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SANTA CRUZ -- The city's charter will be changed to put a controversial desalination measure on the ballot.
That's the order from voters, who on Tuesday overwhelmingly backed Measure P, a resident-led initiative to ensure a future say on the water supply project.
The measure garnered 71 percent support, which proponents say indicates strong concern about the city's plans to pump water out of the ocean and remove the salt to create up to 2.5 million gallons of drinking water each day.
"It could mean it would be very likely a desal vote will not pass," said Rick Longinotti, a founder of Santa Cruz Desal Alternatives.
Desalination proponents disagree and are planning a campaign to convince ratepayers the plant is needed to protect the city from severe drought-driven rationing.
"We're going to outspend them (the anti-desal coalition) dramatically in 2014," said five-time former Mayor Mike Rotkin, referring to the year the plant is likely to come up for a vote.
City Councilwoman Lynn Robinson, who is likely to be mayor in 2014, said Measure P results make "a statement that the community is really focused on the desal issue."
Robinson joined council colleagues in passing an ordinance earlier this year granting voters the right to decide whether the plant would be built. But desalination opponents wanted to ensure the new council, a majority of whom were elected Tuesday, couldn't erase that right by overturning the ordinance.
Measure P blocks the city from constructing the plant or going into bonded debt to pay for it without voter approval. The plant also will need the approval of an extensive host of regulators after an environmental review is released in the spring.
The plant is expected to cost an estimated $125 million to build. The city and its desalination partner, Soquel Creek Water District, already have spent about $11 million studying, planning and designing the facility since 2006.
Follow Sentinel reporter J.M. Brown on Twitter at Twitter.com/jmbrownreports
Asks voters to decide whether they want to change the city's charter to guarantee them the right to a future vote on desalination. It required a simple majority to pass.
36 of 36 precincts reporting | <urn:uuid:a089c7ee-4912-4979-b905-a6122af7dde4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insidebayarea.com/california/ci_21952874/santa-cruz-voters-overwhelmingly-back-desal-vote-set | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956227 | 463 | 1.625 | 2 |
The Gun Shots Recent Posts
The Gun Shots
March 21, 2011
Wyoming is Fourth State to Adopt 'Constitutional Carry' - 8
by John Haughey
Wyoming became the fourth state to affirm the right of its citizens to carry a concealed firearm without a special government-issued license when the state's House of Representatives Wyoming approved a "Constitutional Carry" bill in a 48-8 vote several weeks ago, and Gov. Matt Mead signed it into law on March 3.
Wyoming joins Alaska, Arizona, and Vermont as states that have adopted Constitutional Carry. It goes into effect on July 1.
Similar proposals are being pondered in Colorado and Montana. In Colorado, House Bill 1205 would make it legal for people to carry a gun without a permit. The bill passed the Colorado House in early March in a 40-25 vote and was subsequently endorsed by the State Judiciary Committee in an 8-3 vote. It will soon go before the State Senate.
Meanwhile, there have also been significant developments in concealed carry legislation in other states.
In Oklahoma, voters could decide the future of Oklahoma's "open carry" gun legislation after the state's House Public Safety Committee unanimously approved a bill that would ask on a statewide ballot if citizens should be allowed to carry a gun, whether concealed or unconcealed, if they go through a state-sponsored concealed weapon program.
There are only eight states in the nation that don't allow open carry in some form or another. Of those eight, momentum within State Houses is building in six -- Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Florida -- to allow open carry. Only Illinois and New York remain defiant.
But that may be changing even in Illinois. A measure that would allow Illinois residents to carry concealed firearms in public places passed a house committee in early March, but it still has a long road ahead before it becomes law. | <urn:uuid:bbb2a541-6e2e-4c20-9b45-7f277a423fb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/gun-shots/2011/03/wyoming-fourth-state-adopt-constitutional-carry-%C2%A0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948373 | 391 | 1.804688 | 2 |
July 3, 2012 1:00 pm
Fangirls and boys of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series know that the “fictional” account of the frontier life of a little girl named “Laura” is at least somewhat based on reality. But next summer, they will be able to find out if truth is better than fiction: for the first time, the author’s autobiography Pioneer Girl will be published.
Pamela Smith Hill, who’s editing and annotating the book, told The Rapid City Journal:
“We’re going to publish the original draft … because it gets us very, very close to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original voice,” Hill said. She acknowledges that, like any writer, Wilder might “cringe to have her rough draft published.”
The book was first written in 1930 but never found its way into print directly — too boring, more than one publisher said. Much of the material was repurposed for the Little House series, the first installment of which came out in 1932. Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder, had a hand in shaping the Little House series, notes The New Yorker:
[Rose] did some minor tinkering with “Pioneer Girl,” but, once it was decided to fictionalize the memoir as a children’s story—the idea had come from an editor who rejected the memoir—she took a more aggressive role. It varied in intensity from book to book, but she dutifully typed up the manuscript pages, and, in the process, reshaped and heightened the dramatic structure. She also rewrote the prose so drastically that Laura sometimes felt usurped. “A good bit of the detail that I add to your copy is for pure sensory effect,” Rose explained in a letter.
Now readers will be able to see exactly how much Rose pumped up her mother’s prose.
More from Smithsonian.com:
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week. | <urn:uuid:94c016ff-e416-468a-9ac3-4488fd639a66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/07/little-house-on-the-prairie-authors-autobiography-published-for-first-time-ever/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963938 | 441 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Norma Sullivan said that Sullivan had died at their home in West Sussex, England, on Tuesday. He suffered from heart disease and diabetes and had stopped performing live recently because of his health problems.
Sullivan learned guitar as a teenager and turned professional when he was just 16. He played with many of the biggest names in British pop at the height of the "Swinging London" era.
Along with Jimmy Page, who would later star in Led Zeppelin, Sullivan was one of the most in-demand session guitarists of his era. His website lists sessions with the Tom Jones, Marianne Faithfull, David Bowie, Gerry and the Pacemakers and many others. He claimed to have played on more than 1,000 singles that entered the British charts.
Sullivan's website said he joined his first band, the Wildcats, at age 17, in 1958, which he described as "the early days of rock and roll in this country."
He said he and his friends were too busy learning music to do normal teenage things.
He was known for his mastery of a wide variety of styles, from hard rock to country to blues.
"I am a very lucky man," he said on his website. "I am living my life with my hobby as my profession."
Sullivan also toured with Tom Jones's band, playing in Las Vegas casino hotels and on television shows. | <urn:uuid:89e76bda-a799-4869-909f-36fe21e6864e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.orovillemr.com/entertainment/ci_21696557/acclaimed-session-guitarist-big-jim-sullivan-dies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993078 | 281 | 1.554688 | 2 |
December 12, 2012
There are three subjects that Jews in my social circle never tire of: food, movies and the two-state solution.
Consider me officially tired of the third.
I began promoting a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict long before it was popular. In 1986, when I helped organize a rally in Beverly Hills calling for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, no mainstream Jewish organization would have anything to do with us, and Jewish “patriots” shouted us down and disrupted the event.
I believed then — and still believe — that establishing two states is the best, most just way to resolve the conflicting claims two peoples have over a single piece of real estate.
I believed then — and still believe — that for Israel to annex or incorporate a massive Palestinian Arab population into its body politic would result in apartheid, an endless civil war or the end of a democratic Jewish state.
I believed then — and still believe — that if all sides wanted to achieve such a solution, they could do so in a week. In fact, in the years since that rally, a Middle East peace-industrial complex has arisen with so many agreements, plans, meetings, charts, understandings, negotiators, books and commentators that it now forms a kind of nation-within-two-nations.
The problem isn’t that my beliefs are wrong. The problem is reality.
Reality No. 1 is Hamas. Hamas controls Gaza. And, as its leader Khaled Meshal made clear earlier this week in his first visit there, it seeks the destruction of Israel.
“Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land,” he told a massive rally of enthusiastic supporters on Dec. 7.
“We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take.”
Maybe one day Israel will be able to negotiate with Hamas — but that day will come only when Hamas’ leaders, like the generation of intransigent secular Palestinian leaders before them, recognize that there is no other choice. In the meantime, there can be no “two-state solution” when there are two Palestinian entities, one sworn to Israel’s destruction. Last time I checked, 1 + 2 = 3.
Reality No. 2 is Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). After going to the United Nations on Nov. 29 to successfully upgrade the Palestinian status to a nonmember observer state, Abbas could have then turned to Israel and asked for a resumption of negotiations without preconditions. He could have denounced Meshal’s speech. But he did neither of those things.
Instead, as analyst Douglas Bloomfield wrote, Abbas “renewed his demand for a total construction freeze beyond the 1967 lines, including East Jerusalem, and added a new one, resumption of talks on the 2008 [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert proposal that he initially rejected. He knows both are nonstarters.”
Reality No. 3 is Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not predisposed to taking great risks for a two-state solution, which it’s not clear in any case he really wants or believes in. Many of his coalition partners reject it out of hand, and his foreign minister, Avigdor
Lieberman, has called for Abbas’ removal.
Reality No. 4 is the Arab Awakening, which has thrown Israel’s neighborhood into a lasting turmoil. Syria is on the cusp of even greater change, and the Jordanian monarchy, hiding in the corner like a kid hoping to avoid the teacher’s wrath, is bound to experience its own Tahrir Square.
These realities make a two-state solution as unlikely as a Romney 2016 bumper sticker.
So, as much as I believe in a two-state solution and would like to see it happen in the context of a regional peace, it just won’t.
But that splash of cold water doesn’t rinse away the underlying facts that make a separation between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza so important.
So I’ve moved on from what I think should happen to what I think will happen. And that is not a two-state solution but two-state attrition.
Israel, the dominant player, will resist ceding chunks of the West Bank to the Palestinians until it absolutely has to, when concerns over demography, democracy or international pressure become insurmountable. At that point it will pull back, adjust its security border and go on with its life. A Palestinian entity will fill the void, either the PA alone, the PA in cooperation with Hamas, or, worst-case scenario, a Hamas that has overtaken a weakened PA leadership.
Eventually, Israel will have given up the minimum amount of land and population it has to — including in Jerusalem — and the Palestinians will have established a state with the largest amount of land and people they can get.
The security fence, begun in 2003, was the first stage of the two-state attrition, and its success has proven the concept. Unilateral actions by all sides will arc toward a status-quo solution whose end effect will be Israel and at least one Palestine. It will be a less-than-ideal outcome determined by attrition, indecision, outside events and internal conflicts. There will be no signings on the White House lawn.
The optimist in me wants to believe that years after this dragged out mess, the two (or three) sides will eventually seek cooperation and negotiation. But I won’t hold my breath.
We’re all tired of holding our breath. | <urn:uuid:31c53d37-8482-4257-aaf8-c9a13ff4961d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishjournal.com/rob_eshman/article/two_state_attrition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957361 | 1,196 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Published Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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Leaders of some of the world's most powerful countries will travel to the Lough Erne Golf resort in Fermanagh in just 12 weeks time.
Around 3,500 extra police officers from across the UK have volunteered for duty and, along with hundreds of private security guards, they will assist the PSNI with one of the biggest operations of its kind in the region.
The G8 summit takes place in June this year, and it has a history of attracting protests which can spiral into riot situations, but police are warning that any troublemakers will be dealt with robustly.
"There's going to be a huge number of police officers in the province during that particular time, looking after the safety and security of the summit, of the venue, and in all our major towns," PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay told UTV Live Tonight.
If anyone is out and intent on causing harm, then their opportunities of being stopped in the course of that and being caught, brought to justice, are probably higher than at any other time.
Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay, PSNI
Officers from the PSNI and other forces are undergoing training to ensure they can deal with any situation which may arise during the G8 summit - from sit-down protests involving a handful of people, to full-on riots or any other public order issue.
Security will also be on guard at ports and airports, watching out for known offenders.
"We want to make sure that every officer coming across here has got the confidence that they can deal with everything," PSNI Chief Superintendent Kevin Dunwoody said. "Any suggestion that they've got no training or experience is a complete myth."
"But it's also about learning from a lot of the officers in GB who have dealt with maybe Gleneagles (the 2005 G8 venue) in the past, or dealt with maybe some of the environmental protestors - like in the motorway protest in the south of England."
While the thousands of officers from other police forces have volunteered to travel to Northern Ireland, their unions have expressed concern and questioned the wisdom of the choice of location.
It has been argued that policing is very different in Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK and that there are already enough threats to officers without the addition of the G8 to contend with.
We will stop people who have a history of causing disorder and that's the point where we will intervene and see what powers we can use to keep people safe.
ACC Alistair Finlay
Chief Superintendent Dunwoody insists those tasked with keeping order will be equal to the task.
"No one can guarantee 100% anybody's safety," he added.
"But I'm totally confident that the training and exercises they are given will ensure every officer coming here is safe and will deal with any threat."
The extra officers brought over to Northern Ireland will deal solely with G8-related security and, as is normal for them, will not be armed.
But they will be fully kitted out with bullet-proof body armour.
"The PSNI officers will be armed as normal and key to providing that protection to the group of officers they will be working with during that time," ACC Finlay explained.
A mammoth task lies ahead for all those involved in policing the G8 summit. It is also an operation which will have to be carried out under the full glare of the world's media. | <urn:uuid:8b85165a-959b-4775-b097-cf9f737deca4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.u.tv/News/G8-security-briefed-on-dissident-threat/e3a64d72-f97e-4fb0-8f7e-43d762ec9a23 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966845 | 951 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Best Known For
Barry Bonds is a Major League Baseball player who set a home run record. His accomplishments have been tainted by allegations of performance enhancing drugs.
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Bonds is the son of former Giant and longtime Major League outfielder Bobby Bonds, distant cousin of baseball great Reggie Jackson, and godson of the legendary Willie Mays. Bonds graduated from Arizona State and began his Major League career with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1986. He joined the San Francisco Giants in 1993.
Mark McGwire hit a Major League record 70 home runs, Bonds set the sport on its ear with 73. Bonds denied taking steroids at anytime in 2001 when he was pursuing the season home-run record.
A finicky hitter, Bonds set a Major League record for walks with 177. But he was just as attentive as he was patient, hitting 23 homers on the first or second pitch. He led all players in slugging percentage (.863) and runs scored (146). Among National Leaguers, he finished fourth in RBI and seventh in batting average (.328). Utilizing a short, yet powerful stroke, Barry hit his 500th career home run early in the 2001 season.
Bonds began the 2002 season with 567 home runs and 484 stolen bases. As history's only player with at least 400 career home runs and 400 stolen bases, Bonds needed just 16 of the latter to carve out his very own 500-500 niche.
After battling lung cancer and other health complications, Bonds' father, baseball great Bobby Bonds, died in August 2003. Despite this loss, he remained strong at bat, hitting 45 home runs that season and winning the National Leaguev's Most Valuable Player Award that year. Unfortunately, his success as a player was marred by accusations of steroid use.
Despite the controversy, Bonds had another successful season the next year, again hitting 45 home runs and winning the National MVP Award for the seventh time. But he was sidelined most of 2005 with a knee injury.
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For some athletes, the risk of losing—or even being less than the best—is worse than the many consequences of doping in professional sports, and for decades, performance-enhancing drug controversies have made headlines around the world. Other athletes have garnered media attention, criminal charges and sporting suspensions for their recreational drug use. Biography.com examines some of the world's greatest athletes to ever fall from fame, whose names have been tarnished by drugs scandals, including Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Marion Jones, Andre Agassi, Floyd Landis and Lance Armstrong.
Athletes Involved in Drug Scandals 22 people in this group
They've sprinted, served, batted, slam-dunked and TKO'd their way into sports history. Sprinter Jesse Owens's Olympic triumphs put Hitler to shame. Basketball star Michael Jordan taught kids that they could fly. Gymnast Gabby Douglas showed that champions can come in pint-size packages, and Tiger Woods brought the game of golf to another level. Explore biographies of famous black athletes who broke records and barriers and, ultimately, captured our imaginations.
Famous Black Athletes 148 people in this group
Famous Leos 527 people in this group | <urn:uuid:4b17d86c-c4ea-4cff-9c43-f9f2a2e817c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biography.com/people/barry-bonds-9542459 | 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 | 0.958468 | 714 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Search engine optimisation has changed fundamentally, and as a result the Internet is maturing. Google’s recent ‘Penguin’ update seeks to punish websites that have thus far been using archaic ‘black hat’ techniques, and reward those that create and publish content that is both new, and can attract a large, interested audience.
I suppose one way of looking into Google’s thinking here is that in a sense, they are encouraging the qualities that made pre-Internet journalism successful, and applying it to the age of e-commerce and social media. The key now for improved search-engine ranking for your site is to think, write, publish and share rather than simply looking to exploit a web crawler that searches for keywords and links. This new algorithm has completely changed the philosophy and approach to search engine optimisation that web developers and businesses will have to take, even if they don’t yet realise it – after all, the update was only released in April 2012.
The Penguin update has dramatically diminished the search engine rankings of websites that have not adapted to the change in policy by Google, with many sites falling down the search results as an effect of several years of content negligence and keyword reliance. If you have discovered that your once proud website now appears on page 8 in a Google search then it is pretty likely that you have been caught out by this algorithm change.
You can however counteract this, and ultimately use this fundamental change in search rankings to your advantage. The new rules, which underlie Google’s new ranking policy, are orientated around discouraging ‘spammy’ search engine optimisation methods. These methods used to be cheeky tactics used by many websites in order to improve both search rankings and site traffic.
The opposite is now true for many of the techniques. ‘Spinning’ (i.e. taking something created by another party and making slight keyword changes) is something now picked upon by the Penguin. Keyword ‘stuffing’ was another popular short-term fix several years ago, and whilst the clever use of keywords on your site is important for SEO purposes, it is unwise to simply ‘stuff’ your website with tonnes of keywords in a methodological and unimaginative way.
As we have already mentioned, building relevant content that your audience will enjoy, and potentially wish to share online is an incredibly effective way to re-build your friendship with Google. Blog posts are a great way of achieving this (something I’m doing right now in fact!). Try and write content in your site blog posts that are topical, up-to-date and even opinionated. Remember, this is not a sales technique; it is a way of interacting with the people who are interested in what you do.
Publishing fresh content that your audience can also interact with, comment on and share is evidently an effective tool to use now that the Penguin update is here. The Social Churn publishing element is uniquely efficient in attaining this as it allows you to hand-pick relevant comments from various social networks, and then publish them on your website. If you utilise this you have two instant benefits; you significantly improve your search ranking and also display positive feedback or ‘social recommendations’ on your site, improving both trust from prospective customers and high purchase likelihood.
The Penguin update essentially causes websites to suffer if they fail to innovate, which I can only see as a wholly positive change, which should in time make for a vastly more interesting and content driven internet. | <urn:uuid:6b3f6f26-fdb5-4e35-abcc-ea0332bea96e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.socialchurn.com/2012/08/10/google-penguin-have-you-been-left-in-the-cold/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948921 | 723 | 1.820313 | 2 |
What is ISO?
International Organization for Standards (ISO) is an elite 100 member organization. It's objective is to provide the development of world wide standards for the improvement of operating procedures, efficiency, productivity, and reducing costs.
ISO 9001:2008 applies to all types of organizations. It doesn't matter what size they are or what they do. It can help both product and service oriented organizations achieve standards of quality that are recognized and respected throughout the world.
Why is ISO important?
There are 3 concepts to ISO 9001:2008 that make this program important and effective.
ISO 9001:2008 has very stringent requirements for a company to become certified. Here is an overview of the requirements to become certified.
Five Major Clauses Of ISO 9001:2008
Eight Quality Management Principles
What does ISO 9001:2008 mean to us and our customers?
Being the Gear Centre Group is ISO 9001:2008 Certified, you as our customer can be assured that we stand behind our products and services 100%. All of our products and services are of the finest quality that meet and exceed the highest level of international standards. The Gear Centre Group will maintain and improve on its ISO 9001:2008 Certification on all our products and services. That is our committment to you, our customer. | <urn:uuid:e33cc07f-9e5f-4845-8e85-0712db7708af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gearcentre-offhwy.com/index.php/iso-9001.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943545 | 266 | 1.765625 | 2 |
This paper proposes an augmented Lagrange Hopfield network (ALHN) for real power dispatch on large-scale power systems. The proposed ALHN is a continuous Hopfield network with its energy function based on augmented Lagrange function. For this combination, the ALHN method can easily deal with large-scale problems with nonlinear constraints. The proposed ALHN has been tested on systems from 40 units to 240 units, IEEE 118-bus and IEEE 300-bus systems, and the obtained results have been compared to those from other methods. The test results have shown that the ALHN method can obtain better solutions than the compared methods in a very fast manner. Therefore, the proposed ALHN could be favorable for implementation on the real power dispatch problems for large-scale systems. | <urn:uuid:c0b7969d-cb27-4090-9be6-b1a4df9914ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://econpapers.repec.org/article/iggjeoe00/v_3a1_3ay_3a2012_3ai_3a1_3ap_3a19-38.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936253 | 160 | 1.625 | 2 |
SAN DIEGO (AP) — California’s housing market crisis appears to finally be easing.
The real estate firm DataQuick reports that the number of California homes entering foreclosure in the second quarter of the year dipped to its lowest level since 2007.
DataQuick says 54,615 default notices were filed on homes and condos, down nearly 3 percent from the first quarter and 3.6 percent from the same period last year.
DataQuick President John Walsh says that could mean fewer homeowners are in trouble.
UC Berkeley economist Kenneth Rosen tells the Los Angeles Times that the figures indicate the housing market has bottomed, although there are still a lot of troubled homes out there.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. | <urn:uuid:cf3218c4-83ef-40e7-933a-447f4b4d637f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/07/24/foreclosure-rate-for-california-homes-eases/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94251 | 145 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Iowa City, IA Don’t Miss Attraction: Iowa Avenue Literary Walk
Normally, a city’s attractions are at eye-level. But, when you’re in Iowa City, be sure to look at the ground. A stroll through the Iowa Avenue Literary Walk in downtown is like passing through a large work of art.
The Literary Walk features a series of bronze relief panels, embeded in the sidewalk, that are inscribed with words from 49 writers who have ties to the state. The panels are then connected by quotations, which are stamped into the sidewalk and about books and writing. From children’s books to memoirs to dialogues from plays, a wide variety of material is shown.
Iowa City is designated as an UNESCO City of Literature and home to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and each panel reveals why the authors on the Literary Walk are bound to Iowa.
Learn more about Iowa City’s attractions. | <urn:uuid:fdfca156-c0d5-4496-8247-5861a1803e8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://livability.com/iowa-city/ia/attractions/iowa-city-ia-don%E2%80%99t-miss-attraction-iowa-avenue-literary-walk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962115 | 194 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Transportation in Seoul
Seoul's subway network is the quickest and easiest way to get around the city. Eight lines extend out from the centre with Line 2 (green) travelling in a loop. Travel out of rush hour to avoid the crowds and professional subway pushers.
Taxis are safe and relatively inexpensive. You can hail one from the street or find one at taxi stands. Regular taxis are cheaper but most drivers don't speak English. Deluxe (black) taxis have English-speaking drivers and take credit cards. Rates go up 20% on regular taxis after midnight.
Some areas are best explored on foot and some degree of walking is necessary to see the sights. Use pedestrian walkways and underpasses whenever possible, since drivers don't always stop for pedestrians.
Seoul's many buses are cheaper but more difficult to navigate than the subway. They aren't the quickest way to travel during rush hour, but an exciting way to see the city. There are three types — express (faster, more expensive with seats), regular; and village (cheapest, for travel within a neighbourhood).
Rent your car
Despite traffic, honking horns, weaving traffic and double parking, the key to driving in Seoul is patience and politeness. In an effort to make female drivers feel comfortable, the authorities have even started to paint parking spaces pink!
A T-money Card provides savings on single fares on buses and the subway. If you're travelling exclusively on the metro, the Commuter Subway Card is valid for 60 trips within a 30-day period and is good for all zones on lines 1-8. Driving in Seoul is not recommended for visitors. | <urn:uuid:45600550-4bad-440d-ac97-08a13021b0d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.klm.com/destinationguide/hk_en/airline-ticket/asia/east-asia/south-korea/seoul/transportation.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95256 | 338 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Rantings and tirades of a frustrated economist.
Funny how the news never mentions the 39,000+ that die from the flu every year. The epidemic is really all about the news media being lazy and not wanting to go out and report on actual news. Instead they try to get maximum mileage with the "news du jour"Reminds me of 2003 or 2004 when there was a HUGE uproar about shark attacks near the beaches. Every day for about two weeks, all the news outlets had stories about shark attacks. "Experts" were interviewed about why the surge in shark-human encounters. People were looking into ways to exterminate the sharks.Turns out that the real number of shark attacks was actually lower that year then the year before, and in reality, slightly below average. Guess that demonstrates the quality of their "experts"
Gee and they wonder why? WHY? Newpapers are going down the toilet in readership and so are some TV News programs.
Any time that two events happen one right after the other, the media decides that it is a "rash".This type of cluster mis-identification is rampant in both the media and government. Apparently none of them ever took statistics in school.http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/
While total deaths look about average on this chart, its important to keep in mind WHO is dying. H1N1 is disproportionately affecting younger people, and that is where a lot of the deaths are coming from, especially pregnant women. I think you would agree that a disease that kills 1 million 70 year olds is quite a bit different than one that kills 1 million 20 year olds, even though both killed the same number of people. This is a case of the charts leaving out the most important information: average age of death.
I don't think total deaths look at all average on those charts. The second chart is showing a peak right now about the same height as in previous years. Fine. But look at the time scale. The current peak is at week 39 of the year which in the last two years had zip for deaths. The chart suggests that in normal years the true peak in flu death comes about the end of February.
To the anon in the forth comment: I don't see many 20 year olds kneeling over. It's the very young, the very old, and the pregnant that are primarily dieing, as usual. There was some hoopla about people with strong immune systems (20 year olds) exhibiting stronger symptoms than usual but nothing about them dieing in greater numbers. My take on the whole thing is that we'll make h1n1 out to be a horrible problem so that the messiah can "solve" it through his herculean immunization program. This will prove that the government can handle taking over the medical industry. Just wait, the new state funded media will do nothing but talk about how the anointed one saved us from h1n1.
What's interesting to me are six things:a) the out of normal cycle of the H1N1 deaths,b) we haven't gotten into significant deaths from the seasonal flu yet and probably won't for a few more weeks. c) the numbers here are pediatric deaths, not total deaths. The young are supposedly more receptive to H1N1.d) it's hard to tell where we are at with the H1N1 distribution - has it peaked yet? And no one knows what happens when the seasonal flu and the H1N1 are both running around.e) No one knows if the H1N1 will mutate into something more dangerous.f) It appears the Federal government response thus far is too little too late.Aw heck, why waste a good panic anyway.
Post a Comment | <urn:uuid:8818efa0-d231-49dc-8bb8-5a80db64bd6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2009/10/pig-flu-ala-charts.html?m=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971607 | 776 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Sustainable Manufacturing and E3 Join Forces for the 10th SMARTJanuary 4, 2011
Early December marked the tenth Sustainable Manufacturing American Regional Tour, or SMART and this one took place in Detroit, MI. Sixty representatives from Detroit’s manufacturing sector, state government, nonprofit sector, academia and federal government gathered to discuss, learn, teach and embody the lessons learned from companies who have applied the concepts of sustainable manufacturing. The event was free to participants and the objective was to connect Detroit manufacturers to the federal government’s E3 (Economy, Energy, Environment) Initiative, a multi-agency effort aimed at helping U.S. manufacturers and utilities become more energy-efficient, sustainable and competitive and showcase Detroit-area industrial energy efficiency and sustainability successes through company presentations and manufacturing facility tours. This was the second time the Sustainable Manufacturing Initiative or SMI has formally partnered with E3 (Economy, Energy, Environment). As the largest exporting metro region in the U.S., Detroit area businesses benefit from E3 initiatives, which present an array of opportunities for Detroit businesses looking to cut costs, identify new markets and create jobs.
DTE Energy, Detroit’s largest utility, hosted the day’s morning session that featured opening remarks by President and COO Steve Kurmas and Commerce Deputy Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing and Services Mary Saunders. Saunders highlighted the range of tools and resources available to Detroit-area manufacturers, provided by the U.S. Commerce Department through the SMI, CommerceConnect and local Export Assistance Centers. Other federal government resources, such as the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, the local Manufacturing Extension Partnership affiliate, and Small Business Administration district office were also highlighted.
The day’s events included a discussion about the successes and challenges in industrial energy efficiency and sustainability. The panel included Gerald Polk of DTE, who discussed their energy optimization programs for manufacturers, a program for which DTE has allocated more than $10 million. The program also provides grant incentives to manufacturers that plan to implement energy efficiency enhancements in their facilities. Over 1,100 businesses are currently participating in this program.
A highlight of the day included a tour of Goodwill’s Green Works facility where participants had the opportunity to hear personal success stories from employees and observe Green Works’ asset recovery operations. Participants toured the facility’s sorting and processing operations which use state of the art machinery donated by DTE Energy.
All in all, the day was a great success, with substantive discussion throughout on ways the federal and state governments, private sector, academia and nonprofit sector can work together to advance the green economy in Detroit. The E3 program will provide substantial follow-up to this event, recruiting a steady stream of Detroit-area manufacturers interested in implementing energy efficiency and sustainability improvements in their own operations to enhance competitiveness and environmental stewardship. Presentations, photos, and a full resource guide from the event are available on the SMI website. | <urn:uuid:14136302-dbcd-4790-87d3-e7319952c3b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.trade.gov/2011/01/04/sustainable-manufacturing-and-e3-join-forces-for-the-10th-smart/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939334 | 597 | 1.679688 | 2 |
For some years I have been creating a series of works using negative impressions of the body. Directly or indirectly these works have referenced the history of representation of the body, most particularly that of the female nude.
The work Untitled (after Manet’s Olympia) 2002 formed part of a group of works exhibited in 2002 under the collective title Fleshed Out. This group of works was inspired by a description of a performance work by Claus Oldenberg in 1960 titled Foto Death. In this work, Oldenberg arranged a family group of three in front of a backdrop while a photographer prepared to take their portrait. Each time the group was to be filmed they fell to the ground, so defying representation. Like Roland Barthes’ description of photography as ‘flat-death’ in his book Camera Lucida, Oldenberg emphasizes the embalming process of photography and, by extension, representational history itself.
In the exhibition Fleshed Out famous paintings by Manet, Gauguin and Courbet were used as large life-size photo backdrops in which the central figures were digitally removed. The removed figures re-appeared alongside the photo backdrops as negative bronze casts.
In the work for this exhibition, Manet’s famous painting Olympia is subjected to this process. The impression of a female body, that of the artist, re-creates this pose and presents it to the audience as a ‘performance’ sculpture in bronze. In occupying this sculpture, the viewer becomes the ‘flesh’ of the painting, entering history fleetingly as a representation. Like Oldenberg’s performance, however, this experience is not recorded by the camera or historicized, but remains only in the memory of the viewer/performer.
In one sense, there is mischief at play in interfering with history but equally there is liberation of historical works into a contemporary context. All the works chosen in Fleshed Out were controversial in their own time. The transient nature of performance is introduced as an immediate experience of the work. Without the presence of the viewer the work succumbs to a state of absence. In removing the central figures from the paintings, the meaning and composition of the work become inexplicable, while the negative space of the casts of those same figures reduces the heroic tradition of bronze figure sculpture to a ‘pre-stage’ in the casting process.
There is a politics of representation at play here in which the viewer’s participation forms a crucial part of the subversive process.
Julie Rrap, November 2002 | <urn:uuid:c1644185-ba93-4339-b161-996dcb8ce425> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/SculpturePrize03/Detail.cfm?IRN=122552&BioArtistIRN=21681&mystartrow=10&realstartrow=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96168 | 525 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Gill South discovers that the typical Kiwi male's reluctance to admit to ailments or injuries is not good for their health.
I'm in a waiting room at the unearthly hour of 10 past seven in the morning to see Mt Eden physiotherapist, David Woodbridge. This time it's not for me, but my son Fintan, whose back has been protesting when he does too much bowling. It's the beginning of the cricket season, I want to get any niggles sorted out sooner rather than later.
David is at Functional Physio, across the road from the Auckland Boys' Grammar hockey field, and he helps lots of sporty schoolboys and grown-ups. His assessment of Fintan is that he has a couple of muscle imbalances in the way he stands, he holds his pelvis in an unusual way. If he keeps on doing his sport and overbowling, without strengthening his growing muscles, he might end up with a stress fracture. We are given five exercises to help with this.
I'm hoping we've caught things in time.
I think a lot of Kiwi boys throw themselves at all kinds of sport as my boys do, and then end up with long-term injuries later on.
I tell Professor Grant Schofield, the co-author, with Buck Shelford, of Buck Up, The Real Bloke's Guide to Getting Healthy and Living Longer, that I see a lot of ex-sporty types at my gym and sometimes it's not pretty.
They tend to look athletic but overweight and push themselves with a personal trainer. They look pretty miserable, poor loves. You can see them thinking, "I'd rather be on a rugby field."
The other problem with men and their approach to health is they are loath to consult a doctor if something is wrong, says Grant. They may not admit something like they are bleeding from their bowel until they are halfway out the door.
Women on the other hand, tend to look after themselves better, exercise more consistently and do all right with food and diet. They are able to get a bit hungry at times and not immediately eat. (Not me, guys). Men, says Grant, who is Professor of Public Health at AUT University, don't seem to be able to deal with hunger and not eating. At the same time, they have quite sedentary lifestyles and their jobs can be highly stressful. These lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs, their jobs are never finished and they snack on sweet things to keep going.
Grant, unsurprisingly, is pretty anti-sugar - although he says I can keep eating my dark chocolate in small amounts. His challenge to men is to eat more lean protein and fruit and vegetables. Do it for a week, he says, eating nothing but. For the first three days you will feel awful but after that you will have lots of energy. I think (for a minute) about doing it with you all, then I remember Dry July. I think I've suffered enough for my art this year.
But I'll follow Grant's recommendation for exercise. This depends on how much you move as part of your everyday life, he says. Get a pedometer and see how close you get to 10,000 steps. I might just do that. There are big benefits to vigorous exercise, he says, making yourself huff and puff. He suggests doing this most days or at least three times a week. You may need as little as 20 minutes but get into it, he advises. Exercise is medicine and you earn the right to be fit and healthy by what you do each day.
I gave the blokes some love this week, so it will be next week that I take on aqua-pilates, a world first in New Zealand.By Gill South Email Gill | <urn:uuid:0c4ea84e-20a4-425b-860b-deb1301ff595> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/life-style-comment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503216&objectid=10845979 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978966 | 786 | 1.765625 | 2 |
“The root is the mouth of the tree: pour water there at the bottom and, look, it sprouts green at the top.”
Animals – humans included – are, in essence, trees on wheels, trees on legs, we are mobile plant-life. So, our root is on top, where the mouth is. Pour in water up there, stuff that mouth up there with food and, look, body sprouts at the bottom.
Just like trees, we are living input/output tubes, only oriented differently, and on leg-wheels. Mouth is the root, the root of all your bodymind growth. You literally sprout from these very lips that kiss reality with every bite, from these two rows of teeth that mill the matter of reality into the consciousness that reads this sentence.
So, before you eat next time, notice your mouth. Clench and relax your jaw, smack your lips, let your tongue maniacally sweep around its cavernous abode, chomp your matter-milling teeth. Check the equipment of your growth. Get rooted in the mouth. Realize: this reality you are about to process is the very ground you sprout from.
Reference: Speaking of Siva, A. K. Ramanjuan, 1973, p. 80
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|What is the Liturgy of the Hours?||What is the Universalis web site?|
The Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) is the richest single prayer resource of the Christian Church. It provides prayers, psalms and meditation for every hour of every day. It has existed from the earliest times, to fulfil the Lord's command to pray without ceasing. Never monotonous, always new, it provides the means for the whole world, united, to pray together and sanctify every hour of every day of every year. All over the world, hundreds of thousands of priests and religious have vowed to pray the Liturgy daily, and all over the world they do, in public and in private, in tin shacks and cathedrals, in palaces and in prison camps.
But the Liturgy's very richness is also its weakness. The liturgical calendar, the four-week cycle of psalms, the celebrations of saints - all these interact in an intricate dance of prayer that requires some 6,000 pages of small print in 3 or 4 volumes. The complete books (the Breviary) are expensive to buy, heavy to carry, and, except for the really dedicated, complex to use. Thus many people with a busy life in the world are unable to undertake the project of praying the liturgy, and so it remains shamefully unused.
This site does all the calendar calculations for you, and presents you with the psalms and readings for each hour of today, every day. For instructions, please see the links at the top of this page. As well as the Web, Universalis content is also available for WAP phones, by email, and by web feed for syndication.
As we embark on the third millennium, it becomes more important than ever that we should obey the Lord's command and pray without ceasing, to sanctify time, the world, and ourselves. The Universalis Web site has been created, to give us all, wherever we are, at all times, the chance to participate in the Church's universal prayer. One click - one bookmark - and we can pause for a moment in our busy lives and contemplate what really matters.
This site uses the version of the Liturgy of the Hours given in the Roman Breviary - but the Divine Office is for all Christians and not just Catholics. Christians of many other denominations, including Anglicans, Methodists, and Baptists, are using this site on a regular basis.
|This website © Copyright 1996-2012 Universalis Publishing Ltd (contact us)| | <urn:uuid:4624c89e-346d-46b5-9d0b-5b9950f7dc61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.universalis.com/Nigeria/about.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939623 | 531 | 1.734375 | 2 |
TVR was founded in 1947 by Trevor Wilkinson, who simply used his first name as a model for the company name. The first car was built in 1949, and in 1953 the concept of a GRP bodywork over a tubular steel backbone chassis was born, which is continued to this day. In the early years, a wide range of engines was used.
Currently, TVR is the 3rd largest specialized sports car manufacturer of the world. A surprisingly diverse range of coupes and convertibles are offered, some using an inhouse straight-6 cylinder engine design, others an inhouse V8. These cars are built from sturdy steel frames, cloaked in aggressive (and sometimes bizarre) body designs. | <urn:uuid:75a30cde-6359-48a7-91ad-af08fa453ab7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fact-index.com/t/tv/tvr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979878 | 143 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Health insurance exchange passes in HouseOn Monday, March 4, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed a bill that will create a state health insurance exchange where Minnesotans can compare and purchase health insurance coverage.
On Monday, March 4, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed a bill that will create a state health insurance exchange where Minnesotans can compare and purchase health insurance coverage.
Representative Jay McNamar (DFL – Elbow Lake) voted in favor of creating the exchange, which will serve approximately 1.2 million people in the state.
According to McNamar, the bill will help reduce health care costs by helping Minnesotans get preventative care.
Minnesota families are expected to save more than $1 billion by using the exchange to purchase insurance, with the average family saving $500 and a lower-income family saving approximately $1,800.
The exchange will also help small businesses provide affordable health care choices to their employees. Small businesses currently pay on average 18 percent more than large businesses and the exchange will help them save up to 7.5 percent off premium costs.
“This is a solution that makes sense for everyone,” said McNamar. “And if we don’t create an exchange ourselves, we will be stuck using a one size fits all exchange created by the federal government.
Minnesota has had two years to pass a bill creating a health insurance exchange but failed to do so until under new leadership this session. It will be funded through self-sustaining charges on plan premiums and is unlikely to require any general fund dollars.
McNamar can be contacted at (651) 296-4929 or at rep.jay.mcnamar | <urn:uuid:dbdfbce7-dc0c-4364-ae7b-cc09a319a57b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.echopress.com/event/article/id/102759/publisher_ID/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951693 | 348 | 1.507813 | 2 |
"I love everything about her, and I’m not a guy who says that lightly. I’m a guy who has faked love his entire life. I thought love was just something idiots thought they felt, but this woman has a hold on my heart that I could not break if I wanted to. And there have been times that I wanted to. It has been overwhelming and humbling and even painful at times. But I could not stop loving her anymore than I could stop breathing. I am hopelessly, irretrievably in love with her. More than she knows."
— Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother Season 8 Episode 6, Splitsville (via urameshii)
"I love you’ means that I accept you for the person that you are, and that I do not wish to change you into someone else. It means that I will love you and stand by you even through the worst of times. It means loving you even when you’re in a bad mood, or too tired to do the things I want to do. It means loving you when you’re down, not just when you’re fun to be with. ‘I love you’ means that I know your deepest secrets and do not judge you for them, asking in return that you do not judge me for mine. It means that I care enough to fight for what we have and that I love you enough not to let go. It means thinking of you, dreaming of you, wanting and needing you constantly, and hoping you feel the same about me."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (via wakeupboo)
(Source: venebelle, via wakeupboo)
"For the first time I regret all the other kisses; now I know how much a kiss can mean."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (via fitzgeraldquotes)
"Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything."
— Ray Bradbury (via anditslove)
(Source: journal.neilgaiman.com, via wakeupboo)
"Love can come when you’re already who you are, when you’re filled with you. Not when you look to someone else to fill the empty space."
— Deb Caletti (via kari-shma)
"We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it’s like chasing clouds."
— Libba Bray (via kari-shma) | <urn:uuid:088e4326-f1a0-4ea6-90ca-5ed39ec0058f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greeneyedives.tumblr.com/tagged/quotes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953602 | 557 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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Mon January 14, 2013
Car companies starting auto show earlier
Press days for Detroit's North American International Auto Show "officially" begin Monday morning - but it's become something of a recent tradition to show an especially important car the night before.
That's what GM did with the seventh-generation Corvette, which it calls the "Stingray" in homage to the much-loved 1963 Corvette.
Mark Reussis GM's North American President, and a long-time Corvette fan. He's owned about ten of them in his lifetime so far.
"I love this car, I honestly - that's why I'm here," Reuss told a group of reporters. "I joined this company because of this car."
The car, with a striking exterior design, and upgraded interior, will feature a carbon fiber roof, 450-horsepower, and better fuel economy than its predecessor, which got 26 miles per gallon highway.
Reuss says the importance of the Corvette to the entire company can't be overstated.
"The whole political arena has changed radically over the last few years since we went through bankruptcy," says Reuss, "And I think a lot of people here needed something to believe in. This is a car that we all believed in."
Later in the evening Mercedes Benz showed journalists a sneak peek at an entry-level compact car that will be priced around $30,000....aimed at younger buyers who might have thought they couldn't afford a Mercedes Benz.
The first big event of this morning is the announcement of the winner of North American Car and Truck of the Year. | <urn:uuid:6238d9ed-b9a7-4f2b-8f04-da2fa90c99cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.michiganradio.org/post/car-companies-starting-auto-show-earlier | 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 | 0.967086 | 342 | 1.71875 | 2 |
ANALYSIS-UK retail faces virtual future or real demise
LONDON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Tradition has counted for nothing as new trends put paid to some of Britain's best-known retailers, while some of the oldest names, like venerable department store chain John Lewis, are showing how to catch the changing tide.
With footfall on the high street in decline and new sales channels chipping away at bricks-and-mortar retail, most stores on the main shopping strips are having to evolve fast or face extinction.
"What we are seeing is a seismic shift in shopping habits," said Tim Steiner, chief executive of online grocer Ocado .
Britain leads the way in internet shopping, with online sales making 10 percent of all retail business in 2012, ahead of the United States, where about 7 percent is online, and the rest of Europe, and it's a rapidly rising share. This year it is expected to rise another 12 percent to 87 billion pounds ($138 billion).
John Lewis, a fixture on London's Oxford Street since 1864, is ahead of that trend and others. Online sales now account for one pound in every four spent at the group. Its Christmas online sales jumped 44 percent on the previous year, helped by a click-and-collect service that allows shoppers to also pick up orders from the outlets of sister company Waitrose, an upmarket grocery chain.
When would-be customers browse johnlewis.com on a cell phone, they find a website designed for mobiles that fits handily sized menus to the small screen without the need for resizing or swiping to see what's on the page or hunt for command buttons that are out of sight.
Once reserved for calls and texts, shoppers are increasingly using mobiles to visit websites. At department store Debenhams , 36 percent of traffic to its website in the Christmas trading period came through mobile devices, though conversion to sales was less than for traffic via personal computers. Sales via mobiles at Home Retail's Argos business more than doubled in 2012.
"The trend is undoubtedly towards using mobile devices, and the challenge for retailers is to make them easier to use to get that conversion up," Debenhams CEO Michael Sharp said, adding the key to getting consumers to spend rather than browse is to improve the look and feel of sites on handheld screens.
WINDOWS ONTO THE VIRTUAL
A Deloitte poll showed only 15 percent of e-commerce firms have websites designed to be viewed on smartphones, but after five years of consumer confidence weakened by muted pay rises, intermittent recession and government spending cuts, they can ill afford to ignore technologies that are fast turning physical stores into windows onto the virtual world.
Shoppers are increasingly "showrooming" - using their mobile devices in stores to see if the product in front of them is cheaper online or elsewhere. Some retailers are tapping into that practice; Marks & Spencer's new concept store at Ellesmere Port, north west England, features 70-inch display screens, browse-and-order hubs and iPad-carrying shop assistants to help customers reach a decision to buy.
Some, including Marks & Spencer's "Virtual Makeover" site, are using visualisation technology, which can let shoppers see, for example, how make-up or a pair of jeans would look on them or how a kitchen or sofa would look in their own homes. Others are experimenting with "augmented reality", overlaying computer-generated images onto real-word situations. Luxury brand Burberry opened its Beijing store with holographic models strutting down the catwalk alongside the flesh-and-blood regulars.
In addition to spotting new opportunities to catch sales, retailers also need to recognise how to tailor their traditional channels to cut costs such as rent and wages.
As trade moves online, many retailers, including electricals firm Dixons Retail, mother and baby products group Mothercare, and Philip Green's Arcadia fashion group, have all said they will be more profitable with fewer stores.
Britain's grocers, including market leader Tesco, No. 3 Sainsbury and No. 4 Morrisons, have also slowed expansion plans after two decades of rapid space growth.
"If you are not careful, you build huge temples to retail which become less sustainable as large proportions of your trade go online," said Waitrose managing director Mark Price.
OUT OF TOWN
Run-down warehouses on the edge of cities across Britain are being snapped up by big firms seeking sites closer to customers who will increasingly demand delivery to stores and homes within hours rather than days. Investment is also needed to deal with the inevitable consequence of more returned goods.
Amazon is hunting for 20 sheds close to British cities, while Tesco and closest rival Asda are opening so-called "dark stores" - distribution centres that look like supermarkets on the inside but are closed to customers.
"Your industrial estate (near heavily populated areas) is the high street of the future," said Jonathan Holland, senior manager of Legal & General Property's industrial fund.
Failure to adapt will prove fatal for some.
The collapse into administration of electricals group Comet, camera specialist Jessops, entertainment retailer HMV and DVD rental firm Blockbuster all reflect failure to react quickly to shoppers' changing habits and the threat posed by online stores like Amazon, download sites like Apple's iTunes or supermarkets that undercut them on cost.
According to the Local Data Company (LDC), the stores run by these failed businesses, if left vacant, could raise Britain's national shop vacancy rate by nearly 5 percentage points to an all-time high of over 19 percent.
Slow movers are also paying a price.
Morrisons is underperforming rivals and posted a weak Christmas update, partly attributed to its lack of an online food offer. Analysts expect it to launch a trial this year.
Marks & Spencer, Britain's No. 1 clothing retailer, has also been criticised by some analysts for lagging rivals in adapting to the internet age. While it is now investing heavily, its new web platform is not scheduled to launch until 2014.
By contrast, the second-largest clothing retailer, Next , recorded sales growth of 11 percent in its Directory online business, partly fuelled by a standard service that delivers the next day any orders made by 2100 GMT.
The world's two biggest clothing retailers, Spain's Inditex and Sweden's Hennes & Mauritz, have been slow out of the blocks in their push online.
Though No. 1 Inditex has over 6,000 stores in 86 markets, it only ventured online in 2010, while No. 2 H&M launched its mobile-adapted site in eight online markets in January, and will only launch online in the United States this year.
(Reporting by James Davey and Neil Maidment; additional reporting by Helen Massy-Beresford and Tom Bill; Editing by Will Waterman) | <urn:uuid:2b97eb0c-98cc-44ba-a10d-830172d80083> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/100435715 | 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 | 0.949371 | 1,421 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Hunting is too dangerous for kids
The story in the newspapers about the 7-year-old child who got lost in the woods after “hunting with family” is both appalling and terrible parenting. Taking a 7-year-old, or for that matter any child, hunting is risky and inappropriate. In this case the child wasn’t shot by accident, as is usually the case in these accidents while hunting, but got lost overnight in freezing cold weather. I wonder where the parents were? Deer hunting is dangerous enough already without exposing your kids to the bullets buzzing by your head from other hunters shooting at everything that moves. That’s not including your own rifle going off by accident and killing your best friend or kids. Just ask Dick Cheney, who shot his buddy while quail hunting. The 78-year-old victim had a heart attack after getting shot by Cheney.
So, leave the kids at home and go hunting yourself if you have to. If people are in the woods with children they better stay close to them.
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Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Program
Farm Owner Dies During Tractor Overturn
On August 9th, 2004 a 76-year-old dairy farm owner was fatally injured when the tractor he was operating overturned, pinning him underneath the tractor. The farmer had been moving large round hay bales from a field using a hay wagon pulled by a tractor when the incident occurred. As the farmer attempted to drive the tractor/wagon combination down a sloping farm lane, the weight of the loaded wagon overcame the tractor, pushing the tractor to the side of the lane. The wagon continued forward and pushed the tractor into a jack-knifed position, causing the steel tongue connecting the wagon and tractor to snap in half, thus allowing the wagon to continue down the slope. The tractor continued to skid to the side and eventually overturned, pinning the victim underneath the tractor. The victim’s grandson arrived on the scene shortly after the incident occurred and went for help, asking the victim’s wife to call 911. After the local emergency squad and personnel from the County Sheriff’s office arrived, the medical examiner was contacted and pronounced the victim dead at the scene.
New York State Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (NY FACE) investigators
concluded that to help prevent similar incidents from occurring in the
On August 9th, 2004, at approximately 3:15 p.m., a 76-year-old Caucasian male dairy farm owner was fatally injured while using a tractor and attached wagon to transport round hay bales. The farmer was traveling down an incline on a farm lane when the tractor overturned, crushing him underneath.
The NY State FACE program learned of the incident on August 10th, 2004 through media reports. A NY FACE investigator conducted a site investigation on August 25th, 2004. The investigator worked with the Sheriff’s office investigator who was on the scene the day of the incident. Additionally, the FACE investigator spoke with the victim’s wife regarding the incident and reviewed the medical examiner’s report.
The dairy farm where the incident occurred had been in the family for
many generations and was owned and operated by the victim and his wife.
The victim’s son worked on the farm, and the victim’s grandchildren,
who also lived on the farm, occasionally helped with some of the farm
chores. The farmhouse, barn, and farmyard area were located in a valley,
with field locations both in the valley and on top of the hill located
behind the farmstead. The victim worked full-time on the farm and had
operated equipment on this particular farm lane regularly during his lifetime.
Back to Top
On August 9th, 2004 the farm owner was moving large round hay bales from an upper field location down to the barn area for storage. The farmer and his 15-year-old grandson loaded round bales onto two wagons in a distant field on top of the hill. They loaded eight round bales onto each of the two wagons, and then began transporting the hay bales down to the barn for storage. The farmer was driving a 1969 John Deere model 2020 tractor with the attached hay wagon. The 15-year-old grandson was driving a second tractor pulling the other hay wagon behind his grandfather. They were traveling on a dirt farm lane that descended at a 27-degree slope down to the farm. The farm owner had driven up and down this lane regularly his entire lifetime on this farm.
On the day of the incident, as the farmer descended the sloping farm lane, the weight of the wagon with the hay bales began pushing the tractor down the hill. The hay bales weighed approximately 800 pounds each. The combined weight of the eight hay bales and wagon was approximately 8,000 pounds. The tractor weighed approximately 4,500 pounds. As the tractor and trailer descended the slope, the weight of the hay wagon began pushing the tractor uncontrollably. The evidence at the scene indicated that the farmer applied the tractor brakes, resulting in the left rear wheel locking up and the tractor skidding to the left side of the lane, which was the uphill side. The weight of the hay wagon pushed the tractor off the lane. As the tractor veered sharply to the left, the forward momentum of the wagon further pushed the tractor around, causing it to jack-knife. As this occurred, the steel tongue of the tractor snapped in half allowing the wagon to continue forward, past the tractor. The tractor was pushed around to the left, overturned and ultimately faced back up the hill 180 degrees from its original travel direction. The farmer remained in the operator position with his foot on the brake pedal and was crushed underneath the weight of the tractor.
The grandson, who was driving the second tractor down the slope, was around the bend in the farm lane and did not see the incident occur. As he rounded the bend, he saw the back of the hay wagon off to the side of the lane and thought that his grandfather had pulled over and was waiting. As he approached, he saw that the tractor was overturned on the side of the lane, and that the wagon had proceeded past the tractor. The grandson was unable to stop his tractor immediately due to the weight of the hay wagon behind his tractor, but once he was able to come to a complete stop he got off of his tractor and ran back to help his grandfather. He could see that his grandfather was underneath the tractor, and called out to him.
When the grandson received no reply, he went back to his tractor, drove back down to the farmstead and told his grandmother to call 911. The local emergency squad responded to the scene along with the County Sheriff’s office. The responding County Sheriff subsequently called the medical examiner who pronounced the victim dead at the scene.
During the post-accident investigation it was determined that the evidence at the scene indicated that only the left rear tire skidded across the lane when the brakes were applied on the farm tractor. There was no indication on the dirt road that the right tire skidded across the lane. This dirt road was dry on the day of the incident and would have clearly left marks from skidding.
Since the tractor had dual brake pedals, it is possible that the operator only hit the left brake pedal; however, it appeared that the brake pedals were locked together, which would normally apply equal braking pressure to both wheels. In addition to the discrepancy between the weight of the wagon and the tractor, this lack of uniform braking also contributed to the tractor veering to the left side of the lane.
It is also important to note that during this summer there was an unusually high amount of rain, and the hay bales that were being transported on the day of the incident were greener and had soaked up additional weight from the rain. This was a factor in the overall weight of the hay wagon attached to the tractor.
Cause of Death
The medical examiner listed the cause of death as cervical spine fracture.
Recommendation #1: Tractor/trailer combinations should be properly matched to ensure safe towing operation.
Discussion: In this event, the mass of the towed hay wagon was much greater than the mass of the tractor. Due to the heavy weight of the round hay bales, this mass may have been larger than normal loads carried on this wagon. In this situation, using either a larger tractor or reducing the load on the wagon, would have lessened the chance that the tractor would be pushed out of control.
|New York Case Reports| | <urn:uuid:1952a3dd-3336-49d0-b52a-16c20be0ea6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/stateface/ny/04ny077.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97819 | 1,545 | 1.75 | 2 |
This page presents publications produced by the Neighborhood Housing and Community Development Office and federally required reports including the Consolidated Plans, Action Plans, and Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Reports (CAPERs).
The following reports are required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Austin City Council designates the Neighborhood Housing and Community Development Office (NHCD) as the single point of contact with HUD and lead agency for the grant administration of the entitlement funds received from HUD, including the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships, Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), and the Emergency Shelter Grant (ESG). For consistency in reporting, the City of Austin reflects all local and federal funding in these HUD reports.
The Consolidated Plan is the City of Austin's five-year plan to address the community's most critical housing and community development needs. The goals and strategies outlined in each Consolidated Plan are the result of an extensive public process. The 2005-09 Plan allocates more than $63 million in federal, state and local resources, which is estimated to assist more than 40,000 Austin households with affordable housing, small business development.
Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER)
At the end of the fiscal year, the City must prepare a Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) to provide information to HUD and citizens about that year's accomplishments. This information allows HUD, City officials and the public to evaluate the City's performance and determine whether the activities undertaken during the fiscal year helped to meet the City's five-year goals and to address priority needs identified in the Consolidated Plan and the Annual Action Plan. | <urn:uuid:af682247-56ff-4c09-8b39-b952e2e34d96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://austintexas.gov/page/reports-publications | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930027 | 346 | 1.5 | 2 |
Bartender's Tale Synopsis
The Bartender's Tale is the story of a father and son left on their own in a shifting world--a tale in itself as old as kinship, but ever new in the way "the bachelor saloonkeeper with a streak of frost in his black pompadour and the inquisitive 11year-old boy who had been an accident between the sheets" go about life in the small Montana town of Gros Ventre in 1960.
Tom Harry, the nonpariel bartender and proprietor of the "nearly holy oasis," the Medicine Lodge, has a past he won't talk about and a habit of sudden disappearances for a few days, which plagues his impressionable son, Rusty, as does the unexplained absence of his mother ever since he was born. In their otherwise companionable bachelor life together, Rusty has free run of the saloon's fantastic back room. And in the momentous summer that is the heart of the novel, he shares this secret aperture into the often mystifying world of grownups with Zoe, the new girl down the street whose imagination outdoes even his own amid the wonders of the back of the saloon.
History, as it tends to do, arrives to these prime characters with gale force, first in the person of enthusiastic young oral historian Del Robertson and then in the shapely form of Proxy, an unforgettable taxi dancer in Tom's earlier fabled saloon in a Fort Peck dam boomtown. Proxy comes bearing life-changing news, of the sort that leaves Rusty and Zoe marveling at what grownups get themselves into.The tale unfolds in Rusty's richly reminiscent voice, leading to the climax where a catastrophe delivers them all trials of conscience. In sum, this is a warmhearted yet consequential family saga in the spirited storytelling tradition of William Faulkner's The Reivers and Isak Dinesen's Winter's Tales.
For help on locating this book, refer to the Purchase section. | <urn:uuid:075e8c54-e200-4b75-85d3-a4f1adbe21be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ivandoig.com/guide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958688 | 406 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Wed January 18, 2012
Cheap Chinese Panels Spark Solar Power Trade War
There's a solar trade war going on inside the U.S., sparked by an invasion of inexpensive imports from China.
The U.S. solar industry is divided over these imports: Panel-makers say their business is suffering and want a tariff slapped on the imports. But other parts of the industry say these cheap panels are driving a solar boom in the U.S.
On the manufacturers' side, there's Gordon Brinser. He's an Oregon native who says the company he runs there, SolarWorld, is not only green, it's red, white and blue. "The mission that we have is to build products here in America, for America's community, for America's energy independence, and really leave the world a better place," he says.
Brinser claims China is threatening that vision by flooding the U.S. with cheap solar panels. He claims China subsidizes its solar panel industry to the tune of $30 billion a year, yet uses only a small percentage of the panels it makes. "So obviously," he says, "these subsidies have gone into the industry, and their full intention is to export and control markets in other countries."
Brinser claims the imports contributed to the collapse of some U.S. manufacturers. Three did go out of business in 2010, though the exact cause may or may not be cheap imports. But Brinser has petitioned the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission to slap tariffs on imported Chinese panels.
So far the feds say, yes, American panel-makers have been harmed by Chinese imports. Yet to be determined is whether China is doing anything illegal: for instance, subsidizing panel-makers so they can sell below cost, a practice called "dumping."
Brinser acknowledges that if he wins and tariffs are added, Americans will have to pay more for panels. "The prices will have to increase, you know, a little. They will find their new, natural balance in a competitive and legal environment," he says.
Higher Prices Could Hurt Installers
But CASE, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy, says higher prices are bad for companies that install solar power. These companies far outnumber panel manufacturers.
Kevin Lapidus works for CASE and is vice president of SunEdison, which builds and operates solar power systems.
"Fully 52 percent of the U.S. jobs are in the installation business," he says. "These are U.S. workers who wake up in the morning, put on a tool belt, and they go and build something." He says manufacturers of solar panels in the U.S. are only about a quarter of the domestic business.
Lapidus says solar power is just now shaking off its reputation as too pricey for regular people. "We're finally reducing the price of solar," he says. "We're driving down the cost to grow the solar base — installations, jobs, etc. And the SolarWorld trade case will increase the cost of electricity; it will set the industry back by years."
He says it could also start an international trade war with China. American solar industries export well over a billion dollars of products to China per year.
Most Customers Just Want The Best Price
At Solar Energy Services in Millersville, Md., a single stack of solar panels sits on the floor of a warehouse. Engineer Rick Peters says he got them cheap because the manufacturer folded — they couldn't compete. He's run out of Chinese panels for the moment. "Probably about 70 percent of what we install is Chinese panels," he says.
Peters points out that some homeowners like to buy American, but most, about 90 percent of his customers, just want the best price. And Chinese panels are about 10 percent cheaper.
A tariff could double their price, and Peters says that could push everyone's prices up.
"I'm very concerned about that," he says. "I think that it could significantly increase the price, because of the limited number of manufacturers in the U.S. Potentially, they could take advantage of the marketplace."
By raising their prices as well? "Absolutely," says Peters.
He fears that could have ripple effects for other U.S. manufacturers. He illustrates by cutting open a big cardboard box on the floor of the warehouse. Inside is an inverter, a device that every solar installation needs to convert direct current to the alternating current in your home. It costs about $4,500.
"This one is made by PV Powered," he says, "which is a U.S. manufacturer. A lot of the inverters are manufactured in the U.S." Fewer installations would mean fewer inverters sold.
Over the next several months, the federal government will decide whether China is playing fair or not. | <urn:uuid:379f3255-3336-4a2d-ac78-cfae74afdb3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kios.org/post/cheap-chinese-panels-spark-solar-power-trade-war | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967548 | 1,003 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Tile is an extremely versatile option for commercial roofing, especially when a more decorative and esthetic look is desired. Tile, particularly clay or terracotta, can add an old-world or historic flair to a roof that is very attractive to guests, visitors or clients. With the new shapes, sizes, colors and styles that are available today, commercial buildings can also achieve an extremely modern and updated look. Another bit of good news is that tile also holds its color very well over the years and is not subject to fading.
Advantages to Tile Roofs:
- Durable: Because air circulation is enhanced by the spaces under the curved tiles, tile roofs tend have great durability and can last up to 50 years.
- Tough: Thanks to their composition of stone or baked clay (clay, terracotta, ceramic, slate or concrete are the most often used materials in creating tile roofing materials) tile holds up well under harsh weather conditions, better than almost any other material.
- Drainage: Due to the unique shape of the tiles, tile roofs shed water extremely well.
- Fire Resistance: Because tile is made with clay, stone or concrete it is highly fire resistant.
- Low Maintenance: Tile roofing material requires little or no maintenance.
- Resistant: Tile naturally repels insects and is immune to rot.
Tile Roofing Repair
Damaged or broken roofing tiles should be replaced as soon as possible to avoid further damage to the underlayment from water or exposure to the ultraviolet rays of the sun. Our roofing technicians have very specialized training in properly traversing and repairing tile roofs. In many cases we solve problems with a tile roof that competitors have recommended replacing.
Tile Roofing Maintenance
Regular maintenance will help to avoid costly repairs and ultimately extend a roof's lifespan. Unnoticed damage or debris build-up can allow water to penetrate and compromise the structure, roof decking or even the attic space below. Regular maintenance by qualified tile roofers will catch minor problems early and avoid more expensive repairs in the future.
Tile Roof Experience
Roofing Southwest has plenty of experience on tile roofing, particularly since it is such a popular and attractive product in the southwestern United States. | <urn:uuid:42c95a67-6e6b-4987-9208-35b108552188> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roofingsouthwest.com/commercial/tile-roof/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935745 | 454 | 1.8125 | 2 |
My Own Private Screening
What watching ESPN could teach us about mammograms.
It's not often that a football game can teach us something useful about mammography. But look what happened on Sunday after New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick decided to go for a short fourth-down conversion from his own 28 yard line, with a late six-point lead. The Colts stopped the Pats cold to take possession, and star quarterback Peyton Manning quickly fired off a touchdown pass to win the game for Indianapolis.
Like a woman considering whether to have a mammogram, Belichick—widely considered one of the wiliest and most data-driven coaches in the game—had to process complex probabilities to make a decisive, if controversial, call. What's amazing is how mathematically sophisticated fans and sports commentators are in their analysis of Belichick's decision not to punt. Sports Illustrated labeled Belichick's call "I'm-smarter-than-they-are hubris," but only after it reviewed the preceding plays in numerical detail. On the other side, using a complex mathematic model, two fans gave Belichick a "thumbs up" for a "courageous and correct call": They calculated the Patriots' chances of winning at roughly 77 percent by going for it and 76 percent if they had punted instead. The New York Times football blog and the New Republic also dissected probability equations on the matter.
Journalists and physicians explaining the U.S. Public Health Service's widely publicized change in mammogram recommendations—it now suggests most women start receiving them every other year at 50, instead of 40—might take a page from the sports commentators' playbook. If the sports media have no problem filling newspapers and the airwaves with complex statistics—and often discussing them clearly—why do the health media treat the same consumers like innumerate dolts, especially when women's lives are at stake? Hopefully it's not because they think only testosterone-drenched sports fans can handle the math.
Even though they use the same data, the American Cancer Society, U.S. Public Health Service, and National Cancer Institute—not to mention Canadian and British health authorities—now fail to agree on when women should start getting mammograms. Some say at 40, others at 50. That's why it's critical to separate each organization's opinions from the facts. Encouragingly, there's really no disagreement about the latter.
Here's the bottom line about mammography: Getting screened or not screened for breast cancer is a gamble. There is no right answer, but there is helpful statistical guidance. There are two broad ways to handle mammography for women under 50 years old: to treat them as homogenous and statistically naive (the cookie-cutter approach, usually favored by policymakers) or to assume greater patient savvy (the personalized approach, increasingly favored by clinicians and patients).
Let's first review the "cookie cutter" approach the way a sports analyst might. For the average woman turning 40, there is a 1.4 percent—about one in 100—chance of getting invasive breast cancer before the age of 50. In baseball terms, she bats .986 against breast cancer. (For comparison, a woman turning 50 has a 2.4 percent chance of breast cancer over a decade; she bats .976.) Further, most cancers are treated successfully, no matter how they're found, so survival rates are even more favorable.
How does mammography improve these stats? Researchers generally agree that mammograms save lives, but—this is critical—catching breast cancer early changes the outcome in only 15 percent of cases. So consider the actual numbers: For the average 40-year-old woman, annual mammography for a decade increases one's overall chance of breast cancer survival from roughly 99.7 percent to 99.8 percent. That is, it increases the final batting average by only 0.001. According to the National Cancer Institute, there's also a downside. During this time, half of all screened women will have at least one suspicious mammogram, and one-quarter of them will end up getting a biopsy. Mammograms in women from 40 to 50 years old cause a huge number of false positives, resulting in about 100 biopsies for every life saved. Even more worrisome: It's possible the radiation from those mammograms may end up causing more cancers than they prevent.
But what if you're the one whose life is saved—doesn't that outweigh the dozens of fruitless biopsies and thousands of scans done on other women to save you? Now that's something to talk about. There: You now know pretty much everything the experts do in the debate over whether women under 50 should get mammograms.
Still, there's another way to discuss mammography, which is potentially more useful. When the people who know the most about the subject—like the folks at the National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control, and American Cancer Society—disagree so strongly about mammograms, the lesson is that people handle risks in idiosyncratic ways. As a result, there is a growing but small movement to indentify precisely a given woman's risk of breast cancer and help her make the decision that's right for her alone.
Developed by a statistician at the National Cancer Institute, the so-called "Gail model" allows women to estimate their risk of breast cancer based on family history, age, menstrual history, and other personal factors. (You can calculate your risk of getting breast cancer here. It's helpfully delivered as a percent over five years and over a lifetime.) This allows higher-risk women to make more personalized decision. For example, a woman under 50 who has a sister or mother who's had breast cancer has the same overall risk as someone over 50 and thus would likely benefit from routine mammograms. Based on her risk profile, a woman might make a choice that adheres to her comfort level, without being at the mercy of arguing authorities. To better guide women, national organizations could band together and propose mammogram screening predicated on personal risk percentages, instead of only the blunt instrument of age.
Earlier this year, the American Society for Clinical Oncology proposed another personalized strategy. For women with a Gail score predicting a five-year breast cancer risk of more than 1.66 percent, the organization recommends considering the drug tamoxifen, which reduces breast cancer risk by about one-third to one-half—yet the guideline is widely ignored.
A third personalized strategy involves targeted genetic testing for the "BRCA" genes, which are responsible for one-tenth of all invasive breast cancers. A woman carrying the gene has an almost 60 percent chance of developing breast cancer during her life—and yet, no organization has yet developed guidelines on who should get tested. Though data are still sketchy, it is reasonable to assume that carriers would benefit more than the average woman from early mammograms or tamoxifen therapy.
Over time, medicine is bound to become more individualized. Unfortunately, national health organizations have failed to take the lead in such cancer screening, though the tools exist. But if people given the right statistical tools can manage a fantasy sports teams over a season, it stands to reason they can probably take charge of their personal health the same way.
Darshak Sanghavi is Slate's health care columnist. He is chief of pediatric cardiology and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as well as the author of A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician's Tour of the Body. Follow him on Twitter.
Photograph of nurse and patient by John Foxx/Getty Images. | <urn:uuid:fcea7a43-4b19-4ff9-bd21-a172d0ce19b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescriptions/2009/11/my_own_private_screening.single.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949324 | 1,560 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The Houston Press Mastermind Awards: Last Year It Brought Hightower Great Luck
The Hightower High School Broadcast Academy, which received a $2,000 prize in the Press's 2009 MasterMind contest, was recently awarded three separate grants that will help Ted Irving and his students keep doing projects that are, as we put it last year, "both technologically advanced and ethically impressive."
"I apply for a lot of these grants," Ted Irving, director of Hightower's Broadcast Academy, tells Hair Balls. "And I've been flopping on the grants until about two and a half years ago, and all of a sudden my lucked changed. We've been getting quite a few grants."
One grant came from the Sienna Plantation Community, a large subdivision in Fort Bend County, for a public service announcement titled, "Recycling for Teens," produced by Irving's students. That piece is part of a larger recycling campaign, where people donate things like old cell phones, mp3 players and digital cameras to the Broadcast Academy, which then recycles the stuff. The money funds two scholarships that are given to seniors graduating from the academy.
The academy also recieved $1,000 from the Kids in Need program and $800 from Target, which Irving will use to take his students to Houston's VT2 Studios and Channel 13.
"Every district in Texas, because of the economy, has had a drop in funding and they usually cut things like field trips," Irving says.
Irving came to Hightower in 1999, a year after the school opened and the broadcast academy was created. His classes have produced work that has won 14 national Telly Awards and an Emmy for a 60 Minutes-style program about breast cancer.
Each year, close to 300 students try to get into the academy, but only 45 new applicants are accepted.
When Irving and his students won a MasterMind Award last year, some of his students were working on a 30-minute documentary about the disappearing wetlands in Fort Bend County. That project was three years in the making; Irving came up with the idea during his morning commute to Hightower, through heavy construction, and started thinking about what happens when developers raze and build over the land.
The wetland documentary was screened at the Angelika Theater during the summer of 2009 and aired on Channel 11. You can also see that film on Hightower's School Tube.
Irving used the $2,000 MasterMind money to fund a banquet where scholarships were awarded to Broadcast Academy graduates and to help get the wetland documentary on television.
"The showing on Channel 11, we had a lot of people see that," Irving says.
The Press is handing out $2,000 MasterMind Awards again this year, and the winners will be honored on Saturday January 30, 2010 during our Artopia Party at Winter Street Studios. And be sure to check out our Artopia Preview Party on January 15, 2010 at Reign Lounge. | <urn:uuid:ade70016-a5f0-4f2b-9c43-b677b60630eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/01/mastermind_update_hightower_hi.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97777 | 612 | 1.5 | 2 |
|This is an avoidable crime. This one looks sturdy, but is actually crap security, like all cables.|
This is part of a continuing series on the uselessness of cable locks for bicycle security that I wish was unnecessary. After input from several thoughtful blog visitors, my view of cables is that they are semi-adequate for "just-a-minute" stops where you can keep your eye on the bicycle the whole time. Possibly they also deter easy theft of cheap wheels, thus avoiding inconvenience, when used together with a decent U-lock that is locked through the frame to some fixed structure, including the Sheldon "hook the rear wheel inside the rear triangle and lock it to something" method and its variants. But I'm telling you, and this photo is part of a sad, continuing series supporting the point: cable locks have no place as the primary method of securing a bicycle to rack for an extended and unattended period of time in a city. Period. The packages they come in ought to have warning labels stating that clearly and unequivocally so that people who do not know are not misled.
Today's example represents the theft of someone's daily transportation, the method that they used to get to and from work to earn a living. People who work to earn a living pay taxes, and spend their income on goods and services to keep the juices of our market economy flowing. This was someone who commuted on their bicycle to work in Phoenix in the summertime. So not only is it disappointing and saddening to me as a fellow cyclist, but also I feel that crimes which hamper someone's efforts to earn a living are a concern for all citizens.
I think I'll go U-lock shopping soon, and hang around the bike rack after work to see who wants one, and who wants to learn how to use it properly--there's one U-lock user I see regularly who locks his nutted front wheel to the rack. I would much rather start a collection of uncut cable locks that I traded to people for decent U-locks while showing them how to use them properly. I'm keeping my eyes open for U-lock sales. And going to the office supply store this weekend to look for printing supplies. I'm not sure that I'll find card stock in yellow, but I will be searching.
|Possibly the most effective use of cable locks for bicyclists: basket weights| | <urn:uuid:131ee50b-912f-40e1-8e79-19921be73dd6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onespeedgo.blogspot.com/2011/08/useless-cable-locks-considered-harmful.html?showComment=1313152999694 | 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 | 0.976813 | 491 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Better Than His Wildest Dream
D. Clarke Evans/NBAE/Getty
The French National Institute of Sport and Physical Education (INSEP) sits in a lush forest of oak and chestnut trees just east of Paris. The academy serves as a unique training center in Europe, a boarding school, if you will, for gifted athletes.
Twenty French Olympic medal winners from the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing are products of INSEP. The academy produced 16 Olympic medalists at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.
One of France’s greatest female basketball players, Elisabeth Riffiod, developed her game at INSEP. Decades later, Elisabeth enrolled her son there as well: Boris Diaw.
“I remember when we were doing the visit at INSEP,” Diaw says, “and my mother was saying, ‘Oh yeah, this building was there, but that building was not.’ She had so many memories.”
One memory in particular stood out. It was at INSEP that Elisabeth met a skilled high jumper from Senegal, a man who would become her son’s father, Issa Diaw. Fifteen-year-old Boris listened to the stories and toured the campus, eyes filling with wonder. So many great athletes, so few of them basketball players.
At the time of his tour, no Frenchman had ever played in the NBA, and Diaw had no reason to believe he’d be among the first. But after enrolling in INSEP, he met a brash kid undaunted by the French void in NBA history. Tony Parker.
“Tony knew he was going to make it,” Diaw says. “There were no French guys in the NBA. None. It was a long shot to make it. But you couldn’t tell that to Tony. He had his mind set.”
A friendship formed. Imaginations ran wild. Fifteen years later, they share a reality not even Parker dared to dream: two former French phenoms playing for the same NBA team with a chance to win a championship.
There was no small celebration when the Spurs signed Diaw on March 23. Parker opened his house and gave Diaw, not a couch, but his own room, which he occupies today. As wonderful as that felt, it paled to the wow moment of April 8, when Spurs coach Gregg Popovich started Diaw against Utah.
“When Pop said that Boris was in the starting five it felt like a dream,” Parker said after the Spurs defeated the Jazz, 114-104. “Growing up and going to high school together, both dreaming about the NBA, I never thought I would ever be in the starting five with him and with the Spurs, the best team in the NBA.”
The journey to the NBA began at INSEP, a 35-acre campus of athletic facilities, classrooms and dorms. Under the tough hand of director Lucien Legrand, basketball players underwent long, grueling practices. Legrand once told a French journalist, “You have to like pain and have great moral and physical qualities. … The biggest reward is when one of your former students comes and says, ‘Lucien, you made my life hell but you were right.’”
Diaw and Parker lived across a hall from each other. They played ball together, ate together, studied together. They even sat in the back of class together with another friend, future Heat center Ronny Turiaf.
Was Diaw a serious student? “I was serious enough,” he says, the corners of his mouth pulling back to reveal a smile.
He can still remember the precise time of morning and afternoon classes, lunch, twice-a-day practices, dinner and evening studies. The old, daily routine remains as fresh in his mind as an important birthday. Fresher and sweeter are memories from their days on the French junior national team.
In 2000, Diaw and Parker led a team of underdogs against heavily-favored Croatia in the Under 18 European championship. In the final seconds of an extended game, Diaw made a huge block and France took possession, trailing by one. The ball did not go to Parker. He had fouled out. The ball fell to Turiaf, who had not scored a field goal in the game.
“Turiaf had a layup just before the buzzer,” Diaw says. “We won in double overtime.“
Parker won MVP honors. “Great memories,” he says. “When we won the gold medal, all we cared about was basketball. No money involved. No agents. No pressure. Just fun.”
Winning cemented a legacy and foreshadowed an international turn of events. Five members of the French junior national team became NBA players. Mickael Pietrus and Yakhouba Diawara joined Parker, Diaw and Turiaf in the U.S.
When the Spurs drafted Parker in 2001, Diaw rejoiced and flew into San Antonio to spend Christmas with his best friend. Talk about foreshadowing. Diaw met Spurs coaches and became familiar with the organization. “I lived it,” he says, “through Tony’s eyes.”
Eleven years later, here he is, sharing a house, a locker room and the same home court with Parker. What could be better than that? In a couple of months, Diaw would like to be celebrating again, trophy aloft, with an old high school friend. | <urn:uuid:99c00a2a-c2d6-466e-9a5a-e7837be5e8cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nba.com/spurs/features/120418_rodriguez_diaw | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980203 | 1,182 | 1.570313 | 2 |
This review is the first half of my stop on C.W. Gortner’s blog tour. Please check back this afternoon for a guest post by the author on the research he did for The Queen’s Vow. You can find an overview of all the stops on this tour on the author’s blog.
Isabella was the notorious warrior-queen who, along with her husband Ferdinand, transformed Spain forever. Popular belief has her as a religious fanatic persuaded into the horrific excesses of the Inquisition by her confessor, Torquemada; but C.W. Gortner paints a picture of her early life, showing us a headstrong, passionate girl who grew into the most powerful queen Spain ever knew and whose vision and imagination allowed Columbus to discover America.
Before reading The Queen’s Vow, all Isabella was to me, was the queen who, together with her husband, enabled Columbus to discover the Americas. I wasn’t aware she was the one to instate the Spanish Inquisition or to unite Spain. So in that regard, the book was an education in and of itself. Of course, The Queen’s Vow also sits in the middle of one of my historical fiction sweet spots: it’s a narrative featuring the lives of royalty. Add to that the wonderful voice Gortner gives Isabella and his sense of pacing and romance and I couldn’t help but love this book.
Told from Isabella’s perspective in a first person narration, we’re privy to her innermost thoughts, doubts, and insecurities. The narrative opens on the night of King Juan II of Castile, Isabella’s father’s death. It’s the moment she says changed everything. Daughter to an unpopular second wife, Isabella and her younger brother Alfonso go from cosseted and spoiled infanta and infante to living in a dilapidated castle with a small to non-existent allowance to live on. Beside the financial troubles, there is also the gradually worsening mental decline of their mother, who seems to be suffering from clinical depression interspersed with almost schizophrenic episodes. This places a heavy burden on the young infanta Isabella, as she is the only one who can reach her mother when she goes into one of her spells and she’s called upon to talk her mother down more and more frequently. Reading about Juana’s decline was heart-breaking, both as it seems so unfair to Isabella to be put in that position and because one wonders to which degree Juana’s condition was treatable, maybe even curable, instead of the out-and-out insanity it was viewed as. However, this isolated and difficult youth form Isabella’s character and Gortner portrays her as a complex woman, one torn between her empathetic and inquisitive nature and her duties to God and country.
Gortner cleverly makes Isabella’s match with Fernando a love match from the start, which was rare and almost unheard of for the age. In reality, the marriage probably was one of political alliance and convenience, but over time could have become a true love match and certainly they ruled well together. But again, in this novel, even if arranged, once they meet, they fall in love and passionately at that. I loved how Fernando becomes both Isabella’s knight in shining armour, who she can depend on to come to her aid if she needs him, and also her light at the end of the tunnel, her chance at escape from her horrid situation at the court of her half-brother Enrique IV if only she’s strong enough to arrange it. Despite these romantic visions, Isabella never sits back and waits to be rescued, she rescues herself employing the aid of Fernando and others, but hers is the strength behind the plans. She doesn’t lose this strength once she’s married either; it is a union of equals and she won’t let anyone, not even the love of her life, make decisions for her. Gortner shows us a strong marriage, one that has some huge fights and even a period of estrangement, but also deep-felt passion and affection, resulting in five children, who were very much loved by both their parents.
While Gortner spends a lot of time setting up the circumstances which lead to the Spanish Inquisition and Isabella’s reluctance to pass the edict instating it and we follow her until just after she authorizes the expulsion of Castile’s Jews unless they convert, he skirts showing the actual horror and excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. Beyond Isabella’s receiving of some of Torquemada’s reports and her obvious upset at his methods and findings, there isn’t much detail about the bloodiness of the entire operation. Whether this is because the situation only escalated to that extent after the edict of expulsion was passed, I cannot say, I’m too unfamiliar with the facts and timeline of the Spanish Inquisition, but it does allow Isabella to remain a sympathetic character, who is forced by circumstance and a true devotion to her faith to make some awful decisions. In his interesting afterword, Gortner explains how he came to his interpretation of the facts and he indicates where he deviated from historic facts to facilitate narrative flow and points out the one completely fictional character in the novel. I found it interesting to read where and why he’d chosen to alter the facts a little, as it also was a peek in the kitchen of the way a story is built.
The Queen’s Vow is the story of a remarkable woman and a queen who was formative for Spain’s – the world’s even – history and one who up until now has been largely gone ignored in fiction, film, and TV. If you compare the amount of representations of her to those of Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, for example, it is almost negligible. With his novel Gortner puts her in the footlights and shows the world her fascinating story, without excuses for her mistakes, but not letting the horrible facts of her reign overshadow her accomplishments or her humanity. The Queen’s Vow is a captivating book, which has made C.W. Gortner an author whose work I’ll definitely keep an eye out for in the future.
This book was provided for review by the publisher. | <urn:uuid:d4466e1d-2cf7-49f5-868a-d5705e9098ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.afantasticallibrarian.com/2013/01/cw-gortner-queens-vow.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971481 | 1,348 | 1.65625 | 2 |
A “FIRST CLASS” STORY
One had dinner with President John F. Kennedy often. Another served Dean Martin a Dry Martini. It was a bit more glamorous to be a stewardess when Pan Am was at it's best.
THIS IS A STORY that sounds strange today. No presidents do what he did, says Kari-Mette Pigmans (71) on the phone from New York.
The former “russeprinsesse”, (eqv. to Home Coming Queen), started to fly for Pan Am in 1962, when she was 22 years old. One year later she was chosen along with six others to fly the Pan Am planes that carried the press corps that followed President Kennedy.
The Pan Am plane parked right next to Air Force One. The stewardesses and pilots stayed at the same hotel as the president and his men. Kennedy’s adviser, Dave Powers, often asked Kari-Mette and her colleagues to keep the president company. He said: ”You girls want to come and have drinks and dinner with us?” says Kari-Mette Pigmans.
Kennedy liked having people around him, she says.
The 23 year old from Bærum (just outside Oslo) accompanied the president on several official visits. One evening, she believes it was going to Hawaii, she and a gang were sitting in his suite when Kennedy started to talk about an upcoming visit to Berlin. Pigmans had lived in Berlin for a year and spoke fluent German.
He asked me, how can I say I am a Berliner. He would like to say that.
You taught him how to say “Ich bin ein Berliner”?
Yes, I did, says Kari-Mette Pigmans. But he could have found a thousand others to tell him.
THE EXPERIENCE. From the startup in 1927 and for the next sixty years Pan Am was the major airline in the USA. Pan Am was the pioneer during the years when air travel and mass tourism took off. The first to have scheduled flights across the Atlantic and the Pacific, the first to have the jumbo jet, and the first to serve food on board. Royals, heads of state, and The Beatles flew Pan Am. When James Bond asked Miss Moneypenny to book airline tickets, he insisted on Pan Am, as always.
“The World’s Most Experienced Airline” the ads said. Nobody challenged it. When the Americans landed on the moon in 1969, Pan Am started a waiting list for trips into space.
Pan Am did not fly domestic routes, only international routes. Long before crammed discount flights and endless security lines, when it was a luxury to fly and the job of a stewardess was highly sought after, Pan Am became synonymous with a glamorous, globetrotting lifestyle, which attracted many young Norwegian women.
In 1968 the Norwegian newspaper, VG, wrote: “ The appr. 500 young girls from all over the country who during the last ten years have worn the Pan Am uniform and made our business travelers and other airline passengers homesick when serving the most beautiful airline trays over the Pacific or the Bay of Bengal with a authentic”værsågod”, can without doubt be called our most beautiful articles of export”
Three weeks ago eleven million Americans watched the premier of the TV-series “Pan Am”. Sony Pictures Television has created a TV-drama about the lives of Pan Am stewardesses in the 1960’s. The series has been marketed heavily in the USA, and is along with “The Playboy Club” this fall’s retro-drama on TV, inspired by “Mad Men”’s success. The first episode will be on TV3 in Norway in October.
Until 1969 the hair could not be no longer than shoulder length.
Girdles were a must, and were checked on a regular basis.
The weight was checked before every flight.
BLUE EYES. - Oh, I had Charlton Heston on board. He was gorgeous. And his wife, she had the world’s most beautiful mini coat.
Brit Burns (72) talks while she leafs through piles of faded photos. There are pictures of stewardesses in blue uniforms at airports and in bikinis on distant beaches in the Pacific. Brit Burns was purser for Pan American from 1965 until 1977. Based in San Francisco, she flew west, to Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines etc., with long layovers in Hawaii, Fiji, Guam, and Samoa.
We were treated a hundred times better than flight attendants today. Not everybody could fly. I hardly ever had passengers who drank too much, -not even Frank Sinatra.
He had two martinis and did crossword puzzles. I can still remember where he was sitting, says Brit Burns.
BREAKING OUT. Sissel Graham (73) grew up with three brothers at Bislet in Oslo. In the 1950’s all three were urged by their parents to go abroad to study. There was never talk of her doing the same. You were not supposed to travel if you were a girl in those days, says Graham.
But, there was a way. In 1959 she worked in the office of the production company ABC Film in Oslo. The 21 year old noticed that one of her co-workers received colorful postcards from all over the world.
“I have a step-daughter who is a Pan Am stewardess. Why don’t you go?”
Sissel Graham applied and got the job. She flew for Pan Am from 1959 to 1963,- the most fun and rewarding years of her life, she feels now.
The Norwegian girls were popular at Pan Am. They spoke several languages, were in good health, and were not afraid of work. The requirements were specific: Minimum hight was 5’3”, maximum 5’9”. Weight 110 - 138 well proportioned pounds. At the time of hire women could not be married. A college degree was preferred. And, like one of the former stewardesses said: “You couldn’t be ugly if you applied for that job”.
The first assignment for the Norwegian stewardesses could be Rio De Janeiro, for instance. Or Hawaii. At SAS, who competed for the young ladies, the new hires had to fly domestic for several years before they got a chance to experience international travel.
It was wonderful to get away from Norway. There was nothing happening in Oslo, says Siri Hauge Jacobson (67). But, we could only fly until we got married. It was not a lifelong career, she says.
Siri Hauge Jacobson flew from 1966 till 1968, before she married an American, had children and settled in the USA, like so many other Norwegian Pan Am stewardesses.
FIRST CLASS. The caviar came from Iran. The champagne from France. The were oysters on the half shell. The seven course menu was put together by Maxim’s in Paris. There were white, starched table clothes, silver cutlery, fresh flowers, and heavy porcelain. The prime rib was boarded raw so the stewardesses had to roast it on board.
Pan Am’s First Class had style. So did the guests. They traveled wearing suits. The overhead racks were for hats. A wedding suite was available for honeymooners. Wealthy celebrities did not yet have private jets, and many flew Pan Am’s First Class.
He with the beautiful eyes. Warren Beatty! He was on board from Frankfurt to London. He asked for my phone number says Liv Andersen (71). Unfortunately, he did not call.
Brit Burns remembers the king and queen of Rarotonga. They were so large they needed two seats each. And Zsa Zsa Gabor who had a very messy make-up bag. On a vacation trip traveling as a passenger to South Africa, Burns sat in first class with only one other passenger, Chubby Checker, who sang “The Twist”, one of the 60’s most popular songs and dances. They sat and talked half the night. Chubby Checker disembarked in Nigeria. The country’s president came to greet him, on a red carpet.
“Come and meet the President”, Chubby Checker said. And I did, says Brit Burns.
GIRDLE CHECK. The first thing we learned was to mix drinks, says Susan Elind (65). She laughs and shows me a framed class picture from 1969. In the late 60’s young ladies from all over the world were trained at Pan Am’s International Stewardess College in Miami. It was six weeks of training. In row after row they sat in the class rooms with cigarettes in their well manicured hands and ash trays in front of them. They learned about safety, first aid, elementary flying techniques, cooking, and last, but not least, grooming.
Estee Lauder and other make up companies made sure the stewardesses looked good in the air. Until 1969 the hair could not be longer than shoulder length. Girdles were a must and were checked regularly. If you looked too heavy you were warned before you were grounded and told to lose weight.
The work days were often long and tiring. But, what a life it was!
We were so lucky! We were picked up by limousines at the airport and stayed in the hotels where the movie stars stayed. It was like a dreamworld, says Mette Langfeldt Sinding (63). At the check-in counter the envelopes were ready with our per diem in the local currency, and more money than we would normally spend.
We were always invited out. There were cocktail parties everywhere, says Inger Brandvold (70).
You see it on “Mad Men”: It was very common to flirt with sweet, young girls in those days, says Siri Hauge Jacobson.
If you had a wife and children in the suburb, that was not a problem. And one more thing: The Scandinavian stewardesses were often gorgeous, or at least cute and outgoing and enthusiastic. But, at that time America was very puritanical. And then came Ingmar Bergman with those movies. The Americans got us mixed up with the Swedes, and rumors had it we were available. It was prestigious for many business men to have a Pan Am stewardess by his arm, she says.
I TRAVEL ALONE. Pan Am’s relationship with the government was very tight. During World War II the government used Pan Am airplanes. From the days of Roosevelt (President of the USA from 1933 till 1945) until the 1970’s, the White House Press Corps flew Pan Am when they followed the president on his travels. Pan Am planes were chartered by the American government to fly in and out of West Berlin, and to transport soldiers to Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf. Even Vietnamese orphans flew Pan Am, on chartered planes filled with tears, baby bottles, and motherly care.
It was terrible. They didn’t want to go. They were so young. They read Donald Duck and shook with fear.
FLY ME. “We really move our tails for you”, Continental promised in 1974. “Hi, I’m Cheryl - Fly Me”, read National Airlines ads. Angry stewardesses answered with buttons stating: “Go fly yourself”.
During the 70’s the airline ads became more and more about sexy stewardesses.
Up till then their personalities had been enough of a selling point. The uniforms, especially of the smaller, less established airlines, became more daring. There were mini skirts, hot pants, and boots.
Society viewed stewardesses as pretty, pliable, young women. “But the airlines had not expected that among the glamour girls there were some militant labor union organizers and feminists”, writes Kathleen M. Barry in the book “Femininity in Flight”.
“In less than ten years their court cases and labor unions did away with age- and marriage restrictions, and they later gave them the right to fly as mothers”, writes Barry.
In 1972 a group of stewardesses organized as Stewardesses for Women’s Rights (SFWR). The organization claimed that the airlines’ sexy image of the stewardesses prohibited their ability to act as important safety personnel. Some feminists viewed the organization as contradictory and found it difficult to take it seriously. But heavy weights like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan became important supportive players.
Tulle Kamfjord (66) had to quit flying when she became pregnant in 1970. After a big court case in the US some years later she received a letter with an offer to come back to work. But first she would have to go through training in Hawaii.
There I was with two children hanging on to my legs and with a house at Lilleaker, says Kamfjord and laughs. No new career materialized for Kamfjord, but those who chose to go back were called “Flying Mothers”.
DOWNTURN. The first flight with the Boeing 747, from New York to London in 1970, was news world wide. But Pan Am borrowed 600 million dollars to buy 25 jumbo jets. It turned out to be difficult to fill all the seats. The price of fuel hit the ceiling during the oil crisis in 1973.
Pan Am tried to enter the US domestic market with the purchase of National Airlines in 1980, but the purchase did not help the situation. Deregulation happened around that time. Pan Am employees had expensive benefits and strong unions, while start up airlines could operate with much lower costs.
Liv Andersen started flying for Pan Am in 1962, and stayed almost to the end, until she went to United as a result of the sale of the London routes in 1991. She remembers how it became more and more difficult to get the job done on the Pan Am flights those last years.
We lacked everything. No wine. No breakfast, she says.
The Lockerbie catastrophy in 1988 made it even more difficult to sell seats. After the terrorist attack Pan Am was charges with security infractions, which frightened many passengers. In 1991 the company went bankrupt.
“Pan Am seems to have fallen deeper than any other American airline, because it had further to fall, it had been at the top”, wrote the magazine Conde Nast Traveller later.
FAMILY. 40 years after most of them quit their jobs as Pan Am stewardesses they still stay in touch. The Norwegian division of World Wings International, the world wide charity organization for ex Pan Am stewardesses, has about 20 members who meet once a month. In the past they have arranged fashion shows and Christmas boutiques with proceeds going to charity. For many years they participated in “Ridderrennet” (a cross country ski race for the blind). But now the ladies are are in their 60’s and older.
We have found that what’s most important now is to take care of each other, says Tulle Kamfjord with a smile.
They talk about “The Pan Am Family”. The former employees still feel a strong bond with the bankrupt company.
I have not heard of another bankrupt airline where the former employees still get together 20 years later. But we flew during the heydays, says Elise Tingulstad Nore (63), who flew from 1969 to 1971.
It was difficult to explain to those at home what you were experiencing out there in the world. About the apartments in Manhattan or San Francisco. About the fabulous gold jewelry from the golden streets in Beirut and manicures and pedicures in Bangkok.
We have a bond. We have worked for an American airline and experienced things that are difficult to share with others, says Brit Burns.
34 years have passed since her last flight as a stewardess. She has not flown much since she moved back home in 1977. But there are so many wonderful memories. The best ones are not about celebrities or fine jewelry.
To walk through the jungle in Guam, Burns says quietly. In the middle of the night with a full moon. We were guided by a native who had a machete. Then we came to a bay. The only other way to get there was by boat. We caught lobster. That’s one of the best experiences I have ever had. Walking through the jungle in the middle of the night.
SHAKEN. In the morning of November 22, 1963, Kari-Mette Pigmans arrived at Love Field Airport in Dallas on a plane with members of the press. Shortly after, John F. Kennedy and his entourage arrived on Air Force One. It was scheduled to be a short stay. The Pan Am crew was to get a bite to eat, while the President went to the Dallas Trade Mart for lunch with local politicians and business people. While they were eating the crew were told they had to go back to the airport immediately.
We were there and saw everything. That they left the airport in limousines and that he returned in a coffin. It was hoisted into the back of the plane. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, arrived, and Jackie, in the beautiful Chanel coat that was full of blood. Then Johnson took the oath of office before they could take off.
Nobody took pictures. We were totally shaken. This was a man the press loved, and so did everybody who came in contact with him. He loved people, says Pigmans.
She later married a Pan Am purser from Holland, and flew for Pan Am until the bankruptcy in 1991. She settled in the US, and continued with Delta until she retired after September 11, 2001. For almost 50 years she has kept quiet about her close relationship with John F. Kennedy. Later this month a book will be released about the memories of the Pan Am employees, in which Pigmans talks about the last day in Dallas.
I’m still a Norwegian citizen. I was afraid that if a said something I would be deported. These have been my memories, she says. | <urn:uuid:955a1a50-1f6a-4399-ad10-97853786a43e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldwingsinternational.org/article.html?aid=227 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981137 | 3,843 | 1.84375 | 2 |
kjv@Matthew:11:7@ And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?
kjv@Matthew:11:8@ But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses.
kjv@Matthew:11:9@ But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.
kjv@Matthew:11:10@ For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
kjv@Matthew:11:11@ Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
kjv@Matthew:11:12@ And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
kjv@Matthew:11:16@ But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows,
kjv@Matthew:11:17@ And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.
kjv@Matthew:11:18@ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil.
kjv@Matthew:11:19@ The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.
kjv@Matthew:11:20@ Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:
kjv@Matthew:11:21@ Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
kjv@Matthew:11:22@ But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
kjv@Matthew:11:23@ And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
kjv@Matthew:11:24@ But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.
kjv@Matthew:11:25@ At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
kjv@Matthew:11:27@ All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
kjv@Matthew:11:28@ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
kjv@Matthew:11:29@ Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Who does the Son reveal His Father to? Those who come to the Son toiling and heavy ladden in the convicting burdens of sin. Once relieved of such burden, having taken on His yoke humbly and with meekness, shouldering a sample of His burden, then one comes to know the Father. Such immense time released revelation is only by exchanging our burden for His Son's and carrying His Son's burden forward. It is not any other way around. The so called wise and prudent systematically avoid to see this.
2012 - pBiblx2 Field Wise Bible System Version 2.0.9d - GPL3 | <urn:uuid:7ce43fc6-82be-49d8-a66b-0534f54df857> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shepherdpuplinux.us/cgi-bin/pbiblx-basic.cgi?X=x&Css=1h&Mode=basic&X=x&Css=1h&Version=kjv&Book=VSEARCH&Chapter=Matthew:11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95286 | 945 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Robert Hof, Contributor
I cover the collision of advertising and the Internet.
Facebook has just responded to a New York Times article Mar. 3 that suggested the company might be suppressing posts from appearing in followers’ news feeds as a way to force them to pay to have them distributed widely. Facebook’s answer: No, we aren’t!
In a detailed blog post today pointedly labeled “Fact Check” (full text below), the social network refuted Times reporter Nick Bilton’s implication that distribution of his and others’ posts has been limited so Facebook can charge more people to get their posts seen by more people. Said Bilton:
I paid Facebook $7 to promote my column to my friends using the company’s sponsored advertising tool.
To my surprise, I saw a 1,000 percent increase in the interaction on a link I posted, which had 130 likes and 30 reshares in just a few hours. It seems as if Facebook is not only promoting my links on news feeds when I pay for them, but also possibly suppressing the ones I do not pay for.
Facebook proudly informed me in a message that 5.2 times as many people had seen my post because I had paid the company to show it to them. Gee whiz. Thanks, Facebook.
This may be great news for advertisers, but I felt slightly duped.
Facebook says you can’t really compare response to different posts made more than a year apart, and that any lower engagement is due to entirely different factors, such as less press coverage of the Follow feature and, to put it bluntly, less engaging posts that didn’t interest people as much and therefore were shown to fewer people over time.
In other words, Facebook’s saying, there’s no pay-to-play going on here. As AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka points out, though, Facebook isn’t making it entirely clear why a number of people especially in the press are seeing declining comments and other interaction.
Here’s the full post:
Our goal with News Feed is always to show each individual the most relevant blend of stories that maximizes engagement and interest.
There have been recent claims suggesting that our News Feed algorithm suppresses organic distribution of posts in favor of paid posts in order to increase our revenue. This is not true. We want to clear up any misconceptions by explaining how the News Feed algorithm works.
First, in aggregate, engagement – likes, comments, shares – has gone up for most people who have turned the Follow feature on. In fact, overall engagement on posts from people with followers has gone up 34% year over year.
Second, a few data points should not be taken as representative of what actually is happening overall. There are numerous factors that may affect distribution, including quality and number of posts.
News Feed shows the most relevant stories from your friends, people you follow and Pages you are connected to. In fact, the News Feed algorithm is separate from the advertising algorithm in that we don’t replace the most engaging posts in News Feed with sponsored ones.
Some other background points for context:
The argument here is based on a few anecdotes of one post from one year to a totally different post from another year.
- This is an apples-to-oranges comparison; you can’t compare engagement rates on two different posts year over year.
These anecdotes are taken as representative of what is happening overall.
- In fact, the opposite is happening overall – engagement has gone up 34% on posts from people who have more than 10,000 followers.
For early adopters of Follow, we do see instances where their follower numbers have gone up but their engagement has gone down from a year ago.
- When we first launched Follow, the press coverage combined with our marketing efforts drove large adoption. A lot of users started following public figures who had turned on Follow.
- Over time, some of those users engaged less with those figures, and so we started showing fewer stories from those figures to users who didn’t engage as much with their stories.
- The News Feed changes we made in the fall to focus on higher quality stories may have also decreased the distribution for less engaging stories from public figures.
In the past six months, however, we have introduced changes to solve the above instance – the goal being to promote more content from public figures. These include organic units in NF such as “most shared on <publisher>,” “most shared about <topic>,” and redesigned feed stories for link shares that feature larger images and longer descriptions. Our index of partners has already seen a significant increase in traffic (35%) due to the introduction of these units.
We are constantly working to improve people’s experience with News Feed, and changes like the above we think will surface more of the right posts to the right people. | <urn:uuid:b06099b9-656c-490b-8be9-3fd49af143a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/03/04/facebook-no-were-not-suppressing-posts-to-force-you-to-pay-for-promoting-them/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965564 | 1,018 | 1.773438 | 2 |
- Our Focus Issues
- Press Room
- Open Government Partnership
- Take Action
Each post in the series of posts we plan to publish between now and December 25 focuses on a resolution the Obama Administration realistically can use to make the federal government more open and accountable in the coming year. See below for links to previous resolutions.
Open Government Resolution 2 for the Obama Administration - Make it easier for the public to track agencies’ open government work
President Obama's January 21, 2009 Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government and the resulting December 8, 2009 Open Government Directive launched a novel policy experiment intended to make open government a part of each federal agency's culture. Among other steps, the Directive required agencies to submit "high-value data" to data.gov, set up /open pages and develop and publish Open Government Plans. Those plans are required to be updated at least every two years.
When the initiative was first announced, the White House put up an Open Government Dashboard that made it easy for the Administration and the public to track which agencies were excelling, and which were falling behind. Unfortunately, however, that dashboard - though still featured on the White House's /open page - has not been updated since the first versions of the plans were released in April 2010. At this point the only way for the public to find out if an agency is meeting its commitments in the plans, or even updating the plans as required (which some agencies were quite late doing), is to search for the information on each agency's page, and many of them also have dormant /open pages.
For the most part, government dashboards are intended to "fame and shame" agencies into performing better by making it easy for the public, Congress, and agency managers to see how the agency is performing in relation to its peers. Dashboards are a great tool for accountability, but only if they are kept up to date. The Administration should find a way to make it easy for the public to find out and understand what open government work agencies are doing, either by updating the dashboard (and making the underlying data more available), or through some other method.
12 Days of Open Government Resolutions for the Obama Administration:
CREW promotes ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials -- regardless of party affiliation -- who sacrifice the common good to special interests. | <urn:uuid:0d9625c5-e45f-4717-b139-f261f8485819> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.openthegovernment.org/node/3666 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954423 | 478 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Brandon Etzel has long enjoyed watching words come to life in stories that he pens. His writing efforts paid off recently when he was named Columbia County's Georgia Young Authors' Award winner.
As winner of the North Columbia Elementary School Georgia Young Authors' Award contest, Brandon advanced to the county competition, where he took top honors.
"My teacher just asked if anyone wanted to do it," said Brandon of entering the school-level contest. "I was the only one in the fourth grade to do it."
While students throughout the school participated with their own stories, it was Brandon's story that captivated the judges.
Brandon said he isn't really sure where the story about four young children whose drawings come alive came from.
"I was just thinking about it one day," said the 10-year-old son of Brian and Heather Etzel of Appling. "I was thinking that I wanted to write a book."
Brandon's writing interest likely stems from his love of reading. His mother said she started reading to her son when he was just an infant.
"I read to him really early," she said, adding that Brandon was reading fluently by the age of 4. "I like to read, too, so I guess I was blessed with that."
Mimi Sorrells, Brandon's fourth-grade teacher, said her student is a pleasure to teach.
"He is very conscientious about his work and always gives his best effort," said Sorrells. "Brandon loves to write just to be able to hear reactions when he shares his creative stories."
Sorrells said Brandon is respected by his peers because he is a leader and role model who exhibits such a positive attitude.
"However, he is a normal 10-year-old boy who enjoys video games and playing outside," she said.
Brandon agrees that drawing, writing, reading and playing video games are among his favorite pastimes. In the future, he thinks he'd like to possibly write books.
"I kind of want to do that," said Brandon, who will learn later this summer if his story will garner him a district and state win. Either way, he's pleased with what he's already accomplished.
"He was the winner of the third-grade contest last year," said his mother.
The Columbia County News-Times ©2013. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:9d8214bf-5566-46c8-84f9-457b12e77f6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/2008/05/04/new_197470.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.994403 | 486 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Process for making a joint with a torque-limited collar
||Process for making a joint with a torque-limited collar
||August 22, 1989
||July 14, 1988
||Wing; George S. (Redondo Beach, CA)
||Gorski; Joseph M.
|Attorney Or Agent:
||Christie, Parker & Hale
||29/446; 29/525.02; 29/525.05; 411/1; 411/2
|Field Of Search:
||29/446; 29/525.1; 411/1; 411/2; 411/3; 411/4; 411/5; 411/277; 411/281; 411/335; 411/414; 411/427; 411/437; 411/932; 81/53.2; 81/128
|U.S Patent Documents:
||2940495; 3311147; 3460428; 4383353; 4682520; 4759237
|Foreign Patent Documents:
||Axially-extending troughs in a bark of an internally-threaded collar receive setting balls of a driver that apply a torque to the collar through the balls bearing on the walls of the troughs. At a predetermined pre-load, the balls fail the bark and plow through it to develop circumferential furrows, and the torque application on the collar ends. A second torquing with balls at a different axial position fails the bark again at the same pre-load to compensate for any relaxation after the first torque application.
||What is claimed is:
1. A process for making a joint to obtain a predetermined pre-load, the joint having at least one sheet, a threaded pin through the sheet, and an internally-threaded collar onthe pin, the collar having a plurality of axially extending external troughs for receiving driving elements of a driver, the troughs being spaced apart by bark of the collar that can fail in circumferential compression in response to the driving elementsat the predetermined pre-load, the process comprising the steps of:
(a) engaging the axially extending troughs with the driving elements, and threading and tightening the thread of the collar onto the thread of the pin by rotating the driving elements; and
(b) failing that part of the bark of the collar in a path of the driving elements with the driving elements in circumferential compression by developing circumferential furrows in the bark between the troughs in the path of the driving elementsby such elements plowing through the bark, the bark failing at the predetermined pre-load on the joint.
2. The process claimed in claim 1 including the steps of retightening and refailing the bark in circumferential compression after the first failure of the bark by engaging driving elements of a driver on the bark a second time at a differentaxial position along the bark than where the first bark failure occurred, rotating the driving elements and developing a second set of circumferential furrows in the bark between the troughs by causing the elements to plow through the bark, the barkagain failing at the predetermined pre-load on the joint.
3. The process claimed in claim 2 wherein the driving elements are balls rotatably mounted in the body of the driver along a common circle.
4. The process claimed in claim 1 wherein the driving elements are balls rotatably mounted in the body of the driver along a common circle.
||BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to fasteners in general, and, more in particular to fasteners of the torque-limiting type, a process of setting such a fastener, a resulting joint, and a driver used in the setting.
In a standard threaded fastener system of a male threaded fastener and a female threaded fastener, the female fastener has internal threads that thread onto external threads of the male fastener. Wrenching surfaces of both fasteners accept toolsthat tighten them and clamp one or more workpieces together between them, oftentimes with washers interposed in between. The combination of the fasteners and the workpieces are known as a "joint." Male threaded fasteners are variously known as "screws,""bolts," or "pins;" female threaded fasteners are variously known as "nuts" or "collars;" workpieces are sometimes called "sheets" or "structural elements."
Fasteners bear loads along their axes, tensile loads, and radially of their axes, shear loads. Tensile loading always exists because of the clamping force applied by the pin and the collar to the sheets; this load is known as "clamp-up" or"pre-load." When fasteners join two or more sheets and the sheets are loaded in their planes, one sheet may tend to slide over the other; when this loading of the sheets occurs, it is resisted by the fasteners, and the sheets load the fasteners in shear. Shear loads are transverse to the axes of the fasteners and transverse to the tension load. Cyclic loading of a fastener can produce fatigue failure. In aerospace applications shear failure is usually most critical in fatigue.
Adequate clamp-up or preload is absolutely necessary for a satisfactory joint. A fastener adequately loaded by the reaction to the clamp-up load resists fatique failure. Preload also helps the structural elements to resist fatigue failure. Accordingly, it is desirable to know the clamp-up load the fastener applies to a structure to be sure that a joint has adequate fatigue strength. Adequate clamp-up also avoids sheet slippage and fretting and insures against load shifting and jointfailure.
Clamp-up load correlates to the resistance of a collar to further threading onto a pin and against a workpiece by the application of torque to the collar. As clamp-up force increases, the resistance to further threading increases, and the torquerequired to turn the collar increases.
This fact has been used in fasteners to develop a predetermined clamp-up load by termination of tightening through failure of a wrenching section on the collar. U.S. Pat. No. 2,940,495 to G. S. Wing and U.S. Pat. No. 4,260,005 to EdgarStencel describe two types of such fasteners.
The Wing patent describes a collar extensively used in the aerospace industry. It has a wrenching section connected to an internally threaded section by a frangible break-neck collar. The collar breaks upon the application of a predeterminedtorque that corresponds to a desired clamp-up load. An acircular portion of the threaded section provides a thread lock by pressing tightly against the threads of the cooperating pin. A problem with this type of fastener is that it generates a wastepiece: the wrenching section. The waste piece must be removed from the environment where the fastener is set. This type of fastener is also comparatively expensive because it requires a considerable amount of machining to make it and the frangiblebreak-neck must be held to very close tolerances to provide close tolerances in break-off torques.
The Stencel patent describes a collar that has a plurality of circumferentially spaced lobes on its axial outside that serve as wrenching surfaces and in torque limitation. A wrenching tool, say a triangular shaped socket, has flats that engageflanks of the lobes and turn the collar with respect to the pin. Upon reaching a predetermined clamp-up load, the lobes fail in radial compression and merge into the body of the collar, and wrenching and tightening stops because the lobes no longerprovide purchase for the setting tool. The Stencel collar produces a thread lock by a deformation of collar material radially inward of the lobes against the threads of a cooperating pin when the lobes fail.
Impact wrenches used in setting fasteners do so rapidly. The failures of the break-neck of the Wing fastener and of the lobes of the Stencel fastener occur over very few degrees of rotation, and, when an impact wrench is used, occur veryrapidly. The rapid application of setting torques to a collar can result in loss of some desired pre-load through relaxation of the sheets; relaxation results from the continued deformation of the sheets after the initial loading. Such deformationreduces the load per unit area and absolute loading because material moves away from the clamped zone. When the break-neck or the lobes fail, they fail at a torque corresponding to a desired pre-load. But the load sheets can relax and some of thepre-load lost. This relaxation is a time-dependent phenomenon, and with slower development of pre-load, relaxation and loss of pre-load will be less.
It may also be desireable to be able to change the pre-load even with the same collar. For example, when the sheets are not as strong in comparison as some other sheets, it may be necessary to lower the compressive load on them.
In some applications secondary wrenching is desired in order to increase pre-load above design pre-load or to compensate for relaxation. Secondary wrenching is impossible in the standard configurations of the Wing and Stencel collars. Thesecollars are also difficult to remove after they have been set because of the absence of wrenching sections.
An important requirement of an aerospace fastener is a known and repeatable clamp-up load. The clamp-up load correlates directly with the torque that sets the fastener. Nonetheless, a lot of the setting torque in a typical fastener system isnot used in developing clamp-up, but instead is used in overcoming friction. The reduction of parasitic friction has the advantages of reducing the driving load, reducing the requirements of the setting tools, and increasing the accuracy of the clamp-upload.
In a fastener system where pre-load is determined by the failure of some external wrenching means, such as the lobes on the Stencil collor swelling of the collar because of radial loads applied to it can adversely affect the pre-load.
Many fastener systems have a thread lock to keep the collars from loosening on the pins. A form of thread lock uses deformed thread of the collar to increase friction between the collar and the pin threads in a localized area. Substantial hoopstress on the collar imparted through the threads of the pin can reduce or eliminate the effect of the thread lock because the hoop stress overcomes the deformation in the collar and plastically deforms the thread lock so that it loses its ability toperform its function.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a new threaded collar, a method for its setting, a resulting joint, and a driver.
In general, the collar has a bark or plateau with at least one axially extending trough that receives a driving element of a driver. A wall of the trough provides bearing for the driving element. As the collar tightens on threads of a pin andagainst the sheet of a joint, the pre-load increases and resistance to tightening increases. At a predetermined pre-load, the bark fails in circumferential compression and the driving element moves circumferentially with respect to the collar by plowinga furrow in the bark until its path is free of bark, whereupon resistance to wrenching stops. The collar also includes a base with a bearing surface for transmitting pre-load to one or more sheets.
In its presently preferred form, the collar includes a plurality of troughs in the bark spaced at regular circumferential intervals, each capable of receiving a ball driving element of the driver. A track on the collar pilots a guide of thedriver during bark failure and helps align the collar and driver and axially position the driver. An interior chamfer at the top of the collar centers a thrust retainer of the driver during setting and applies an axial thrust on the collar at this time. An axial counterbore at the base end of the collar accommodates imperfect threads of the pin in a standard manner. The base of the collar has the greatest diameter of the collar. A transition section between the base and the bark reduces the diameterof the collar to the diameter of the bark. The troughs stop at the transition section. The troughs are arcuate in axial cross-sections. The track is at the entrance to the troughs at the top of the collar, the troughs extending slightly into thetrack. The track has an arcuate cross-section in axial section to pilot the guide of the driver. The collar can have a thread lock, preferably a crimp in the wall of the collar that deforms the threads to a limited axial and circumferential extent. The bark can be made of a different material from the rest of the collar so that its hardness is tailored to the pre-load desired. Alternatively, the threads of the collar can be in a hardened insert with the balance of the collar being comparativelysoft. The troughs can be varied in number to vary the degrees of arc each driving element must travel during failure. Further, the number of driving elements can be increased by axially stacking them, one on top of the other, to develop two or morecircumferential bands of troughs.
Preferably, the threads of the collar are modified buttress threads of the type described in my co-pending application, filed Feb. 15, 1985, Ser. No. 702,150, and entitled An Improved Thread Form and Fastener System Using The Form, andincorporated herein by reference. The buttress thread form experiences very little radial stress and, as a consequence, the collar does not expand. Because of its lack of expansion, the torque control setting load is very accurate, and the amount ofparasitic torque is very low. Because of this, the accuracy of pre-load is very high.
The driver includes a body with a driving socket. This socket has driving elements, preferably balls, receivable in the troughs of the collar and engageable with the walls of the troughs to ultimately develop the furrows. Guide balls above thedrive balls may be provided to guide on the track of the collar. Optionally, a thrust retainer in the socket can apply an axial thrust load on the collar during setting; it preferably has a positive taper for engaging a mating, negatively taperedchamfer of the collar. An acircular drive socket for accepting a corresponding element of a setting tool, such as an impact wrench, couples the driver to the tool for the application of torque to the collar. Preferably, the thrust retainer has a clearthrough bore for accepting the threaded end of a pin above the collar. The retainer may also have a radial, external flange that axially captures a sizing ball for each of the drillings of the driver which determines the diameter of the drillings.
For making a joint, the driver is placed on the collar with the driving balls in the troughs and the guide balls on the track. Torque applied on the driver threads the collar onto a threaded pin, and eventually the collar and pin will begin toload the sheets that they are joining in compression. When this load on the sheets reaches a predetermined pre-load, the bark fails and the driving balls begin to plough circumferential troughs through the bark, and when a complete circumferential bandof troughs develop, torque application stops because the collar and the driver are no longer coupled for the transmission of torque to the collar.
As the balls plow through the bark, the pre-load already developed can relax somewhat. In this event, the resistance to tightening drops off and plowing stops in favor of further tightening of the collar on the pin. With further tightening,pre-load increases back up to the predetermined pre-load, then plowing begins again. There may be both plowing and rotation until pre-load stabilizes and rotation stops and only plowing occurs. The time it takes to plow a furrow is "dwell." The maximumdwell is the time it takes to plow a complete furrow entirely around the collar.
The number of troughs determines the amount of dwell. The fewer the troughs, the longer it will take for the bark to fail and the more likely it is that the ultimate pre-load in the joint will correspond to the pre-load at bark failure. Formany applications, eight equally-spaced and axially-extending troughs will provide adequate pre-load after acceptable load relaxation. Dwell can also be increased by decreasing the number of driving balls, say for an eight trough collar, dropping thenumber of driving balls to four from eight doubles the dwell. However, because the bark area resisting failure is the dominate parameter in failure, it will be necessary to increase to approximately double the bark area failed by the balls to achievethe same pre-load when changing from an eight-ball to a four-ball drive.
Pre-laod control can be achieved by varying the number of setting balls: a variation changes the area of bark resisting compressive failure; for example, reducing the ball count from eight to six reduces the pre-load by about 25% for the samecollar.
It is presently preferred that pre-load control be effected by redriving the collar. A set of balls, say eight, occupy a ring at a first axial distance on a first driver. These balls plow through the bark in the manner described. A second setof balls, say eight, occupying a different axial position in a second driver, then plows through the bark in a second axial position of the collar to bring the pre-load back to where it is desired value after the pre-load relaxation attending the firstdrive.
The collar troughs are normally not completely obliterated by the setting action. For example, the depths of the furrows need not not correspond to the depths of the troughs. Accordingly, secondary wrenching is possible with larger balls thatextend deeper into the troughs than do the primary balls. Alternatively, secondary torquing can be accomplished by the driver having cylindrical rolls that gain purchase on unaffected portions of the bark. The collar can be removed by the sametechniques.
The collar and driver develop a joint with a highly controlled pre-load and without developing a waste piece. The pre-load can be changed merely by changing the size of the driving element so that the furrow depth developed in the bark changes. Dwell time can be increased by reducing the number of driving balls so that each of the balls remaining has to plow through more bark, at least the bark between two troughs. A positive thread lock is always assured by the provision of the thread crimp.
These and other features and aspects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following description, appended claims and drawings.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is an elevational view of the preferred collar of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a top plan view of the collar of FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 is a fragmentary view partly in half section of a collar and a driver with a furrow being formed;
FIG. 4 is a fragmentary view partly in half section showing the thread lock used with the collar of the invention;
FIG. 5 is a view of the collar in a set joint;
FIG. 6 is a view in elevational half section of a preferred form of the driver of the present invention;
FIG. 7 is a sectional view taken in the plane of 7--7 in FIG. 6;
FIG. 8A is a perspective view, partly in section, of the preferred driver of the present invention;
FIG. 8B is a perspective view, partly in section, of the preferred driver of the present invention with the driving balls at a different axial position than those of the driver of FIG. 8A for redriving;
FIG. 9 is a perspective view, partly in section, of the preferred removal tool of the present invention;
FIGS. 10A through 10C illustrate the driving of the fastener of the present invention with the preferred driver;
FIG. 11 is an elevational view, partly in half-section, of an alternate embodiment of the collar of the present invention; and
FIG. 12 is a view of the fastener system of the present invention with a washer that deforms to compensate for a difference in the angle of the sheets from a perpendicular to the hole through the sheets.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERREDEMBODIMENTS
FIGS. 1 and 2 show a presently preferred collar 10 of the present invention. In general the collar includes a base 12, an axial bore 14, an axis 15, a threaded section 16 of the axial bore, a wrenching section 18, and a track 20.
The wrenching section forms a bark or plateau of the collar. The bark is an axially extending skin of the collar along its outside. It has a plurality of axially-extending troughs 22 that extend in length from trough entrances 24 in the trackto terminii 26 at a transition section 28 between the bark and base 12. Each trough has as a perimeter the arc of a circle that in the limit corresponds in diameter to the maximum diameter of the drive balls of a driver, to be described in detail withreference to FIGS. 6, 8A and 8B and shown in FIG. 6 as driver 30 and balls 32. The depth of the trough, the material of the bark, and the diameter of the drive balls correlate so that bark fails upon the application of a predetermined compressive forcein the circumferential direction on the bark. The failure in circumferential compression correlates directly with applied torque, which in turn correlates directly with the pre-load on a joint between the collar and the head of a cooperating pin on oneor more sheets, as will be described in detail subsequently.
The bark can be integral with the collar, the collar being monolithic, or the bark can be a second member applied to the collar and secured there by a shrink fit. With such a composite construction the bark can be made of a soft material, forexample, aluminum, and the collar can be made of a harder material, for example, A-286 stainless steel. The number of troughs of the preferred form of the invention is eight. The number of troughs can be varied.
The time it takes for a driving ball to traverse the distance between troughs, about 45.degree., and the rotational speed of the setting tool determine the extent of relaxation of a joint, all other parameters remaining constant. It may be thata greater separation of troughs would be desirable to minimize relaxation to a desired final pre-load. It is preferred to redrive the collar to minimize the effects of relaxation, and this will be described subsequently.
One way to control pre-load is by varying the amount of material the balls must plow through, and this can be done by varying the ball count. Pre-load is approximately a function of the number of balls: eight balls develop twice the pre-loadthat four balls do, all else being equal. Pre-load can also be varied by varying the area of the bark intercepted by the balls or the area of the balls intercepting the bark. A third way is to vary the hardness of the bark.
Track 20 is contiguous to and above bark 18. The lower portion of the track abutting the bark has a curved surface 34 with a radius in axial section corresponding to an arc of a circle having a diameter about equal to the diameter of guide ball36 of the driver. The guide balls guide on track 20 and surface 34 to accurately maintain the axes of the driver and the collar coaxial during the threading of the collar onto the pin and during failure of the bark.
The collar also has an interior chamfered, annular seat 38 at the top of the collar. It has a negative taper of preferably about 150.degree.. It seats a bearing surface 40 of a thrust retainer 42 of the driver. (See FIGS. 3 and 6.) Thisengagement permits the application of an axial thrust force on the collar during the threading of the collar onto the pin and the formation of a joint. The collar also has a base 12 of standard configuration. The base diameter is the largest on thecollar to lower the unit loading on the sheets. It has a counterbore 44 that receives incomplete threads of the pin. It has a bearing surface 46 that extends radially from the axis of the collar and engages a washer or the surface of a sheet.
With reference to FIG. 4, the collar further includes a crimp thread lock. The thread lock is formed by crimp 48 at the floor of one of the troughs 22, the crimp deforms the wall of the collar above the zone where the driving balls act. Thedeformation deforms the threads locally at 50 by displacing them inward to form an acircular thread lock.
FIGS. 3 and 4 show the preferred form of the threads of the collar of this invention: a modified buttress thread 52. The thread has a load-bearing flank that is nearly perpendicular to the axis of the collar and a nonload-bearing flank that isat an angle of about 45 degrees to the perpendicular to the axis of the collar. The thread form has a substantial right cylindrical, axially-extending root and a right cylindrical flat at its crest. This buttress thread form produces very little radialforce on the collar. As a consequence, the collar can be made light weight because the diameter of the bark will not change during setting. It has been found that without the buttress thread, and using a standard V-shaped thread, some collars expandradially under the radial stress imposed by the pin, and this expansion presents more material for the balls of the driver to go through, increasing the torque required to set the collar, and, with this increase in torque, the radial stress increaseseven further. This increase in dimension makes control of the amount of clamp-up force hard. The buttress thread avoids the problem, and clamp-up load can be accurately correlated to the balls plowing through the bark.
FIG. 6 shows driver 30. The driver has a body 60. The body has an axis 62. An axial bore 64 extends completely through the body and has several sections. The first of these sections is a socket 66 that may be square in cross-section andreceives a drive of a wrenching tool. A detent 68 opens into the socket to receive a ball of the drive. A conical chamfer 70 pilots the wrenching tool drive into socket 66 and tapers away from the socket. So much is standard.
The drive end of the socket includes drive balls 32 and pilot balls 36. These balls are kept in axial drillings 72. A sizing ball 74 sizes the drillings accurately for both the pilot and drive balls. Material displaced by the ball can be seenin front of the ball. As can be seen in FIG. 7, the drillings extend beyond the center of the balls and wrap around the balls to radially capture them.
A keeper assembly 80 provides the constraint for balls in the opposite direction. The keeper assembly includes a pair of rings 84 and 86. Ring 84 is received in a circumferential groove 88 of the body 60. Ring 86 is stacked on top of ring 84and provides the actual bearing on the driving balls. Ring 84 is split to get into groove 88. Ring 86 is continuous and is kept in place by ring 84.
Bore 64 steps down from groove 88 at 90 to provide the capture for balls 32 but it is larger than the diameter on the outside of the collar. The bore steps down again at 92 to provide a radial stop for an external radial flange 94 of retainer 42as well as the capture of guide ball 36. Bore 64 steps down again at 96 to provide a radial stop for external flange 94 of retainer 42 to bear against and to locate the retainer axially in the balance of the driver.
Driver 30 also has a plurality of radial fingers 98 that extend into corresponding slots through the walls of the drillings in order to keep the retainer from rotating by bearing against walls of the body.
As already mentioned, the retainer has external radial flange 94 that engages the bearing surface of internal stop 96 of the body. It also has a clearance taper 102 to clear guide balls 92. Taper 102 bounds bearing surface 40.
The retainer has an axial cylindrical bore 104 to receive the threaded end of a pin.
FIG. 3 shows the mechanism of bark failure and the determination of the predetermined torque. In the figure, the illustrated portion of the driver is rotating into the paper to set collar 10 on a cooperating threaded pin 110. Bearing surface 46of the collar bears against a surface of a sheet 112 for the transfer of an axial compressive pre-load to the sheets in cooperation with a head of pin 110. The driving ball has plowed a furrow 114 in the bark. The furrow takes the cross-section of theball and develops radial protruding ring sectors 116 and 118 from material displaced from the trough. Vertical line 120 shows the depth of the furrow plowed into the bark below the raised ring sectors. Plowing continues until all the balls plow out acomplete circumferential furrow. In the embodiment illustrated, ball travel will be about 45.degree.. (It is not 45.degree. because of the width of the troughs.) During this relative rotation between the driver and the collar, the guide balls willtrack on track 20 and maintain a fixed vertical and angular orientation of the driver with respect to the collar. During this rotation and before it, thrust retainer 42 bears on seat 38 and applies an axial thrust to the collar to force it axially alongthe threads of pin 110.
The resulting joint has a predetermined pre-load that is very close to the load on the sheet that existed during the plowing of the furrows in the bark; there is very little relaxation. There is very little relaxation because relaxation is afunction of time, the shorter the time for the set, the more relaxation there will be. Because of the time required to traverse the approximately 45.degree. between troughs, there is plenty of time for relaxation during the set, and therefore theachievement of a pre-load corresponding to the pre-load on the joint at failure.
Stated differently, the load applied to the sheets during plowing must spread from a comparatively local zone to a comparatively larger zone. During the first portion of plowing, the pre-load reduces due to relaxation and if it reduces enough,the collar will rotate on the threads a little to increase the pre-load. Plowing and tightening can occur simultaneously, but eventually only plowing occurs after the pre-load stabilizes at its final value.
Pre-load depends on a few factors. One is the bark area intercepted by the ball, which can be varied by varying the thickness of the bark, the depth of the trough, or the diameter of the ball.
The pre-load also depends upon the hardness of the collar and its material. Obviously, the pre-load increases as a function of hardness. If the collar material is workhardenable, the resistance to plowing increases for a few degrees of arcbecause of workhardening before reaching substantially a constant value. The developement of the ring sectors, as well, influence pre-load by the developement of a "bow wave" of collar material ahead of the plow that effectively increases the area ofthe bark that resists plowing.
Note that with the driver construction of the invention, varying the pre-load by varying the diameter of the ball is easy and effective: the retaining ring set is removed and the drive ball changed, the axial location of the drive ball can befixed by varying the thickness of ring 86 with the diameter of the drive ball used so that the total of both is always a constant. When the drive balls are smaller in diameter than is necessary to span the gap between the bottom of the trough and thewall of the driver radially of the bottom, the balls ride up on the trough wall and contact the driver wall during plowing because this is the location of least resistance.
FIG. 3 also shows a composite nut and collar construction. A separate piece of bark 128 replaces bark 18.
FIG. 5 shows the completed joint. Collar 10 and a head 132 of pin 110 tightly clamp sheets 112 and 134 between them with a predetermined pre-load. The arc sectors of the developed ridges 116 and 118 extend completely around the collar. Thetrough depth extends deeper than the furrow depth because the diameter of the driving balls was smaller than the distance between the bottom of the troughs and the constraining driver wall radially outward from the trough. This leaves a portion of thetrough for secondary wrenching to tighten the joint to effect greater pre-loads than on the primary setting or to breakdown the joint by the removal of the collar and pin. Secondary wrenching can be done with cylindrical drivers in place of drivingballs 32.
FIGS. 8A and 8B illustrate the presently preferred drivers of the invention. The Figures show two wrenching sockets, each having balls in a different axial position from the other. In FIG. 8A, a socket 150 has a barrel 152 with a standardfour-sided wrenching socket 154. The driver narrows at a transition section 156 to a driving end 158. An axial bore 160 of the driver extends through it and into the wrenching socket. The axial bore includes an enlarged diameter guiding section 162that guides around the base of the collar. The guiding section ends and the bore steps down at a shoulder 164. A right cylindrical wall-retaining section 166 extends from the shoulder toward the socket end of the driver. A plurality ofregularly-spaced balls 168 in this retaining section are the driving balls of the driver and plow a furrow in the back of a collar at a predetermined axial position of the collar. The balls are retained in place by swaging of the material of theretaining section. The driving section ends at an interior shoulder 170 that pilots on the top of the collar to axially locate the balls with respect to the collar. In FIG. 8B, a second driver 171 shows driving balls 172 at an axial location spacedfrom the axial location of the balls of the first driver by the distance between the two arrows between FIGS. 8A and 8B. The balls of the second driver develop a second furrow in the collar during a redrive step that compensates for the relaxation andoccurs after the first drive and assures that the joint formed by the collar has the desired pre-load. Other than the ball location, the driver of FIG. 8B is identical to the driver of FIG. 8A.
FIG. 9 shows a third tool used with the collar of this invention to remove the collar from a pin. A removal tool 176 includes a barrel 178 that has a standard, four-sided drive socket 180 at one end. At the opposite end, a removal socket 182has eight axially-extending removal lobes 184 that register in the troughs of the collar and gain purchase on the sides of the trough on the collar's bark, particularly between furrows, during the removal of the collar from a pin. A chamfer 186 at thisend of the removal tool pilots the tool onto the collar, and a bevel 188 at the end of each of the lobes serves the same function in piloting the lobes into the troughs. The ends of the removal tool connect through a neck 190.
FIGS. 10A through 10C show a driving sequence of the collar and driver of the present invention. A collar 200 on a pin 202 bears on a workpiece, not shown. The pin is restrained from rotating during driving through a wrench in a socket 204. InFIG. 10B, the first furrows 206 have been formed by balls 168 of socket 150. The resulting joint has a predetermined pre-load at setting, but that load relaxes to a value lower than desired. This relaxation is taken up on a redrive shown in FIG. 10C. There, driver 171 has formed a second set of furrows 208 axially spaced from the first set. The resistance to failure of bark material confronting the balls of driver 171 is the same as bark material confronting the balls of driver 150. As aconsequence, the joint after redrive will have the predetermined pre-load desired, relaxation after the redrive not accounting for any material deviation from this value.
FIG. 11 shows an alternate embodiment 220 of the collar of the present invention. It is of a composite construction of two parts, a base washer 222 and a nut 224. The nut is the driving and threaded portion of the collar. Washer 220 is capableof rotating on nut 224 so that the base remains stationary during the installation of the collar, not introducing a variable into setting torque or moving the workpiece surface. The nut and collar engage at radial surfaces 226 and 228. The frictionalengagement between these engaging surfaces can be closely controlled. A lubricant between the two surfaces can reduce the friction and this parasitic torque. Other than in the composite construction, the collar shown in FIG. 11 is the same as in thepreviously described embodiments.
FIG. 12 shows the collar of the present invention with a washer 250 affixed to it at its base. This washer is capable of deforming under axial load to accommodate an inclination of the adjacent workpiece surface from a perpendicular to the axisof the collar and pin. In the Figure, workpiece 252 has a surface 254 at an angle to the perpendicular to the axis of the fastener and the hole in which a pin 256 extends, the angle of inclination being indicated by the opposed arrow heads to the rightin the Figure. Washer 250 is retained on the collar through a crimped section 258. The washer necks in at 260 in a weak section, weak in compression or column relative to the balance of the washer. A bearing end 262 of the washer connects to thisweakened section and bears directly on the workpiece. The weakened section fails in column with the application of sufficient axial load and exactly compensates for the angle of the surface of the workpiece from the perpendicular to the axis of thefastener and the hole through the workpieces. As in the previously described embodiment, the washer can rotate with respect to the collar so that the setting torque is not affected by the condition of the workpiece surface engaged by the washer.
The present invention has been described with reference to certain preferred embodiments. The spirit and scope of the appended claims should not, however, necessarily be limited to this description.
* * * * *
||Randomly Featured Patents | <urn:uuid:2de2fe0c-f107-4d37-8a58-19e2daa8a7a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/4858299.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932595 | 8,081 | 1.570313 | 2 |
In the Uk I see some practitioners have the title medical homeopath, is their initial course of learning very different from that of a classical/ professional homeopath? If so, how? I know that some General Practitioners also use Homeopathy in their practise and wonder how their training and approach differs also. Is this clearer? If not then I think I need reflect on what I'm trying to get at.
I can understand little, from your explanation...
But if you see here in India The practice of homoeopathy (so called in the name of homoeopathy) is common... Here we have 3 class of people A,B & C.
A - graduated in college - BHMS/MD
B - Registered Practitioners With experience - RHMP
c - They practice without any degree (Subjected to legal actions)
Here the classical homoeopath terminology is used to indicate those persons who practice strictly according to the Hahnemannain principles and they are very very few in number which can be seen in all the three categories.
The medical homoeopaths and proffessional homoeopaths are not in use here....
But i hope The medical homoeopath is a one who may be interested in research work in homoeopathy and the proffesional homoeopath may be the one who have converted to a homoeopath from other schools of medicine,.... But i m not sure of this, sorry.
Very interesting. I qualified this Summer with a Licence to Practise Homeopathy here in England, I do not have an MD qualification, I am a stand alone Homeopathic Practitioner. In England I see we have Medical Homeopaths who are medically qualified first and Homeopaths like myself who have spent 4 + years studying homeopathic medicine. In addition I believe there are practitioners here who are Holistic practitioners without a particular specialism of practice. Compulsory registration is imminent, but right now as long as practitioners are insured they can practice. Please, anybody, correct me if this information is now wrong...................
Hi Senthil. Yes we have several establishments that I can contact for further clarification, I do not need to know this information I was curious and thought international responses would be interesting.
What a nice surprise, thank you for your enquiry. I am moving in the right direction, however, I am not very balanced and so my experiences are proving quite stressful to me and my commitment to meditation and time of peace is poor. I qualified as a Practitioner July last year and since then I have been working hard in one way or another building a Practice, never quite sure whether I am doing the best thing!............................. | <urn:uuid:37b01daa-847b-4c80-b95a-9860434575f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://homeopathyworldcommunity.com/forum/topics/medical-homeopathy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957628 | 554 | 1.59375 | 2 |
How to Begin a Cover Letter
6 of 10 in Series: The Essentials of Cover Letters
If you want an employer to actually read your cover letter, pay close attention to how you begin the letter. Effective ways to start a cover letter's opening statement uses words that immediately grab the attention of the reader and then hold it tightly throughout the complete text of the letter.
Getting attention in your opening line
Here are some effective ways to start your cover letter:
Mention a personal referral in your opening line. A personal referral works wonders. In this approach, you begin with the name of a mutual connection. Someone whom the letter’s recipient likes or respects. Name dropping virtually guarantees that your letter will be read. Additionally, you can score points by identifying yourself as a member of an affinity group, such as the alumni of a college or member of a civic organization.
Clearly state what you want, followed by the qualifying benefits you offer. Include qualifications that directly relate to the requirements the hiring company seeks. Or turn it around — lead with the skills and benefits you offer before saying what you want.
Create a narrative hook. In the broadest sense, a narrative hook is a literary technique in the opening of a story that “hooks” the reader’s attention to keep eyes scooting down the page. A cover letter hook often is a thematic statement, followed by a flashback to the history the reader needs to understand it.
Don’t waste valuable opening-line real estate by focusing on the source of a job post — I saw your ad in the KoKoMo Express last Sunday. Instead, handle sourcing head-on in the regarding (“RE:”) line at the top your letter.
Sample cover letter opening statements
So what do contemporary openers look like? Review the following opening statement examples that are sure to make a cover letter jump out of the pack right from the start:
I recently met with James Smith from your firm, and he strongly recommended that I send you my resume. Knowing the requirements of your open position for a financial analyst, he concludes that I am the ideal candidate.
During your visit to UCSB last fall, I had the pleasure of hearing you address the issue of FuelCO oil rigs off the coast of Santa Barbara. As a UCSB June graduate, I . . .
My computer skills developed from childhood, plus my well-honed interest in technology advances, and my recently completed education in computer science make me a strong candidate for a position as an entry-level software engineer at your highly regarded company.
I recently graduated with a 3.75 GPA from the University of California, where I was a research assistant to Dr. Joe Famous, engineering department chair.
I enjoyed our meeting at the Rancho Santa Fe Garden Club and, as you suggested, am sending you this additional information to review before we get together.
Chaim Isenberg of the Greenwich and Co. accounting firm suggested I contact you regarding opportunities in your warehouse division in Champagne. My background documents considerable success in the areas of loss prevention and asset recovery, which I understand are high on your list of requirements.
Are you in the market for a sales pro who has set sales records for four different companies and trained dozens of high-performance sales reps?
Preparing to respond to your ad in today’s Chicago Tribune, I did some research and discovered that we’re both Northwestern grads. Is this serendipity or what? I hope our mutual alma mater is a harbinger of good things to come and that we’ll be cheering on the same side in the workplace as well.
As a new USC graduate, I’ve been hoping to find the kind of position you’re staffing because I have exactly the background you’re asking for. Specifically, the following columns match item for item: (The company’s requirements are listed in the left column, and in the right, your matching qualifications.) | <urn:uuid:3bb72b63-92fe-42b4-bf6d-4f9c6568f91c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-begin-a-cover-letter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945392 | 823 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Thu February 21, 2013
After Prison, A Second Chance To Be A Better Mother
Originally published on Fri February 22, 2013 8:42 am
When Rowena Gore-Simmons went to prison, her daughter, Kenya, was just 4 years old. On her first night behind bars, Rowena recalls, her hands and feet were shackled.
"I was disappointed in myself, and I was scared for you guys," she told Kenya during a visit to StoryCorps in Baltimore.
During the year Rowena was incarcerated, people would often ask Kenya, 'Where's your mother?'
'I didn't tell them nothing," recalls Kenya, now 16. But all the questions, she says, made her feel like an outsider.
When Rowena asks Kenya the hardest part about their separation, Kenya doesn't hesitate. "Everything," she says.
Rowena had her own personal struggles while in prison. "It made me really think about life," she says. "I asked myself, 'Who are you and who do you want to be?'
"I wanted to be a better mother and learn more about being a mom," Rowena tells Kenya. "I wanted to hold you. I wanted to count your fingers; I wanted to brush your hair. I wanted to be with you."
Rowena, 48, says she is a different person today. In 2009, she founded 2 God B The Glory, a nonprofit transitional housing program for formerly incarcerated women, after working at another Baltimore nonprofit, Power Inside.
"You know, I sometimes look back at the past and I say to myself, 'Who was that person?' And I thank you for being patient with me and I thank you for still loving me," Rowena tells Kenya. "And for giving me the opportunity to be your mother."
When Kenya asks her mother to describe the best part of being out of prison, she laughs.
"Oh my God!" she says. "That I have my family. This is what I'm living for — to be able to be a family."
As for Kenya, her hope for the future is "that we never get split apart again. And we stay together forever."
"You're so special to me," her mother replies. "And I will always be by your side."
Audio produced for Morning Edition by Katie Simon. | <urn:uuid:d24a4770-c200-467d-a82c-e94ea66c9d06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksut.org/post/after-prison-second-chance-be-better-mother | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987536 | 483 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Tairua Paddle for Humanity05-Oct-2011
The founder and medical director of SurfAid International, Dr Dave Jenkins, will be the official starter at the Tairua Paddle for Humanity on Saturday 19 November. The event, now in its second year, is organized by the students at Tairua school as part of their global citizenship social inquiry. The paddle is a culmination of applying the SurfAid Schools Program teaching materials on global citizenship to local community action. Last year more than 250 people participated and raised over $3000 for SurfAid's tsunami relief work.
The school and its students organise the event and their participation demonstrates authentic teaching and learning at its best. The "Tairua School Citizen" aims to be a global citizen of the future and this year's Tairua Paddle for Humanity will embody this spirit. | <urn:uuid:e447e63a-73d1-4dcf-8fc6-ce5e4490f876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://schools.surfaidinternational.org/announcements/tairua-paddle-for-humanity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941444 | 170 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Trying hot Yoga for the first time
As someone who enjoys going to yoga classes regularly, when I heard about Yoga to the People's Traditional Hot Yoga I wanted to try it. Adding variation to my routine was one reason, but the challenge was another.
Typical yoga is Power Vinyaste Flow, which focuses on breathing in relation to the continuous movements of the body. Each pose seamlessly flows into the next. Hot Yoga's slower pace was a surprising difference.
Hot Yoga is a series of 26 poses and two-breathing exercises, not to be confused with Bikram Yoga. Though both are performed in a room heated to 105-108 degrees, Bikram Yoga is described as more rigorous and fast-paced, while Yoga to the People's Hot Yoga is designed for beginners, which is good because I am definitely a beginner.
The poses were slower and more precise than what I'm used to, focusing on flexibility and balance.
At times I felt unsure of what I was doing, but the instructors were helpful, teaching and guiding students who struggled to keep up with the steady flow of the class and showing us the proper way to position our bodies.
The varying poses combined with the temperature made for a difficult workout, both mentally and physically. It was certainly tough, but sweating out the toxins felt refreshing and rewarding.
Tips from Hot Yoga instructor Sarah Schwartz:
1. Don't drink too much water in class
"Drinking water makes it harder in the room because your body has to digest it," Schwartz said. "The more water you drink, the harder it may be, so ration what you actually need."
2. Keep the clothing light
"Less is best," Schwartz said. "If you feel shy, you can wear full clothing, but make yourself comfortable."
3. Stay motivated throughout
"Sometimes people get dizzy and nauseous and try to leave the room," Schwartz said. "If you feel that way, just sit down. We tell people their first time goal should just be staying in the room." | <urn:uuid:79e49a55-cf0b-4adc-81f9-1c9e6165519d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/trying-hot-yoga-for-the-first-time-1.4635453 | 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 | 0.980256 | 420 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Gram Parsons (November 5, 1946 – September 19, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist born Ingram Cecil Connor, III. A solo artist as well as a member of both The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, he is best known for a series of recordings which anticipate the so-called country rock of the 1970s and the alt-country movement that began around 1990. Parsons described his records as "Cosmic American Music". He died of a drug overdose at the age of 26.
Parsons was born Ingram Cecil Connor, III in Winter Haven, Florida, the grandson of citrus fruit baron John Snively, with extensive properties both there and in Waycross, Georgia, where he was raised. A sister, "Little" Avis, soon followed. Despite all the material advantages of old Southern money, he was surrounded by a dysfunctional family in which alcoholism was rife. His father, "Coon Dog" Connor, suffered mood swings and abruptly committed suicide two days before Christmas Day 1958. His wife, Avis, subsequently married a pseudo-grifter named Robert Parsons, whose surname was adopted by young Ingram, the elder Parsons going as f...
|date of birth||November 5, 1946|
|place of birth||Winter Haven, Florida|
|date of death||September 19, 1973|
|place of death||Yucca Valley, California| | <urn:uuid:d3d34ad9-ee3e-4fdc-a9de-879619204f81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chordie.com/song.php/songartist/Gram+Parsons/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975899 | 289 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Two stories this week stand out as examples of how entrepreneurs in India are doing what the government and the private sector have largely failed to do.
One is on housing, the other on healthcare, hot-button topics in India, which is struggling to house and heal its 1.1 billion population even as it gallops toward double-digit growth.
Various state governments and real estate firms have made lofty promises of “affordable housing”, but few have delivered.
One man is determined to show he can. Entrepreneur Jaithirth “Jerry” Rao, who headed software firm MphasiS, this week launched a project in Bangalore to build 1,900 homes that will be priced at 450,000 – 1 million rupees (roughly $9,500 – $21,000) each.
Rao’s Value and Budget Housing Corp – floated with a former Citibank colleague – will use lightweight aluminium beams and cast-on-site technology to cut costs. | <urn:uuid:2160e288-7630-42b3-beec-c2da8fa63c1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/india/tag/affordable-healthcare/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955077 | 205 | 1.757813 | 2 |
HUD: Lenders can't deny loans to new mothers
In this era of tightened credit, pregnant women and those on maternity leave have been denied loans, despite a 44-year-old law that prohibits this kind of discrimination.
One of the life events that often propels people to buy a new home is the arrival of a child.
As anyone who has had a child knows, it's usually necessary to take a maternity leave from work right after the birth.
But being pregnant or on maternity leave does not disqualify a woman from receiving a mortgage, the Department of Housing and Urban Development clarified recently, after reaching an agreement with two lenders accused of denying loans to women who were pregnant or on maternity leave.
Post continues below
"It is against the law for any lender to deny a mortgage loan to a woman because she is pregnant or on paid maternity leave," John Trasviña, HUD assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity, said in a news release. "Women shouldn’t have to choose between buying or refinancing a home and exercising their right to have a family. HUD will take appropriate action any time we determine that discrimination has occurred."
Magna Bank agreed to pay $14,085 to one woman who said she was asked to return to work before her loan could be approved. Home Loan Center will pay a Las Vegas woman $15,000 after denying her application because she was on maternity leave.
The rules on the rights of pregnant women and those on maternity leave are not new. The Fair Housing Act, which became law in 1968, prohibits housing discrimination based on family status or disability, as well as discrimination because of race, color, national origin or religion. The law applies to home sales, rentals and lending. HUD celebrates April as Fair Housing Month.
As credit has tightened and lenders have gotten more vigilant about verifying information in mortgage applications, some women have complained that lenders are violating the fair-housing law by denying loans to women who are pregnant or haven't returned to work after giving birth.
"If you are not back at work, it's a huge problem," Rick Cason of Integrity Mortgage in Orlando, Fla., said in a 2010 New York Times article that prompted HUD to look at the issue.
In another discrimination settlement with HUD, Cornerstone Mortgage Co. was ordered to pay $15,000 last year for refusing to count a woman's maternity-leave income toward her mortgage, and the company was ordered to set aside $750,000 in case other women made similar claims.
Some lenders argued that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don't provide clear guidance on how to treat pregnancy and maternity-leave issues in their underwriting guidelines. But Fannie Mae spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus told syndicated columnist Kenneth R. Harney last year that Fannie Mae's rules "do not preclude lenders from underwriting mortgages for borrowers receiving short-term disability payments, on short-term leave or expecting to be on short-term leave, including borrowers on maternity leave."
As a single father of two young daughters, I also get disgusted by the amount of rules and regulations out there to help protect single mothers, but single fathers are left out in the cold. They really need to make one little change and say single parents.
I wish I could fit into one of these "groups" that gets all the special privleges. I've been waiting all my life. I can't change my race or gender I guess I'm screwed.
More fallout from Dodd-Frank(me in the butt) bill!Pretty soon,the only people who will quality and GET a loan will be minorites,gays/lesbains and those with 550 or below credit scores!If you are a single man with an 850 and make $250k per year,you might be able to qualify to rent an apartment!Oh,those liberals are always giving away something they don't own and regulating things they know nothing about!
About Teresa Mears
Teresa Mears is a veteran journalist who has been interested in houses since her father took her to tax auctions to carry the cash at age 10. A former editor of The Miami Herald's Home & Design section, she lives in South Florida where, in addition to writing about real estate, she publishes Miami on the Cheap to help her neighbors adjust to the loss of 60% of their property value. | <urn:uuid:d6c79672-adb0-4853-a621-e397aec90130> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://realestate.msn.com/blogs/listedblogpost.aspx?post=30269629-02bd-40a4-ae90-8bbf93add341&_p=0995fdb2-2dfc-4725-8c04-13dd2981d613 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975772 | 894 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Different folks, different strokes
The response to Facebook updates always reminds me of some topics that I get to thinking about now and then:
- Different people learn new things, and adapt to new things, in very different ways.
- People are as different to each other on the inside as they are on the outside.
In technology upgrades, two types of people always surface; those who embrace change, and those who resist it and want to stay in their comfort zone. Two valid responses. Two different personas.*
Though there’s also a third type that’s easy to miss. People who couldn’t really give a shit one way or the other.
Years ago, part of a job I had, was to try and make everyone else’s job easier. You know, automating tasks and tweaking processes. But when I sent out updates, there was always a few groaners. And I found that really surprising at first. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would groan about something designed with the sole purpose of making their life much easier.
Again it all came down to learning something new and implementing change. Even though the learning something new was ”Just click this, instead of 5 minutes doing that” and implementing the change took just a moment. Some people are naturally inclined to resist change, regardless of the reward. That’s mother nature fucking with your head. As she does in many ways.
I also discovered, that if I researched various methods of carrying out a task, and found one method infinitely easier than the others, there would still be people who preferred another method entirely.
And therein is my point. And I think it’s a big one. I think it’s the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last decade. People are very different to each other. More different than many people allow for regardless of the well known idiom in the title of this post. That’s the problem.
There’s as much, if not, much more difference between you and me in how we think than how we look. The way you think, learn, work, interact, enjoy, hate, feel about something is quite different to other people. Your brain took a completely different path to arrive at you being you.
Keep that in mind, either with colleagues, family, or friends, and some shit will be easier … either for you or whoever you’re interacting with. Life lesson 101 over and out.
*some updates are just shit, regardless of your persona – because of design by committee, or a lack of basic UI Design principles, aka common sense, or again not recognizing different personas – but that’s a different debate. I’m neither arguing for or against the latest Facebook update
- Top 10 books of 2012
- The truth about tattoo removal
- CABBAGE CONTROLS – some thoughts on Prometheus casting
- Power’s Short story
- Books of the (last) year
- Pruning your feeds
- That other time I went to the States…
- Quincy M.E. and Cameron Diaz doing the La Bamba
- Different folks, different strokes
- Family cinema design
- Seat hogs
- Super Fly Guy
- Doctor Heiter’s Connections | <urn:uuid:b0345e4c-4ce9-4e44-998b-671aba774c85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.johnbraine.com/2011/09/22 | 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 | 0.947533 | 689 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Capitol Hill residents will see some changes this week as construction begins on the future light rail station at 10th Avenue and East Denny Way.
On Tuesday, a portion of East Denny Way between 10th Avenue and Broadway was closed, and will remain closed for up to six years while work is under way. Also closed was a portion of Nagle Street at the northwest corner of Cal Anderson Park.
Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray says utilities are being relocated in preparation for the excavation work that’s soon to begin.
The U-Link light rail line, which will extend underground trains 3.15 miles from downtown to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington, is scheduled to open in 2016.
At the work site, crews will begin digging a 400-foot long, 75-foot deep crater that will eventually become the light rail station. A tunnel-boring machine will eventually push from there to downtown and back, digging the first leg of two light rail tunnels. At the same time, two tunnel-boring machines will begin their way from the University of Washington campus to the Capitol Hill location, completing the line.
Sound Transit plans to share more information Thursday during a construction kick-off meeting at South Central Community College. The meeting will last from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in room 1110. The meetings will be held every three months, Gray said.
Other changes include:
- Three trees removed from the northwest corner of Cal Anderson Park, as well as several trees lining East Denny Way.
- Building a solid construction fence around the site.
- SDOT will install a new traffic signal at Broadway Avenue and East Denny Way.
Sound Transit has applied for a noise-ordinance permit so crews can work around the clock when tunnel-boring begins in 2011. A public hearing on the permit application is scheduled for February, he said.
Gray said a noise wall also will be built around the site. The height will vary from 24 feet in some places to 8 feet to compensate for a slope in the landscape heading east.
“We’re doing everything we can to be a good neighbor. We’re committed to keeping all the sidewalks open around the site,” he said.
More information is available here. | <urn:uuid:bf98f316-c3f7-441a-bc84-ff6383e9aa4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.seattlepi.com/transportation/2010/page/66/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95045 | 470 | 1.5625 | 2 |
More riders mess up on lefthand bends than in just about any other situation. Panic has a lot to do with how we can get things wrong and then make things worse
It was a warm dry lunchtime on a road much used by bikers for the smooth road surface, national speed limit and multitude of corners that make riding a bike so much fun.
In the apex of this bend there was a Ford Mondeo, with both the nearside wheels on their relative nearside grass verge. The damage was all focused around the front offside of the vehicle. The offside headlamp assembly was missing and the bodywork in this location had crush damage where the striking object had intruded into the vehicle. The bonnet was folded up and buckled around the point of impact and the front bumper was missing.
Slightly ahead of the Ford in the opposite carriageway was the Suzuki GS 500 motorcycle lying on its nearside. There were a series of scratches and gouges in the road surface leading from the rear of the Ford to the Suzuki. The front wheel and fork assembly has been broken at the headstock and wasw now lying in front of the Ford. The rest of the damage to the bike was mainly focused around where the front wheel appeared to have been pushed back into the engine before completely separating itself from the rest of the bike.
The initial account from the Ford driver was that as he navigated the right hand bend, a bike approached from the opposite direction, the rider had lost control and rode across the solid centre white lines and collided with the front offside of the Ford.
There were no marks generated by the bike to suggest its position prior to the collision. The first clue were two tyre scuffmarks at the rear of the Ford. The nearside mark was 7 metres long and led up to the front nearside tyre. The second mark was only 2 metres long and was set 1.43 metres apart from the first tyre scuff. This separation in the marks matched the track width of the front wheels of the Ford. Tyre grinding to the front wheels confirmed the driver had applied emergency braking during the collision.
The rider was taken to hospital prior to our arrival but his position had been marked 12 metres behind the Ford in the opposite carriageway.
Oh dear, a rural left hand bend crash at 27mph!
Sergeant Breeze has not asked quite the right question. Rather than asking how you correctly assess corner entry speed, I would ask why this poor chap chose this particular corner at which to crash?
You could safely assume that this was not the first corner he encountered, so what was different about this corner compared to all the ones he had successfully negotiated before? Just looking at the picture of the aftermath we can see that there are chevrons in both directions and from the point where the photographer was standing, we can see that this corner was quite long. Sadly the photograph does not tell us if there were any more chevrons before or after the ones we can actually see, so we do not know the full extent of the corner or the road leading up to it.
Looking at where the car stopped, I would say that whatever went wrong, our rider got a spot of target fixation on the telegraph pole and sailed towards it and would have probably hit it, had the car not got in the way first!
So then, a classic rural left hand bend accident, made even more poignant by the fact that it happened at a stupidly low speed. Makes mincemeat of the idea that you slow down and enter the bend at a speed you’re happy with as you probably couldn't go much slower than 27mph if you tried.
One day, the Police will investigate accidents properly and perhaps will let us know just exactly what is going wrong in rural bends, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Posted: 31/08/2010 at 18:36
In my younger days I had this exact crash, only in suburbier. The mistake I made was nothing to with speed. It was to do with target fixation. Not on the oncoming vehicle, but the mini skirt and heels walking up the opposite side of the road.
Basically, as soon as I slow down, I get bored and my eyes wander.
Take a 57mph bend at any speed, if you are not focused on the vanishing point, your gonna drift off line.
Of course, we also don't know if the the rider's entry speed wasn't alot higher and just 27mph at the point of impact.
Posted: 01/09/2010 at 08:25
I don't believe the 27 mph. That was calculated from the distance the rider travelled after impact, which could have been reduced by many other factors, including contact with the car taking out most of the energy of his forward travel. On a bend like that, if you take it at 27 mph, you would be wobbling round like a learner, more in danger of falling off due to lack of forward motion than drifting offline and hitting a car. It''s a classic example of the bike being far more capable than the rider believes. He thought he was going too fast, braked and stood the bike up. That's not a criticism of the guy. I suspect most of us are not as good as our bikes, and we've all done that at some point.
Posted: 01/09/2010 at 12:23
Posted: 01/09/2010 at 15:08
if your vanishing point goes away from you on bend then it is a safe speed or can even accelerate more ,.....if vanishing point comes closer to you then you need to decelerate till the vanishing point is neither coming or going away from your point of view ......
as said and practiced by motorbike cop on the bikesafe course attended .would recomend to all, and in most counties it is free or highly funded so cost is minimal....
Posted: 01/09/2010 at 22:30
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© Immediate Media Company Ltd 2012. This website is owned and published by Immediate Media Company Limited. www.immediatemedia.co.uk | <urn:uuid:10e88eae-2d3d-42f8-9dbf-0a80f5e798f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.visordown.com/advanced-riding/advanced-motorcycle-riding-course-cornering---left-handers/13571.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977942 | 1,289 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Winter solstice eve, 2011.
The darkest day of the year, and yet presaging the return to light. The stars and planets continue to wheel overhead, taking little notice of all the sturm und drang here on Earth.
Tonight there is one image that keeps calling out to me for comment. It goes by the Web shorthand “woman with the blue bra, Cairo.”
Did you see that one?
Someone captured on camera a brief two minutes of violence in Cairo, Egypt, when an unnamed protester was dragged by military forces in the street, then stripped of her abaya, under which she wore only a blue bra–and then beaten up some more.
WordPress has taken away my ability to post video, so you can watch it here.
It goes right up there with the video from New York City, towards the beginning of the OWS protests, of a police officer spraying peaceful, captive girls in the face with pepper spray. This video has apparently been watched on You-Tube more than 1.5 million times.
There is something about seeing women being beaten up by masked, uniformed security forces that sets off particular triggers in most of us. It’s certainly no accident that the Occupy protests swelled dramatically in numbers after that pepper-spray incident, or that more than 10,000 protesters, mostly women, turned out in Cairo following the posting of this image on the Web.
Part of me wants to question why it is that we get so upset when women protesters are attacked. After all, they knew the risks they were running when they went out into the street. And what’s the big difference between a man and a woman being beat up by goons, anyway?
But there is a difference.
The difference is that it’s always men doing the beating.
Yes, we have some women in police and military uniforms. And yes, women can be violent. But you will have to look long and hard to find cases where women bore the responsibility for killing or attacking civilians, in any circumstances. It may happen, but it’s pretty rare.
So when we see a mob of men stripping and beating a woman–in a society where nudity is absolutely taboo, to boot–it’s impossible to ignore the full impact of the insult intended. And in a society where women are forcibly kept out of leadership roles, the message is all the clearer.
Stay at home where you belong, or we’ll do this to you, too.
I’m so glad that the women of Cairo did not take this attempt at intimidation lying down. Just like the women in New York, who took the unwarranted police brutality as a gauntlet thrown down to test their protest mettle.
The question of whether men are in fact more aggressive than women is still a matter for debate in academic circles, but taking a look around the world, it’s pretty clear that men commit almost all the violence in every context. When women murder or assault, it’s almost always in self-defense.
And yet women are still held back from leadership roles in most societies, and even held back from the peace-making negotiating tables in post-conflict regions. A big exception is Rwanda, where women have taken a leadership role in rebuilding that shattered society–mostly because the men had succeeded so well in killing each other off.
We have moved past the point in the intellectual history of gender studies where feminists were striving to be “the same as” men. Women don’t want to be the same as men if it means repeating the same old history of violence and abusiveness.
What we need is to move, as men and women, beyond the violence that has continually plagued human society.
Violence towards each other; violence towards other species and the rest of the world.
The only way to move forward as a species is to disable that aggressive switch, and become the consensus-seeking conciliators we have always been in our finest moments as human beings.
As we return to light this solstice night, this is my fervent prayer: that the aggressive, masculine energy that has dominated this planet for the past 5,000-plus years will begin to shift to a more peaceful, creative, feminine energy, from which both men and women–and the planet as a whole–will benefit.
Let it be so. | <urn:uuid:de467ba4-a46f-4c46-bdec-70fe8533f250> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bethechange2012.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958274 | 912 | 1.78125 | 2 |
If there is a King of salumi, it's definitely Culatello di Zibello. Many might think that honor belongs to Prosciutto di Parma, with it's 5 pointed crown branded onto it's skin, but in reality, those in the know, understand that Culatello is the true King.
Culatello is made from the large muscle mass in the rear leg of the pig. Creating it means destroying the possibility of making a prosciutto. That, combined with it being a relatively small part of the whole leg, its tremendous aging time, the fact that it's the best part of the leg, and the expertise required to make it, make it one of the most expensive salumi in Italy, particularly if it adheres to the DOP regulations to be a Zibello culatello.
The flavor of culatello is indescribably delicious, but I'll try. It has a soft, supple texture similar to prosciutto, but a tiny bit dryer. The flavor is robust, and redolent of the 500 year old, humid, caves where they spend their 12 months drying. The pork flavor is the main thing you can taste (which is delicious because to adhere to the DOP certain criteria for raising the pigs have to be adhered to, and they must be pigs from either Lombardia or Emilia-Romagna), followed by the funk of the aging and the caves It's really something special. There is obviously no way I can recreate the flavor from the 500 year old caves and the native molds, but I'm hoping I can create something similar and delicious.
You can see the cure is exceedingly simple. Nothing to interfere with the pork flavor and the flavor of the 500 year old caves, which I was unable to import from Italy. This would be a good candidate for using a high quality pastured pig. I'm sure I'll do it again with one, but for this trial I was trying to learn how to make the cut and the complex tying.
I have to thank Scott @ Sausage Debauchery for pushing me to make this through some friendly competition, as well as my friend Alberto in San Francisco (don't know if he reads the blog) without whom I wouldn't have known where to begin the cutting, and also Angelo Competiello and his dad for also showing me how to make the cut.
This is a BIG post with a lot of pictures. It's a complicated process so make sure you understand what you're doing before you hack away! Since i've never made this, and its a complex salume, there is the chance that what I've done will fail....so follow at your own risk. I'm going to also show the curing of the fiocco which is the other side of the leg...a poor man's culatello if you will.
|Culatello starts with a whole rear pig leg. I got the biggest one i could find. This one was about 23 lbs.|
|The first step is removing the aitch bone. Just feel around the front for it, and gently cut around the bone without gouging too far into the meat. Don't want any excess cuts or slices.|
|Aitch bone is removed and on top of the leg for demonstration.|
|Next step is to skin the ham leaving behind as much fat as possible.|
|This is the other side of the leg. Nice and skinless. Ooops! i nicked the fat there in the middle.|
|It's important to "milk" or "pump" the femoral artery in the leg to get any remaining blood out of there. Leaving it in there risks rancidity.|
|It's easier to watch a video of someone milking the artery than try to explain how to do it...found this on Youtube.
Thanks to Kim Adams @ Gangofpour.com
|Now it's time to cut the precious ham into a culatello, a fiocco and a bone.
The culatello is the the large side of the leg shown inside the green area on this picture.
The fiocco is the small side, shown in red on the picture.
In between is obviously the bone.
|Locate the bone and understand how it runs inside the leg, then cut the hunk of muscle off it.
The flap on the front of the culatello is cut off to square up the face. That's the small piece you see there. Use it for salame, or make little pork steaks to eat fresh.
|This shows the culatello on the right, the bone in the middle and the fiocco on the left.
The fiocco is considered the poor cousin of the culatello, but it's still good. I cured using the same exact formula ratios as I used for culatello.
|Here is the culatello. Trimmed to its proper shape. Use all your trimmings for salame.
|The other side of the culatello. Ready for its first tying.|
|Using slip knots the culatello muscle is tied really tight so it keeps its nice round shape.|
|Tie tie tie|
|Rear side. Use twine big enough to not cut into the meat and fat|
|Salt, pepper, cure #2. That's it.|
|Rubbed and massaged all over the culatello and then bagged with all the cure.|
This was left in the fridge for 21 days. Turning and massaging every 4 or 5 days.
|The fiocco/fiocchetto is tied up as well and salted just like the culatello.|
|The culatello is cased in a pig bladder traditionally. I wasn't able to get any, but, I was able to get a beef bladder. It took some wrestling to get it in there, and then I sewed the cut I made back up, pulling the bladder tight. Kind of looks like Frankenstein. I should have used thinner twine for the trussing. Next time.|
The fiocco is stuffed in a beef bung.
Instead of a bladder, collagen can be used, as can strips of beef bung which can be cut open, and used to wrap the culatello. Cut the bung open so it's a flat sheet and wrap the culatello in that. It might take more than one, no problem, they'll fuse together where they overlap once they dry a little.
The tying is complex and takes quite a while. It took me about 1.5 hrs to case and tie. See the video below for how to tie.
|This guy is awesome! I must have watched this 20 times.|
|I sprayed the culatello and fiocco with MEK 4 mold spray and put it in my fermentation box at 70-72 deg. for 30 hours. This is after the fermentation.|
|It's so beautiful I can't stop looking at it!|
|The fiocco was nice looking too.|
Now the waiting game starts. The culatello and fiocco are in the curing chamber at 55 F and 75% RH. I'm guessing the fiocco will be ready in about 4-5 months and the culatello in about 8-10, maybe longer. I guess it'l be a Thanksgiving treat! | <urn:uuid:1759795b-b1e7-419a-bd8f-85541e94f949> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://curedmeats.blogspot.jp/2011/02/culatello-king-of-cured-meats.html?showComment=1314541964375 | 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 | 0.957201 | 1,555 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Area schools' test scores drop
Number failing to reach state standards jumps after new reading tests
Published: Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 1:58 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 5:23 p.m.
The number of area schools failing to reach state test score targets jumped dramatically last school year, a change blamed in part on a new reading tests.
Henderson County Schools fared well on the 2007-2008 school year ABCs, according to results released Thursday.
All schools met expected growth, except for East Henderson High. Sixteen schools also made high growth, compared to 11 for the 2006-2007 school year.
In the western region of the state, which includes 18 school districts, Polk County had the highest number of students proficient in reading, followed by Henderson and then Transylvania counties.
The state's ABC report shows that in about a third of the state's schools, less than 60 percent of students passed the exam. That's double the number of students compared to 2006-07.
At least 80 percent of students passed the test in only 10 percent of schools, compared to 23 percent of schools in the previous academic year.
But public education officials said the drop is largely due to new reading tests in elementary and middle schools. They said drops are normal when a new exam is introduced.
The number of schools earning the state's top accolades for the most students passing state exams fell by more than half, the News & Observer of Raleigh reported. Only 10 percent of schools had at least 80 percent of students passing state exams and meeting academic growth requirements, compared with 23 percent of schools in 2006-07.
The ABCs report is required to also list each school's AYP status under the nation's federal testing standards.
In Henderson County, eight of 21 schools failed to make Average Yearly Progress, the federal standard under No Child Left Behind to reach targeted improvements among different categories of students.
In Buncombe County 11 of 25 schools failed to make the federal standard. Polk County High School and Brevard and Davidson River elementary schools in Transylvania County also failed to make the AYP.
In Henderson County, schools that failed to reach the federal AYP targets were Clear Creek, Dana, Fletcher, Hillandale elementary schools, Flat Rock and Rugby middle schools, North Henderson High School and Balfour Education Center.
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Despite being denied a grant application at last week’s City Council meeting, Rusty Jackson said it is simply a matter “of when, not if” a bakery, cafe and full-service restaurant opens downtown at the corner of Wall and Main streets, and she said she is still excited about the prospect.
Jackson said she still wants to work closely with the city of Clinton toward not only realizing her dream, but also opening a venture she insists will work to benefit the city and the downtown. The City Council denied serving as the pass-through for Wall Street and Main Inc.’s Building Restoration and Reuse Grant application for building improvements.
Jackson, the manager, and property owner Vince Burgess previously approached the city about applying for a N.C. Rural Economic Development Center grant application for their venture at 101 Wall St, with $152,000 being dependent on 20 full-time jobs being created at the location.
While 20 jobs was said to be ambitious, Jackson said having a central kitchen to serve all three entities would be well stocked with employees. An eight-hour shift would be easily worked with the business going from morning into the night.
“It’s 12,000 square feet with three businesses and one central kitchen,” said Jackson. “I will probably stagger the openings for each so all the employees will know what they’re doing.”
The building has come a long way with close to half a mile of steel I-beams placed throughout the three floors, as well as overhauled duct work and walls stripped down to brick and insulated windows put in. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements have also seen nearly 1,500 feet of fire escapes and wheelchair access installed. The interior and exterior facade were designed by Jackson herself.
When she arrived at the Clinton location, among her first concerns were the outside utilities, and whether they could handle the needs of the business. Those are being repaired and rehabilitated by the city, something that will help the business and is crucial to its opening, she said.
“Seven months ago, I had to stop construction,” said Jackson. “Not being open is why I needed to apply for the grant. I can’t go any further until I know where the utilities are on the outside. My timeline is three months once I have those utilities. To me, three months is even longer than I need. I didn’t want to run plumbing and electrical until I knew where the panels would go and where utilities would come into the building.”
In June, the Council awarded a bid to Jymco Development Inc. of Smithfield for the replacement and repair of the water and sewer lines in the alley behind the Wall Street and Main Inc. bakery business, stretching along the Wall Street from Main Street to Sycamore Street.
Public works director Jeff Vreugdenhil noted the poor condition of the system and said repair of the lines was “very needed” for surrounding properties. He stated that there will be all new water service, as well as additional lighting. He said at the beginning of June that it would take a minimum of 90 days to complete the $160,000 project.
Jackson said she believed the whole point of revitalizing downtown and improving utilities was to attract and keep good businesses in the heart of Clinton, and she is happy for the assistance. “The service there wasn’t big enough for the whole block and me,” said Jackson.
Installing those panels are in no way an inexpensive venture, and Jackson said she did not want to have to do it twice.
Jackson said she is not overly discouraged by the denied grant application, but knows that it is not in her nature to wait around for something when she can pursue it.
“I’m just as excited to have my business downtown, I’m just an incredibly inpatient person,” Jackson said. “It’s always been a matter of not if, but when. I can’t wait to open up. It’s difficult at home, really difficult. I get a lot more calls than I can handle.”
Her Salemburg residence is where Jackson has been baking since closing down her Roseboro location to focus her efforts on the move to Clinton. It is not out of the ordinary for Jackson to have to turn down 10 orders a week, just because she doesn’t have the room, the help or the time to fill them and does not want to give anything but her best effort.
Jackson started as a chef, owning three restaurants over the years and working in Las Vegas, Colorado and Arizona. She has also been an executive chef at resorts and other restaurants. Despite her resume, Jackson said she could not even get a job cooking at the jail, and she knows many other qualified people struggle to find work.
She said while she could have kept the business going in Roseboro or set up a smaller shop in Salemburg, she was encouraged by people with the city, along with others, to come to Clinton — and jumped at the chance. Knowing how tough the job market is, Jackson said she wanted to be able to offer jobs.
“It was important to me to do that,” Jackson said. “I can open a small bakery, have two people work with me and make the same amount of money. The whole point is the jobs. It actually is my bottom line. I did really well in Roseboro and I developed clientele there with no real advertising.”
Council members praised Jackson for her talents and her endeavor to bring a quality business downtown, but raised concerns with city time that would have to be involved as a stipulation of the Building Reuse grant. The grant, if approved, would have had to be funneled through the city of Clinton and to the applicants with the stipulation that the 20 jobs be maintained for six months. Jackson shared her confidence that those jobs could be created, and still stands by that.
There will be plenty of traffic, and plenty of business to be had.
“There’s a lot of people in the morning with the courthouse traffic, and there’s a lot of people when they break for lunch,” she said. “With the designer cakes, it is also a destination, so it kind of markets the restaurant.”
Along with having a central kitchen to serve the bakery, cafe and restaurant, each entity will also feed off one another, with bakery delicacies offered as desserts at the cafe and restaurant. Jackson said she also has a couple wholesale accounts for bread cooked at the bakery to be purchased from other restaurants.
Even with some obstacles and delays, Jackson said she is optimistic about opening downtown, sooner rather than later.
“I’m still going to open,” she said emphatically. “It’s only a matter of when, and hopefully that will be soon.”
Chris Berendt can be reached at 910-592-8137 ext. 121 or via email at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:ad71cf7f-dfbf-46b1-a317-fed7d132daac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clintonnc.com/pages/home/push?rel=prev&per_page=5&class=prev_page&x_page=170 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979486 | 1,479 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Brother of blind China activist flees village
BEIJING (Reuters) - The brother of blind activist Chen Guangcheng has fled his village in north-eastern China, evading a security clampdown to seek help from lawyers for his son who has been detained in a case that has become a rallying point among rights activists.
Chen Guangfu, the eldest brother of Chen Guangcheng, told Reuters that he walked out of his home in Shandong province at 3 a.m. (1900 GMT) on Tuesday, eluding the increased number of sentries near his village by avoiding roads and running through fields. He arrived in Beijing on Wednesday evening after a six-hour journey by car.
His activist brother escaped Dongshigu village in late April after 19 months of detention at home, following a similar route to the capital before taking refuge in the U.S. embassy, where he stayed for six days and sparked a diplomatic crisis between China and the United States.
That crisis, which overshadowed a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was finally defused on Saturday when China allowed Chen to fly to the United States to study. But while Chen Guangcheng spent his first few days in New York after years of jail and detention, most of his family back home in Shandong has remained under a security clampdown.
The 55-year-old Chen Guangfu, in a rare interview since his brother escaped in April, recounted details of his own torture and reprisals by authorities since his brother's escape.
He said he was restricted from leaving the village and that police in Shandong warned him they would increase the sentence for his son, Chen Kegui, who is being held on an attempted murder charge, if he gave interviews.
"I feel since they are already doing this, why can't I say something?" Chen Guangfu said late on Wednesday in a teahouse in western Beijing. "I have the power to speak up."
"I told them their claims have no legal basis, but are based on power or by their will to determine Kegui's sentence. On this point, I'll never be able to accept it," he said, adding he planned to return to his village soon.
Local government and public security bureau officials were not immediately available for comment.
Chen Kegui, 32, was charged with "intentional homicide" for using knives to fend off local officials who burst into his home on April 27, the day after they discovered his blind uncle had escaped. He could face the death penalty. His lawyers, denied access to him on Friday, said he did not kill anyone.
Chen Guangfu's wife, Ren Zongju, also may be indicted for "harbouring" her son, a charge punishable by up to 10 years jail, lawyers said. She was detained on April 29 and freed on bail. His daughter-in-law, Liu Fang, has been in Beijing for the past three weeks seeking lawyers for her husband.
Reprisals began soon after Chen's escape was discovered. Just after midnight on April 27, men in plainclothes scaled the walls of Chen Guangfu's home and kicked open its doors. They put a hood over him and took him to a police building. There, he said, they handcuffed him, bound his feet in iron chains, slapped him and stomped on his feet.
His captors lifted his handcuffed hands from the back so he couldn't sit straight and used his belt to whip his hands. The beatings lasted "a long time" and his left thumb lost feeling, he said.
"How did Guangcheng escape?" police asked him repeatedly.
The Foreign Ministry has said that Chen Guangcheng was a "free citizen" after his release from jail in 2010. But the walls and guards that penned him in his home and kept supporters and reporters out reflect the pervasive informal controls used to throttle dissent in China.
His elder brother's account illustrates the pressure authorities put on family members of dissidents and the hard line taken against Chen Guangcheng's family. Their treatment has encouraged lawyers and advocates to challenge what they see as the ruling Communist Party's stifling of lawful dissent.
A farmer and an odd-job labourer, Chen Guangfu said he told the police the full account of his brother's escape after they mentioned the names of activists and villagers involved. He also told police he had an obligation to help his younger brother, and stressed that he had already completed his sentence and become a "free citizen".
"I don't think he's a criminal. I don't think I'm in the wrong for helping a free citizen," he told police.
After police took Chen Guangfu into custody, a second group of men went to his home and beat his wife and son, Chen Guangfu said. His wife later told him uniformed police charged in with shields and rubber truncheons and resumed beating her and Chen Kegui, who was by then bleeding and crying out for help. It was around this time Chen Kegui took a kitchen knife and slashed three officials.
Chen Kegui is being held in a detention centre in Yinan and authorities have barred family and the lawyers they chose from visiting or representing him, his father said.
Police told Chen Kegui's lawyers that he had been appointed two lawyers from the state-run Yinan legal aid centre. Officials at the centre said they have no knowledge of the case.
"I think this is unfair and illegal," said Chen Guangfu, a dark and lanky former high school teacher. "Based on my understanding of Chen Kegui, he will never refuse the intervention of outside counsel. From Guangcheng's case, he understands thoroughly that these so-called 'legal aid lawyers' are useless."
Chen Guangfu said he was "extremely pessimistic" about his son's prospects.
Chen Kegui's wife Liu, also present, told Reuters that she hoped her husband's case would be treated like "a normal, criminal case". Her 5-year-old son, Chen Fubin, is back in Shandong.
"He (Chen Kegui) must be heavily injured, I'm worried about his physical state," she said, her voice breaking. "Inside, he might be subject to beatings."
The two lawyers she chose to represent Chen Kegui challenged the Yinan County Public Security Bureau for "illegal" efforts to deny them access to their client, in a letter to the Yinan police chief published on a microblog on Monday.
Before he left for the United States on Saturday, Chen Guangcheng predicted the authorities' drive to manipulate his nephew's case would fail and increase public discontent over an episode that has renewed international focus on China's human rights and legal system.
Chen Guangfu also provided new detail on his brother's escape. The blind Chen Guangcheng left on the morning of April 20, scaled eight walls, some as high as four metres, and slept in a pig sty, he said.
"I tried too to follow his escape route, there were two walls I didn't dare to scale," Chen Guangfu said.
The elder Chen said he helped by contacting activists He Peirong and Guo Yushan after learning his brother had left his village. The two activists drove down from Beijing and arrived at Tai'an city in Shandong to pick Chen Guangcheng up.
Asked for his thoughts about his brother in the United States, Chen Guangfu said: "I think if he has a chance, he should take us there to have a look.
"So many people have said bad things about the United States. Someone even said he was like a dog that was kicked out of the U.S. embassy," he said. "But ultimately, he ended up in America. So I think the criticisms aren't justified."
(Editing by Brian Rhoads and Jonathan Thatcher)
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It sure sounds like it according to the title of this crAPpy article.
Solar power outshining Colorado's gas industry
Push a bias much there AP? (You know that they do)
According to this article, solar power is outselling andor outproducing the natural gas industry in the state of Colorado, right? Well, not according to the actual text of this lovely fine article.
Click on "READ MORE" to see the next page.
Let's just see how bad the natural gas industry is in Colorado.
The sun had just crested the distant ridge of the electric meter on the side of the Smiley Building to spin backward., but already it was producing enough power for the
From the very frst paragraph we have it. Proof. Undeniable proof that the within the whole entire complete state of Colorado, this guy's solar panel system HAS undone the state's natural gas industry.
I don't know about you, but I'm a believer. (guess I should tell you I just got my indoctrination flu shot today, too)
For the Shaw brothers, who converted the downtown arts building and community center into a miniature solar power plant two years ago, each reverse rotation subtracts from their monthly electric bill. It also means the building at that moment is producing more electricity from the sun than it needs.
"Backward is good," said John Shaw, who now runs Shaw Solar and Energy Conservation, a local solar installation company.
There you have it. Why ask for anything more. This proves it. The fact that this man, created a single business from the power of the sun, means natural gas is history. OH COME ON!! We all know natural gas is horrible, nasty, toxic, and a danger to your newborn puppy. It must be gotten rid of. I think we need to fine people for using it.
I mean, it IS the leading cause of global warming.
A recent greenhouse-gas inventory of La Plata County found that the thousands of natural gas pumps and processing plants dotting the landscape are the single largest source of heat-trapping pollution locally.
Natural Gas has now become the new villain it would seem. Did anyone really think that the libSocialistGreenies would be content with just harassing coal power? They started off with nuclear. That has died out now despite new efforts behind it recently. They moved on to coal. Now, no new coal-fired plants are under construction. Next in line... natural gas. 60 minutes had an excoriating show on the other week about coal ash and its problematic storage and recycling.
But, what is the truth within this current story? Let's find out.
As La Plata County in southwestern Colorado looks to shift to cleaner
sources of energy, solar is becoming the power source of choice even
though it still produces only a small fraction of the region's
The natural gas industry, which produces more gas here than nearly every other county in Colorado, has been relegated to the shadows.
With the county and city drawing up plans to reduce the emissions blamed for global warming and Congress weighing the first mandatory limits, the industry once again finds itself on the losing side of the debate.
Thus, once again, a report's own text reveals how biased and incorrect its own title is. There is no way this can be an accident or an editing mistake as this occurrs over and over again. Titles of online articles pushing an agenda that is not supported within the article's body.
So, in the midst of a massive recession, near-depression like statistics, our political priests feel it is completely prudent to push for increased taxes and fees upon coal and natural gas production, while at the same time preventing new electrical-generation facilities from being constructed.
Recall that the liberals and the greenies prevented the construction of the solar power plants in California and Nevada due to "environmental" and "land use" concerns.
Ask yourself this. What will electricity cost when it costs twice as much to produce in the near future?
Think switching to solar energy will make you green? Think again. Many
of the newest solar panels are manufactured with a gas that is 17,000
times more potent than carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming.
And solar power production is more expensive to construct and to purchase electricty from than traditional sources. During a time of economic disorder, shouldn't we be pushing for clean and CHEAP energy to get us back on our feet? | <urn:uuid:82ecd05a-3c8e-4d70-a3aa-117643b3594b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://snappedshot.com/ghost/mxn | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950336 | 924 | 1.515625 | 2 |
What we've done
We have systematically collected evidence from our legal and welfare support work to provide a detailed picture of children’s experiences in detention. The campaign team uses this evidence to push the government to stop detaining children and families.
The Government review on ending child detention
A huge thank you to everyone who made their voices heard by emailing the UK Border Agency during their public consultation on ending the immigration detention of children.
The OutCry! team influenced the Government's review to ensure the best outcome for children and their families.
Our support services
In addition to the campaigning work of OutCry!, both Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) and The Children’s Society directly support children and families affected by detention.
Our legal support services are provided to:
- families with children
- parents who are held in immigration detention and separated from their children
- pregnant women.
Our welfare support services are provided to:
- families with children, especially those detained at Yarl’s Wood
- parents who are held in immigration detention and separated from their children.
Find out how you can support our services. | <urn:uuid:97fbbd58-af1a-4e22-a26d-0d582382c83f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-you-can-do/campaign-join/outcry/what-weve-done | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965163 | 236 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The scam : Your credit account may have been compromised. Fortunately, the credit card company contacts you about suspicious activity. That's reassuring -- the company is being prudent. But, unfortunately, it's not the credit card company calling, it's an identity thief. A local woman told We've Got Your Back that she got just such a call one day recently after working a night shift. The woman, fatigued from her long day, was prompted to repeat her credit card number to the scammer and then she gave him the verification number from the back of the card.
How it works: The thief gets your credit card number. They can get them any number of ways, from Dumpster diving to stealing them right from a store register. That verification code is key. (On American Express cards, it's a four-digit number on the front.) In fact, it was created specifically to prevent fraud when the actual imprint of the card cannot be taken, as in online sales. | <urn:uuid:2bb2706c-f8c7-4549-8520-db2379dc6023> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.mcall.com/2008-08-21/news/4172687_1_credit-card-card-number-card-inquiry | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970248 | 199 | 1.65625 | 2 |
As a public service to our readers this week we've been offering a list of three stories each day that we think illuminate the looming sequester (or at least the debate over it), set to be triggered by the passing of Friday's deadline.
— "How Sequester Cuts Are Made Can Be Telling" from the Los Angeles Times shows how the Pentagon is already playing a bit of a shell game with its budget. The story notes that while the U.S. Navy canceled the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, "on the same day that the Defense Department cuts are to begin, one of the Navy's newest vessels, the littoral combat ship Freedom, will set sail for Singapore on a long-planned eight-month deployment, part of the Obama administration's emphasis on rebuilding the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, officials said."
— In "Sequester Will Sock A Vulnerable Economy," The Washington Post points out that the D.C. area will bear the brunt of the sequester cuts, citing a Center for Regional Analysis estimate that "the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region is the recipient of 21 percent of the federal money subject to sequestration, even though it is home to less than 5 percent of the U.S. population."
— Politico's "House Republicans To Meet on CR" notes that there's still a glimmer of hope of "kicking the can down the road" once again before Friday's sequester deadline: "House Republicans are convening a 'special' closed meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss a stopgap government funding measure to prevent a government shutdown," it says.
Update at 1:15 p.m. ET: NPR's sequester coverage is collected here. | <urn:uuid:0942934e-5a22-4710-a654-188954923bbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/173038274/countdown-to-sequester-3-stories-that-sum-it-up | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930793 | 362 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Marco Rubio's Evolution on Immigration Reform
10:35 AM, Feb 5, 2013 • By JOHN MCCORMACK
Not too long ago, Florida senator Marco Rubio seemed like a very unlikely candidate to spearhead an immigration reform effort alongside the likes of John McCain and Chuck Schumer. "The most important thing we need to do is enforce our existing laws," Rubio said in a 2009 interview with Javier Manjarres. "I am not, and I will never support any effort to grant blanket legalization/amnesty to folks who have entered, stayed in this country illegally."
A year later, in a Senate debate with Charlie Crist, Rubio criticized the Florida governor for backing the 2007 McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. "He would have voted for the McCain plan," Rubio said. "I think that plan is wrong, and the reason I think it’s wrong is that if you grant amnesty, as the governor proposes that we do, in any form, whether it's back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America."
And in an October 2010 debate with Crist, Rubio was asked by the moderator, "So your plan is that you're going to close the borders, get the electronic system, fix the legal system, and then do what?"
"And then you'll have a legal immigration system that works," Rubio said. "And you'll have people in this country that are without documents that will be able to return to the -- will be able to leave this country, return to their homeland, and try to re-enter through our system that now functions, a system that makes sense…Earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty."
But last week, Rubio endorsed a bipartisan proposal to normalize the status of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the country and open up an earned path to citizenship for them. In a phone interview Monday, I asked Rubio why he changed his mind on the issue. His answer was that he really hasn't changed much at all. Here's the transcript Rubio's conversation with THE WEEKLY STANDARD (lightly edited for clarity and space):
Q: Three or four years ago, when you were running for Senate, we talked about this issue, and you seemed opposed to any bill that would legalize the status of illegal immigrants. Do you agree that your thinking on this issue has changed? And if so, when and why did it shift?
RUBIO: Well, first of all, I think my position has consistently been a couple things. Number one that we’re not going to create a special pathway to citizenship that disadvantages people that are doing it the right way or that encourages people to come here illegally in the future.
And the second thing that I’ve made very clear is that we’re not going to round up 11 million people. We’re not going to grant a blanket amnesty to 11 million people. And the solution lies somewhere in between those two.
In the past I really haven’t really had a specific response to address that. And obviously I spent time learning about this issue and talking to others. If you look at what we propose now in these principles, there’s been a lot of noise made about amnesty and things like that. But the reality of it is the only thing these folks are earning is the chance to apply for a green card just like everybody else does. They’re not getting anything different than anybody else would get…
The only thing they’re going to get is the chance to apply for a green card, just like they would if they went back to their nation of birth and waited 10 years. So, we’re not creating a special visa for them.
Q: In 2009, in one interview you said that ‘nothing will make it harder to enforce the existing laws if you reward the people who broke them,’ and 'I’ll never support an effort to grant blanket legalization/amnesty to folks who’ve entered illegally and stayed here.’ So you think that your position isn’t inconsistent with your past remarks at all?
RUBIO: No, again, the legalization that they’re getting is a temporary work permit that in no way disadvantages the people who are trying to come here permanently the right way. The people trying to come here permanently the right way are applying for a green card, and there isn’t a single person—none of these people who have illegally entered the country would get a green card before someone who is doing it legally before them would get one.
Q: What are the benefits of having a green card versus the temporary probationary status that would be granted immediately? | <urn:uuid:60603f9f-5f96-4fd5-ba9c-c59f71e078ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/10-questions-marco-rubio-immigration-reform_700249.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972408 | 980 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Much has been made in the mainstream media the past few days, of an exchange between Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Texas' new U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.
The exchange was during a committee hearing regarding Feinstein's proposal to ban certain firearms and high capacity magazines.
To those who haven't seen the exchange, here it is in a nutshell: Cruz asked Feinstein if she would make exceptions to other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like limiting which books we can read under free speech regulations. Feinstein replied that she was "not a sixth grader" and that, while not a lawyer, she understood the Constitution and didn't need a lecture from Cruz. She feigned being offended to the max, all while never addressing Cruz's legitimate question.
Feinstein's hissy fit made for good television and thus, predictably, the media focused solely on that exchange. There was another moment however, while quieter and gentler, screamed much louder and speaks many more volumes.
Towards the end of the exchange, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) pipes up and says "none of these rights are absolute."
Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote our nation's Declaration of Indepen-dence, thought otherwise. He declared in that document that there are certain inalienable rights, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that are only endowed by our Creator. In other words, those rights are natural and absolute – not given by man or governments, but rather we are born with them.
He also stated that: "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated, but with his wrath?"
Other's have said that there are no absolute rights and they even point to a Jefferson quote as proof, when he said: "All natural rights may be abridged or modified in their exercise by law." They use this quote to justify laws that trample individual freedoms, or limit those freedoms. They are wrong.
I believe what Jefferson meant was that when one's exercise of their natural rights tramples basic human morals, or the natural and absolute rights of others (i.e. murder, rape, pillage, etc.) then the people as a whole (government) has a right to step in and take that offenders rights away via prison, death sentence and other means. What it does not mean is that government has a right to limit other citizens rights, merely because someone may or may not do something in the future.
To say something as Durbin did either shows a complete lack of judgment, or a lack of common sense – neither of which is needed in the upper chamber of our legislative body.
The belief that no rights are absolute, is a belief that leads to tyranny.
Many folks will pass that statement off as paranoia, or as hysteria. However, while it is my belief that many who come down on the side of Feinstein's bill, or that discounted Rand Paul's fillibuster are wrong, I do not doubt their sincerity, their passion or their belief that these measures will keep others safe. I do, however, doubt those that will come later and still have these powers and I am not willing to sacrifice this nation's ideals or principles in the name of a little safety and security now.
It's too big of a slippery slope. After all, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin | <urn:uuid:de4d0ce7-aa7a-4278-9825-be2a4973bea9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tribunenews.com/index.php/k2/edition-categories/top-news/itemlist/user/51-caleb-harris?start=30 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97303 | 740 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Dental Implants Huddersfield
Tooth loss is not only a problem which affects the elderly, it affects many people of all ages.
A dental implant is a small titanium body which is placed just below the gum level, acting as a high-tech tooth root that becomes part of the jaw.
They are as firm as if they were part of you, and provide a stable base for single tooth crowns, bridges, full arch bridges or to another dentures too.
Our dental implant specialist at Honley Dental Practice is highly-experienced and only offers the highest quality implant treatment. Placing over 250 implants per year, it's little wonder!
One of our patients before and after Dental Implants:
High success rate
Implants have been available for over 30 years. Over this long period no allergies to titanium have been known. They have a well established success rate of 96% after 30 years.
During the placement you will feel no pain or discomfort. You may be slightly tender in the area of the procedure for about 24 hours, but only similar to having a tooth removed. If you are anxious about the procedure then sedation is available.
Completed within the hour
The procedure can take as little as one hour to complete for a single implant. The implant needs to be left between two to three months to heal before the final restoration can be made. During this time the temporary restoration will always be placed, ensuring you are never with a gap.
Looks like the real thing
The implant is placed underneath the gum level so you will not be able to see the implant once the final restoration is fitted. It will look the same as a natural tooth supported restoration.
How much does it cost?
This again is dependent upon how many implants you need. You will always be offered a written estimate after your consultation.
If you are interested in finding out more about Dental Implants, please feel free to contact us for a private consultation.
Telephone: 01484 664692 | <urn:uuid:fcc5b44b-1d44-4f51-817f-8584c63db285> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.honleydental.com/Dental-Implants.htm | 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 | 0.940722 | 413 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Faith Reactions to the President’s FY2013 Budget
With the release of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget, faith groups are inserting an important moral dimension to the contentious budget debates in Washington. Just as faith groups mobilized during last year’s budget debate, they are once again working hard to ensure that the President’s budget protects vital human needs programs while speaking out to ensure that Congress does not prioritize tax breaks for the rich over the needs of the most vulnerable.
The United Church of Christ guide to the federal budget provides a useful framework for evaluating both President Obama’s and Congress budget priorities.
While we like to define ourselves by these ideals of fairness and generosity, we have spent much of our history trying to make the reality resemble the words. Today—when millions are unemployed, and when many jobs pay too little to lift families out of poverty while other people have unimaginable wealth and proposals abound to cut taxes for those most able to pay—our society is failing to realize the ideals we proclaim.
Our laws and public policy are the blueprints by which we set up the institutions that allocate people’s chances in life. They can provide opportunity for all, and thereby promote justice, or conversely, they can create opportunity for some and deny it for others.
While acknowledging the need to address deficits, David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, was pleased to see that hunger programs are protected in the President’s FY13 budget and has called on Congress to do the same:
We must address our deficits, but we cannot sacrifice our commitment to hunger and poverty. This is not a partisan issue; it is a moral one. In the upcoming budget decisions, Congress must form a circle of protection around programs for hungry and poor people.
While anti-hunger programs and vital infrastructure investments are protected in the President’s budget, more work and advocacy are needed to ensure cuts to Medicaid and Medicare programs do not prevent seniors from receiving vital medical treatment
Prior to the release of the President’s budget, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and The Jewish Federations of North America sent a letter to Congress calling on them to oppose radical changes to Medicare and Medicaid that may prevent senior citizens from receiving vital medical treatment:
Within the current framework of Medicaid and Medicare, we believe that it is possible to restrain growth and rein in costs. Any reductions to Medicaid and Medicare should stem from efficiencies that improve service while reducing costs as well as targeted efforts to eradicate fraud, waste, and abuse. The United States is capable of strengthening the long-term viability of these programs without a fundamental restructuring that turns Medicaid into a block grant or Medicare into a voucher.
In part because of last year’s tireless efforts by faith groups and their continued advocacy, President Obama’s FY 13 plan does not include plans to block grant Medicare or Medicaid.
From Talking Points Memo:
The goal of these reforms is to make these critical programs more effective and efficient, and help make sure our health care system rewards high-quality medicine,” Obama writes. “What it does not do—and what I will not support—are efforts to turn Medicare into a voucher or Medicaid into a block grant. Doing so would weaken both programs and break the promise that we have made to American seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families—a promise I am committed to keeping.
Continued vigilance by faith groups and all concerned citizens around the country will be crucial to ensuring our neighbors and the most vulnerable people are protected in this ongoing budget fight.
Photo Credit: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr | <urn:uuid:6276ad3d-1cf6-42b9-8529-1c0971c57b85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/blog/faith-reactions-to-the-president%E2%80%99s-fy2013-budget/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942341 | 742 | 1.5625 | 2 |
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations can "spend freely" to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress.
As usual, Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's lone black justice, joined the conservative majority. Thomas dissented on Part IV, which upheld disclaimer and disclosure requirements. Curiously, the justice took the opportunity to gay-bash from the bench and cited anti-gay Proposition 8 supporters who wanted their identities hidden.
Thomas' dissent reads in part:
I dissent from Part IV of the Court’s opinion, however, because the Court’s constitutional analysis does not go far enough. The disclosure, disclaimer, and reporting requirements in BCRA §§201 and 311 are also unconstitutional….
Amici’s examples relate principally to Proposition 8, a state ballot proposition that California voters narrowly passed in the 2008 general election. … Any donor who gave more than $100 to any committee supporting or opposing Proposition 8 was required to disclose his full name, street address, occupation, employer’s name (or business name, if self-employed), and the total amount of his contributions. 1 See Cal. Govt. Code Ann. §84211(f) (West 2005). The California Secretary of State was then required to post this information on the Internet.
Some opponents of Proposition 8 compiled this information and created Web sites with maps showing the locations of homes or businesses of Proposition 8 supporters. Many supporters (or their customers) suffered property damage, or threats of physical violence or death, as a result. …
Now more than ever, §§201 and 311 will chill protected speech because—as California voters can attest—”the advent of the Internet” enables “prompt disclosure of expenditures,” which “provide[s]” political opponents “with the information needed” to intimidate and retaliate against their foes. Thus, “disclosure permits citizens … to react to the speech of [their political opponents] in a proper”—or undeniably improper —”way” long before a plaintiff could prevail on an as-applied challenge.
"I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in “core political speech, the ‘primary object of First Amendment protection.’"
Adds Joe Sudbay at AMERICABlog: "That's the contribution to the debate from Justice Thomas. He seems a tad obsessed with the gays these days. One wonders if he'd ever compile a similar list of incidents of hate crimes and violence against LGBT Americans." | <urn:uuid:9ef2666b-19a4-465d-a644-aaa7b8cbebaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rodonline.typepad.com/rodonline/2010/01/clarence-thomas-dissents-on-campaign-finance-disclosure-engages-in-antigay-fearmongering.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934598 | 563 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The Mission Statement of the Department of Chemistry begins with a strong commitment to the education of our students. We will work to provide students the foundation necessary to be life-long learners. We will encourage students to develop their academic abilities and career interests through well-designed curricula and effective advisement. We will maintain an instructional program meeting the highest standards of our accrediting agency and continually assess our degree concentrations and program options. We will provide opportunities for research and independent study in order to address the individual needs of each of our majors and reward them for their excellence. We will maintain state-of-the art scientific equipment in our department, and offer both undergraduate and graduate students exposure to such instrumentation to better prepare them for the workforce. We will sustain and continually assess our educational environment which promotes effective communication, respect, and understanding among students, faculty, and staff. | <urn:uuid:58f2a9c9-85a8-4b8f-b732-40bad3059209> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tntech.edu/chemistry/mission/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95163 | 174 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Here is an example of what I am trying to put together:
What material could I use as a base onto which I can mount the motherboard, hard-disk and other wiring?
|show 1 more comment|
Your circuitry and peripheral devices could be mounted on a piece of plywood. Such plywood could be pre-painted if you wished to get a desired color effect. For a more unique effect you could cover the plywood with a layer of sheet cooper similar to that used by roofers. This could look very cool of it was all buffed out to an exquisite shine and sealed with a coating to keep it from tarnishing. A clear lacquer finish may be just the ticket. | <urn:uuid:a69bc288-be86-4127-814b-e55d3f9ccb97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/21683/what-should-i-use-as-a-base-for-my-wall-mounted-pc-case?answertab=active | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96424 | 142 | 1.523438 | 2 |
In the run up to a budget or autumn statement, one piece of paper becomes the most important in Whitehall: the scorecard. This is the table which sets out the net effect of the government’s planned decisions: how much is raised in revenue and how much is spent on services and/or foregone in tax cuts. When the budget is announced, it is published in the Treasury document as a summary table of decisions. It is the place to look if you want to get behind the chancellor’s spin, since it will often make clear the sneaky measures which raise money but didn’t feature in the press briefing, and it tells you the truth about how much each individual decision is really worth. The figures tell the story.
Next week’s scorecard will be especially interesting. Although a lot of the headline attention will focus on whether the chancellor has missed his debt target and whether spending cuts will be extended through to 2017/18, we are likely also to see quite a few important tax and spending decisions. This is because the chancellor wants to set out the basic arithmetic for government spending in 2015/16, the final year in which the Coalition will govern (for a month before the election), while at the same time making further progress on welfare cuts and responding to political pressure on fuel duty.
It has been reported that the chancellor wants to maintain the headline 80:20 ratio between spending cuts and tax rises for the fiscal consolidation in 2015/16. Currently, the implied cuts/rises ratio is 96:4. Using the figures from the March 2012 budget, he would need to find £22.4 billion in cuts and £5.6 billion in tax increases in order to shift the ratio to 80:20. Of course, the UK’s economic performance has deteriorated since the budget, so the chancellor could be faced with a bleaker fiscal scenario, as both the SMF and IFS have recently set out. But assuming that the rate of fiscal consolidation is maintained as planned in 2015/16, we can expect cuts and tax increases of this order of magnitude.
How might he raise the taxes? Restricting higher-rate pension tax relief further would be fair and it would raise tidy sums. If all pension contributions were restricted to basic rate relief, the Treasury would raise £7 billion – but a sweeping move of this kind is unlikely. Instead, the chancellor could further reduce the annual or lifetime allowances. The Resolution Foundation recently estimated that restricting relief to a lifetime allowance of £1 million would raise up to £1.5 billion a year.
The chancellor has also spent the summer quietly consulting on a new holding charge on properties valued at over £2 million owned by non-doms. This could be presented as a ‘son of mansion tax’ and it would help further in taking the heat out of the high-end London property market, which has become a global reserve currency for the word’s super-rich. Further stamp duty increases for high-value properties have also been mooted, beyond the newly introduced 7 per cent rate on properties worth more than £2 million (which is planned to raise £180 million next year). Putting all this together might conceivably get the chancellor over the £5 billion line, but he’s likely to need something more to get the whole way.
The chancellor has also indicated that he is seeking £10 billion of welfare cuts by 2016/17. To get to that figure, the Treasury would need to find £6.6 billion in 2015/16. A freeze on working-age benefits in 2013/14 and 2014/15 is likely to give him the lion’s share of this, since it is like compound interest in reverse: if you cut the baseline in 2013/14 and freeze it again in 2014/15 then the net effect is higher savings by 2015/16.
There are also other measures to factor into the equation. Delaying the fuel duty increase again will cost £550 million. Raising the personal tax allowance by £1,100 to £9,205 from April 2013 cost the chancellor a whopping £3.3 billion at the last budget, so any further progress on that score might wait until next year. But if he wanted an eye-catching stimulus measure he could announce a further £100 in tax-free income, at a cost of £590 million in 2013/14. An announcement of extra funding for childcare has also been suggested – if done properly, this would be a better targeted measure than raising the personal tax allowance and more effective at lifting the employment rate.
Overall, however, the consequence of holding to an 80:20 ratio on cuts and tax rises is that the burden of further fiscal consolidation will be carried overwhelmingly by those in the lower income deciles, since they rely most heavily on tax credits and social security benefits, and gain most value from public services. By definition, if the ratio of cuts to tax increases is 80:20, the Liberal Democrat ambition that the rich shoulder the greatest burden will not be achieved. That is a certainty. Next week’s autumn statement may do many things, but it is unlikely to be progressive. | <urn:uuid:3715fb2d-6cfa-4a3f-965a-8783636feed8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ippr.org/?p=938&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=17 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965717 | 1,052 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Talk all you want to about "personal responsibility" and taking advantage of opportunities that come your way, but if you are a child and your neighborhood looks like this and operates in a totally dysfunctional manner largely due to its infrastructure failings, what real chance do you have of moving forward in any truly productive manner?
I took these photos in one of the South Dallas neighborhoods where we work every day.
Three realities are very, very clear here.
First, with a few rare exceptions and excluding the Habitat homes, the majority of the housing stock is in terrible disrepair. Much of it is uninhabitable, even though folks are trying to make homes in some of these structures.
Second, vacant lots where homes once stood are everywhere. In one section of this neighborhood many contiguous lots form large open spaces that are ripe for new development, but for the horrible surrounding properties.
Third, when a neighborhood "tips over" like this to the negative side of the ledger, nothing will change until public policy solutions are agreed upon and implemented. Only a major commitment from the public institutions of our larger community will allow this community to live again.
The City of Dallas should be ashamed to continue to carry this "housing" in its community portfolio. The City should muster the political and economic will to bring this area back. Such a move will involve the investment of millions of dollars in mortgage assistance funding and in infrastructure improvements and developers' incentives.
While the cost will be high, the price of doing nothing will turn out to be much more expensive in terms of human loss--crime, delinquency, deteriorating health, educational failures and dropouts and environmental impact.
The City has ignored this neighborhood long enough.
Take a look again.
Can you believe this is Dallas, Texas, the "can do" city?
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Larry James' Urban Daily
A repository of ideas, resources, commentary and opinions concerning the issues facing low-income residents of the inner cities of the United States and how mainstream America largely forgets or, worse, ignores the day-to-day realities of urban life for the so-called "poor." Written and edited by the President & CEO of CitySquare. Please visit CitySquare.
Today and throughout 2013, we need your support to continue our life-changing work in inner-city Dallas. Every day hundreds of our wonderful neighbors arrive at our doors seeking our assistance, offering their help and prepared to pursue a better life. Frankly, the folks we "serve" make essential contributions to the scope, nature and soul of the work we attempt. At CitySquare we honor and recognize the amazing value and richness of our low-income neighbors. During 2012, almost 55,000 different people received the benefit of our wide-ranging services designed to assist in the process of building better lives. We need your help TODAY as we continue to respond to the needs of our community. Even more, we need you to become our PARTNER in the work of compassion and community renewal--work that continues day after day at CitySquare. | <urn:uuid:3fdb3a09-3659-4a23-b850-be5e505f3de8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com/2007/01/shameful-housing-situation.html?showComment=1169176320000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947288 | 669 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The United Service Organization was founded in 1941, as a way to provide morale to service members through entertainment. Hollywood was happy to promote its patriotism (and its stars), and sent entertainers to combat zones, often in danger, to perform for the troops. From Marilyn Monroe to Stephen Colbert, many of the biggest names in showbiz have put on shows for the American service members around the world. Check out these famous USO entertainers.
Sammy Davis Jr.
Film Actor, Television Actor, Comedian, Dancer, Singer / 1925 - 1990
Sammy Davis Jr. was an actor, comedian, singer and dancer, and part of the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, with whom he starred in several films.
Activist, Dancer, Songwriter, Singer / 1933 - 2006
James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul," was a prolific singer, songwriter and bandleader, as well as one of the most iconic figures in funk and soul music from 1956 to 2006.
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profile name: Marilyn Monroe profile occupation: Film Actress, Pin-up
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profile name: Sammy Davis Jr. profile occupation: Film Actor, Television Actor, Comedian, Dancer, Singer
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profile name: Bob Hope profile occupation: Film Actor, Television Actor, Television Personality
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profile name: James Brown profile occupation: Activist, Dancer, Songwriter, Singer
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Queen, the famed British glam-rock band, reached the top of U.S. and U.K. charts with songs like "Killer Queen," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "We Will Rock You" and "Another One Bites the Dust." Explore this group to learn more about the popular foursome, including Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor.
4 people in this group
An acronym was born the day actor Philip Michael Thomas (a.k.a. Detective Rico Tubbs of Miami Vice fame) announced his aspiration to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony within five years. But it was his gold EGOT medallion, which he had made as a reminder of his aims, that really solidified the term in Hollywood history. Sadly, Thomas still hasn't achieved his 1984 goal but, to be fair, only a small group of performers ever has. Here are the notable few who have made awards history.
11 people in this group
Many of the most horrifying acts of violence are committed by serial killers. Always looking for next victim, these murderers kill again and again, never fully satisfied by their bloody deeds. Their twisted motivations—and even more twisted techniques—land the people in this group among the most frightening criminals in history.
35 people in this group | <urn:uuid:fbda934c-6d37-4ad2-a76a-097d225b0baf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biography.com/people/groups/uso-entertainers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949813 | 669 | 1.570313 | 2 |
10/31/2007 - Two nonprofit projects — one helping military and overseas voters on a worldwide scale, and another limited to military and overseas voters who are residents of Okaloosa County, Fla. — are making strides that could change the landscape for absentee voters.
Okaloosa County officials plan to literally bring the voting booth to military and overseas voters in three overseas areas for the 2008 general election.
Operation BRAVO has a partnership with Scytl Secure Electronic Voting S.A., a provider of secure remote voting technology with extensive experience in international projects.The U.S. Election Commission has found that about half of service members attempting to cast absentee ballots, particularly from abroad, are unable to do so, for a variety of reasons. A number of organizations are trying to solve the problems, said Michael Caudell-Feagan, project director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Make Voting Work.
Read the full article States Work to Make Absentee Voting Easier on the Military Times Web site. | <urn:uuid:bc529e6e-ca48-4639-b8bd-13c7abbc456b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35132 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938429 | 205 | 1.703125 | 2 |
New York, Feb 7: Since everyone navigates singledom differently, a dating website in the US has helped shed more light on what the single life entails.
Match.com's 3rd annual "Singles In America" survey, conducted in association with biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher and Kinsey Institute, evolutionary biologist Dr. Justin R. Garcia, polled 5,000 single men and women and over 1,000 married individuals about sex and relationships.
The participants, who were not drawn from Match.com's member pool but instead represent a national representative sample, answered over 200 questions each.
This year's findings indicate that, as already suspected, the ideas of a widespread "hookup culture" among young Americans and the death of marriage have been blown out of proportion, the Huffington Post reported.
"Despite all we hear about hooking up and divorce, we now have significant data that shows American singles (including men) are earnestly seeking respect, trust, transparency and commitment in a relationship," Dr. Fisher said.
According to the findings, "friends with benefits" are more common than ever
47 percent of singles (40 percent of women and 53 percent of men) have had a friends with benefits relationship in the past. These arrangements are actually turning into relationships -- 44 percent of 2012 respondents entered a long-term relationship with their FWB partner, compared to 20 percent of 2011 respondents.
As a result more women are waiting to have sex for this reason.
Seemingly at odds with the "friends with benefits" data comes the news that more women are insisting on commitment before intimacy with a new partner. 37 percent of women want to wait until they are in an exclusive relationship before having sex with a new partner-compared with 31 percent of single women in 2011 and 25 percent in 2010.
The report also showed that more americans are meeting dates online.
The popularity of online dating shows no sign of waning. According to the report, nearly 1/3 of singles (27.5 percent) reported dating someone they met online. And 20 percent of singles met their most recent first date online, compared to 7 percent who met at a bar.
Most people are also putting a partner's satisfaction first, as 97 percent of singles say it's more important to satisfy their partners sexually than be satisfied themselves.
Despite consequences, sexting also remains common, as 57 percent of single men and 45 percent of single women have received a sext; 23 percent have shared a received sext with others.
With the advent of technology, single women now demand digital transparency in relationships. 77 percent of women, and 53 percent of men would not date someone who was secretive about their text messages.
Also, be careful what you put online, because it can affect your chances of dating success.
49 percent of women and 27 percent of men would cancel a first date because of something they found while researching online.
Another thing is that single people are optimistic about marriage. Far from viewing marriage as a burden or the end of freedom, 9 out of 10 single Americans are optimistic about marriage. (ANI) | <urn:uuid:1b1fc15e-d21a-41af-9182-d031ca97daa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.realbollywood.com/2013/02/singles-revealed.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964823 | 636 | 1.570313 | 2 |
This November, the presidential election might be the most important in the history of this nation. Our economy is on the verge of collapse, unemployment is about to rise to record levels, auto manufacturers have literally thousands of automobiles sitting on lots that they cannot sell, our country has been mortgaged to China to fund an illegal and immoral war over--well--nothing. Our children are being deprived of essential education as schools scramble just to stay open. Medical care is in crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Americans not being able to afford life sustaining care. Meanwhile, our so-called "liberal" media battles over which candidate is wearing the right pin, or misspoke over something trivial--ignoring the issues as if not talking about them will make them suddenly disappear. It is absolutely essential that we choose the right President. Every person in this country who is eligible to vote must go to the polls and cast a ballot. Every voter must be fully informed before casting their ballot. This election has to be settled at the polls--not at the hands of paid members of the Electoral College or the Supreme Court. There is no room for error. | <urn:uuid:8c27c497-30ae-4e73-be59-2039396b27d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.daily-jeff.com/citizen%20opinion/2008/05/27/the-coming-election | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963666 | 227 | 1.625 | 2 |
Real Talk with Caitlin Plummer: The ultimate guide to dealing with haters
We all have them. Haters are just a fact of existence, and unfortunately, they’re not going to disappear from your life anytime soon. There will always be people who are jealous of you, disagree with you, or just plain dislike you. Journalists especially have to learn to adjust to haters, because we have the privilege and power to express our thoughts for the world to read; obviously, not everyone agrees with everything we have to say. To quote Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and one of our responsibilities is responding to criticism and adversity with poise. Here are a few things I’ve discovered in the course of being a high school journalist that everyone should learn in accepting haters.
Cry about it a little. Yes, not everyone likes you. This is a fact that I have struggled with since elementary school, when I actually trapped a girl in a bus seat so she’d have to talk to me and therefore come to like me. That night, as I proudly recounted my successful tactics to my parents, they warned me that trying to make someone like you isn’t always going to work. Needless to say, they were right. However, that doesn’t mean that cruel words and cutting opinions don’t hurt. It’s important to acknowledge that you’re upset and need a little time to wallow. Personally, I recommend chocolate during your pity party.
Do not retaliate with similar cruelty. That tweet, Facebook status or rumor really stung, I know. Of course your first instinct is to jump to your own defense with an aggressive counterattack to make them reconsider before ever insulting you again. Shocker: this will only make it worse. No one wants to read your beef over social media (unless there’s nothing good on television) and any instinct based off anger or distress probably isn’t the best course of action, so think before you respond. Taking the high road may be more difficult, but you emerge looking classier and more mature.
Respond to the hater in question. Most people don’t like confrontation and would rather talk about you than to you when they’re upset, so actually addressing them could shock them into looking at the situation logically. Calmly defend yourself by stating your point of view, even if you’re boiling on the inside. If it’s a really personal issue, deal with it in private: over a text, Facebook message, or even face to face. Bringing it out into the public invites ridicule from people who don’t necessarily know both sides of the story. It also makes it seem like you love to fuel drama.
Just be honest. If you are under attack because of something you actually did, own up to it. Explain your thinking behind the action and offer apologies when appropriate. Chances are, people will stop being so harsh if they see that you understand how you offended them and are genuinely sorry. On the other hand, if you’re unsure why you’re being treated rudely, just ask them what you did to deserve such accusations. Then you need to tell them how you really feel. Your frankness may actually lead them to sympathize and compromise with you.
Address the problem so history doesn’t repeat itself. Maybe it was a misunderstanding or an inconsiderate comment you made that offended someone. Whether you were truly to blame or not, there is always something to be learned from conflict because you can always take bigger precautions to avoid it. The fact remains that even haters don’t like the drama they create when you hold them accountable by confronting them. No one likes to waste his or her time in pointless tiffs. Be more careful next time, but remember: haters gon’ hate. They always will.
Caitlin Plummer, a senior at Meadowdale High School and co-editor of Meadowdale’s newspaper, The Maverick, enjoys writing about a broad range of topics that are on her mind. She was born in Lynnwood and lives there with her parents, her younger brother and her golden retriever, Cinnamon. Her future aspirations include earning a degree in journalism and writing for a major news source. | <urn:uuid:f4f20d8f-3711-40be-a477-6160bf4fccb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myedmondsnews.com/2012/11/real-talk-with-caitlin-plummer-the-ultimate-guide-to-dealing-with-haters/ | 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 | 0.970277 | 893 | 1.765625 | 2 |
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Arkansas Secretary of State's office says turnout for this year's presidential election closely matches turnout for the contest four years ago.
With some precincts still counting votes Wednesday, turnout was at 65.31 percent. That amounts to 1.05 million of Arkansas' 1.6 million registered voters.
The numbers were on target with election officials' prediction that turnout would be similar to the 2008 election.
In the early voting period this year, more than 465,000 people voted — a figure higher than the totals from 2008 and 2010.
©2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:cc6a3c33-9c50-4ab2-9031-971580d0652f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fox16.com/news/state/story/Arkansas-voter-turnout-at-65-percent/DU9cbOkznkCwNBInxOyQ1Q.cspx | 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 | 0.94977 | 143 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The beneficiaries qualified under the following standards set in the DSWD National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction: They must be from indigent families; 77 years old and above; registered with the Parañaque Office of the Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA); they are not recipients of other pension benefits (GSIS, SSS, AFPMBAI, etc.); and are not getting any support from their families.
The DSWD’s Social Pension Program is provided under Republic Act 9994 which is also known as the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010. Under said law, covered seniors are given P500.00 monthly pensions to help them with their daily expenses.
The Parañaque seniors thanked the DSWD-NCR and the Parañaque City Social Welfare and Development Office under Mr. Dean Calleja for arranging the conduct of the payout in the city, making it more convenient and economical for them in terms of travel time and transportation fares.
They also expressed their gratitude to OSCA for its untiring service likewise to the Office of Councilor Benjo Bernabe whose programs greatly benefit elders and PWDs in the city.
“In their time, the seniors did much for the development of the city and for the welfare of the citizens and for that, we are most grateful. Like loving children, we in the city government give them love, respect and care.”, Mayor Bernabe said.
“Apart from the benefits dictated by law, Parañaque Senior Citizens get extras. They get movie passes that afford them free admission in Parañaque cinemas. They are also given free blood chemistry diagnostics and immunization vs. seasonal flu yearly. The city government also provides for the city’s elders free reading glasses, crutches, wheelchair and dentures as needed. Moreover, this LGU builds Senior Citizen Centers and organizes outings, seminars and other productive activities for them.”, he added. | <urn:uuid:29e7887a-3ad0-4b13-a971-9430549da924> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thevillagesportsclub.com/para%C3%B1aquenews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957309 | 406 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The first stone for Vega at Europe's Spaceport
The construction site for the ground segment of Vega, the small European launcher, was opened at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana last month. Vega is due to be launched at the end 2007 and will complement the European mid-class Soyuz and heavy-class Ariane 5 launchers.
The site was formally inaugurated on 20 October by ESA together with CNES and Italian company Vitrociset, prime contractor for the ground segment. This is the start of a new life for ELA1, the launch pad originally used for the Ariane 1 European launcher, 15 years after its deactivation. The new launch pad (ZLV - Zone de Lancement Vega) is being built on the ELA1 foundations.
The choice of the Kourou Spaceport to build the new Vega ground segment infrastructure meets one of the main requirements of the Vega programme; namely to provide a high-quality launch service whilst limiting the cost by re-use of existing facilities and expertise.
Activities will start with the fencing of the area, the partial renovation of the bunker and waterproofing, metallic fixture installation, removal of the old ELA1 launch table, the installation of the 'evacuation chamber', set up of telecommunications network, as well as the refurbishment of the building that will be used for temporary lodging of personnel.
Prime contractor Vitrociset and its subcontractors will work with the support of local contractors, guaranteeing additional work for Europe's Spaceport and the companies involved. The site is due for completion in April 2007, in time for Vega's qualification flight at the end of 2007. During the exploitation phase, from 2008, the Vega Launch Service will be then operated by Arianespace.
More about Vega's ground segment infrastructure
The Vega launch zone (ZLV), located on the old ELA1 site, comprises a permanent infrastructure (the bunker) and a mobile building (the gantry).
The bunker includes:
- the launch table that ensures the launcher keeps its vertical position and that provides the interface with the exhaust duct
- the umbilical mast that ensures the launcher and payload's conditioning and power supply until the very last moment before lift-off. It has to secure the correct disconnection of those systems from the launcher during lift-off.
- the exhaust ducts through which the burning gases are expelled at ignition
- four anti-lightning masts
- various premises such as safety room, fluid room and gantry connection room
The gantry, which is rolled back before the final countdown, provides the infrastructure necessary for the launcher integration, and is composed mainly of:
- hoisting devices for the erection of the stages
- platforms to access to the different levels of the launcher
- connection and supply facilities
- propellant fuelling installations for the fourth stage, known as the Altitude and Vernier Upper Module (AVUM) or liquid propellant stage
- safety systems
The Launch Control Centre for Vega will be located in CDL3 (the control centre built for Ariane 5) which allows independent operational and monitoring systems dedicated to Vega, as shared components with Ariane.
Vega will also benefit from shared use of the general facilities of the European Spaceport such as the satellite preparation area, Jupiter control centre for coordinating launch operations and facilities, storage sites, technical support services (transport, flight phase tracking, flight data processing for post-flight analysis, and meteorological data).
Evolution of the launch pad
Almost thirty years have passed since the initial launch pad built in the late 60s for the Europa 2 launcher was modified into ELA1 to meet the requirements of the first Arianes. Since then, two other ESA-funded launch pads, ELA2 and ELA3, have been built to support the later Ariane launchers. launchers. Today, only ELA3 - dedicated to Ariane 5 - remains in use. | <urn:uuid:6b5db31f-a76b-4d33-91f9-3328b4a7a232> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/The_first_stone_for_Vega_at_Europe_s_Spaceport | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942709 | 812 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Just as a reminder to everyone, make sure you consult a doctor before starting a exercise routine. Do this to make sure you are healthy enough to do any of the challenges issued. Before starting any of the food challenges, make sure to check with your doctor or nutritionist to make sure any changes to your diet will be ok. Also remember if you are lowering your calorie intake, do not lower it too low. Make sure you are at the calorie intake you need to have to maintain the weight you want to be.
I agree with this as well. Its always important to consult your doctor before starting a new exercise routine or making a major change in your diet. If you don't know what your calorie intake should be go here to find some tools to help you get started. | <urn:uuid:bdd54ba7-d650-47a8-b8ea-0e2dd5d293a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobile.cafemom.com/group/108990/forums/read/12977599/Important_to_read?use_mobile=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955473 | 157 | 1.554688 | 2 |
HPPR hosts & contributors
Wed October 10, 2012
Successful Surgery For Pakistani Girl Whose Shooting Has Caused Outrage
Originally published on Wed October 10, 2012 9:12 am
After several hours of surgery, the girl whose shooting by the Taliban has caused deep anger in Pakistan and has exposed that nation's "deepest fault line," is said to be in stable condition.
Malala Yousufzai, our colleague Philip Reeves reports from Islamabad, is surrounded by her family. The BBC says doctors successfully removed a bullet from her head. Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper says doctors have decided she will not need to be sent abroad for more treatment.
As Phil said earlier on Morning Edition, what happened to Malala on Tuesday has led to "one of the most disturbing images to emerge from years of conflict in Pakistan: A 15-year-old girl lies on a hospital bed, with a bullet wound in her head.
"This is her punishment."
And why has this happened to her?
"Because," Phil said, "she had the courage to demand the right for girls like her to get an education. Because she criticized violent Islamist militants who want to make sure they can't."
Malala, as Phil reported, had exposed the Pakistani Taliban's cruelty in blog posts and had become a leading advocate for the education of girls in her country. She had been honored with an award in Pakistan and a nomination for the International Children's Peace Prize.
But she also was a target. Tuesday, as she was traveling home with some schoolmates, the van they were in was stopped by two men with guns. According to school administrator Iqbal Hussain, one of the men got in. He asked which girl was Malala. Then, Phil reported, "he opened fire, injuring Malala and two other girls."
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility and told some news outlets that they will try to kill her again if Malala survives.
Now, as Phil added, "Pakistan's deepest fault line" has been exposed:
"It's the conflict between the many Pakistanis who do not embrace the values of the Islamist militants and those who seek violently to enforce those values.
"The Taliban say they consider Malala to be 'obscene.'
"Afrasayab Khattak, a Pakistani politician and friend of Malala's family, uses similar words when he talks about the Taliban.
" 'They are criminals,' he says. 'They really do not belong to anything. No religion, no race, thay are just brutes, agents of dark forces, agents of destruction, and death.' "
Update at 10:05 a.m. ET: In 2009, Malala told Phil that in the Swat Valley where she lived the Taliban "were blasting schools. They have tortured us, very much. They stopped us from going to school. They banned the girl education."
As Phil also reported then, Malala's father had been a vocal advocate for peace after the Taliban moved into the area and the Pakistani army came to battle the militants. "Most people preferred to lie low," Phil reported. "[Ziauddin] Yusefzai organized peace marches. He appeared repeatedly on Pakistani TV. He often strongly criticized the Pakistani government, but he also excoriated the Taliban at a time when it was very risky to do so. He did take some precautions. To protect his wife and three children, he stopped sleeping at home."
Note: While other news outlets are reporting that Malala is 14 years old, Phil spoke with her in August 2009 and she said at that time that she was 12. Also, he has checked with officials at her school and they say records show her date of birth was July 12, 1997. | <urn:uuid:6f36ae58-d86b-49d5-bcf3-6dc1aad27e6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hppr.org/post/successful-surgery-pakistani-girl-whose-shooting-has-caused-outrage | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984855 | 770 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Museum to exhibit Raj Kapoor's classic films in NY
By Hindustan Times
American audience will soon get a glimpse of legendary Indian filmmaker Raj Kapoor's repertoire of cult cinema, with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) here exhibiting eight films by the showman including Awara and Bobby.
The exhibition, titled Raj Kapoor and the Golden Age of Indian Cinema will run from January 6 through January 16. It will showcase Kapoor's eight legendary films, presented in newly struck 35mm prints, offering an "introduction to one of the most ravishing and influential periods of world cinema."
"Largely unknown in North America—except to millions of fans of South Asian descent actor, director, and mogul Raj Kapoor is revered not only in India but throughout the former Soviet world, the Middle East and beyond for the films he made during the golden age of Indian cinema," MoMA said.
The exhibition will open with Kapoor's Awaara, followed by Barsaat, Boot Polish, Jis Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai, Shree 420, Meera Nam Joker and Bobby.
The exhibition is being curated by artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox Noah Cowan, who also wrote the introductory text and film descriptions for the exhibition. | <urn:uuid:2bc707e8-2bbb-46c1-b9c6-82f201a3917f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bollywood.com/node/32552 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95316 | 263 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Having sex in any body of water actually poses a higher risk of infection to both partners but more so to the woman. Penetration allows other bacteria from the water to enter the vagina as well and can cause infection or irritation to the sensitive skin and membranes.
Water is not as lubricating as natural body fluids and can cause friction between the partners resulting in discomfort and irritation.
If water is forced into the vagina it can cause major infections and result in other problems for the woman as well.
If you have sex in water (pool, hot tub, etc) try to have the sex OUT of the water, as in, don't allow the genitals to be under water during penetration.
You have to be careful of irritation for the most part. Otherwise there's not much affect. The water on the person's body may cause him or her to be more or less aroused, it depends on the people.
Hope this helps, enjoy!
Between my gyno and spending time in the women's locker room for 24 years I've picked up a bit of knowledge ; ) | <urn:uuid:4f5aef13-ed05-4a71-b4e3-c1bd10cad1c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070509061055AAHMk5d | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959569 | 219 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Washington » A group of 13 attorneys general filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of health care reform a mere seven minutes after President Barack Obama signed the bill.
That mostly Republican group includes Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who believes Congress trampled the rights of individuals and states by requiring most people to buy insurance or pay a fine and by greatly expanding the size of Medicaid.
The health reform bill "represents an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals," the suit contends, with the attorneys general arguing the Constitution doesn't give the government the right to force people to buy insurance, known as the individual mandate.
"Our goal is to eliminate the individual mandate and stop the Medicaid expansion, but we don't want to kill the legislation entirely," Shurtleff said shortly after the filing in a Florida federal court. Like many of the other states involved, Utah recently passed a new law banning individual mandates, placing it in direct conflict with the federal reforms.
Brigham Young University law professor Frederick Gedicks said the lawsuit has little chance of success, particularly in striking down the insurance requirement.
"The challenge to the individual mandate is a fool's errand," said Gedicks, a constitutional law scholar.
White House spokesman Adam Abrams said, "These challenges have no merit and they will not stop historic reform from taking place.
Shurtleff acknowledged the suit filed in Florida faces a difficult path and put its chances of success at about 50 percent, but he also said the staffs of the AG offices involved "are no slouches."
"Whenever you sue in federal court asking the federal court to limit federal power you are fighting an uphill battle, there is no doubt about it," he said.
The individual mandate goes into effect in 2014 and those who fail to buy insurance would face a $95 penalty, which would go up to $695 per individual by 2016 or no more than $2,085 for a family.
Supporters of health reform say the mandate is justified by the government's right to regulate interstate commerce and is needed to stop cost shifting from the uninsured to those who have coverage. The lawsuit counters this by saying the requirement punishes an individual for not taking an action and "inactivity by its very nature cannot be deemed to be in commerce."
Gedicks thinks that argument is simplistic and flies in the face of existing law.
"I can't think of a clearer case of a constitutional tax than the individual mandate," he said. "For this lawsuit to succeed, the Supreme Court would have to undo a century of tax and spending jurisprudence."
He said the government could easily argue the tax is necessary for the success of a larger regulatory scheme, which would block insurance companies from denying people coverage because they have pre-existing conditions.
The second big issue in the lawsuit is a planned Medicaid expansion, which will cover millions of poor adults who are not currently eligible for the program jointly run by the federal and state governments. The attorneys general argue the states will not be able to afford their share of the expansion and can't back out of Medicaid or millions will be left without a safety net.
Under the new law, the federal government would pick up the entire cost of the new enrollees for a few years before states must pick up their share. But states, such as Utah, that are already chafing under the high costs of the program, say the expansion may force tax increases.
"The federal government will boost its Medicaid funding, but not soon enough and not nearly enough to cover that expansion," Shurtleff said.
The suit also argues that the federal government is requiring states to set up new health insurance marketplaces, known as exchanges, without giving them the needed funding.
Gedicks thinks this issue is more serious than the individual mandate claim, but he still expects the courts to uphold the health reform law.
"The bottom line is the states have a choice: They can either expand Medicaid or drop out of the Medicaid system, rather than set up the exchanges," said Gedicks, who is a self-described Democrat who is in favor of the health reform effort. "Nobody is holding a gun to the head of any state and insisting it be in the Medicaid system."
The states involved in the lawsuit are Utah, Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Idaho, Washington, Colorado and Louisiana. All of these attorneys general are Republicans except for Louisana's Buddy Caldwell, who is a Democrat. Virginia filed a separate suit challenging the individual mandate on Tuesday. | <urn:uuid:74435e82-5df0-47c9-b97a-3b806ec7f2b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14741183 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962515 | 935 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Since 2001, the NH Conservation License Plate (Moose Plate) program has contributed to the ongoing success of more than 150 projects around New Hampshire. Every county has benefited from the funds raised through the sale of Moose Plates.
Charles W. Canney Camp, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, Candia. In 1892, Governor Frederick Smyth, a native of Candia, donated, to the town, a bronze statue honoring 126 men of Candia that fought to preserve the Union. The Moose Plate grant received by the Town of Candia, in 2005, helped to restore damage that had occurred either by vandalism or by weather and time. | <urn:uuid:74ca6ba5-1ca3-4ba7-b738-259fec16478b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mooseplate.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=46&cntnt01returnid=43 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958973 | 133 | 1.84375 | 2 |
By Dr. Pepper Schwartz
You read the profiles. Every once in a while a man or woman says something like, "…and don't bring your baggage with you…". Whatever do they mean? And why should you care?
"Bringing your baggage with you" means wherever you go, your past emotional hang ups (and usually negative) move with you. If you had a bad divorce, you cannot get over it. About five minutes after you meet someone, they know about how badly you were treated, why it was a damaging experience or why you will have trouble trusting anyone ever again. They will hear a litany of complaints against your ex husband/wife and when you talk, you cannot keep the emotion, the anger, or the outrage out of your voice. This blameless person who has just sat down to have a cup of coffee with you, is now witness to the biggest traumas of your life. And, they haven't even known you 20 minutes.
Sometimes the baggage doesn't show up immediately. However, it surfaces eventually, and it's no fun. It may even be something we can all understand: fear and loathing surfacing from having been left with all the bills when the marriage broke up; anger at having been cheated on by your partner; or cynicism over being left behind as your partner unexpectedly married someone else on short notice. It is totally understandable these would be awful events, and difficult to get over. And, yes, the impulse would be to get them off your heart and out of your mind to the first person willing to listen. Bad things have to be put into historical perspective, rather than kept in the present. Wounds have to heal, and neuroses have to be conquered. Otherwise, people feel they are inheriting headaches, problems they had nothing to do with and emotional landmines.
What does this have to do with you? Hopefully, nothing. But, if you recognize yourself as someone who carries their baggage with them, this might be a good time to promise yourself to quit doing it. You can reinvent yourself if you want to. You can nurse your old injuries in private and put on a good face until you've recovered from them. You can make someone believe you are ready to be alone with them, rather than have a relationship unnecessarily crowded with too many ghosts from your past. Get rid of the baggage! Create open, uncluttered space for a new love and embrace this relationship!
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Copyright © PerfectMatch.com 2003-2013 | <urn:uuid:da2fe70e-d17d-4865-a083-02458c19c895> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.perfectmatch.com/dating-advice/Hang-Ups-and-Hook-Ups/baggage.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97354 | 522 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Medical professionals and patient support groups have raised concerns after people with HIV in London have been asked to switch to taking different antiretroviral drugs, as part of cost-cutting measures.
In April, London HIV Consortium, which is responsible for the capital’s HIV services, was tasked with saving £8m over two years, having to manage growing patient numbers on a budget that has not increased in line with inflation.
London Specialised Commissioning Group (LSCG), which commissions the capital’s HIV treatment, negotiated terms with atazanavir manufacturer Bristol Myers Squibb to receive discounts for larger orders of the drug.
As a result, clinics have been given new “prescription messages” – recommending doctors ask certain HIV patients who take a life-saving protease inhibitor other than atazanavir to switch to atazanavir – with saving money given as the overriding justification.
But now HIV doctors and support groups have raised concerns that switching prescriptions creates “medical risks” and raises “ethical issues”.
LSCG HIV drugs commissioner Claire Foreman said: “It is not in anyone’s interest – not our patients nor the taxpayer – to treat fewer people with more expensive drugs.
“There are no financial incentives for clinics to switch patients.”
No HIV patient will be prescribed an incorrect medicine as a result of this process” – Claire Foreman, Lead commissioner, LSCG
However, an HIV specialist at a London clinic, who wanted to remain anonymous, told the BBC: “Clinics are under financial pressure to contribute to the £8m savings.
“A confidential statement went out to doctors saying ‘there is a carrot and sticks approach to this. If you reach your targets each individual service will be set, there will be benefits for you this year, and clearly be benefits for you in next year’s budget’,” he added.
“Claire Foreman has back-pedalled on this.”
Ms Foreman denied this allegation, adding: “Doctors are taking a leading role to ensure patients can be treated despite the pressure on budgets.” The clinician added it was “clearly evident” if doctors did not meet targets for patients switching to atazanavir.
“Doctors are under pressure from the LSCG to get patients to swap to cheaper prescriptions. I’m not sure if it was taken into account the pressure that would put clinicians under,” he added. “Not only does that discomfort the patient, it’s costing us in terms of clinic visits.”
Ms Foreman said this was not the case, adding: “No HIV patient will be prescribed an incorrect medicine as a result of this process.”
The anonymous specialist went on to say: “It’s difficult to prescribe certain pills in London, that people outside London can get, due to financial pressure from doctors’ managers.”
LSCG said its prescription messages were in line with British HIV Association guidelines, but these were last updated in 2008 so did not consider drugs licensed since then.
More recent guidelines, including those of the European AIDS Clinical Society, recommend a range of drugs which are available through the NHS but are not suggested for prescription in LSCG’s messages.
However the specialist cited raltegravir as an example of an antiretroviral drug “that everyone wants access to, because it has few side-effects.
“But commissioners have stated it will only be used under certain circumstances.
“That’s entirely down to cost pressures. It would be easier to get outside London,” he said. The specialist added: “The prescription messages stop putting patient choice at the centre of care in London.”
“This could potentially damage doctor-patient relationships.”
LSCG said: “All standard of care drugs licensed in the UK are available for use by HIV doctors.”
Dr Mike Youle, an HIV consultant at north London’s Royal Free Hospital, told the BBC about potential ethical and medical implications of switching patients’ prescription.
“When you’re talking about someone who has been stable on a drug for five years, I see no medical reason to change their prescription,” he said.
“There’s an ethical issue about switching people.”
But Prof Brian Gazzard, chairman of the drug purchasing group which advised the consortium, said: “All the doctor needs to do is note the reason the patient doesn’t want to switch.”
Meanwhile, African Health Policy Network chief Francis Kaikumba said: “Vulnerable African communities will be adversely affected as studies have shown African people are far less likely to question their health advisors.”
Ms Foreman said: “Clinicians and commissioners have been clear that any targeting would be unacceptable.”
Addressing the medical implications, Dr Youle said: “Every time you change medication with HIV, you run two risks. One is having a side-effect. Something might go wrong. The second is you might fail on the next drug. The virus might be resistant and you may put your health at risk.”
Prof Gazzard said: “Switching can involve side effects. If it does the patient will be told ‘we’ll switch you back’.”
Dr Yusef Azad, from the National Aids Trust, highlighted emotional pressures patients might come under saying: “With HIV, daily adherence is vital. Concerns about their medication might undermine a patient’s willingness to adhere to treatment.”
Prof Gazzard said: “If stress is being introduced into that system it’s a problem between the doctor and patient, not the London Consortium.”
Meanwhile, Dr Youle asked: “What happens when the next tender goes out and a different drug becomes the cheapest?” You then have to say the drug you were originally on is cheaper and we’re going to move you back.”
Prof Gazzard said: “There will be a balance between the saving and the difficulties of switching people every two years.”
Some HIV support groups have said the deals between the LSCG and pharmaceutical companies were rushed through.
Robert Fieldhouse, editor of Baseline, a magazine for people living with HIV, said: “The consultation took place behind closed doors with the wider HIV community in the dark.”
But Ms Foreman said: “Commercially confidential processes mean specific prices of companies cannot be shared.”
Dr Asad said a wider debate should have been had before procurement. “It would have been better to have a more open discussion earlier – asking ‘is it ok to switch stable patients simply on the basis of cost?’,” he said.
Meanwhile, with the government’s Health and Social Care Bill proposing to shake-up the way the NHS in England works, London’s HIV drugs procurement will be closely scrutinised to see how money savings could be implemented on a wider scale.
Original Article By Andy Dangerfield via BBC NewsSTAY UPDATED
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- Increase In Life Expectancy for People Living With HIV (lass.org.uk)
- Antiretroviral Drugs Work – This Is Why You Should Take Them! (lass.org.uk) | <urn:uuid:4e20c69a-fbb6-491d-a133-90979d02b24e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.lass.org.uk/tag/government/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952035 | 1,586 | 1.796875 | 2 |
It is government U-turn season! We can now eat pasties straight out of the oven without paying VAT, sell-off our house and move into a static caravan, have secrets discussed openly – well in secret anyway, and 261 schools, out of 587 applicants, will be rebuilt or refurbished within the government’s re-vamped PFI (Private Finance Initiative) scheme – the Priority School Building Programme.
When the Coalition came to power they ended New Labour’s £55bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme but Education Secretary Michael Gove admitted recently that the manner in which this was done was “clumsy and insensitive”.
Of course PFI was not uncontroversial under New Labour. It involved construction companies, banks and management services companies building schools, hospitals, roads and other infrastructure, at their own cost, and leasing these back to the providers for a monthly fee, over 25+ years. In fact there are two fees, one for the building and one for the management contract to run the building, often held by different companies. These contracts, and the ownership of the buildings, are traded as financial commodities. Most of the builders have sold their contracts to banks or private equity companies, taken a profit and reinvested. The contracts provide a long-term secure income.
The U-turn makes sense. The Coalition is seeking to stimulate the economy. It is keen to have new providers in the public service sector, and wants to reduce public sector expenditure in the short term. PFIs may offer all of that but they come with considerable transaction costs (contract writing and monitoring, investment in the design process etc) and there is an unresolved debate about whether in the longer term they are cheaper or more expensive than traditional financing and ownership by the state.
The new scheme will mean that yet more of the public service infrastructure will be privately owned, in some cases by overseas companies. And the BSF scheme did lead to difficulties for service providers. One school in which I have been researching has a member of staff permanently assigned to manage relations with its PFI contractors. Just before the last election a Department for Children Schools and Families regulation required that the school have yellow lines painted on its stairs to help visually-impaired students. The building contractor said it was not their responsibility, and the management services company said it was not theirs. But the building contractor forbade the school to paint “their” building. In the Coalition scheme the Department for Education has been working with the Treasury to reform the PFI model and provide a “cost-effective and more transparent” delivery of services. Schools will manage and control services such as cleaning, catering and security. But details of procurement and contracting remain sketchy.
The overwhelming response to the new PFI scheme is that it does not do enough for a school system that is literally creaking and bursting at the seams. Equally though it is important to bear in mind the longer-term implications of PFI for the future funding and ownership of the education system. | <urn:uuid:d7561c10-f5a8-4c45-84a9-64ac3e8cc173> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/pasties-caravans-school-buildings-u-turn-if-you-want-to/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974009 | 622 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Professor Chris Bryant’s Sabbatical Brought Opportunity for In-depth Research, Writing and Professional Development
Do you recall that famous elementary school question, “What did you do last summer”? For law school professors, however, the question becomes “What did you do on sabbatical?” For Professor Christopher Bryant sabbatical brought an opportunity for research, reflection, analysis, and significant writing.
The popular professor applied for a year-long sabbatical for the 2010-11 school year, aspiring primarily to co-author a textbook. While, his application was accepted, his co-author asked to defer the project. Nevertheless, Professor Bryant – who is currently teaching Constitutional Law I and Conflicts of Law – was encouraged by Dean Lou Bilionis to use the sabbatical and pursue other scholarly opportunities. “A sabbatical presents an enormously valuable opportunity for concentrated research and writing and is indispensable to the continuing development of faculty as scholars,” Bryant said.
Although Bryant was not in the classroom last year, he spent much of his time working at the College of Law in his fourth-floor office during his sabbatical. Ultimately, he produced four articles and essays – all of which have already been accepted for publication by various law reviews.
In September 2010, Bryant’s “What McDonald Means for Unremunerated Rights,” was accepted by the Georgia Law Review. The essay, which reviewed the 2010 Supreme Court case McDonald v. City of Chicago, ran in Georgia’s Summer 2011 issue. This past spring, the BYU Law Review and the University of Richmond Law Review also accepted Bryant’s articles for publication – “Foreign Law as Legislative Fact in Constitutional Cases” and “Constitutional Forbearance,” respectively. Additionally, Bryant’s essay on the Supreme Court’s 1927 decision in Nigro v. United States will be included in the Nevada Law Journal’s forthcoming symposium issue devoted to identifying “The Worst Supreme Court Decision, Ever.”
While he will continue to pursue other scholarship and still plans to work on the aforementioned textbook, the Constitutional Law scholar is happy to be teaching again this school year.
“I love teaching. I find it very rewarding and I am very glad to be back in the classroom,” he said. “It has helped tremendously that I was able to have a break from it in that I feel very refreshed; I have a renewed excitement and energy and willingness to experiment and desire to try different teaching methods and different tools in the classroom.”
Professor Bryant added that stepping away from teaching for a year gave him “a perspective (he) otherwise would not have enjoyed. I think it’s likely over the long-term, it will make me a better teacher,” he continued. “I certainly hope so.”
In addition to teaching, Bryant has also been working on a legislative fact project, which he recently expanded to cover research into the practices of foreign constitutional courts. And on October 5, jumping right into the college’s extracurricular activities, he participated in one of the Federalist Society’s semester debates: “A Debate on Judicial Engagement” with Clark Neily, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice.
By Jordan Cohen, ’13 | <urn:uuid:e4941d01-0fc3-4321-9117-8151d3bb234a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.uc.edu/news/sabbatical-lessons | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972883 | 695 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Report: Ohio wildlife officers hunted deer on duty
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio wildlife officer has been placed on unpaid leave after state investigators found that he and two other officers in the southwestern part of the state hunted deer while on the job.
A Thursday report by the state inspector general accuses field supervisor David Warner of hunting while on duty in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The watchdog’s review also accuses wildlife officer Matthew Roberts of hunting while on duty during the 2010 deer gun season.
Wildlife officers are tasked with enforcing state hunting and fishing laws.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources said Roberts, a Clinton County officer, has been placed on restrictive duty with pay. A third ex-wildlife officer — Allan Wright — was also cited in the report for hunting while on duty, though he was fired last year for other violations.
A department spokeswoman said the officers aren’t available for comment.
A federal judge last week ordered probation and house arrest for Wright after he was convicted of helping a South Carolina hunter illegally obtain an Ohio deer license at a discount that saved him about $105.
Wright also was convicted of seizing the antlers of two deer taken illegally and giving the antlers to a friend, instead of securing them as crime evidence.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. | <urn:uuid:e6e93e7c-163f-457e-8f38-bd4b263003e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prairiestateoutdoors.com/index.php?/pso/article/report_ohio_wildlife_officers_hunted_deer_on_duty/ | 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 | 0.966412 | 272 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Italian epic came of age with Giuseppe de Liguoro's imaginative silent version of the Inferno, loosely adapted from Dante and inspired by the illustrations of Gustav Doré. L'Inferno was first screened in Naples in the Teatro Mercadante 10 March 1911. The film took over three years to make involving more than 150 people and was the first full length Italian feature film ever made. It's success was not confined to Italy it was an international hit taking more than $2 million in the United States alone.
Tangerine Dream have composed the soundtrack based on their opera of Dante's Inferno producing a soundtrack truly worthy of their position as one of the top film music composers in the world.
For further information about Tangerine Dream go to www.tangerinedream.org. | <urn:uuid:74b781a1-b086-4d65-93d8-185fa987c0f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linferno.com/background.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965853 | 165 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Choose one of these gifts as our thanks when you join:
Choose 10 trees that grow well where you live, and we'll send them to you to plant in your yard. You can also choose to send the trees directly to someone else.
In your honor, we'll plant 10 trees in a forest in need.
Our nation's forests provide wood, habitat, clean air, and drinking water for millions of us. Your trees will help preserve these precious resources for this and future generations. | <urn:uuid:32f269c3-b513-4d57-a8f7-1c01fcb2e045> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.arborday.org/shopping/Memberships/memberships.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953658 | 100 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada and the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
This man was so astute as to the goings on in Gaza and Isreal/US policies coming to fruition- the displacement of the people of Gaza as a solution to Israel's problems. This site has more on the conflict.
Where do the contenders for the presidency stand? Here's some stuff that might interest you, and it turns out, he knew Barack Obama for a while.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/24/w ... ders_stand
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, I’d like to say that the suffering in Gaza has been so unremitting and so horrible and will continue. But I think we have to recognize and celebrate the resistance and the people power of the people in Gaza. And we have to recognize that there has been a deliberate siege on them by Israel, a decision taken by the leaders of
The government of Egypt has been complicit in this. They could have opened the borders months ago. Israel has been besieging Gaza for almost two years in this way. Egypt didn’t have to wait until Palestinians took matters into their own hands to free themselves from this barbaric siege.
The United States is complicit. And, by the way, Amy, this is another setback for the Bush Doctrine. The people of Gaza have been the victims of an experiment by the Bush administration and Israel, where, first of all, they had a democratic election. The US and Israel didn’t like that result, so they tried to overthrow Hamas using Contra-style militias and using a starvation siege. Hamas turned the tables on them and got rid of those militias. So they decided to tighten the siege on the people of Gaza, and the people of Gaza decided to break out of it themselves.........<snip>........ don’t know if they’ve been asked in a debate, but whenever they have been asked, they have all gone out of their way to express full support for what Israel is doing. Barack Obama is not distinguished from the rest of the pack, except by for how far he has moved to try to appease AIPAC and pro-Israel movements.
I remember, Amy—I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator—when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that’s just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation. And just yesterday, he apparently sent a letter to Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador at the UN, to urge the US not to allow any resolution to pass criticizing Israel and saying how Israel was forced to impose this barbaric medieval siege on Israel.
None of the other candidates in the mainstream have spoken out for Palestinian rights. The only ones who have taken forceful positions opposing the current US strategy are Dennis Kucinich on the Democratic side and Ron Paul on the Republican side. The mainstream are all perfectly comfortable with the war crimes that Israel is committing, no matter how much they talk about human rights elsewhere.
He goes on to speak about Hillary and Edwards as well as the Repubs. it is well worth reasding to get an idea how far and how much influence these people will go to push their agendas.
For example, a couple of years ago, she went and staged a photo opportunity in an Israeli settlement by the apartheid wall and talked about how the wall was necessary. This wall, of course, which has been condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Israel to tear it down, Hillary Clinton went and stood in front of it and endorsed it.
And we’ve seen that time and again. John Edwards, the same, staunchly pro-Israel. On the Republican side, you have John McCain, who talks like a maverick on other issues, but on this one he has gone out of his way to offer full support for Israel. You have Huckabee, who is on the Christian evangelical right, that is historically not very friendly towards Jewish people, but is very strongly pro-Israel for reasons of biblical prophecy. And Huckabee, who is—according to a report in the Jerusalem Post, talked about a Palestinian state in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, so really talking about the forced transfer or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as a solution. That, unfortunately, is the level of discourse.
He goes on about Romney but the key here is what kind of monsters do we have running here. Looks like the only ones that may be sincere are Kucinich and Paul. The others are just corporate owned puppets of the dumbed down American public. This election I predict will be a worse disaster than W stealing the presidency last two times. If this is what we're voting for, it's time to do something crazy and vote for the least candidate who has the best chance to beat these creatures from below.
And many Muslims feel that they are now the targets of a hysteria, which is similar or has even become worse than the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s, where Islamic militancy is under every bed and where any form of resistance, any form of resistance to US imperialism, to Israeli colonization and occupation, is defined as extremism. And there’s nobody who’s—you’re not even allowed to go and get food for your family from Egypt if you’re starving without being called an extremist, without being accused of militancy or terrorism. That’s level we’ve reached.
No resistance is permitted, Amy. But what we’ve seen from Gaza and what we’ve seen time and again in Lebanon is that resistance will continue, that people will not quietly accept the fate that has been designed for them in the boardrooms of the Pentagon and the White House and the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. People will resist.
Please resist these elites and flush them all down the toilet the walking shits. There isn't one among them who isn't to be suspected as a traitor or a nazi. resist the urge to just go along with it and make your vote count- now more than ever.
Peoples lives hang in the balance, maybe even ours. | <urn:uuid:e6980c22-2254-4dfe-8a48-75444cb7e24a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tvnewslies.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10748&p=46208 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965574 | 1,348 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The Volvo Powertrain North America plant that manufactures Mack Truck engines near Hagerstown will be featured in a program to air Saturday on The National Geographic Channel.
Mack Trucks spokesman John Walsh said film crews recently were at the plant to shoot segments for an hourlong episode of “Ultimate Factories,” a show that goes behind the scenes to unveil how some of the world’s most popular products are made.
“We focused on the production of Mack engines,” Walsh said of the filming portion at the Mack facility off U.S. 11.
Walsh said crews also concentrated on filming plant employees working on a drag-racing truck. He said he wasn’t sure whether a segment about the production of truck transmissions made the cut.
In addition to filming at the Washington County plant, National Geographic television crews visited the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania, where Mack has a test track and another production facility in Macungie.
Mack is one of North America’s largest producers of heavy-duty trucks that are sold and serviced through an extensive distribution network in more than 45 countries, according to a corporate news release.
Mack trucks and diesel engines sold in North America are assembled in the United States.
Mack Trucks Inc. is part of the Volvo Group, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks, buses and construction equipment, drive systems for marine and industrial applications, aerospace components and services.
The Volvo Group, which employs more than 90,000 people, has production facilities in 19 countries and sells its products in more than 180 markets.
Volvo Group sales for 2010 amounted to $36.7 billion.
When it’s on
What: “Ultimate Factories”
When: Saturday from 8 to 9 p.m.
Where: The National Geographic Channel, Channel 71 on Antietam Cable. | <urn:uuid:b1e4077f-58d9-44dc-bf9f-75bf63a6a57a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.herald-mail.com/news/hm-volvo-powertrain-to-be-featured-on-ultimate-factories-20120112,0,4707911.story | 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 | 0.938835 | 392 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Imagine getting luscious red-colored-colored lips, perfectly created eyebrows, and flattering eye lining. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It is also stated that you have a choice you could have a number of these and never having to concern yourself with them smudging or wearing off again! This is actually the promise that cosmetic products hold for you personally. You can begin your day-to-day activities whether it’s going to a fitness center, or likely to parties throughout the evening searching fresh, lively and vibrant. Others though, resolve to permanent cosmetics.
As lengthy as you've a specialist take action, you are in good hands. You ought to be careful because nowadays, plenty of unqualified people pose as professionals and declare that they are licensed to complete such methods.
Micro skin color is an additional status for permanent makeup. This is similar to tats. Professionals take advantage of the needle to put pigmented granules within the upper layers of the epidermis. Other similar techniques are tattoo and medical restoration and vitiligo, which basically means the scarcity of natural skin.
Lately though, the trending type of permanent makeup may be the eye lining, then eyebrows and lip color. Some professionals offer even blush and eye shadow but there is also a couple of from the greater ones that have been directly from the concept because the undesirable effects are very unpredictable. Almost always there is possible of developing allergic responses out of this. Whenever you really consider it, it's very true athis isn't a part of the body that you could cover with clothes. What we should coping here's needing to alter the physical form altogether.
Eyebrow tattooing has in some manner become trendy one of the youth nowadays. Before anything is carried out onto the skin, an anesthetic should be applied first. Touching within the makeup might need to be completed in the very first two several days roughly but effects can have round the third month. A few of the licensed individuals who are able to do this method are physicians, cosmetologists, aestheticians, nurses, and tattooists. However, just ensure that you discover about this first to obtain a little understanding prior to deciding to subject you to ultimately laser treatment or any other surgical procedure.
If the involves semipermanent makeup, allergic reactions aren't uncommon. Nevertheless the irritation is actually difficult to stop. Almost always there is some risk of results not anticipated when artificial chemicals are injected to the skin. More often than not, breakouts appear a few years later or maybe a defense mechanism hypersensitive reaction. "Iron oxide remains shown to end up being the most dependable pigment," states ophthalmologist Charles S. Zwerling, MD. The more youthful crowd is really the one which produced micro skin color.
Other sorts of possible uncomfortable allergic reactions are granulomas, these form inside tissue around an foreign substance, and keloids, which are overgrowths of skin damage or possibly a heightened scar. However, keloids appear more often with getting rid of semi permanent makeup than its application.
Imagine never requiring to concern yourself with shaping your eyebrows because you’ve already had them attracted on. Eyebrow tats indeed really are a time short-cut, but can it be really useful? “Think of permanent makeup as permanent,” states Zwerling. “You have to be very obvious on which you are likely to do as this is not something simple and fast to alter.” | <urn:uuid:bf647131-4060-4bc4-9071-c3f92e1dc2a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eyebrowtattooing.org.uk/tag/eyeliner/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969485 | 712 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Pastor's words still ring true on the 10th anniversary of 9/11
Every year on this day, I think of what the Rev. David Shelton told me around the first anniversary of Sept. 11.
“I don’t think it should change what we do,” he said. “For all our shortcomings, there is no nation in the world like America. We need to celebrate that we endure.”
I met Shelton in September 2000 at Restoration Embassy, a big old church on St. Thomas Street, where he fed the hungry and homeless of New Orleans every weekday.
He was 75 and he had been doling out lunches on the second floor of his church for 13 years. He told me how his program began:
He had always wanted to feed the hungry, but he never had the money to do it.
“Then one Sunday I was preaching on faith, and my message to the people was, ‘What are you waiting on?’” he said. “When I left the pulpit, the Lord spoke to me. He said, ‘What are you waiting on?’”
At the evening service, he announced that he was going to start feeding the poor, and the next day the Rev. Bill Brown, founder of Trinity Christian Community, gave him $500 to get started.
“I told him, maybe we’d do about 40 people once a week,” Shelton said. “He asked, ‘Why not twice a week?’”
The first day, 40 people showed up, and by the second day, there were 200.
“Instead of two days, I did five,” Shelton said.
In 13 years, he had served 368,000 meals. He did it with the help of volunteers; donations from individuals, other churches and civic groups; and food purchased through Second Harvest.
He didn’t preach to the people or question their motives or situation. God told him to just give them the two things they needed most.
“I feed them, and I love them,” he said.
When I went to see him in September 2002, he told me he was almost 78 and he was tired. But God wouldn’t let him stop cooking that delicious food.
“I’m up to almost 400,000 meals,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for 16 years.”
And he celebrated that he endured.
In 2004, I wrote about a special meal two of his volunteers donated to his program: steak dinner for 150 homeless people. They’d been doing it for five years. It began with a request Monsignor Doug Doussan made when he celebrated his 40th anniversary as a Catholic priest. He asked his parishioners at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church in Gentilly not to give him personal gifts, but to give a “gift of compassion” to someone truly in need.
Emile Netzhammer and his wife, Anna Belle, thought a steak dinner would be a nice gift for the folks who showed up at Shelton’s dining room. They got the idea from something that happened in 1967, the year the New Orleans Saints came to town.
That summer, with the help of Saint Paul’s School in Covington, the Netzhammers organized a camp for some needy New Orleans families.
“It was families with lots of children, and for $1 a person, they went to Saint Paul’s for a full week of fun,” Netzhammer said.
The Saints had training camp at St. Paul’s that summer, and the family camp started the day training camp ended. There were steaks left over from the Saints’ kitchen, and the chef served them to the families for dinner that night.
“They even had flowers on the table,” Netzhammer said. “It was a surprise, and it was so great to get an unexpected gift.”
So every year on their anniversary, the Kenner couple gave an unexpected gift to the folks who showed up at Restoration Assembly. On that day, there’d be tablecloths and fresh flowers on the tables, and Shelton would sit down with his guests to eat steak “so tender you can cut it with a plastic knife.”
By 2004, he wasn’t sure how many meals he had served. He quit counting at 400,000. When I asked him how long he planned to keep going, he said, “I’ll be 80 years old Dec. 2. Looks like with help from folks like these, I’ll be doing it ’til Jesus comes.”
Unfortunately, Katrina changed those plans. But Katrina didn’t stop Shelton.
He served his last meal the Friday before the hurricane. When he came back to New Orleans after the storm, he found his downstairs kitchen in ruins. All his equipment had been destroyed. But the next time I saw him, he had repaired the big dining area above the church and was putting it to good use: Every week, he welcomed another group of volunteers who came to rebuild the city. Eventually, more than 800 volunteers from all over the country bunked there.
I hadn’t seen Shelton in a while, so I called him a few days ago to catch up. He was at his church, and I was glad to hear that joyful sound in his voice. He said he’s doing well -- “no arthritis, no diabetes, no Alzheimers.” He just walks a little slow.
“Three or four months ago, I told the Lord -- I talk to him like I talk to you -- I told him, ‘I’m getting old,’” he said.
He is 86, but he still drives across the river from his home in Harvey to have services at his church.
“God don’t let his preachers retire, not the real ones like me,” he added, with a laugh.
Shelton’s dining room has been repaired and is air conditioned now, and he’s eager to get back to his mission.
“We could feed people tomorrow if we had a kitchen,” he said.
He has been working with FEMA to get a loan to replace his equipment. He has filled out all the necessary paperwork, and he has all his licenses and records in order. Now, he’s just waiting.
And someday soon he’ll be handing out his tasty meals again.
“The devil in hell ain’t going to stop us,” he said. “I’ve got faith we’re coming back.”
Since the storm, Shelton’s words from the first anniversary of 9/11 have rung truer than ever. I remember how numb and helpless we felt 10 years ago and how long it seemed before anything felt normal again. But I also remember the way ordinary people came together to accomplish extraordinary things after that national tragedy, and after the national tragedy of Katrina. I think about the countless volunteers who showed up after the hurricane and are still coming six years later. I think about Pastor Shelton, opening his doors to them and still determined to get back to his cooking mission at 86.
For all of our shortcomings, there is no other nation like America. And today I will celebrate that we endure. | <urn:uuid:749f4e5b-a91d-438c-b83d-e02cafa5ea56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nola.com/living/index.ssf/2011/09/pastors_words_still_ring_true.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985687 | 1,590 | 1.726563 | 2 |
63 Chrysler turbine car. Chrysler is said to have built 5 prototypes, and 50 “production” cars that they gave to consumers to test and give feedback on how the turbines acted in the field.
When the testing was done all were destroyed but 9 or so, of the them only 6 ran. Given to museums or collectors few are ever seen, I have seen two, one in the Henry Ford Museum and one in the Chrysler Museum. There is video footage on the internet showing some of them being destroyed, I get tears in my eyes watching.
They were destroyed for a couple reasons, mainly because the liability if they got into the wrong hands.
Jay Leno purchased one from the Chrysler museum a few year back $$$$$$$?
They would run on diesel fuel, unleaded gas, kerosene, jet fuel, vegetable oil and tequila. They would wind up to 44,500 rpm. Try that in your big block!!!! | <urn:uuid:f5f6367d-bec7-4397-885c-4a3e7039a547> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://musclecardreaming.tumblr.com/post/40606248426/63-chrysler-turbine-car-chrysler-is-said-to-have | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976723 | 193 | 1.71875 | 2 |
OUTSOURCING RAPID METHODS
A new alternative to bringing a rapid screening system in-house is to partner with a contract analytical lab that offers rapid
detection as a service. With overnight shipping widely available, there's still much to be gained by being able to release
products within two days.
Look for an accredited lab that is certified in current good manufacturing practices. Such labs will understand the demands
of the regulated environment. Ask about their experience with validation services and, if there's a future possibility of
bringing testing in-house, with method transfer. In addition to having a robust rapid screening system, the lab should be
equipped to perform follow-up testing on any samples that test positive.
Some laboratoies are capable of mapping organisms at the genetic level. This strain typing process uses repetitive extragenic
palindromic sequence polymerase chain reaction (rep-PCR) to identify and track organisms. Because it can be used to catalog
any mutations or seasonal changes over time, strain typing can be a significant benefit to facilities plagued by a recurring
ADOPTING RAPID METHODS IN PHARMA
As a growth-based method, AK-amplified bioluminescence has the advantage of being able to test products with a wide range
of physical characteristics. This includes clear, opaque, highly pigmented, acidic, and viscous products, whether filterable
or not. Both AK-amplified and traditional methods rely on batch or lot sampling, enrichment, and incubation. While the traditional
method depends on laboratory technicians visually inspecting hundreds of samples one at a time over multiple days, the rapid
method assays up to 120 samples in about one hour using a light-measuring instrument called a luminometer. Results are objectively
recorded and presented in clear, color-coded tables and graphics, so no "judgment calls" are needed to interpret the results.
Transitioning pharmaceuticals and other regulated products to a rapid release method is straightforward and is, in fact,
encouraged by many global regulatory bodies, including FDA. A contract laboratory with experience in this method should be
able to assist its clients in validating their product or group of products for routine release using a rapid method. This
typically entails side-by-side testing to ensure the rapid method is as sensitive as the traditional method. Once this comparability
protocol is completed and the validation data is submitted, the RMM is effectively implemented.
A good RMM provider may have regulatory compliance expertise on staff, as well as drug master files (DMFs) accepted by FDA.
DMFs include data for specificity, limit of detection, robustness, ruggedness, and equivalence, and can be used to supplement
or streamline the validation of a company's rapid system. This may save significant time in both preparation of regulatory
filings, and in FDA's review and approval process.
Tina Sturgill is senior director of biologcial sicences at Celsis Analytical Services, St. Louis, MO, TSturgill@celsis.com | <urn:uuid:b5f6fc03-3f2d-4c0e-832f-58f8d3a55dcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biopharminternational.com/biopharm/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=718075&sk=&date=&pageID=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930272 | 645 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Merchants (also known as vendors) are the primary source of items and equipment in the world of Fallout, aside from dead enemies. Merchants operate out of either fixed stores or traveling caravans.
Merchants are a main source of items besides scavenging or looting from dead enemies. They usually specialize in a certain area such as weapons and ammunition, food, armor and clothing, etc. but some merchants (often times scavengers or traveling merchants) carry an assortment of all sorts of items.
Interactions with the player character
Some merchants offer medical aid, rent beds, repair equipment, or even sell information (ex. Colin Moriarty). To discover which of these are available, the player needs to interact with each using dialogue choices. Merchants may also give discounts to the player as a result of Karma, or sometimes in return for personal favors.
Effects of player actions
- Killing a merchant gives the player access to the store's wares through a key or directly on the body, but you won't ever be able to buy from the merchant again. | <urn:uuid:ed585f4f-e83c-46f5-a26f-81ab160fbcd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Merchant?oldid=1717190 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941234 | 217 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Phi Sigma Iota, the International Foreign Language Honors Society, was founded in 1922 to recognize outstanding ability and attainments in the study of foreign languages, and to foster the learning of foreign languages and the spirit of liberal culture. The crest at left reads, Philotês, Spoudê, Idiôma, "Friendship, Scholarship, Language" and its motto is "To understand others is to understand oneself, one's culture, and one's heritage." Phi Sigma Iota awards scholarships, fellowships, and grants to students and faculty to complete scholarly programs in foreign languages, literatures, and cultures.
Induction into ECU's Sigma Upsilon Chapter, established in 1969, represents our highest academic honor in the field of foreign languages. Students must be juniors or seniors majoring or minoring in a foreign language discipline, possess a minimum 3.0 GPA in foreign language courses and 3.0 overall.
Membership: Initiation into the Sigma Upsilon chapter is $45. The fee includes a three-year membership in the international honor society as well as six issues of the society's journal, The Forum. Additional benefits of membership and details are available on the Phi Sigma Iota Homepage. New members are inducted in the fall and in the spring and are recognized at the departmental awards ceremony. For more information, contact Dr. Frédéric Fladenmuller (firstname.lastname@example.org). | <urn:uuid:8c14c21c-846b-47d5-8180-a4a706d91718> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/foreign/scholarships.cfm?RenderForPrint=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937942 | 302 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Thanksgiving brings a home for Washington woman
Karen Mansfield / Observer-Reporter
Dawn Bennett holds the keys to the new home she purchased through Habitat for Humanity. Bennett became a first-time homeowner at a dedication ceremony Tuesday.
Dawn Bennett stands in the kitchen of her new home. Bennett partnered with Habitat for Humanity to purchase the home.
Karen Mansfield / Observer-Reporter
Order a Print
F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives.
Fitzgerald never met Dawn Bennett, a former drug addict who fought hard to kick her habit and now counsels Washington County women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.
This Thanksgiving, Bennett has much to be grateful for: a loving family and boyfriend, a fulfilling job and, thanks to Washington County Habitat for Humanity, the Washington community and Bennett’s work ethic, a house.
Bennett became a homeowner when Tony Gacek, Habitat for Humanity executive director, handed her the keys at a Tuesday dedication held at her new home on Arch Street.
Bennett’s house is the 48th home Habitat for Humanity has completed in Washington County, and the organization worked hard to make sure it was finished in time for the holiday.
“I’m amazed that my journey in Washington has brought me to this point,” said Bennett, who has stayed clean for 8 ½ years. “All the pain and misery I went through in my addiction is for the positive because I can help another woman. I can give her hope that she can have a good life and to stay clean and sober. All of your dreams and goals are achievable if you stay clean and sober.”
One of Bennett’s dreams was to own a home. That seemed impossible more than a decade ago, when Bennett was hooked on heroin, Xanax, prescription painkillers and alcohol.
A Beechview native, she started smoking marijuana and drinking as a teenager, and spent several years in and out of rehabilation centers.
She was married and working in a beauty salon when she became a victim of physical and emotional abuse, so she left, taking only her clothes.
To support her habit, Bennett would steal clothes from retail stores and sell them to her friends for half price.
“It was really bad. I lost everything and ended up living in my parents’ basement,” said Bennett, 45. “I had nothing. My dad would cry to my sisters and he’d say he was going to bury me. My family finally said they couldn’t watch me kill myself, and I had nowhere to go.”
In 2004, she ended up at Avis Arbor women’s shelter, the Washington City Mission’s haven for homeless women, for five months and successfully completed a drug addiction program. Bennett wanted to help others who were fighting with addiction, so began working with women there. She moved into the one-bedroom apartment she has lived in until she partnered with Habitat, and the former hairdresser now works in the drug and alcohol recovery field.
“I had reached a crossroads when I went to Avis Arbor. They’re faith-based, and that was important. I couldn’t be where I am today without God and the recovery program,” said Bennett, who attends Victory Church, a nondenominational church in Washington. “I’ve met good people.”
Among those good people are the volunteers at Habitat for Humanity, which Bennett heard about from a friend who had worked with the organization to earn a home.
Bennett partnered with Habitat for three years and worked side by side with Habitat staff and volunteers to build her home.
“She’s really a hard worker. She took part in every phase of building this house and all of the guys like her a lot,” said Matt Simon, a member of Ben’s Men, a volunteer group from St. Benedict the Abbott Church in Peters Township, which worked on the house once a week. “It’s very satisfying to see her become a homeowner.”
Habitat builds simple, affordable homes for its partner families using volunteer workers and monetary and material donations. Habitat sells the homes to the families at cost, with a zero percent interest mortgage, and uses the revenues to support more Habitat homes.
For Bennett’s home, Washington Slovenian Savings & Loan donated the property. Also participating in the build were Washington Financial, Peacock Keller, Washington County Redevelopment Authority, Joe Sistek, McMurray Cooling & Heating, Sykes-Scholtz & Collins, Ben’s Men, and other groups and individuals.
Mary Ann Simon, a Habitat volunteer and Bennett’s family partner, helped Bennett through the building process, including financial management classes.
“Dawn is an exceptional woman. She is sensitive and intelligent,” said Simon. “She can get frustrated, but she knows how to deal with frustration. Prayer is an important part of her life. She is going to make many happy memories in this home.”
Bennett will spend this Thanksgiving with her family, and move into her home – with her cat, Precious - over the next several days. One of the first items she plans to buy is a Christmas tree.
“It’s going to be a beautiful holiday.” Said Bennett. “I’m so excited about Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s going to be one to remember. The biggest dream I have for this house is having family and friends coming to visit and spending time. I want to plant a garden in the back yard and plant lots of flowers. God is good.”
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Route 40 festival marked with nostalgia (146) | <urn:uuid:da18fc2d-0c3f-440b-b346-5443d35134ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.observer-reporter.com/article/20121121/NEWS01/121129795/0/LIFESTYLES04 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962799 | 1,354 | 1.570313 | 2 |
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