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WHAT IS STRIVE?
Strive for College is a new approach to correcting the inequalities of college access. Strive recruits undergraduate student mentors from local universities to guide low-income high school students through the process of applying to, enrolling in and paying for four-year colleges and universities. We are a national organization with chapters across the country. | <urn:uuid:6d6c5fa1-6cc3-4e1b-849d-4b729fb29a29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.striveforcollege.org/contact/contact.html | 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 | 0.940098 | 104 | 1.578125 | 2 |
A few weeks ago, the pollsters for NBC and The Wall Street Journal asked this question:
"If thousands of immigrants in the U.S. do not show up for work on May 1 in protest of immigration policy, do you think this will do more to help their cause, do more to hurt their cause, or have no real effect either way?" Fifty-seven percent said it would hurt their cause. Only 17 percent said it would help.
But that point is being roundly and deliberately ignored by the national media. Tossed and turned by internal diversity police who demand a greater minority presence and minority consciousness in the newsrooms, those who report the "news" are doing their level best to ensure that the protesters for "immigrant rights" get the best possible publicity boost.
So when the May 1 boycott and protests occurred, it was just another syrupy, sugary turn for the pro-illegal alien media. The Big Three network evening news shows all led Monday night with multiple favorable stories about the day of protests and shutdowns by those who would legalize their criminal behavior.
ABC's Elizabeth Vargas led off with pom-poms shaking: "We begin with an economic show of force by America's illegal immigrants ... altogether, close to a million people took to the streets in more than 30 cities. And that number could still rise. It was the newest wave of protests against legislation that would increase the penalties for being in the U.S. illegally."
Bob Schieffer opened the CBS newscast by touting: "From coast to coast, from north to south, they wanted us to know what America would be like without them, and so millions of immigrants missed work, skipped school and marched in the streets. They want America to find a place for those who came here illegally."
Over on the "NBC Nightly News," which put no less than six reporters on the story in six different cities across America, Brian Williams heralded: "Stores closed as workers headed out the door, and live television covered it all, all day long. We have comprehensive coverage tonight from coast to coast."
In short, the networks were nothing less than stenographers to protest, because they don't see it as their role to question the demonstrators, only to celebrate them. Show me one example -- one example in the past 30 years -- where anyone in the national news media has accorded the same courtesy to the tens of thousands who annually protest the horror of abortion.
And if the media's job is simply to report without prejudice, then what of the views of the vast majority of Americans, outraged by the sight of illegal aliens demanding "rights" from the government they refuse to obey?
The language gets all mangled in these stories. Tuesday morning, NBC's Kevin Tibbles actually referred to illegal aliens with this P.C. gibberish: The protests were for "those who critics call illegals." If you came into America without going through a legal process, you are here illegally. But minority-journalist groups are actually demanding that the press drop the I-word. Ivan Roman of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists says this word gives the "implication of something criminal or worthy of nothing but suspicion. That helps to predetermine the credibility or respect given to one of the protagonists of this debate, which is not conducive to good journalism."
Isn't it odd that our liberal media run around in horrified circles about "illegal wiretaps" or "illegal leaks" of Valerie Plame's name, but when it comes to immigration, illegal aliens are just patriotic folks exercising their free speech, devoid of controversy?
The media insist the controversy is not over the protesters, it's over Congress for failing to accede to the illegal-alien lobby's demands. On CBS, morning show host Hannah Storm pressed Sen. Bill Frist: "Monday, over one million immigrants skipped work and skipped school and marched in streets across America. What is it going to take, Senator, for Congress to come together and institute some meaningful immigration reform?"
"Meaningful immigration reform" simply means amnesty for illegal aliens, and encouraging more illegal immigration in the future. These people seem to have no finger on the pulse of average Americans, who don't like illegal-alien cheaters having the audacity to first come into the country illegally, and then demand their "rights."
Reporters don't ask the question: Doesn't the rally present a terrific opportunity to round up and arrest illegal aliens for deportation? (More public opinion ignored: MSNBC made this their unscientific online poll question, and two-thirds said yes.) Don't the businesses shutting down for the rally suggest terrific targets for immigration enforcement visits? Couldn't some reporter somewhere ask of our political leaders, "What's it going to take, Senator, for Congress to come together and institute some meaningful immigration enforcement?"
Fox News' Roger Ailes: Administration's Excuses Won't Work, Americans Died For Press Freedom | Katie Pavlich | <urn:uuid:54944535-6cbb-4984-ad5d-95afc2a7cb56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2006/05/03/the_pro-illegal_alien_media/page/full/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959055 | 1,019 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Newly added to Connecticut Vital Records to 1870 (The Barbour Collection): Norwalk (1651–1850), Norwich (1847–1851), Stamford (1652–1852) and Stratford (1639 –1840) birth, marriage, and death records.
Compiled from an original Lucius Barnes Barbour typescript in the NEHGS special collections, this database currently contains records for the towns of Fairfield, Farmington, Greenwich, Guilford, Hartford, Middletown, Milford, New London, Norwalk, Norwich, Saybrook, Stamford, Stratford, Stonington, Wethersfield, and Windsor.
The complete Barbour collection contains information on 137 Connecticut towns. The remaining towns will be added to the database over the next year.
This collection contains records of marriages, births, and deaths in Connecticut towns from the 1640s to about 1850, some towns include records up to 1870. These records were collected, transcribed, and abstracted by Lucius Barnes Barbour (Connecticut Examiner of Public Records, 1911–1934) and his team of researchers between 1918 and 1928.
Mr. Barbour became a member of NEHGS in 1907, in which capacity he remained until his death in 1934. This set of typescripts was donated to NEHGS by Mr. Barbour's wife and children in 1938. Search Connecticut Vital Records to 1870 | <urn:uuid:b1631235-8049-4498-b624-46697bdd707b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanancestors.org/Blogs.aspx?blogmonth=11&blogyear=2011&blogid=124069 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938125 | 293 | 1.78125 | 2 |
This year marks the sixth anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death and the end of a seven-year legal battle over her end-of-life care. In the absence of any documentation outlining this 41-year-old woman’s wishes concerning her own health-care treatment, her family — and ultimately the court — was left to decide for her.
Countless families across the country have found themselves in similar situations, burdened with making difficult end-of-life health-care decisions for loved ones of all ages. Much of this could be prevented if people let their loved ones know their wishes in an advance directive, also known as a “living will” or health-care power of attorney.
This Saturday, April 16, Santa Barbara will join the rest of the country in celebrating National Healthcare Decisions Day. The annual observance is aimed at increasing the number of Americans who have completed an advance directive in which they name the person who will make medical decisions for them in the event they are seriously ill and can’t speak for themselves.
“It’s understandable that people would put off discussing the topic of serious illness and death, but it’s essential to have this family conversation in advance,” said Lynda Tanner, president and chief executive officer of Visiting Nurse & Hospice Care, which encourages patients and families to have a conversation about end-of-life decisions before it’s too late.
“It’s a discussion that should take place in the living room, not in the hospital waiting room when a patient is no longer in a position to make decisions on their own.”
To help patients and families navigate the end-of-life care decision-making process, VNHC uses Aging with Dignity’s Five Wishes® advance directive program, America’s most popular living will with more than 14 million copies in national circulation. The 12-page document is easy to use and deals with personal, family and spiritual matters in addition to medical and legal concerns.
“The Five Wishes booklet was given to our daughter by the Palliative Care team at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital,” said a patient from Santa Ynez. “It was a tremendous help to confirm what her wishes were in terms of care and comfort measures as she went onto hospice care. It was invaluable for us as a family to discuss some sensitive areas as well as joyful for the opportunity to share with each other how she would want to be remembered.”
To receive a copy of the Five Wishes advance directive booklet, call VNHC at 805.965.5555, or click here to create your own advance directive online.
— Greg Rogers is the communications officer for Visiting Nurse & Hospice Care. | <urn:uuid:50cb4dff-901f-421c-99ca-838c1a31f921> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.noozhawk.com/article/041511_advance_directives_what_are_your_health_care_wishes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960087 | 582 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Travis Taft here with another edition of Total Access, where I provide unfiltered insight into my perspective as a disabled gamer. From my very first article here at AbleGamers I have been preaching the virtues of games that allow for the player to customize the gameplay experience, whether through adjustments to the rules in play or through changes to the controller and its settings. But this week I’d like to celebrate those games which go beyond letting the player tweak details and into full-on player-created content.
There are many instances of this theme throughout gaming history. Though I’m not sure which game was the first to allow for fan generated content, I can say that the first time I personally encountered it as on a game called Load Runner which allowed for the creation of levels to play. Since then, other games allowed for the creation of more than just maps and let players create entirely new items or abilities. Just last week I wrote about the Creatures franchise, which traditionally had a strong community based around the creation of new in-game toys or entirely new breeds of creatures.
Modern games allow for much more creation from the gamers. One modern example of a game that is known for a plethora of user-generated content is Bethesda Studios’ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bethesda gave players the power to do everything from change unit models to creating new powers to implementing different leveling systems. When players buy Skyrim, the included campaign is only one incarnation of the game they now own. New fan content can be found right from the Steam game client just like any brand new title they would want to get. And if you still really can't get the game exactly how you think it should work, with a little programming and one of the many tutorials online there's a good chance that there is a way to bring your ideal vision into reality.
Another game with a notable fan-generated segment is Portal 2. Although similar to Skyrim in that they are both top sellers on Steam's service with fan made content readily available, Portal 2 does something a bit more unique with user generated content. In a move that works perfectly with Portal’s quirky style, puzzles created by fans are treated as existing in parallel dimensions to the main game and the players making the levels are spoken of as workers for the facility’s development crew. This way whatever absurd scenarios the gamers create can still be acknowledged within the game’s story but still not interfere with the designers’ primary vision.
Finally, there are games that are really little more than just building tools for the gamers to play with. One example that is popular right now is Minecraft, which does have a survival mode but is better known for its “Creative” mode which allows players to customize their world as they see fit – as long as they have the patience to get it just right. Another prime example is the Playstation 3 hit LittleBigPlanet (LBP). Although I have yet to play LBP or its sequels first hand, I have seen some of the things that can be done with the game. LBP comes preloaded with a variety of old school platformer-style levels ready to play, but the main draw is using the level editor to create these levels yourself.
In my opinion, the most impressive results of these building games are the ones where players take the mechanics made available and use them to design something totally unexpected. I could write and entire article on some of those projects, but there is plenty of readily available information out there already so I’ll avoid being redundant. But to give some sense of the scope of things out there, I have seen Galaga style shooters made from LBP and accurate scale globes of the Earth made in Minecraft. When Starcraft 2 was released, it came with a level editor powerful and versatile enough to make everything from third-person shooters to kart racers, with plenty of other interesting creations in between.
While I personally think that games should make sure to include solid ready-to-play content and shouldn’t just be building grounds for the player to mess around in, I must say that I am thrilled by the ability to use these tools without any particular special knowledge, since many of these games make the creation process as user-friendly as possible. Thanks to this, a player (such as myself) can use their creativity to make unique puzzles and other content without spending years learning programming and designing a game from the ground up.
So, fellow AbleGamers, have any of you ever designed your own content? I’d love to see an informal contest for best disability-themed game mod. Perhaps a Skyrim mod with a wheelchair-bound hero who can only navigate designated paths and has trouble with stairs? Or an amputee character who can only use one arm? There’s tons of potential out there, it’s just a matter of tapping into and activating it. | <urn:uuid:921a117c-213a-4fc5-ab47-03226cc695ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ablegamers.com/Disabled-Gamers-General-News/total-access-the-content-is-king.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969965 | 999 | 1.65625 | 2 |
By James Herron
OPEC appears to be aiming for an amiable agreement about oil production at its meeting in Vienna on December 14, but treacherous markets mean the foundations for such a consensus will be shaky.
Oil supply and demand appear to be fairly well balanced right now. Several OPEC officials have recently expressed contentment about the level of prices. These should be conducive circumstances for a consensus, which is all the more important now after the group’s failure to reach any agreement on oil production at its last meeting in June.
Bill Farren-Price, head of consultancy Petroleum Policy Intelligence said in a report:
“Ministers are agreed that failure to reach an agreement in December would damage OPEC’s credibility and there is a universal desire to make progress. The debate can be expected to be more diplomatic in tone…[but] there are still areas of disagreement.”
The December meeting will be taking place on dangerously shifting sands–rapid changes in oil production in Libya; tremendous uncertainty over the state of the world economy; and escalating political tensions between Iran and the West.
Any of these constantly changing situations could cause a rift.
Just a week ago OPEC officials were all but ruling out any change to oil production levels at the next meeting, but the increasingly speedy return of Libyan oil production has forced a rethink. Every major oil field in Libya is now back online and analysts are having to revise up their production forecasts repeatedly.
Libya, and other expanding countries like Iraq, the U.S., Canada and Brazil, will be pumping their extra barrels into a faltering economy. If there is a double-dip recession, OPEC could suddenly find itself producing oil the world doesn’t need, said Morgan Stanley analyst Hussein Allidina in a note to clients.
If oil demand slows considerably and, “OPEC was to leave production at current levels, inventories would balloon through the first half of 2012,” Mr. Allidina said. “Consequently, [Brent crude] prices may fall well below our full year average of $100 a barrel.”
Many OPEC members in the Middle East and North Africa, who are estimated to need oil prices of around $95 a barrel to balance their budgets, do not want to see this happen.
But there is of course no certainty the global economy will shrink next year. If it continues to grow, albeit more slowly, Goldman Sachs says the world will need as much oil as OPEC can produce.
GS analysts said in a note:
“We continue to expect that oil demand will grow well in excess of production capacity growth. In our view, it is only a matter of time before inventories and OPEC spare capacity become effectively exhausted, requiring higher oil prices.”
The International Energy Agency, which represents major energy-importing developed economies, continues to warn of the danger of much higher oil prices.
Questions of supply and demand look relatively simple compared to the tensions between Iran and the West. Following fresh warnings about Iran’s nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Europe is discussing an outright ban on imports of Iranian crude.
How OPEC would respond to such a ban is unlikely to be on the official agenda in Vienna, but it will simmer under the surface and has potential to stoke further tensions between Iran and western-leaning Gulf states like Saudi Arabia. | <urn:uuid:1ea41fa8-18d1-4fe7-8ef6-e099495ef2c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2011/12/01/treacherous-economy-will-hinder-opecs-quest-for-consensus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958996 | 692 | 1.8125 | 2 |
In case you don’t know, Alan Aragon is a popular expert on nutrition in general, and sports nutrition, in particular. I’ve seen several of Alan’s articles over the years on various internet sites (including one I mentioned in a recent post on How Many Meals A Day Should You Eat) and have always been impressed with his evidence-based approach. Recently I became aware that he publishes a monthly e-zine called, not surprisingly, Alan Aragon’s Research Review (AARR). I subsequently received a copy of the latest issue of AARR, for reasons which I will describe shortly. After reading through the publication, I thought I would share my views on it.
According to Alan’s website, AARR is “is an unbiased monthly critical analysis and application of the latest research pertaining to nutrition, exercise, and supplementation. This journal is designed to help the reader develop a solid understanding of important topics in fitness that are widely misunderstood. Overall, the goal is to provide a unique science & practice-based, multi-topic, bias-free, commercial-free, in-depth, ongoing resource of information.” Pretty lofty goals. Question is, does it deliver as promised?
Each issue of AARR apparently follows a similar format. It begins with an “Editors Cut.” Here Alan dissects a recently published peer-reviewed article. It is an in depth critical analysis where the respective article’s strengths and weaknesses are discussed at length (spanning several pages). The segment concludes with Alan providing his opinion of the article’s validity as well as commenting on any relevant practical applications. Alan is frank in his analysis; he says what he feels.
Of note, the subject of “Editors Cut” in the issue I received was actually an article of mine, recently published in the Strength and Conditioning Journal. He was nice enough to send along a copy so I could see his commentary on my article. He invited me to submit a rebuttal to his criticisms, if I so desired. I did. The gesture was appreciated.
Next up are several shorter reviews of published articles (usually one page in length). These reviews are segmented into three categories: Nutrition and Exercise, Supplementation, and a “Less Recent Gem” which, as the name implies, looks at an article published in the distant past. Although Alan does not go into the detail that he does in the “Editors Cut” section, the reviews are nevertheless quite detailed. He delves into the strengths and weaknesses of each study and makes practical applications where relevant.
The last article in AARR is called “In the Lay Press.” This segment evaluates a non-refereed consumer-oriented article with the same scrutiny afforded peer-reviewed publications. This is especially apt given the pomp and hype surrounding so many articles appearing on the web and in the muscle rags. Given the lack of peer-review in these articles, there is a lot more for Alan to pick apart…and he does so without pulling any punches.
What is my overall impression of AARR? Plain and simple, it’s one of the most definitive resources on nutrition that I’ve seen. Alan is extremely knowledgeable about the subject and obviously keeps up with current research (which sadly is rare, even amongst many nutritional professors). What’s more, Alan understands how to critically evaluate research studies with respect to internal and external validity, providing appropriate recommendations on their relevance. Just as importantly, he provides information in a completely unbiased manner without allegiances to any food or supplement industry companies (as is the case with many so-called “experts in the field). The content is good, the writing is good, and the recommendations are solid. It’s a winning combination.
As for my article, his review was very balanced and fair. He actually pointed out several things that, in retrospect, I should have clarified to a greater extent. It would have strengthened the article. I could have quibbled over a few of his criticisms, but these would have debatable points. Most importantly, I learned from the experience, which is what science is all about.
In conclusion, I would highly recommend AARR for anyone who wants the straight facts about nutrition, particularly as it relates to those involved in exercise programs. You can view a sample copy here and see for yourself if it is worth the investment.
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with AARR and, as is my policy, receive no compensation of any kind from its sale or proceeds. | <urn:uuid:47c4cef5-928d-4db7-a768-f58201aafe69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://workout911.com/?p=3068 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969044 | 948 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The Politics of Gun Control: Christie Aims for the Center
- Credit: Governor's Office/Tim Larsen
Gov. Chris Christie took a middle road on gun control yesterday that continued his reelection makeover as an apostle of bipartisanship who is “above politics,” as a reasonable alternative to the Republican Right, and as a forceful but compassionate leader willing to take on the powers that be even within his own party.
One day after President Obama called for a national ban on military-style assault weapons that contain magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition and universal background checks for gun purchasers, Christie unveiled what he calls his antiviolence strategy.
Noting that New Jersey’s gun laws are the second most restrictive in the nation, after California, Christie said he is creating a bipartisan task force to study the broader issue of violence. Christie asked the commission to come back with recommendations not just on gun control, but on a broader “antiviolence” agenda that includes how to promote school safety, limit violent video games, and address the substance abuse and mental health problems that can lead to mass killings like the Sandy Hill Elementary School shootings in Connecticut.
Christie, who has future national ambitions as well as a gubernatorial reelection campaign this year, has seen his poll numbers soar both locally and across the country since he embraced the Obama administration and chastised Republican House leaders over their actions after Hurricane Sandy. He continued in that vein Wednesday by leveling a sharp-tongued attack on the National Rifle Association for its “reprehensible” ad suggesting that Obama could afford to oppose armed guards in schools because his children have armed Secret Service protection.
Former Democratic Gov. James J. Florio said Christie’s middle-of-the-road agenda is shaped by the awareness that public sentiment in New Jersey is even more strongly in favor of gun control today than it was when Florio championed his groundbreaking assault weapons ban in 1990. In fact, a Fairleigh Dickinson University Poll found that more than three-quarters of New Jersey's registered voters favor greater restrictions on both high-powered guns and high-capacity ammunition clips.
Florio, who received the “Profiles in Courage Award” from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government for his efforts on gun control, noted that it took a coalition of religious leaders, the healthcare community, police and educators – and a flood of calls from moderate Republican women -- to convince a Legislature with veto-proof two-thirds Republican majorities not to strike down the assault weapons ban in 1992.
In deference to the Second Amendment conservatives who make up a sizable bloc of the Republican electorate, Christie refused to comment on Obama’s gun proposals -- even though, as a former U.S. Attorney, he is on record favoring continuation of New Jersey’s 22-year-old assault weapons ban. He said he would await recommendations from his New Jersey SAFE task force headed by two former state attorney-generals -- one Democrat and one Republican -- before devising new policies for New Jersey.
Do the Right Thing
“There are no predetermined outcomes. They will come to me with the best ideas they can find,” said Christie, who promised that he would “try and figure out what the right thing to do is.”
“I’m not worried about anybody on any side of this argument. I’m not worried about the NRA. I’m not worried about the Brady Campaign against gun violence. Or Gabrielle Gifford's. Or any of the other people who are very vulnerable on all sides of this issue.”
Christie’s approach to the gun-control issue infuriated Democratic legislative leaders and gun-control advocates, who regarded the 60-day study commission as an excuse for Christie to put off taking potentially unpopular positions on what has been a major hot-button issue since the governor was an unknown Morris County freeholder more than two decades ago.
“Leaders lead,” asserted Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex), who has been emphasizing gun-control issues in her campaign for the Democratic nomination to run against Christie in November.
“We do not need more talk. We need action,” agreed Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver. Democrats in the state Legislature have already introduced a number of bills to tighten New Jersey’s gun laws. “The Assembly will soon be advancing a wide-ranging and responsible package touching upon gun and ammunition safety, mental health care, school security, gun trafficking and other concerns.”
Florio said it was possible that the task force could come up with a serious package of proposals. He praised the selection of former Attorneys General John Degnan and Peter Verniero to head Christie’s task force, and said he would be watching to see if the governor took their recommendations seriously.
“The NRA counts on the public becoming disengaged and uninformed while they try to run out the clock” after a tragedy like the Sandy Hill Elementary School massacre, said Florio.
“Governor Christie really hasn’t taken a whole lot of positions on this issue,” Florio said. “For a lot of us concerned about the positions he might take, that’s a very good thing. He hasn’t done anything bad, so that’s good.”
Florio said he was particularly enthusiastic about Obama’s call for universal background checks for all gun purchasers. “Under the current system, a person who gets turned away at the airport because he’s on the terrorist watch list can buy an assault weapon at a gun show,” he said.
In addition to Degnan, the Attorney General under Democratic Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, and Verniero, who served as both Attorney General and Supreme Court associate justice under Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, the New Jersey SAFE Task Force will include Manuel Guantez, chief executive officer for Turning Point in Paterson, a substance-abuse treatment facility; James Romer, director of services at Monmouth Medical Center; Evelyn Sullivan, managing director of the Daytop New Jersey treatment facility in Pittsgrove; and Brian Zychowski, superintendent of the North Brunswick school district.
“If we are truly going to take an honest and candid assessment of violence and public safety, we have to look more deeply at the underlying causes of many acts of violence,” Christie said yesterday. “That means removing the stigma and evaluating issues of mental health, addiction, prevention and treatment services alongside the effectiveness of our firearms laws, enforcement mechanisms, and our school-safety measures.”
The SAFE Task Force, Christie said, would look at issues surrounding guns, addiction, mental health, violence in our cultural products and school safety. He said the task force would look at New Jersey laws, as well as new laws passed this week in New York and elsewhere, and would hold public hearings before issuing its report within 60 days.
“We are taking a holistic, balanced, well-formed approach to address the underlying causes,” the governor said “We have a problem with violence in society,” he said. “It is not confined to one thing that causes it. If we focus on calling this gun control, we are missing out. We have to focus on violence control.”
Nicola Bocour, project director for the Coalition for Peace Action’s Ceasefire New Jersey project, said that the creation of the task force was an important step, but that it was important to recognize that it is gun violence that needs to be addressed.
“This all stems from a conversation on gun violence,” she said. “As state’s leading gun violence prevention organization, it is disappointing that he did not consult with us or any other gun violence organization” before setting up the task force.
Bocour said Ceasefire New Jersey would reach out to the task force and offer its expertise and raise its concerns. She also praised the governor for acknowledging that “we have strong gun laws and that they have made the state a safer place,” but she said there are significant holes that must be plugged.
“Dealing with the current laws in New Jersey is important, but a lot of this conversation should be about what new laws and what new policies should be put in place that will strengthen gun violence prevention.”
She added that the organization hopes that the task force will look at the issue of the 50-caliber rifle – the so-called sniper rifle.
“While we may have a federal assault weapons ban coming,” she said, “we need to ban the 50-caliber rifle. That is designed for military use and has no use in the protection of the home or for hunting,” Bocour said.
She was critical of the 60-day timetable, saying that it took the federal panel less than a month to issue its recommendations.
“We saw the speediness with which Vice President Biden presented his report,” she said. “We think 60 days is too long a period of time to be willing to wait before you are willing to say you are going to take some action.”
Public Health Crisis
Even as the governor was announcing the creation of his task force, Sens. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) and Shirley Turner (D-Mercer) announced that Senate Bill 2430, which declares violence a public health crisis and would create a commission to study its causes and effects, would be the subject of a Senate Law and Public Safety Committee hearing January 28.
“This is about taking a multipronged approach to reducing violence in New Jersey,” Lesniak said. “Whether it’s providing greater access to mental health treatment, leveraging federal funds from the CDC, or advocating on behalf of stricter gun controls along the lines of what President Obama announced yesterday. It’s past time that we incorporate a proactive, comprehensive strategy to keep New Jersey residents safe.”
Christie was not asked about the legislative efforts – eight bills and four resolutions have been introduced in the state Legislature dealing with the regulation of ammunition and gun registration in the past two weeks. And he refused to comment on Obama’s proposals. He said that it was the role of Congress and the president to develop federal gun policy. He said that his responsibility was to ensure the safety of New Jersey citizens.
Christie added that it was important to address the issues surrounding guns and gun violence in a deliberative fashion.
“We cannot and should not let our emotions guide our actions,” the governor said. “Now is not the time for empty rhetoric and the demands of the 24-hour news cycle. This issue is very personal for many people at many levels and our job is to make sure our emotions do not interfere with our work.”
Hank Kalet is a veteran journalist and editor who has covered economic issues, government, and entertainment in central New Jersey for more than two decades. | <urn:uuid:4980cc91-c7dc-40ea-979d-4f1d9eb245ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/01/18/the-politics-of-gun-control-christie-aims-for-the-center/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967272 | 2,311 | 1.601563 | 2 |
I was actually surprised to discover that conservative right wingers took the time to search through the latest wikileaks Iraq War documents. Instead of being horrified at the loss of civilian life (now thanks to these documents is considered much higher then W Bush admitted) they found a gem they could rally around. That’s right, there were WMDs in Iraq and the main stream media did nothing to report it. Another “Liberal Lie” bites the dust.
While the invasion of Iraq didn’t find huge stockpiles of new WMDs, it did uncover stockpiles that the UN had demanded destroyed as a condition of the 1991 truce that Saddam Hussein abrogated for twelve years
To my shock even Wired is running the story that wikileaks unearthed WMDs They should at the very least know better.
While the Right wing has somehow discovered the internet for the first time, what they still haven’t found is Google. You see, I actually remember it being reported in independent news that these caches of old Mustard Gas had been found. The reason the main stream media never picked up on it? because George Bush Senior sold him the Mustard Gas and the turned a blind eye towards Saddam using these on his own people (especially the Kurds in 1991). It would have been embarrassing to have to explain where this mustard gas originally came from.
Going to google and searching for Mustard Gas Iraq finds the following News Stories:
Fox News Story from May 17 2004 Which includes this gem
It also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news; they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.
If the Bush Administration had found WMDs, why would it be classified instead of them shouting it from the roofs?
However, the find of a small amount of mortar shells is unlikely to satisfy a growing chorus of criticism that the much-touted weapons of mass destruction either never existed or were destroyed years ago. The Danish team has found only 36 mortar rounds buried in desert about 45 miles from Al Amarah, a southern town. But it added that up to a 100 more could still be hidden at the location. The rounds were in plastic bags and some were leaking. It seems they had been buried for at least 10 years.
That’s quite the imminent threat to American Security!
A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions “in such a degraded state they couldn’t be used for what they are designed for.”
The official, who asked not to be identified, said most were 155 millimeter artillery projectiles with mustard gas or sarin of varying degrees of potency.
Once again, not exactly the threat we were told of before the war.
Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration cited evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found.
So it appears that Operation Iraqi Freedom actually INCREASED the number of labs producing Mustard gas in Iraq.
The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center’s commander said here today.
“These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes … they do constitute weapons of mass destruction,” Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.
The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.
Rumsfeld said Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told him about the find when they met earlier this week at a NATO summit in Istanbul.
“He pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across — I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 — warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas,” Rumsfeld told Newradio 600 KOGO of San Diego, California, in an interview aired Wednesday.
Even the Poles knew about the Mustard Gas!
Look, it doesn’t take that much work to go to Google and type in Mustard Gas Iraq. If you are going to start tooting your horn about there being “WMDs in Iraq” then your going to have to find something better then this. Saddam was never going to use this stuff to attack America. For the most part it seems quite possible that poor bookkeeping had more to do with these handful of Mustard shells here and there still being around. In about ten minutes I found six articles from 2004 and 2006 which were published at the time. There is no claiming that the “Main Stream Media” swept this story under the rug. Please next time do a little research before you celebrate proving the “Liberal Lie” wrong. | <urn:uuid:d1f313dd-2849-4d86-88e8-81696998245b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paperstreetbrigade.com/blog/?p=16071 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975239 | 1,030 | 1.726563 | 2 |
5 Common and Very Avoidable ‘Business Casual’ Mistakes
Business casual: the dress code that makes you happy you don’t have to wear a tie or pantyhose, but otherwise confuses the khaki out of you.
Whether it’s your first job, a new company, or you just aren’t sure what’s best at the office you’ve worked for years, “business casual” is a phrase that means different things to different people in different offices and can really affect your standing with management and clients.
Even if your company’s overall dress policy is business casual, or you have casual Fridays, that doesn’t give you license to show up looking like you just got out of bed for your Lit 101 class. There are a lot of common business casual pitfalls that await you in the workplace, but they’re all very avoidable.
Of course, the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to your company’s business casual policy is to not know what it is. Most often, when an organization calls for business casual, they only mean a step down from formal business attire. Make sure you read your employee handbook and have a firm idea of what is and isn’t acceptable to wear to work. And if you have questions, ask someone. Don’t let it turn into something that becomes a disciplinary issue.
But you should be dressing beyond the dress code. If you dress better, you’ll do better work and you’ll stand out more on your team. Business casual doesn’t have to be confusing or cost you promotions, sales or pay raises—as long as you don’t make these five basic mistakes:
No Business, All Casual
There are two words in the phrase “business casual.” What you need to remember is that you should focus on the “business” part of your wardrobe more than the “casual” part. Casual work clothes are not the same as casual social clothes. The things you wear when you’re out with your friends are most likely not the things you should wear to your job.
For example, if your company allows you to wear jeans—which many don’t, except on special casual days—you still have to choose the right kind of jeans. The jeans you wear to work shouldn’t have rips or holes, they shouldn’t be faded or worn (especially in awkward places), and they shouldn’t be jeans you picked up off your floor or from the bottom of the hamper. You should stick to clean, dark jeans that look dressier than the casual jeans you wear at home. And if you’re wearing jeans, you still need to leave the T-shirt at home. Wearing T-shirts with logos (other than your company’s) or wacky messages is a very common business casual mistake.
Day Job but Night Club
Another business casual trap a lot of people fall into is dressing too sexy for work. Women seem to struggle with this more than men, but the rule applies to all. There are only a few jobs where dressing with sex appeal in mind is actually helpful, and you probably don’t have one. Ladies, you shouldn’t be wearing mini skirts or blouses that show a lot of cleavage. You don’t have to show up to work looking like a nun, but you should keep on the conservative side of the line. Watch the hemlines of your skirts and necklines of your blouses.
Men need to watch their necklines, too. Showing off chest hair isn’t the way to make an impression at work. And both men and women need to make sure their business casual work clothes aren’t too tight. The workplace is not the proper arena for showing off how toned you are. Dressing too sexy at work sends absolutely the wrong message. You want to be respected for your contributions, not your ability to pose for a calendar.
Slob With a Job
A very easy business casual mistake for anyone is to show up to work looking sloppy. Just because you’re allowed to wear jeans on a Friday doesn’t mean those jeans should be wrinkled and/or stained. If you want to be someone who’s considered an asset to the organization, you need to dress like you care about how you look and how the company looks. You also need to show that you can pay attention to details. Wear a belt and make sure it matches. Add some jewelry, but nothing showy or distracting. Iron your clothes. If you look like you’ve been sleeping, your boss will assume that’s what you do on the job.
Right Desk, Wrong Shoes
They’re down by the floor, but don’t be fooled into thinking no one notices your shoes. Shoes are a big part of dressing appropriately for work, and they are often something that trip people up when trying to abide by a business casual dress code. First of all, leave the old, worn (and probably super-comfy) shoes at home. If your loafers have turned to peep-toes, they aren’t appropriate for work. Athletic shoes are not appropriate unless you’re a nurse or a delivery person. Even if it’s a jeans day, those cross-trainers aren’t work shoes.
On the other hand, stiletto heels don’t work for work either. (See our advice on dressing too sexy for work above.) Besides, working in stilettos is nearly impossible. Stick to a less showy, lower and wider heel. And, finally, if you’re wearing flip-flops to work and your job doesn’t take place in a surf shack, you’re doing it wrong. Wearing flip-flops to work is not at all appropriate for men or women.
Taking a Grooming Vacation
Even if you work in a casual environment, that doesn’t mean you can take a break from good grooming. The primary violators of this rule are men and their facial hair, but it applies to both genders. Men, if you’ve got a beard or mustache, you don’t get to send your razor on vacation. If you aren’t a professional mountaineer, you need to keep your facial hair groomed. This goes for everyone. If you don’t take care of yourself, the people you work with aren’t going to have confidence that you can take care of clients or anything else you’re responsible for. If you look professional, everyone you work with will think you’re a professional and treat you that way. | <urn:uuid:329e4a40-34f2-455c-b0d9-9d818bf0a5a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://q103albany.com/business-casual-common-mistakes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943223 | 1,421 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Tornado sirens get upgrade in St. Paulby Jessica Mador, Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — The city of St. Paul is retooling its tornado warning system with state-of-the-art tornado sirens.
The city plans will upgrade equipment by replacing 36 mechanical sirens with and install one additional siren. Crews are also relocating tornado siren poles from the top of buildings to the ground to make them accessible for repairs and keep them off private property.
Cost of the project comes to about $1.3 million and will be paid for with city funds and federal grants.
St. Paul's Director of Emergency Management Rick Larkin said the new sirens will create a safer, more responsive warning system. He said it was difficult to get replacement parts for older parts of the system, which dates back to the early 1950s.
"We can't even get our computer to replace the one that we had been using," Larkin said. "Definitely it's time to upgrade a 50-year leap in technology that we've made."
"If there is some kind of a problem with one of the sirens it'll actually send a signal back to the control center and it'll say the motor is not functioning or we lost power or the radio signal is offline, or whatever the case might be," Larkin said. | <urn:uuid:2cc35eac-45d8-49d5-92b9-9e196f158ed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/05/01/tornado-siren-upgrade?refid=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965638 | 284 | 1.664063 | 2 |
MIAMI - With a week to go until Election Day, the nasty campaign tactics are coming out. | » Full national election coverage
People in Florida, Virginia and Indiana have gotten calls falsely telling them they can vote early by phone and don't need to go to a polling place. In suburban Broward County, Fla., a handful of elderly voters who requested absentee ballots say they were visited by unknown people claiming to be authorized to collect the ballots.
And there's a mysterious DVD popping up in mailboxes that purports to be a documentary raising questions about the true identity of President Barack Obama's father.
It's one more indication of just how close this presidential election is. Voting rights advocates say reports of political deception and underhandedness are on the rise.
"Unfortunately it seems like the shadowy individuals that want to prevent people from voting are doing things earlier," said Eric Marshall, legal mobilization manager at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The organization is part of a coalition called Election Protection that is monitoring voting access and rights nationwide, including a toll-free hotline set up to take complaints.
"Each American's vote matters. It's important to them and it's important to the community," Marshall said.
Indiana's secretary of state launched an investigation of the phony voting
In the Broward County, Fla., case, elderly voters "were told, `I'm an official and I'm here to pick up your absentee ballot,"' said Alma Gonzalez, a senior Florida Democratic Party official working on voter protection efforts. "There is no official who picks up your ballot."
In addition to those cases, garish billboards warning that voter fraud is a crime punishable by jail time and fines were put up in minority neighborhoods in Ohio and Wisconsin. They were recently taken down amid complaints they were aimed at intimidating African-American and Latino voters. The people behind the billboards have not come forward.
"It's hard to believe that these were just public service announcements," Marshall said. "Those neighborhoods were specifically targeted."
"It doesn't pass the smell test."
Independent Florida voter Jane Bowman smelled something bad, too, when she recently discovered a DVD in her mailbox questioning the identity of Obama's father.
"I think it's just a dirty trick. It just astonished me," said Bowman, a Jacksonville resident who says she plans to vote for Obama as she did four years ago. "I think they're doing everything they can to win Florida. It's a sorry situation."
The DVD's director, who says he has mailed some 7 million copies to homes in swing states, says that he is unaffiliated with political campaigns or their supporters and that the film reflects his own painstaking research into Obama's family background.
The DVD, "Dreams from My Real Father," posits that the president's true father was a communist agitator, author and poet living in Hawaii named Frank Marshall Davis - not the Kenyan man who shares the president's name. Both men are now dead.
The title is a reference to Obama's book about his family history. That book does mention a poet named "Frank" who was a friend of Obama's maternal grandfather.
In an interview, DVD director Joel Gilbert described himself as a nonpartisan independent who seeks only to tell what he views as an extremely important story. Gilbert said he did not coordinate distribution of the DVD with any political entity and also took no political contributions to finance it. Yet the DVD was targeted at voters in key battleground states, including 1.5 million in Florida and 1.2 million in Ohio, according to Gilbert's website.
"It's a publicity measure," he said of the free mail distribution. "This has been an effort to force and embarrass the media into covering the content of the film."
Gilbert declined to disclose how the DVD and its distribution were financed, saying his production company is private and not required to. He has also made what he calls "mockumentaries" exploring whether former Beatle Paul McCartney might really be dead - as was rumored in the 1960s - and finding Elvis Presley alive and living as a federal agent in Southern California. He has also done films on Islamic-Jewish relations and Iran's strategic ambitions.
Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher declined comment on the DVD.
Another mysterious batch of mailings to voters in at least 23 Florida counties is being investigated by the FBI and state officials. These anonymous letters, which were postmarked from Seattle, raise questions about the voter's citizenship and provide a form that supposedly must immediately be filled out and returned to elections officials. Otherwise, the letter says, the voter's name will be purged from the rolls.
"A nonregistered voter who casts a vote in the State of Florida may be subject to arrest, imprisonment, and/or other criminal sanctions," warns one of the official-looking letters complete with eagle-and-flag logo, which appear to have been aimed mainly at registered Republicans.
Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner has asked all of the state's supervisors of elections to report any similar letters. There could also be federal charges against those responsible.
Voting rights advocates also say there have been scattered complaints of bosses ordering employees to support a particular presidential candidate or face job repercussions. And in the past, students and other groups have been the targets of robocalls falsely saying they can vote on the day after Election Day if the lines are too long.
Marshall said such misinformation tactics surface election after election because it's not illegal in most states to deceive someone about the timing or place of an election, or to lie about a candidate's political affiliation. Most laws, he said, are more geared toward preventing voter intimidation and ensuring physical access to polling places. Those who do get caught in deception usually claim it was all a big misunderstanding.
"It's very difficult to stop," he said. "The tactics have evolved but the law hasn't."
Election Protection voter complaint hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE
Follow Curt Anderson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Miamicurt | <urn:uuid:93538d3a-e045-4c83-8c2f-116deb8968d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailybreeze.com/latestnews/ci_21895423/presidential-race-nasty-campaign-tactics-topped-off-by | 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 | 0.975099 | 1,235 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt founded Hunt Botanical Library with the intention that it would conduct its own program of research while ensuring that its collections would be available to others. Hunt Institute remains committed to making its reference services and research collections available and accessible to the scientific and scholarly communities, publishers, businesses, and the interested public.
[Bouquet of mixed flowers], watercolor on vellum by Pierre-Joseph Redoute, 1839. HI Art accession no. 2202. John Parkinson's Theatrum botanicum: The theater of plants (London, Thomas Cotes, 1640). HI Library call no. CA P247t. Archibald Menzies (17541842). HI Archives portrait no. 2.
This page provides an overview of Institute services. Additional information about department-specific services is available in the services section of the departments' web pages. Queries about any of these services may be made to the relevant department(s) or to the Administration Office by mail, email, telephone, or fax, as well as in person. This page covers the following:
The Archives department provides reference services and makes its research collections accessible to others. The collection is available for on-site use, by prior appointment and subject to restrictions placed upon materials by donors or by the Institute.
The Art department provides reference services and makes its research collections accessible to others. The collection is available for on-site use, by prior appointment and subject to restrictions placed upon materials by donors or by the Institute. We do not provide appraisals of artwork and recommend your consulting an art appraiser or art gallery.
The Bibliography department makes its reference services accessible to others. The bibliographer provides bibliographical reference and research assistance to all serious inquirers and publishes bibliographical aids and reference works.
The Library provides reference services and makes its research collections accessible to others. The library is open Monday through Friday for on-site use; readers' hours are 1:00 to 5:00, or contact the librarians for morning appointments.
Staff members in each of the departments assist patrons in researching specific questions or topics. In addition to providing general assistance to researchers, staff may also be engaged to provide more extensive research assistance. An hourly fee is charged for services negotiated beyond a standard level of service; see the Service Charges page for more information.
Staff also perform photo research and coordinate requests for photographic reproductions of book illustrations, artworks and portraits. The Institute's photographer works closely with staff from the Library, Archives and Art Department to provide this service. Prints, negatives and slides and transparencies may be ordered. The Service Charges page has detailed information about these photographic services, including options, schedules and prices.
The Institute also provides photocopying services. Some limitations apply, based on constraints such as the condition of the materials from which copies are requested to be made, as well as copyright restrictions when applicable. Fees are listed on the Service Charges page.
Please note that some photographic and photocopying requests may be subject to research service fees and publication fees. Interlibrary loan requests for photocopies or loans are subject to interlibrary loan fees. Any relevant fees are discussed in advance of provision of services.
Access to Collections
Most of the departmental collections are available for supervised on-site use, subject to restrictions placed upon materials by donors or by the Institute. In order to prepare for your visit and ensure that materials of interest are accessible, the Institute requests that you contact department staff to make prior appointments. For general library use, readers' hours are 1:00 to 5:00, or you may contact the librarians for morning appointments. See the department pages or Staff page for contact information.
Although the Library collections do not circulate in the usual sense, limited interlibrary loan is available for some recent publications, subject to restrictions. These loans are made library-to-library, for in-library use only. Interlibrary loan photocopying is also provided. Restrictions are based on constraints such as the age, condition, value and replaceability of the materials, as well as copyright restrictions or other restrictions as outlined in the interlibrary loan policy. Interlibrary loan requests for photocopies or loans are subject to interlibrary loan fees.
Repositories for Botanists' Papers
The archivist acts in an advisory capacity to assist in finding appropriate repositories for botanists' papers in order to ensure that they are placed where they will be most serviceable to researchers, and the Institute can serve as a repository of alternate resort when one more suitable is not available.
Tours, Collection Talks and Other Presentations
The librarians provide tours of the Library as well as presentations on a variety of topics relating to the collections. Similarly, tours of the Archives or Art Department can be arranged, as can gallery talks and other collection-based presentations as well as tours of the Reading Room. Appointments can be arranged through the departments or the Administration Office.
Art Exhibitions at the Institute
Descriptions of current and upcoming exhibitions, to be displayed in the Institute gallery, are available.
The Institute shares its resources by offering travel exhibitions to museums, schools, botanic gardens, arboreta, gardens clubs and other organizations the opportunity to borrow and display ready-to-hang Institute exhibits of botanical art and illustration. For travel exhibitions currently on display, see News and Events.
Queries about any of these services may be made by mail, email, telephone, or fax, as well as in person. Additional information about department-specific services is available in the services section of the departmental pages.
See: Archives - Art - Bibliography - Library | <urn:uuid:f183c114-0483-44ac-88ff-25b522a2b46b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/HIBD/Services/Services.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935231 | 1,169 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Let there be light: How I conquered the dark days
Can money buy happiness, a sense of self-worth, optimism? I was counting on it, looking for happiness in a box, the one that had just landed on my back porch. It was late November, and my joie de vivre was circling the drain.
It happens every year. When darkness closes in, as the days grow suffocatingly short, my idea of a good time is to burrow deep below my comforter, suspended on a sea of memory foam. Even when the weak winter sun is shining, it’s hard to buckle down and get things done. My mind wanders from the task at hand, and the question that arises again and again: What’s the point?
And all too often, the siren song of carbohydrates becomes irresistible, as a batch of warm chocolate chip cookies– I think of them as culinary heroin– becomes a quick fix in the quest for a lighter mood.
Spring and summer are a different story. With longer days, the world becomes a benevolent place. Hope and happiness are right there; I don’t have to look for them. But pretty soon, I’m flipping the lights on by 4pm, it’s dark so early, and it feels like we should all complain to the authorities. Surely, there’s something to be done about this: a referendum, or maybe a Constitutional Amendment.
Around the world, in regions far from the equator, millions of people share this experience of the “winter blues,” a condition brought on by diminished daylight. The lack of bright sunlight appears to disrupt the availability of the hormone melatonin, as well as the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. Melancholy, lethargy, and weight gain are wintertime companions for those whose brain chemistry waxes and wanes with the changing seasons.
For some, the symptoms are severe enough to be labeled “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” and require professional intervention. For the rest of us, non-prescription strategies like exercise and taking melatonin supplements can offer some relief. The idea is to fix the errant brain chemicals, one way or the other, and bring back the mood and behavior enjoyed during the sunny months.
(Doesn’t this make you wonder what personality really is, anyway? We figure everyone has control over how they feel and what they do. And maybe that’s true for most people. But there are significant variables, like this involuntary reaction to annual light deprivation, and other kinds of messed-up brain chemistry caused by junk food, genetics, lack of sleep, heartbreak, and God knows what else.)
Since light is what I’m missing in the winter, it made sense to use the remedy that brings it back. Alas, my budget didn’t allow for a trip to the tropics, so I chose the next best thing: a powerful lamp designed to treat the winter blues.
The day the light box arrived, I felt a little foolish for thinking that some gadget could, quite literally, bring me back to happiness. After sliding it out of the box, I noted that it was about the size of a brownie pan. Inside it were three white-light providing, compact fluorescent bulbs.
According to the directions, in order to get the full benefit and bask in the glow of all 10,000 lux (whatever those are– I looked it up, and still couldn’t tell you) for twenty to thirty minutes each morning you have to remain about one foot from the light.
Hmm. That’s pretty close, and for a significant stretch of time. It comes with a stand, so you could set it up to shine down over your computer, or over your Cheerios. Or both.
After plugging it in to make sure it arrived in good working order, I discovered that the meaning of “10,000 lux” must be “wicked bright.” This would take some getting used to.
I sized up various placement possibilities in our house and settled upon mounting it on the wall perpendicular to the bathroom mirror.
For years, it's been taking me at least twenty minutes to pull myself together in the morning. Suddenly, my high-maintenance habits of daily blow-drying, flat-ironing, and makeup application were a plus. Now, I could multitask, tending to both exterior and interior maintenance.
By the time I’d attached the thing to the wall, it was mid-afternoon. Too late, in theory, to do the recommended morning bask. Undeterred, I flipped the switch and basked (if one can be said to bask while standing up) for maybe half an hour.
I then turned it off and wondered when the happiness would start. Nothing. My already-low sense of self-worth was sinking further. And now, I had to explain to my husband why there was a klieg light hanging on our bathroom wall.
What was I thinking? Money does not buy happiness, and it certainly does not come sealed up in a box from Amazon.com. Rather than packing it back up and returning it, I figured I’d give it a few days.
The following morning, as directed, I stood in the glow of the light box for over twenty minutes. Still nothing.
However, that afternoon, something changed. I stood a little taller, as though some invisible, weighty layer had lifted. Someone was humming – it was me. I was looking forward to checking off items on my “to do” list, and thinking of other stuff I also wanted to tackle.
Oh, right: happiness, optimism, self-worth. I remember those! I felt like I should contact anyone I had bummed out or let down during one of my annual light-deprived stupors and apologize.
This happened a year ago. Ever since that first day, when I opened the box and wondered whether I was an idiot for thinking it could bring happiness, I have faithfully placed myself in the light every morning. It’s still working.
So, can money buy happiness? Apparently, it can.
Janis Jaquith pens her essays from a now light-infused dwelling in Free Union.Read more on: season affective disorder | <urn:uuid:ebe0acbb-75f8-4790-a989-6027f3e0362a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.readthehook.com/108844/let-there-be-light-how-i-conquered-dark-days?quicktabs_1=2 | 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 | 0.963471 | 1,323 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The Call of Nature
I have found recently that I have been craving for a walk in nature and have found an overwhelming sense of inner peace when I meditate on a place from memory. My question is why do I always find a connection to G-d through nature?
In our age of high-tech and synthetic surroundings, it should not be surprising that a person feel a need to get back to basics from time to time and to connect to G-d through the natural world.
The world of nature is a wonderful setting in which to celebrate Creation. Breathing pure, clean air, smelling the scent of the trees, fields and flowers, hearing the chiming of birds, falling leaves and rushing streams, seeing the beautiful scenery and feeling the texture of the world all around us tantalizes the senses, sending a palpable surge of life through our being.
Connecting in this way to Creation naturally facilitates a connection to the Creator Himself. Recognizing that it is G-d behind all this beauty and splendor rejuvenates one's appreciation for the wonder and wisdom of the Creator and the soul is thereby stirred to commune with G-d in this setting more than in our artificial, climate-controlled environments.
Interestingly, the Hebrew word for nature (הטבע) has the same numerical value as the name for G-d (אלהים). It is in Nature, therefore, that we find G-d. The man-made settings that distance us from Nature actually insulate us from feeling G-d. Conversely, getting back to Nature can help us get back to G-d.
Kabbalistic and Chasidic teachings note that as Nature teems with life, each species resonates its own song of praise to G-d. In fact, Perek Shira, (literally "Chapter of Song" and often translated as "Song of Creation") which is attributed to King David, is an ancient collection of the praises recited by various parts of Creation. These songs are harmonized into what's described as a subliminal symphony of praise to G-d.
When a person merges his meditations, prayers, supplications and praises to G-d within this symphony of Nature, they are elevated tremendously while he is greatly inspired and G-d derives from them great delight. What's more, if this symphony is comprised of different sections - inanimate, vegetative and animate - he contributes the missing human element. In fact, he becomes the actual conductor of this grand symphonic orchestra of praise to G-d.
Given all the subliminal sub-currents resonating in Nature, it should now be clear why you find such a connection to G-d through Nature. | <urn:uuid:d9af1f7c-9c9e-4729-8851-8622d5a31545> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ohr.edu/5369/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949312 | 566 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Comparative Long-term Morbidity of Intensity Modulated vs Conformal Radiation Therapy (RT) for Prostate Cancer: A SEER-Medicare Analysis
Reporter: Surbhi Grover, MD
The Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Last Modified: October 4, 2011
Presenter: N. Sheets
Presenter's Affiliation: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
- There is a rapid uptake of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for treatment of prostate cancer because of potential reduction of dose to normal tissue and hence reduction in morbidity related to treatment.
- Although there is rapid implementation of new technology, comparative effectiveness data looking at different modalities is lacking.
- Authors of this study evaluated morbidity of IMRT vs non-IMRT treatment of prostate cancer in definitive and post-operative setting using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Result (SEER)-Medicare linked database.
- Between 2000-2005, authors identified about 40,000 patients who received IMRT using CPT codes.
- Patients were divided in two groups:
- Patients who received definitive treatment within 1 year of diagnosis (n=38,159)
- Patients who received post-operative radiation therapy, treated within three years after surgery (n=1,503)
- Co-morbidity scores were calculated and data on interventions after radiation treatment were assessed in both definitive and post-operative patients in IMRT and non-IMRT groups.
- Patient in the IMRT and non-IMRT groups were matching using propensity score analysis.
- In the definitive group, 6666 patients received IMRT and 6310 patients received conformal radiation therapy. Follow up was 73 months for non-IMRT patients vs 53 months for IMRT patients.
- There were lower rates of hip fractures and bowel morbidity in the IMRT group. However, erectile dysfunction was worse in the IMRT group. Patients treated with IMRT required less additional cancer treatment compared to patients with non-IMRT.
- In the post-operative group, 505 patient got IMRT and 663 patients got non-IMRT treatment.
- With the follow up of 56 months for non-IMRT patients vs 30 month for IMRT patients, there was no significant difference in morbidity in the IMRT and non-IMRT group.
- There was a suggestion of higher use of additional cancer therapy in IMRT group. Also, there were higher rates of erectile dysfunction noted in IMRT group.
- There was a rapid adoption of IMRT noted in both definitive and post-operative setting.
- There has been a rapid uptake of IMRT for treatment of prostate cancer.
- In definitive treatment, there are lower rates of additional cancer treatment needed with IMRT likely because of dose escalation with IMRT.
- In post-operative setting, higher rates of additional cancer therapy may be needed in IMRT group. This needs to be assessed in prospective randomized trials.
- Higher rates of erectile dysfunction in the post-operative patients is likely residual from prostatectomy, therefore it is difficult to interpret differences in erectile dysfunction associated with radiation modalities.
Clinical and Scientific Implications
This study is an attempt to use SEER data to describe outcomes between IMRT and non-IMRT treatment. There are limitations to this study because of the data available in SEER. Although one can look at additional procedures and survival, toxicity data is limited and evaluation of this data should be taken with caution. It is interesting to see that in the definitive setting, patients treated with IMRT have fewer additional procedures. However, the follow up is shorter in the IMRT group which may account for some of this difference. | <urn:uuid:bdcb62cc-e701-4b0c-a1b5-f3c97fa83522> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oncolink.org/conferences/article.cfm?c=3&s=68&ss=350&id=2187 | 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 | 0.94369 | 772 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Toloudis, Nicholas. (2001) "Common procedures, common problems: Moving toward uniform electoral procedures for EP elections". In: UNSPECIFIED, Madison, Wisconsin. (Unpublished)
[N]ational level political interests and ideas have impeded the reform process. I will test this argument by examining the manner in which political and ideological factors have played out at critical periods in the history of the directly elected EP and two member states to prevent the installation of uniform procedures. Results indicate that the issues under consideration during the debates on direct elections legislation have had lasting effects on subsequent efforts to impose uniform electoral procedures. Failure at the supranational level to find consensus on a reform proposal came even in the face of a concerted effort to account for domestic interests. The installation and amendment of EP electoral procedures provide an excellent perspective on how member states' perception of the EU has changed and are a unique and important case of electoral reform.
|Social Networking:|| |
Actions (login required) | <urn:uuid:f0fd942b-f18d-4f08-9ed5-f2568baa23bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aei.pitt.edu/2195/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93598 | 204 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Venezuela is planning to invest $5bn in its power generation sector through to 2012, according to Business News Americas.
"For 2011, we plan to continue with already designed plans, which include repairing generation units currently out of service. We also plan to install a large number of thermo generation units," said Ali Rodriguez, the minister of electricity.
The minister said the government plans to bring online 5 GW in thermal capacity in the next two years. The new capacity will be added by both state power company Corpoelec and NOC PDVSA
, the government-controlled oil giant.
The new power plants will be concentrated around Venezuela’s capital Caracas and the country's Andean region, Rodriguez added. | <urn:uuid:ba8da09b-540d-44ca-9da4-f679311a3135> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2011/01/venezuela-promises.html | 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 | 0.952123 | 150 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Gulf Coast governors defend Shell drilling plan
TAGS: 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Bobby Jindal, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, deepwater drilling, deepwater drilling moratorium, Defenders of Wildlife, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Natural Resources Defense Council, Robert Bentley, Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc., the Center for Biological Diversity, U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
BATON ROUGE — The governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are asking a federal appeals court to uphold the Obama administration’s approval for a Shell deepwater drilling plan in the Gulf of Mexico.
Environmental groups have asked the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta to throw out the exploration plan. The three Gulf Coast states are seeking to intervene in the case, saying deepwater oil and gas exploration is vital to the states’ economies and to the fossil-fuel dependent nation.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office released the court filings Friday.
“While these lawsuits attack Shell’s exploration plan, they could impact exploration and drilling activities in the entire Gulf of Mexico — completely halting the approval of future permits, or action to be taken on permits that have already received approval,” Jindal said in a statement.
The exploration plan, which the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement approved in May, involves Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc. drilling 10 wells off the coast of Alabama. Shell’s plan, according to the court filings, would use Louisiana seaports and airports as staging areas for much of the drilling work.
Approval of an exploration plan is not an approval to drill. A separate drilling permit must be issued.
Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council claim the drilling would violate new regulations imposed in August, a few months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and Gulf oil spill, and that the exploration could harm the environment.
The Obama administration imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf after the oil spill. Though it was lifted in October, permits have been slow to flow again. The industry and many Gulf Coast elected officials have prodded the government to move faster, while environmental groups have pushed the government to slow down.
“We cannot let the wrongful conduct of a few companies prevent the safe development and production of oil wells which are so vital to the economy of our state,” Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said in a statement. “Offshore drilling is important to the viability of the state, Gulf Coast region and nation, both economically with the jobs they produce and to ease our dependence on foreign sources of energy.”
Filed Thursday, the request by Jindal, Bentley and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour asks to allow their states to weigh in on the appeals court proceedings because of their economic interest in the outcome of the case.
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Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:6de7b1dc-f695-4dd0-9682-837fcbc88388> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2011/07/11/gulf-coast-governors-defend-shell-drilling-plan-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934877 | 635 | 1.695313 | 2 |
|Adalinda once struggled to feed her children, but thanks to an Operation Blessing livelihood project, she now has her own small business.
SAN MANUEL, Honduras – Every day Adalinda could only watch as her two children headed to school with empty stomachs. Worse, she knew that Kevin and Jocelyn would have nothing to eat for lunch.
The question foremost in her mind was always where their next meal would come from.
“It is difficult as a mother to see your children go hungry,” Adalinda said through tears.
Adalinda and her husband, Daniel, had struggled to find steady jobs for months. Daniel found some work in construction and Adalinda cleaned a school once in a while, but neither job was regular enough to provide the income they needed to provide for their children.
Then Adalinda received a special blessing when she was invited to be part of Operation Blessing’s microenterprise program in Honduras where she could learn everything she needed to start her own business.
|Adalinda’s business is thriving, and her husband, Daniel, needed a more efficient way to distribute the supplies, so Operation Blessing provided him with a new tricycle.
Adalinda soon began learning how to make cleaning supplies and even took classes in small business management. Before long, she had finished the classes and received all of the supplies she needed to start a business.
When the first batch of cleaning products was made, Daniel loaded them into a wheelbarrow and sold them around their neighborhood, earning enough money to purchase additional supplies.
Today, Adalinda’s business is thriving—so much that her husband needed a more efficient way of distributing the cleaning products. So Operation Blessing purchased a tricycle for Daniel, allowing him to travel further and sell the products in surrounding communities.
Now, Adalinda and Daniel are able to provide the food their children need to grow strong and healthy. They can even afford additional clothes and school supplies for Kevin and Jocelyn.
“Thanks, Operation Blessing, for this opportunity,” Adalinda said. “Thanks for teaching me how to start my own business because now I can support my family’s needs.”
HOW YOU CAN HELP
This microenterprise venture is one of many Operation Blessing projects touching lives around the world. You can be a part of improving the quality of life for impoverished communities by supporting these and other life-changing programs.
Copyright © 1997-
by Operation Blessing International of this page and all contents. No part of this site may be used without prior written consent from OBI. All Rights Reserved. Questions or comments? Email us at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:e4849759-4453-46fb-ba4d-8748d3b358ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ob.org/_programs/micro/news/2012/me_2012_0521_a_business_for_adalinda.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97095 | 565 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Liverpool, United Kingdom: Long-term administration of Sativex, an oral spray consisting of natural cannabis extracts, reduces neuropathic pain without inducing tolerance in multiple sclerosis patients, according to clinical trial data published in the journal Clinical Therapeutics.
Twenty-eight patients completed the two-year, open-label extension trial. Investigators reported that patients required fewer daily doses of Sativex and reported lower median pain scores the longer they took the drug.
Authors also reported that drug’s administration was not associated with an increase in patients’ use of other analgesics – noting that several of the study’s participants reduced or ceased their use of pharmaceutical pain medications while taking Sativex. It has been estimated that more than one out of four MS patients suffer from neuropathic pain.
"[Sativex] was effective, with no evidence of tolerance, in … patients with central neuropathic pain and MS who completed two years of treatment," investigators concluded. "The use of [Sativex], per se, did not lead to a … major increase … in the use of new analgesics, which over at least two years is … a further indirect measure of sustained effectiveness in [this] population."
Previously reported data on the long-term efficacy of Sativex has shown the drug to decrease spasticity and bladder dysfunction in patients with MS.
NORML Senior Policy Analyst Paul Armentano called the extension trial results significant. "Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, degenerative disease; its symptoms become more severe over time," he said. "Therefore, one would assume that patients would be increasing their daily drug administration in order to maintain their initial levels of pain relief. That they are not doing so indicates that patients are not becoming tolerant to the drug’s therapeutic effects. More importantly, this result may also be evidence that cannabinoids are, in fact, moderating the progression of this debilitating disease. "
In August, Canadian health officials granted regulatory approval to Sativex as an adjunctive treatment in adult patients with cancer pain. Canadian officials had previously approved the drug’s prescription use to treat MS-associated neuropathy.
Makers of the drug are seeking regulatory approval for Sativex in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and in the United States.
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at: email@example.com. Full text of the study, "Oralmucosal delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol/cannabidiol for neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis: an uncontrolled, open-label, two-year extension trial," appears in the September issue of Clinical Therapeutics. | <urn:uuid:a8c7bd6b-86c9-492e-9592-6db8e655a8df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://norml.org/news/2007/11/15/cannabis-spray-effective-long-term-in-pain-treatment-study-says | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947591 | 557 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Obituary: Ray Alan
Entertainer was a big favourite – with help of Lord Charles
Born: 18 September, 1930, in Greenwich, London.
Died: 24 May, 2010, in Reigate, Surrey, aged 79.
WITH his handsome good looks and artistry, Ray Alan was a television favourite for almost half a century. With his upper-class dummy Lord Charles – who always seemed to be sloshed – he appeared on countless variety shows: indeed, he made the most appearances on the BBC's hugely popular The Good Old Days.
In 1954, Alan had worked on the farewell UK tour of the famous American comedians Laurel and Hardy after Harry Worth (the future comedian but then working as a ventriloquist) was forced to pull out.
During that tour, Alan got the idea of the dummy Lord Charles and spent some years developing the character of the humorous rogue with an eye for the ladies, who used the famous catch-phrase "you silly arse" at the most inconvenient moments. Technically, Alan was an outstanding ventriloquist and much admired by colleagues. He put in hours of practice and perfected a stage presence that not only let him perform hugely demanding vocal feats but also gave him free range to change accents and add extra colour to a character.
Ray Alan was educated at Morden Terrace School, in south London, and set his heart on a career in showbusiness. He entered many local talent competitions from the age of five and at 13 became a call-boy at the Lewisham Hippodrome Theatre, where he started to do magic tricks between acts. It was in his late teens that he started to perfect his ventriloquist act and concluded it with a song on the ukulele.
It was the fortuitous date with Laurel and Hardy that inspired Alan to base Lord Charles on the features of Stan Laurel. The boozy toff's mannerisms and slurred delivery, however, came from a character Alan spotted at a table during a cabaret show. "He was wearing a dinner suit, drinking champagne and had a delightful young lady with him." Alan recalled. "He kept patting her on the knee and saying, 'By Jove, you're a lovely little thing, have another glass of champers'." Lord Charles the tipsy aristo was born there and then.
Alan introduced Lord Charles at a charity show at Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1954 and later that year to a wider public on The Good Old Days.
The two became popular and were soon household names. Alan made regular appearances on television in shows such as David Nixon's Comedy Bandbox, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the Billy Cotton Band Show, The Two Ronnies and The Liberace Show. In 1985, he was a special guest for Bob Hope's birthday show at the Lyric Theatre in London.
Alan was the consummate ventriloquist/comedian. He often delighted in sending up his act, with Lord Charles being wildly irreverent. He had an routine which has now become a classic in which, as Alan worked the toffee nosed dummy, Lord Charles gave the appearance of working a second dummy named "John". The complexities and vocal hurdles were immensely challenging, but Alan performed the sketch with a refined ease. While his manipulation throughout the sketch remained perfect, Lord Charles slurred his way through it. Alan cleverly let Lord Charles make mistakes with certain phrases that are well-known ventriloquist's nightmares. Ladies and Gentlemen became one continuous word with a hiccup; hospital became hoskital and bottles of beer just a hotchpotch of nonsense. It was a tremendous performance and is remembered as a real comic tour-de-force. The art, in any performance by Alan, was to make it all look easy.
Alan had his own children's series in the Sixties on television. Tich And Quackers was set in a school, with Alan and Tony Hart (who played Quackers) having much fun trying to outdo each other for sheer naughtiness.
Alan was also a guest on game shows such as Celebrity Squares, Give Us A Clue and 3-2-1. He continued performing in cabaret, clubs and at corporate events. In 1998-99, he had a successful spot in the cabaret on the QE2.
He was always the real professional. While many ventriloquists allowed their dummy to take on an almost human persona, Alan would have none of it. He and Lord Charles may have been inseparable in the eyes of the public but not when the show was over. Alan once said: "I am not one of those ventriloquists who thinks he's real. When I finish my work, I put it back in the tool box and I don't take it out again until the next job."
Alan also wrote some of the scripts for the TV sitcom Bootsie and Snudge and published three crime novels, He is survived by his wife Jane.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Thursday 23 May 2013
Temperature: 5 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: North west
Temperature: 4 C to 13 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North east | <urn:uuid:1569b863-155a-499a-805a-5ef1281031e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/obituary_ray_alan_1_805708 | 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 | 0.982111 | 1,099 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Six-year-old Aliyah Shell was standing on the front porch with her mother and younger sister when she was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Chicago.
Seven-year-old Heaven Sutton was standing next to her mother in front of her home selling candy when gunshots rang out on her Chicago block and she crumbled on the pavement, dead from a stray bullet.
Sandra Tyler held her 13-year-old son, Tyquan, in her arms as he bled out on a Chicago sidewalk, another random victim of a senseless, drive-by shooting.
“I held him in my arms on the sidewalk and talked to him while he was fighting for his life,” Tyler said in June. “I regret letting him go to the party. He was my baby — so loving and respectful.”
And the list of black and brown children goes on and on…
Without fanfare or pomp and circumstance, mothers and fathers in rural towns and urban cities mourn their children quietly, as their memories fade from America’s conscious like tiny footprints in the sand.
There will never be an appropriate time to say that this nation only stands at attention when the majority of victims are white Americans, as was the case at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut, so I might as well say it today.
It is horrifying what happened to those babies. As my mentor, Rebecca Carroll, so unerringly stated, for a parent, the thought of what transpired within the confines of Sandy Hook conjures up not just “visceral” emotions, but “primal” urges. We know hallways smelling of chalk and sanitizer, with the faint sounds of math and science echoing down the halls, empty with the exception of the lone student on a bathroom break and the teacher’s aide dashing to make copies.
We hear the laughter and screams on the playgrounds; we can imagine the whispers and the memories being made — check yes or no — when a crazed madman burst into their 6- and 7-year-old worlds with a big scary gun that mommy and daddy couldn’t save them from. The terror seizes our hearts as if those were our children — because they could have been. And the deepest fear most parents have is not being there to protect them when they need us most.
But therein lies the fundamental difference.
The nation doesn’t stop when the Heavens and Aliyahs of the world are snatched from us too soon. How many outside of our own communities demand gun control legislation when the victim is brown-eyed and kinky-haired, and not blue-eyed and blond?
White American children in this country who become victims of gun violence are a sign of shattered innocence, an anomaly that must be analyzed and dissected to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Black and Brown American children who become victims serve as an indictment of our communities, our homes and our parenting.
Even white perpetrators are assessed delicately. Adam Lanza was a good kid, let media and friends tell the tale — a genius even, who simply exhibited maladaptive social tendencies. His loving mother Nancy, who taught him how to shoot her cache of high powered rifles before he shot her in the head multiple times, was an exceptional parent. This tableau leaves many white Americans in paralyzing fear, because, gotdamnit, if being white, rich and Christian doesn’t afford you some protection in this crazy, mixed up world, then we’re all doomed.
President Barack Obama, a Commander-in-Chief for whom murdered black children has never made the itinerary beyond a Rose Garden soundbite and MTV during the election cycle, rushed to Newtown, Connecticut — as he did Aurora, Colorado – to comfort and console the community:
I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief, that our world, too, has been torn apart, that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you. We’ve pulled our children tight.
And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide. Whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown, you are not alone.
You know, someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around.
With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice, and every parent knows there’s nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet we also know that with that child’s very first step and each step after that, they are separating from us, that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them.
They will suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments, and we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear. And we know we can’t do this by ourselves. It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community and the help of a nation. And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children.
This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.
And we will be found lacking.
Though President Obama briefly touched on toxic gun violence across the country, the close to 300 Chicago Public Schools students killed by violence over a 3 year period still deserve a vigil; the 27 Palestinian children killed by U.S. and Israeli funded weaponry in this latest conflict deserve a vigil; the 178 children killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen also deserve a vigil.
More urgently, as a nation we must move beyond the shallow rhetoric of “we can do better” to actually implementing targeted, effective policies across the spectrum, from gun control to mental health, that will dismantle the blood-thirsty war machine, domestic castes systems and the entrenched systemic and systematic racism that leaves white America stunned when incomprehensible violence kicks in their front doors and the rest of America resigned when it tears down theirs.
Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t make it more heinous because there were 20 children murdered at one time in a quiet, well-to-do enclave; there is no package deal on grief. The unconscionable act of the killer may take brutal to new heights, but it does not tilt the scales on the collective value of the lives lost. Peel apart the tear-stained layers, and there are individual families who will grieve in their homes alone years after the candles have been blown out and the flowers have withered and died. And they are no different from families suffering in silence around the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, they are all precious. And until we, as human beings, begin to treat them as such, until we purposefully live the creed that “an injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere,” our chickens will continue to come home to roost.
And innocent children will continue to fall victims to a world not of their own making.
***In honor of the 27 innocent victims of violence in Newtown, Connecticut, and all over the world. May they rest in peace and love.*** | <urn:uuid:8ec45c93-f40a-449f-a5a8-98658e9fa655> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/12/race-and-violence-in-america-we-are-all-newtown/comment-page-5/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956936 | 1,671 | 1.773438 | 2 |
10 June 2011
Mike Leonetti's Number Four, Bobby Orr! It took ages for Ted Williams to get his own picture book, but this Boston sports legend got his in 2003 (any news on a Larry Bird picture book? How about Yaz--the last winner of baseball's Triple Crown? Someone get writing!) Illustrator Shayne Letain sets the triumphant tone for this book with his rendition of the iconic 1970 photo of Orr's cup winning goal. The book itself is about a young boy named Joey who loves hockey and idolizes Orr. When an injury curtails his season, Joey writes a letter to Bobby Orr, asking for advice on being a better defenseman. Joey's recovery coincides with the progression of the season, culminating with a healed Joey sitting in the Boston Garden to witness his hero make history.
There is quite a lot of information in this book about Bobby Orr and his impact on the Bruins and the city of Boston. For locals there are a number of little details which give fanish delight (such as mention of the fact that Joey is watching the Bruins on channel 38.Remember WSBK?!) Number Four, Bobby Orr! is an unashamed love letter to a hockey legend, and a fun read for Bruins fans as they face the rest of the series. | <urn:uuid:26580ab0-fe68-46e1-84e5-92f304ed97db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://notjustforkids.blogspot.com/2011/06/picture-books-for-stanley-cup-number.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960635 | 265 | 1.632813 | 2 |
By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) - BP Plc will gain access to U.S. government documents that may shed light on the size of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a crucial issue in determining the oil company's liability.
According to a Wednesday court filing, the government agreed to produce the documents after BP had accused it two weeks ago of unfairly withholding them because they were privileged.
BP has said the documents may show that an August 2010 estimate of 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled, of which about 800,000 barrels were cleaned up, is too high.
A reduction would lower the maximum civil fine BP could pay under the U.S. Clean Water Act, now estimated as high as $17.6 billion. That law calls for a maximum fine of $1,100 per barrel of oil spilled, or $4,300 if there were gross negligence.
In a filing with the U.S. district court in New Orleans, the government said it will produce 100 documents that BP requested, citing "the importance of this case and the desire of the court to keep this case moving expeditiously."
It said it will work with BP to produce other similar documents, and expects the company to do the same on documents concerning "flow rate" issues at the ruptured Macondo well.
BP, through an outside spokeswoman, declined to comment.
On March 29, BP accused the government of improperly withholding more than 10,000 documents because they reflected policy deliberations.
The London-based company said this decision swept too broadly by keeping factual evidence on the amount of oil discharged under wraps.
In Wednesday's filing, the government said it expects to re-review about 13,000 documents by May 15, and invoke privilege as needed to ensure that decision-making is not impeded.
BP agreed in principle on March 2 to pay $7.8 billion to settle claims by more than 100,000 private plaintiffs for economic, property and other damages.
It still faces potential claims from the government, Gulf Coast states and drilling partners Transocean Ltd and Halliburton Co.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier has scheduled a May 3 meeting with lawyers to discuss how the case should proceed.
The case is In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon" in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana, No. 10-md-02179.
(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr) | <urn:uuid:919c1ca5-e7aa-40f6-b856-c86fc07a169a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobile.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSBRE83A1FR20120411 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956754 | 532 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The peak Boum is one spectacullar rocky pyramid, an easily recognizable silhouette in the massif of Maupas-Perdiguero. Due to that nearby the summit of the highest and known peak Maupas, it's not the first option generally for the mountaineers that visit the zone for the first time, but it's a very recommendable ascent for a second day or a good excuse to have the opportunity another time to visit the valleys of Benasque or Lis. This massif serves of border between France and Spain that supposes to have two routes with completely different trailheads separated by many km of road. The easiest and normal route is that of the north side (France) but many Spanish mountaineers use the route of the valley of Remuñe in Benasque to avoid the long itinerary of car.
When we contemplate the mountain is easy to guess that the route is not a simple walk due to its conical and vertical forms but the climb of normal route is not difficult for the people with something of experience (PD-, II) not being needed the use of material of rock-climb. Of all the normal route the majority is a simple degree I or I+ and is only in less than 3 meters, in the final part that access to the top, where is found the chimney of II. The itinerary is exposed for which only it's recommended for mountaineers with experience. It's possible to climb the peak in one day (important slope of 1900m) or two days, with the use of refuge of Maupas.
The Spanish route is most difficult and it has some rock-climbs of II and one of II+ before the final ridge (rappel advisable for the descent).
At last, it's possible the climb of Maupas and Boum in the same day from the normal routes (French side), but the itinerary is very long. You must traverse to the glacier north of Maupas, descending to a point of 2750m to entry in the normal route of Boum and you’ll need to gain anothers 250 meters of slope. To climb both peaks it's better the use of the refuge of Maupas (from the valley the total slope is 2400 meters).
Getting ThereFrance: approach to Luchon. From the west across Pau and Tarbes we reach the road to Bagnéres de Luchon. In Luchon we follow the little road to the ski-resort of Superbagnéres and we leave it in the signal “Vallée de Lis”. We’ll reach the parking of Aubergue de Lis (1100m).
Spain: Benasque is reached from Huesca taking N-330 to Sabiñanigo and across Ainsa and Campo for the N-260. The trailhead is the road no finished near of Hospital de Benasque where's the entry of valley of Remuñe.
It's a natural park in both sides with rules about conservation of nature and the camping.
The refuge of Maupas it's very little in it's advisable the reserve early if you want to use it from 15 June to 15 September. Out of the season the winter hut is available.
The camping it’s not allowed, it’s national park, but the refuge of Maupas it’s a very good option (30 places, Tel: 05.61.44.21.60, out of France: 33 188.8.131.52.60. Opened from 15 June to 15 September).
The Aubuerge de Lis it’s opened from July to September but as well you had hotels and lodges in Luchon or the ski resort of Superbagnères. | <urn:uuid:fc59ee57-5f49-4c7e-8ed1-2dc32cf8abe8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.summitpost.org/boum/318505 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947967 | 783 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Search Engines See You Coming
Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are always an important part of launching a website, whether it is built with WordPress or not. However, because we use WordPress we have an enormous advantage when it comes to optimizing your site and getting it found in search results.
A not-so-secret weapon
There is one thing that by now every SEO expert knows; Google loves blogs! In particular it has been said that Google favors WordPress blogs. It is not the fact that the search engine giant favors the platform of WordPress, because that is silly, and any website built any which way will always get ranked in Google for the quality and relevance of its content. No, it is because blogs, such as WordPress, dynamically update content (in this case, blog posts or articles) so regularly that they get indexed and crawled by Google more often. It is important to remember that Google also loves fresh content!
Research and action (SEO)
SEO mainly takes place on page, meaning everything is optimized literally in the text content of your pages. To do this we need keywords which are specific to what you hope to rank for in a search results list. These words, phrases, or terms will be decided upon after researching the competition. We find out how many people are searching for your particular words, the level of difficulty it will be to compete with others optimizing for the same words, and determine the best phrases for your words which will be more likely to get you to the top of Google sooner.
Once that is all done, we carefully write your page titles and page descriptions, setup your link anchor text properly, and heading tags all around your site. In addition, we’ll train you in how to maintain this optimization as you go on to write new articles and pages in the future.
A lot of hard work (SEM)
SEM is where things can get time consuming. This is mostly taking place off site, meaning in other locations around the web. It is where social networks come into play, paid advertising networks such as Google Adsense, and building quality backlinks to your site.
The goal here is two fold. You want to increase awareness of your website by writing on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook with a link back to your site, or on forums and blogs with the same link back, (hence the term “backlinks”) simply to get new visitors and more traffic.
As well, manually writing legitimate comments on other website, or posting updates to your social networks should be done on a regular basis. It could be done as little as four times a month, or as often as every single day. This is done to build credibility for your site. Google wants to see that your content is important and is in fact what people are searching for. When you have a backlink with keyword text on several different sites of similar relevance, Google will start to put you higher in the results.
Of course we offer to do all this for you, and you are welcome to join in and have twice the marketing power as your competitors. | <urn:uuid:94773dc0-e319-40fa-876d-5299d8447a3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bravewhale.com/services/seo-sem/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956391 | 641 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Just off the phone with a teleconference called by the Catholic Democrats. They had Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut and Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts speaking about Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in Veritate and about tomorrow's meeting between the pope and President Obama.
The big question (asked by Michael Paulson of The Boston Globe) was about tomorrow's meeting. Is it symbolism or is it significant?
The representatives were both adamant that this was no mere photo-op.
McGovern said, "In the past there have been symbolic meetings that amounted to no more than photo-ops and nice press releases. But my sense of President Obama is that he doesn't do symbolism. He is not going through the motions. This is man who ran for president with a deep desire to change the world for the better. He is a man with a mission."
"I believe that [Obama] really wants to change things," McGovern said. "And I think this pope, with the encyclical that he has issued has put forward a framework not just for the Untied States to follow but for the rest of the world to follow. …
"I have high expectations for this meeting. … I believe this meeting has the potential to have a lasting impact, to help not only inspire but to provide -- quite frankly -- the political cover in some cases to move forward in some of these areas that up to this point have been difficult for politicians to deal with." The difficult issues he cited were peace in the Middle East, extreme poverty and hunger.
"My expectation and my hope for this meeting tomorrow is that it will be about real things and about results," he said.
DeLauro agreed with this sentiment and with the idea that Benedict has given the world a road map for the global economy. Benedict, she said, "is very clear about what are the moral consequences and the economic consequences of what we do and how that affects people. He is trying, in a very thoughtful way, to address very serious issues. … President Obama has demonstrated this equal kind of deep thinking on these very, very serious issues, and he isn't afraid to take on these very serious deep issues which cause tension in our society."
"He has taken on issues that not too many political figures want to take on," she said. He did this during his campaign on the issue of race, at Notre Dame on abortion and in Cairo on Islam.
"This is not a photo op. This is not, excuse me, posing for holy pictures. There is a reality and a difficulty about the serious issues that face all of our societies." The issues are complex with no easy answers, DeLauro' said, but Obama and Benedict are saying, "let's find the common ground and let's see what we can pull out of this to try and move the dialogue forward."
"That is the kind of leadership that we need in the world," she said.
I'll blog a bit later on DeLauro' and McGovern said about Caritas in Veritate. | <urn:uuid:b3ea995c-b314-4fad-b165-b3bd388c5d0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncronline.org/print/blogs/ncr-today/obama-benedict-meeting-no-mere-photo-op | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982969 | 630 | 1.710938 | 2 |
PAGE 2 OF 2
CBS reporter Leslie Stahl visited HHMI headquarters in 2003 to interview Tom Cech for a 60 Minutes story about the Institute (left). Tom Cech presided over the 2003 groundbreaking of the Janelia Farm Research Campus. Since its 2006 opening, he has been a regular visitor for science meetings, workshops, and public lectures (right).
One area where HHMI charted an independent course concerns research involving human embryonic stem cells. HHMI enabled its investigators to work outside the constraints of a national policy that limited the stem cell lines that could be used and barred the development of new cell lines in federally funded research. We made our decision in consultation with outside advisors, including ethicists, and with the support of our Trustees. The care with which HHMI proceeded made the initiative no less bold. Our stem cell investigators, who aim to cure some of our most devastating diseases, have established new cell lines and have published important, sometimes surprising, findings on tissue development and regeneration.
Back in the 1980s, HHMI president Donald Fredrickson believed the Institute should locate its headquarters “inside the Beltway” so that it would be proximate to the NIH and the officials (elected and otherwise) who make important decisions about science policy in the United States. The decision to base HHMI in the Washington, D.C., area was prescient and has facilitated my interactions with the National Academy of Sciences, NIH, National Science Foundation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the numerous scientific societies headquartered in Washington. Often we find ourselves facing the same issues about biomedical research in the United States. These issues include the challenges early career scientists face and the cumulative effect of conservative funding decisions on innovation in America.
Last year, the Institute launched a new open-application competition to identify talented researchers at the very beginning of their independent careers, between years two and six of their first academic appointments. We're betting that unfettered financial support to these Early Career Scientists, coupled with the new interactions they'll forge as part of the HHMI community, will have a big impact on their ability to develop full-fledged research programs.
This issue of the HHMI Bulletin highlights another response by HHMI to the current research environment. Jack Dixon, our chief scientific officer, has led the creation of the Collaborative Innovation Awards. Using HHMI investigators as the nucleus, we challenged them to assemble teams of scientists to tackle transformational research projects that are too big or too risky for any single laboratory to handle. If a quarter of these efforts succeed, HHMI will have done something worthwhile. That's the whole point: we don't want to be assured that these teams of scientists will solve the problem; we do want to ensure that they have the means to explore big questions.
As I prepare to return to my laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder—to focus more on some scientific questions of my own—I am deeply conscious of the fact that the Institute's successes of the past decade reflect the contributions made by HHMI employees around the country, the members of the Medical Advisory Board and other advisory groups, and, most particularly, the Trustees. Led by Hanna H. Gray, the Trustees have ensured that HHMI remains true to its mission as a medical research organization and lives up to the highest standards of excellence. Thank you for the privilege of leading this great organization.
Photos: Paul Fetters | <urn:uuid:53c8f914-fa8f-407b-af6e-6ddad2689c23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/feb2009/cech/cech2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950057 | 694 | 1.773438 | 2 |
I write a lot about how certain elite (pundits, politicians) have made it their quest to criminalize poverty. David Walker, a lackey of billionaire and Social Security pirate, Pete Peterson, openly pined for the days of debtors’ prison, which is actually already a reality in six states. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) proposed an amendment that would demand mandatory drug tests for welfare and unemployment beneficiaries. A particularly enlightened commenter on my blog summarized the logic behind the amendment thusly: “you gotta make sure they’re not on the crack pipe.”
Previously, I have also written about hiring practices that act to preserve America’s permanent underclass, and how some employers are now making it a practice to check potential employees’ credit scores. Poor people are buried under extravagant loans, which they might never fully pay back, simply for attempting to pursue higher education. Some students actually resort to killing themselves to escape debt, but these are isolated instances that shouldn’t overly concern anyone.
Then there was the embarrassing spectacle of the ruling elite dangling the carrot of unemployment relief before the noses of millions of jobless Americans. There were actual lengthy debates about if the country could really afford the lavish benefits ($300 a week per person) to help people survive the recession during a time when the U.S. is engaged in two separate tremendously expensive military occupations – not to mention the shadow wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. – and after taxpayers spent trillions bailing out the crooks on Wall Street.
Now, a Tea Party favorite Carl Paladino has thrown his hat in the poor-bashing ring.
Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.”
Don’t worry. The program would be totally voluntary.
As we all know, the only reason the undesirables are poor is because they don’t know how to correctly use a loofa. It has nothing to do with institutional racism, archaic and racist drug policies, the prison-industrial complex, stagnate wages, corporate outsourcing, or a government more interested in waging war than properly funding schools.
No, all we need to do is lock away poor people in far away buildings where the normies won’t have to look at them. Really, nothing kills a day more than having to see one of those beggars.
Unsurprisingly, Paladino has a problem with New York social services benefits. He promises a 20 percent reduction in the state budget and a 10 percent income tax cut if elected. Of course, by reducing benefits for jobless people, the underclass will expand, but then we can just throw all those losers in a warehouse and go back to worshipping at the feet of the Aqua Buddha.
Paladino is in good company. Fellow teabaggers Rand Paul and Sharron Angle place the onus of unemployment on the unemployed, and of course this has been the territory of Conservatism for years: it’s your fault you’re unemployed. Intellectual giants like Rush Limbaugh constantly say things like unemployment benefits “do nothing but incentivize people not to find work.”
Paladino is just taking that dehumanization of the poor to its logical conclusion. If it’s their fault they’re jobless, then it follows that the unemployed are somehow lesser beings – not really like us. We should just lock them away, throw away the key, and hope we never inherit the same fate. | <urn:uuid:2dfc07d3-8e50-4848-8662-2cc542ee8557> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allisonkilkenny.com/2010/08/tea-party-favorite-continues-class-war-against-the-poor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952788 | 751 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Smithfield Police Department
Founded as a constabulary in 1937, the Smithfield Police Department was formally established by an act of the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1950.
After being housed at Smithfield Town Hall for more than two decades, the police department moved into its current facility on Pleasant View Avenue in 1972, roughly 18 months after its approval of funding at the town's Financial Town Meeting in 1971.
Chief Richard P. St. Sauveur Jr. oversees a force of 40 uniformed officers and 13 civilian employees.
- Hours: 24-hour emergency response
- Handicap Accessible: Ramp | <urn:uuid:52ea93f0-90e7-4b9c-9f0b-5f61d7b9d126> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smithfield.patch.com/listings/smithfield-police-department | 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 | 0.936499 | 125 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Dr. Warren Sherman is the Director of Cardiac Cell-Based Therapies at Columbia University Medical Center. He is also the physician who performed the very first stem cell procedure for heart failure on a human being and the first in the United States. Dr. Sherman is recognized as a pioneer in this research.
Appearing for all four hours, author Christian Wilde discussed the latest in heart disease prevention, heart health and the advances being made in adult stem cell research. He noted that doctors often fail to spot heart disease risk factors among patients, including sleep apnea and gum disease. Additionally, women's heart disease (500,000 women die per year from it) often gets overlooked, he reported.Joining the discussion in the second hour was Dr. Warren Sherman, who performed the first stem cell procedure for heart failure on a US patient. ... More »Host: George Noory | <urn:uuid:b325d171-d245-441b-a60e-85b80ab2a6d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/sherman-dr-warren/7147 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94897 | 178 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Kibber is one of the highest villages on earth – close to 15,000 feet up in the Himalayas of Indian Tibet. The town is nestled in a shallow valley amidst snow-capped peaks and yawning chasms, and its inhabitants are friendly (mostly) Buddhists. Kibber’s ancient monastery occupies a high perch above the town.
After arriving by bus, me and my travel companion stayed for a few nights at a guest house run by two brothers…luckily, they had HEAVY down comforters because, although we went in July, it was freezing cold at night. I recall that we had a balcony at the front of our second story room, but it had no guardrails/barriers to protect from falling!
I will never forget standing on that veranda at night. Lamps illuminated the windows of homes without electricity, giving the impression of a medieval European village. And the stars did truly shine.
While in Kibber, we took a fantastic hike above town, which offered great panoramas of the entire village and its surrounding peaks. While hiking, we passed Tibetan women working in little fields that must have been extremely difficult to develop for agriculture, and Buddhist monks cooking lunch around a small pond on the hillside. They invited us to a meal. And, of course, the village children sought candy…a lot. : )over 4 years ago | <urn:uuid:8cdf3d31-1ad5-4429-8a93-1b670afe2774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.43places.com/person/sonarbangla/entries | 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 | 0.976155 | 292 | 1.53125 | 2 |
FAIRHAVEN — Mark Twain will be visiting Fairhaven again this weekend when the Fairhaven Historical Society presents Bern Budd as the famous author in "Reminiscences of Fairhaven and Henry Huttleson Rogers."
The presentation will take place on Saturday, Sept. 15, in the Knipe Auditorium at Fairhaven High School.
The high school is an appropriate venue for Twain's return because it is one of the buildings given to the town by Henry Huttleston Rogers. Twain and Rogers were close friends and frequent correspondents.
Twain was a frequent visitor to Fairhaven. He spoke at the dedication of Town Hall (see page A5) and at banquets for the Fairhaven Improvement Association.
Bern Budd is well known in the region for his one man embodiment of Mark Twain. Mr. Budd was the voice of the bicentennial for the town.
Admission to the event on Saturday is free but donations are suggested. | <urn:uuid:df404617-043d-4568-9cf7-f5a512c24c6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120913/PUB01/209130407/-1/rss14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94361 | 197 | 1.734375 | 2 |
12/29/2006, Normans Cay
So I'm sitting on the beach at Normans Cay and I started thinking about toilets. Marine toilets in particular. Having nine people on your boat can bring these sorts of reveries about.
When we were looking at boats, one of our "nice to haves" was fresh water toilets. We have chartered a fair amount and sailed in a lot of friend's boats and one of the most disgusting parts of the experience is the smell of a nasty marine sanitation device. The explanation routinely provided for this maleficent odor is that the many critters suspended in the salt water bite the big one when left floating in the bowl or stranded in the hoses. The human waste is long gone (and frankly much more fragrant in most cases) when this aroma takes over. Now, to paint a picture, take someone with a tad less than an iron stomach, send them to an enclosed space below decks in rough weather, and for the topping, throw in a few whiffs of stock marine sanitation device. The reaction is swift and violent. Who wouldn't want fresh water toilets?
Toilets are yet another item on my full circle list. First let me debunk the most important myth: salt water marine toilets do not have to smell bad. It is true that all salt water marine toilets that sit and brew dead plankton for two months before anyone opens the lid stink to high heaven. Stop brewing the plankton and you stop the smell.
I am incredibly glad that we did not get fresh water toilets. If you are cruising, you live on your boat. If you live on your boat, you use the heads regularly. If you have nine people on your boat, you use the heads non stop. Not one of the four heads on our boat smells. They all get used constantly so there is never a problem with stinky fermented sea water.
On the other hand, I shutter to think of the fresh water that would be wasted if we had switched our configuration. Fresh water is expensive out in the wide world. Few islands have natural sources of fresh water and it is still relatively expensive to make these days. Most places in the Bahamas want $0.50 per gallon. Worse yet, what happens when you're out of fresh water!?
Our boat has a Spectra Newport 4000 which makes about 16 gallons of water an hour. It's a DC unit which is the only way to go IMHO. Everything critical on a boat is (and should be) DC. Your batteries are DC, diesel auxiliaries output DC, solar and wind output DC, even your charger makes DC out of shore power or genset AC. I can't imagine firing up the genset while underway to use the water maker. It is also such a power hog that I can't imagine adding the inefficiency of an inverter to the power toll. Our Newport easily draws 20 amps of DC and it has a Clark pump. So while we have plenty of fresh water when it is the two of us, and we have enough when it is nine, I certainly don't want to flush it down the toilet.
If you're cruising, get salt water toilets! If you use them there will be no smell. When only Hideko and I are aboard, we use a different toilet every time to make sure that they're all circulating (we don't have a checklist or anything). I suppose it is nice to have four heads but two would be fine I think.
Now if you are going to buy a boat and leave it in a marina all its life, or just take it out on weekends here and there, by all means go with fresh water if you like. The heads will smell great when you return to the boat and you can stick a hose in the water tank every time you get ready to go out.
My final thought here has to do with power versus electric. We have electric salt water heads. This is a nice combination. It is not quite so alien to guests as the big pump handle, although you still have to brief them on the fill/use/flush/empty routine. That said the macerators on our heads draw 10 amps. They aren't used that often (unless you have nine people on board) but it is one more thing that needs power and wiring and I'm praying every day that they don't break down! I certainly wouldn't get anything exotic in this arena.
Are electric toilets worth it? I'm still on the fence here. I think if I had only one toilet I would have a manual one. If you have one head, it needs to be very reliable. A good manual toilet is hard to beat there. On the other hand we have four toilets. If one breaks I have three to go. Hard to imagine we'll ever get that unlucky. I think in retrospect that I would have rather had our day head be manual and the ensuite heads power. That way we have a work horse around for hard times and the luxury of power when appropriate. It is not a big enough deal that I am going to change anything however. It is nice to have everything the same from a spares and maintenance stand point.
12/28/2006, Normans Cay
The wind has been blowing 20 knots plus all day today. That said I prefer the wind to the current. Unfortunately we have both. On the bright side, both of our anchors are set like no ones business and we have not budged from the spot we originally dropped back to. Garret (my brother in law) and I took a look at both anchors through the looky bucket. The Claw was mostly buried and the Rocna was gone, with just a bit of chain burrowed into the sand.
As we motored around we stopped by Lehder's plane wreck. The plane is still visible above water at the north side of the anchorage. It is fading though and there's a lot less there than you see in all of the travel guides.
Later in the day Garret joined some other folks in the anchorage spear fishing and the kids went to a great little island on the south side of the anchorage. They named the island "One Tree Island" due to the singular Palm tree smack in the middle. The island is great because the kids can't go far and it is half beach and half coral which lets them build sand castles and explore tide pools.
We took a trip to the main island to visit with Ellen, Loic and Mia from Eyran. We explored the run down Cocaine production facilities and then walked across the airstrip to see if Mac Duffs was still in existence. Mac Duffs is dead. The beach cottages and main buildings are still there and a generator was running but we didn't see anyone and the facility was obviously not operational. We were so looking forward to a good burger. We found a sign on the beach that said Mac Duffs was under new management and would be open late November. Seeing as how it was late December we didn't know exactly what to think.
12/27/2006, The Great Bahama Bank
We had a front pass on the 26th. It was pretty mild but I always hate to tempt fate and sail with a front coming, even if the gradient wind is good. Rain and high wind squalls are no fun when you're sailing in areas known for numerous coral heads.
The forecast for the 27th was for North wind around 15 knots which is just about perfect for a sail down to the Exumas. The three days after were forecast at 20 knots plus from the east. We had originally planned to stop at Allens Cay to see the iguanas and make the first sail as short as possible. Given the conditions and the fact that my sister's family was aboard, Hideko and I decided that we should make a longer run and get on the hook at Normans Cay due to the better protection.
We had to leave the harbor with a fairly stiff wind and it was really nice to have extra hands onboard to help spring off of the dock safely. We checked out with the harbor master as we headed out the West harbor entrance (Nassau Harbor control wants all boats entering and leaving to check in).
As we approached the outer buoys the swell began to build. It was work getting out of the entrance with large 5 and 6 footers on the nose and breakers on either side. We had to go around Paradise Island to get to Porgee Rocks due to our inability to get under the bridges. This put us at a serious disadvantage to the boats that could just pop out of the East end of the harbor and head south. It was also pretty rough going with big swells on the beam and some waves breaking at the tops due to the rapid shoaling and wind. It was not the first exposure to sailing for the family on our new boat I was hoping for. I sensed some nervousness here and there but the kids were having a blast. They liked seeing the Atlantis from the ocean and riding the waves.
We motored into the lee of Salt Cay which killed the nasty surf thankfully. We had plotted a track around the east side of Porgee Rocks which took us through the deepest water in the neighborhood, not deep by any stretch. Once we cleared into the really deep water south of Porgee (20 feet) we headed up to raise the main.
It takes awhile to get the canvas up to the top of that 72 foot stick. We watched several other boats who had left the East Harbor sail off ahead of us as we cranked away on the winch. Someone once told me that anytime you have two sail boats in the same water you have a race. Things we pretty gusty and it looked like it could get a bit squally so I left the first reef in. Brayden, my four year old nephew, kept telling me, "Captain, we need to beat them".
We were motor sailing on one engine at a little over 10 knots. I wanted to get to Normans fairly early due to the strange anchorage, shoal water entrance and poor light. I also didn't want my seven guests to have too long a first sail. The weather was very overcast but seemed stable. We were in a deep broad reach with 12 knots apparent so I shook out the reef and killed the engine which slowed us a bit but we were still doing over nine knots. We passed two boats fairly quickly and left one that had vectored in on us. We caught and passed another two mono hulls just past Yellow Bank.
Ah yes, Yellow Banks. You have to love areas of the chart marked, "numerous shallow coral heads" with well known waypoints on either side and rhumb lines connecting all the dots. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just can't get used to sailing 10 knots in 10 feet of water. I only saw ten feet once but it freaked me out all the same. I later read the Stephen Pavlidis Guide and noted the following quote, "A few of these heads have only 3'-4' of water over them". Hideko routed us around a few scary looking spots but I really don't know if we could reliably expect to see all trouble areas at nine knots with the cloud cover we had. I have talked to other cruiser who have a fairly cavalier attitude about these banks, sailing through at night or on auto pilot with no watch. The only thing I can say about that is that if you are routing directly from one Explorer Chart waypoint to another you're probably fine relative to coral heads, so many people travel the exact path. On the other hand, you have a good chance of having a head on collision with someone else on the reciprocal track.
As we cleared the Yellow Bank area the swell picked up and the ride got a little more rolly, but was still fairly comfortable. No one took medicine and the Mal de Mer didn't strike once. With seven landlubbers aboard that's saying something given the 40 mile run.
We never caught up with Eryan or Side by Side but they were both there when we reached the main anchorage at Normans. We considered anchoring in the Pond and on the West side of Normans but we thought it would be more fun to be close to Eryan and Side by Side so that the kids on all three boats could play together. The Pond has a tight entrance only navigable (by us anyway) at high water. Once inside, the Pond is like a lake and one of the most peaceful anchorages around. Pavlidis noted that Hammerhead Sharks frequent the Pond and Andre, yet another French Canadian we had met in Bimini, told us he saw Lemon and Tiger sharks from his deck. I am not shark paranoid but I wanted to find a place fun for the kids to swim and Tiger sharks are one of the three flavors (Whites and Bulls are the other two) that don't let kids swim with. The other problem with the Pond is that the entrance is on the Exuma Sound side and with the winds predicted (20+ knots from the East) you can't get in or out of the Pond. There were no yachts on the West side. So we decided to drop the hook near Eryan. The main anchorage at the South end of Normans is well protected but right in a high current cut, which I hate.
Alex from Eryan and Jean, another French Canadian skipper, came out to help us as we were looking for a good anchorage. They gave us an overview of the depths in the area and, in the end, dinghied out our second anchor making Hideko's and my job very easy. Talk about a helping hand! It was our first time Bahamian mooring and it was great to get the help.
Catamarans are tricky to double bow anchor. We have a second roller on the top of the cross beam but there is no track on deck or easy access to the windlass for the second chain so we have to hand deploy things. We stow our 66 pound Claw wrapped in some towels in a deck locker so we have to dig that out and then attach the shackle with some pliers and hand lower the chain over the roller. We also have to pre load the chain onto a trampoline to avoid chewing up the lip of the chain locker.
You pretty much need to secure each anchor with a bridal on a cat. The bridal acts as a snubber taking up a bit of the shock load that can be generated when the boat falls back off of the anchor and it also centers the chain between the two hulls, avoiding too much sailing around. We leave our main bridal on the storm anchor attachment points and cleat the secondary bridal onto the cleats on the cross bar. Once we had the anchors down we hooked the bridals on and sat back to consider the situation. Two anchors, two chains, two bridals. Very complicated and, with a few 360 degree rotations, quite messy. We pretty much had to Bahamian moor because there were a lot of boats in the anchorage with two anchors out and not much deep water. I am hoping we don't have a twisted mess to undue when it is time to leave.
Rick on Merlin showed me a lot of great places to visit in the Exumas. He explicitly warned me about the wicked Bahamian current flowing onto and off of the banks through the cuts between islands in the Exumas. I am experiencing first hand what he warned me about. The current here is so strong that none of the kids can jump off of the boat into the water because they would never be able swim back to the boat. Taking a dinghy ride can be a lot of work and stowing the dinghy is a pain because the dinghy wants to point in different directions than the large boat. The wind blowing 20 knots against the outbound tide creates a small, due to the limited fetch, perfectly vertical chop, guaranteed to soak everyone on the dinghy if you aren't surfing down wind.
I think we are going to consider moving to the west side of the island tomorrow.
12/26/2006, The Atlantis Marina
We had originally planned to leave on the 26th for Allens Cay but a front came through today so we decided to wait until Wednesday the 27th. It was a mild front but the rain and gusty weather would have made the tricky trip through the banks no fun. We are set to leave tomorrow early in the morning so that we have plenty of time to see the Allens Cay Iguanas and then perhaps anchor or even head down to Norman to visit with some of out other friends. We have to go out the West Nassau harbor entrance and then head all the way around Paradise Island due to our bridge problem. We are going to inch our way down to Porgee rocks through all of the shoal water on the East side of New Providence and then off to the Exumas.
I always like to have everything ship shape the day before the day before we make a passage. That allows me to rest and take care of everything I forgot to handle the day before the passage. The kids all played at the park today and I just took a nap. I spent a little time at the pool right next to the boat and even sat in the Jacuzzi for a while. The Walkers took me to Johnny Rockets for dinner and then we did a chart briefing. It was a nice close to a wonderful stay at Atlantis.
12/25/2006, Paradise Island
It was a great first Christmas on our boat. We had a bunch of family aboard, the kids opened presents, we played Christmas tunes on the MP3 rig and we had great food.
Having 9 people for Christmas dinner on a boat is a serious endeavor. Jessica, Garret, Pops, Hideko and I all had to really hustle to get everything ready, even Brayden and Logan helped. In the end we had used every cooking appliance and almost all of the pots and pans. We had a Butternut Squash soup going on the stove top (and used the overn to roast the squash prior), Broccoli going on the stove top, a birthday cake (Logan was born on Christmas day six years ago) and a pumpkin pie in the oven, mashed potatoes heating in the convection oven, Béarnaise sauce on the stove top and a Chateau Briand grilling on the barbeque. Throw in an Agua Dulce Cabernet from our engagement and you have a pretty good meal. The weather cooperated so we ate outside which was a nice bonus.
You really need to plan the logistics out for this type of thing on a boat. At home on the dirt you can just whip up whatever with counter space and pots and pans to spare. On the boat you have to carefully sequence things to avoid running out of cookers or pots and pans or counter. Hideko was finding bowls and whatnot all over the boat the next day.
Well it has been an interesting week. We've gone from 2 people and a dog on the boat to 9 and a dog. Wow. It's kind of fun to have every berth in use. We have basically been parked so there hasn't been a lot of nautical stuff happening aboard. I think the week on the dock has been a good way to acquaint everyone with the boat. Living on a boat is not like living in a house. Everyone has now dealt with living on a boat (even if it is one plugged into shore power, and adjacent to Johnny Rockets and a Casino).
The Atlantis has been a blast for the kids and adults. The aquariums are awesome and the pools and water slides are a constant source of fun for the kids. The Atlantis is like a giant ocean based theme park. They have water slides that wind through shark filled pools, a set of tunnels that burrow through the lost city known as The Dig, many kids pools and some adult pools, a lagoon with a completely protected beach and lots of paddle boats and other toys, beach access with life guards and perimeter nets, jet ski rentals, scuba programs for the kids, an Internet library, crew's lounge with showers and a pool table, the list goes on. It is a great resort complete with restaurants of all kinds and a casino. It is also safe, unlike Nassau at large. There are guards and video cameras everywhere.
Some tips for cruisers considering a visit to Atlantis follow. If you dock somewhere in Nassau and come to the Atlantis with your family you will likely pay more than if you just dock here. The Atlantis park is an open area, you could be sneaky and get into a lot of the fun at the resort without paying. That said you need a wrist band to do the water slides and to even get into some of the areas. To get a wrist band you need a room key (or marina key) or you can buy a one day access pass. The one day pass runs up to $200 for a family of four. If you dock your 50 foot boat near the entrance of the marina you will pay $3 a foot (no extra charge for Catamarans!) or $150 a night. Not only will you get full access to the park for your whole crew but also a safe slip with good dock service, power, room service and everything else you have staying in a room at the hotel. No cab fares or dinghy rides either. IMHO this is the bargain of the century. We have 9 on board and pay $150 a night! Sixteen dollars a head is pretty cheap for the experience.
The Atlantis marina is located west of the bridges, which is great if you are entering the harbor from the West. Our stick is 72 feet above the water which means that I don't do bridges under 75 feet. The Paradise island bridges that cross the Nassau harbor are 65 feet. Most marinas here require us to enter from the far more tricky East side of the harbor, no fun in fading light.
Getting a slip reserved in the Atlantis Marina can be difficult during the holidays. The entire place has been reserved this year since August. However, weather and the whims of the rich and famous (who don't care about paying cancellation fees) leave slips open constantly. If you are willing to roll the dice a bit you can stay here as long as you like in my experience. Here's what I ended up doing: We called in September to discover that they were booked but we were told to call in when in town and they would see what they could do. December 16th we radioed in on approach and they said no problem for two nights, take slip 27. Unfortunately slip 27 is prime turf (an alongside spot big enough for a 200 footer) and ran $7 a foot. Yikes. The next day we moved into a slot that had become available up to the 23rd. We didn't want to leave the marina until after Christmas to minimize the challenges with 9 aboard. Lucky for us the 120 foot sloop taking up the alongside #1 and #2 spots moved into a prime slip so we shuffled over to #2 for the last few nights at the reduced rate of $3 a foot. As stated previously we would have had far fewer problems if our beam had been only 22 feet as there are many 25 foot slips for the mega yachts. Our beam of 26 and change had us scratching for the alongside slips only. If you are close to the entrance you only pay $3 per foot but have a good walk around the marina to get to the resort. The middle spots are $5 and the prime spots in the main marina area are $7.
They purport to be very green and I'm sure they try but the mega yachts are washing the topsides every day or two so there's soap and other cleansers floating around the marina regularly. You obviously need to be on holding tanks here but the marina pump outs at each slip are broken. The kind of broken where they will never be fixed I suspect. There's no fuel and the dinghy dock, if you're visiting, is at the very back behind an alley where they often have two mega yachts side by side parked two deep. If you can tie more than two dinghies up there I'd be surprised, they are not exactly encouraging outside boats to visit.
You wouldn't think it looking around at all of these monster motor boats, but we actually don't fit into most slips here. Our catamaran is a bit over 26 feet wide. The beam makes things real stable and comfy, but tricky to fit anywhere in a marina. It is end tie or no tie for us.
The marina is not quite packed but apparently the whole place is booked for Christmas. We called in September to check into reservations and they told us to just show up because they couldn't give us a reservation. We had to move to a new spot today to squeeze another few days out of the harbor master. | <urn:uuid:dcef2598-1b1c-4611-a6bf-8d5503c3ff19> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sailblogs.com/member/swinginonastar/?xjMsgID=21818 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975004 | 5,175 | 1.515625 | 2 |
|« Back to Article|
Shining light on Planned Parenthood issue
By Lisa Falkenberg | August 20, 2012 | Updated: September 19, 2012 12:12pm
There are plenty of reasons for Rene Resendez to bite her tongue when it comes to women's health care.
She's young. She lives in Odessa, in one of the most conservative regions of the state. She was raised Roman Catholic. And most importantly, she's low income, and depends on a state-federal program called the Medicaid Women's Health Program for annual well-woman exams, cancer screening and contraception.
But the 25-year-old graduate student isn't letting any of that stop her from speaking out about Texas' exclusion of Planned Parenthood from its new, rogue version of the Women's Health Program, set to roll out Nov. 1. Texas decided to go it alone and forfeit a 9-to-1 federal funding match, after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused to let the state kick qualified, non-abortion providers out of the program if they happen to be affiliated with abortion providers.
Resendez, a Lubbock native who is studying psychology at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, has started an online petition at change.org, asking the state to hold a public hearing on its proposal to exclude Planned Parenthood.
Others, including Democratic state senators and House members, have already requested a hearing on the controversial proposed rule, which the 46,000-member Texas Medical Association has called a "gag order" for barring doctors from even discussing abortion with patients during visits covered by the state.
Still, Resendez's online campaign is shining badly needed light on the crisis facing a popular, cost-effective women's health program serving 130,000 clients.
'Deserve a voice'
Litigation over Planned Parenthood's exclusion is still pending. And although Gov. Rick Perry vowed to find state money for Texas' Women's Health Program, he seems clueless about how to do it in another tight-budget session.
"Politics should not interfere with women's access to basic health care in the state of Texas," Resendez writes in her online plea for signatures. "And the women at risk of losing services deserve a voice."
In a week, she's amassed more than 1,300 signatures.
To many, it's an audacious suggestion, that a poor woman who can't afford her own health care has as much right to choose her provider as those who can buy private insurance. Some would say that even though she pays taxes like the rest of us, she should keep her mouth shut and be eternally grateful for whatever the mostly male, mostly affluent lawmaking Gods see fit to provide her.
"The conservative side seems to think if you're not wealthy or not middle class, it's your own fault. You're just sitting at home waiting for a welfare check. Most of them were never low income, these policy-makers," Resendez told me. "A lot of them are men. They're not going to face these problems like cervical cancer, or when's the right time to have a baby."
Resendez doesn't fit the Medicaid stereotype. She was the first in her family to go to college, which she paid for with financial aid, working two jobs, and help from her parents, who are themselves uninsured. Allowing Resendez to see a provider she actually trusts in a rural area with few other options isn't a luxury Texas can't afford. It's simply a political inconvenience for the conservatives who run Austin.
Resendez's choice of Planned Parenthood isn't about politics. It isn't about abortion. She doesn't think of those things when she calls to schedule her annual well-woman exam. She thinks about how Planned Parenthood helped save her mother's life.
Resendez says that when her mother was her age, an abnormal pap test at Planned Parenthood alerted her to the fact that she had cervical cancer. Then, Resendez says, Planned Parenthood diagnosed her sister with an ovarian cyst and helped treat it.
The Planned Parenthood clinic that Resendez went to in Odessa closed in March after funding cuts, and she's not sure where she'll go for her next appointment. She's hoping her petition at least draws attention to the issue, puts a face on it, gives voice to tens of thousands of low-income women who haven't had one in this debate. | <urn:uuid:de8299ba-71da-4295-b2f5-98250a6833c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chron.com/news/falkenberg/article/Falkenberg-Shining-light-on-Planned-Parenthood-3802244.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974487 | 912 | 1.5 | 2 |
|Department Chair:||Prof. Dr. med. Martin Scherer|
|Department Vice Chair:||
Dr. med. Maren Ehrhardt
Dr. Christina Meigel-Schleiff
Our Department is part of the Center for Psychosocial Medicine. Research focuses on topics relating to primary care, particularly in the areas of dementia, multimorbidity and chronic disease. The primary field of interest is home medical care.
The courses taught cover the areas of primary care medicine, healthcare economy/healthcare system, introductory clinical medicine as well as the occupational field. The Department is also very active in the advanced training of primary care specialists and the continuing education of general practitioners in Hamburg.
The Department's research projects are grouped in the following areas:
Courses and training required for licensing of medical doctors cover the following areas:
We regularly give continuing education courses for 80 general practitioners with a lectureship.
Our department is actively involved in advanced training of specialists in primary care medicine.
As part of the "General Practitioner Continuing Education Hamburg" consortium, we are responsible for the didactic design and evaluation of continuing education for general practitioners.
More than 20 scientists and eight non-scientists as well as a varying number of student assistants and doctoral students work in our department. | <urn:uuid:be8def3f-2a94-4a63-ad21-e8e71fade726> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uke.de/institute/allgemeinmedizin/index_ENG.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939132 | 265 | 1.742188 | 2 |
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Gov. Sam Brownback took time Wednesday to honor the men and women of the nation's military.
The Governor signed a proclamation declaring Wednesday as Armed Forces Appreciation Day.
Lt. Gen. David Perkins from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Adjutant General Lee Tafanelli and Brig. Gen. Donald MacWillie from Fort Riley joined Brownback for the event.
"We are honored as a state to host several major facilities of the United States military," Brownback said. "We take delight in doing this. We are really happy being a military state."
Members of the Governor's Military Council were also in attendance. The group held a meeting Wednesday discussing strategy for maintaining military presence in Kansas.
The Defense Department projects cutting 114,000 personnel nationwide by 2021, which could mean losses for Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth and McConnell Air Force Base.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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I was just over at China Law blog, reading this article warning about future attempts of emails selling you “your” domain name. For China that is.
It seems that once ICANN starts accepting applications for domain names with non-Latin characters (i.e., Chinese):
This practice could get a further boost in China following the announcement in late October by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that domain names do not have to have Latin characters. No doubt Chinese domain peddlers are already preparing to register the established brand names of Chinese and foreign companies in Chinese characters.
Thus, if you are planning to venture the Chinese business world and would like to set up a website .cn buy as soon as possible, before it’s gone and you might start getting “sales pitch emails”.
As suggested on China Law blog do not respond to these emails, unless you want to buy the domain.
That I guess, it’s a whole other story.
New Year, new China.
Published in November by the State Intellectual Property Office of China, the document called the “National Patent Development Strategy (2011-2020)” is set to bring more innovation than imitation to China. This document, discusses broad economic objectives as well as specific targets to be attained by 2015.
China’s goal for annual patent filings by 2015 is two million. That number includes “utility-model patents,” which typically include items like engineering features in a product and are less ambitious than “invention patents.” In the American system, there are no utility patents.
The New York Times quotes Mr. Kappos, Director of the US Patent and Trademark office: “The leadership in China knows that innovation is its future, the key to higher living standards and long-term growth,” Mr. Kappos says. “They are doing everything they can to drive innovation, and China’s patent strategy is part of that broader plan.”
China intends to overcome the “stigma” associated with being known as the world’s cheapest workshop for assembling computer parts and producing counterfeit fashion products i.e. Italian high street clothes and bags.
China has the chance to bring innovative products and technologies to the world and is making the US worried.
Will China gives us the next Mark Zuckerberg?
Share your thoughts with us. | <urn:uuid:9723a572-a27c-4b09-aeff-bc8c58d1bc08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hrpayrollchina.com/date/2011/01/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954261 | 503 | 1.664063 | 2 |
I’m swamped with our new graduate programs right now, so here’s a repost from 7/20/09 that I hope you’ll enjoy.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which we humans seem to gravitate towards “either/or” choices. Either we protect Northern Spotted Owls or people’s logging jobs. Either we invade Iraq or not. Either we pull the troops out or stay. There are more. Either we trust our minds or hearts. Either we are Christian or Muslim. Either we are Republican or Democrat.
Yes, there are people who want to protect owls and jobs, think beyond either/ors and work creatively to come up with the wisest choices in Iraq, trust both their minds and hearts, see the connections between all religions, and consider themselves Independents. But it seems to me such people are the minority.
Among activists, the either/ors are sometimes cast starkly: either someone (or some company or industry) is good or evil. The CEO of Altria (formerly Philip Morris), of Exxon-Mobil, of Monsanto –- they must be evil, while the CEO of Working Assets/CREDO must be good.
It’s just not this simple. But complexity is, well, complex. Commitment to seeing both-ands instead of either/ors demands more from us. It may at first even appear wishy-washy, as if you’ve lost your passion and your commitment if you don’t immediately “take sides.” It shouldn’t. Instead, a commitment to both-and is a commitment to problem-solving at the deepest level. A realization that people have the capacity for dangerous, unwise, unhealthy choices, as well as compassionate, kind, and brilliant choices means that we can try to influence the former, rather than call people names and divide the population into us and thems.
There will be many times when taking sides is exactly what you need to do, but let’s not let side-taking become a knee-jerk reaction to everything that is presented to us in either/or terms. You’ll find either/ors everywhere. Listen for them. And then see if you can determine a more nuanced both-and…and a solution that works for all.
Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Filed under: critical thinking, third side thinking | Tagged: both/and, critical thinking, either/or, MOGO choices, power of choice, problem solving, third side thinking, us and them | Comments Off | <urn:uuid:99b43ae8-abe7-4943-9121-57cf21dbf013> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zoeweil.com/2011/04/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930517 | 617 | 1.734375 | 2 |
2008 Washburn Award Recipient
Neil deGrasse Tyson, PhD
Frederick P. Rose Director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History; television host, NOVA scienceNOW
Neil deGrasse Tyson, PhD, is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose directorship of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. He earned his BA in physics from Harvard University and his PhD in astrophysics from Columbia University.
Dr. Tyson's research interests include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. He has served on two presidential commissions — one focused on the future of the US aerospace industry and the other on the implementation of the US space exploration policy. In 2006 NASA appointed Dr. Tyson to its prestigious advisory council, which helps the agency fit its ambitious vision into its restricted budget.
In addition to his monthly "Universe" essays in Natural History magazine, Dr. Tyson has written eight books, including his memoir The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist and his recent New York Times bestseller Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries. His Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, which he co-authored with Donald Goldsmith, became the companion book to the 2004 PBS NOVA miniseries Origins, which Dr. Tyson hosted. He is also a host of the PBS NOVA scienceNOW program.
Dr. Tyson is the recipient of nine honorary doctorates and the NASA distinguished public service medal. The International Astronomical Union has recognized his contribution to the public appreciation of the cosmos with the naming of asteroid "13123 Tyson." | <urn:uuid:df142ad1-ed62-49d2-8dd5-337f90330436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mos.org/washburn-award/neil-degrasse-tyson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946623 | 337 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Amphetamine (USAN or amfetamine (INN) contracted from alphamethyl-phenethylamine or α-methylphenethylamine) is 1-phenylpropan-2-amine or C9H13N. It exists as two enantiomers: the levorotary form levamfetamine (INN) and dextrorotary form dexamfetamine (INN). It is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class that produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite.
A new study which capitalized on an extensive ongoing survey, shows that children with high IQs, especially girls, are more likely to indulge in illicit drug use in their 30′s than people with lower IQs. Dr. James White of Cardiff University and his team of researchers used data gathered from the British Cohort Study, an ongoing [...] | <urn:uuid:9096c53f-2f2b-45de-abb1-c465b30c2411> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zmescience.com/tag/amphetamine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936463 | 192 | 1.8125 | 2 |
I’ve always had an affinity for instructing others (my sister, who’s an actual teacher, would tell you I’m just bossy—but that’s another story). This educational instinct is one reason I enjoy working at Family Tree Magazine. In each issue, podcast episode and online article, I get to share tips and hints that help you trace your families.
Now I’ve got a new way to play tutor: We recently launched a series of online workshops—how-to genealogy tutorials you “attend” over the Internet. They’re a lot like in-person seminars—you watch and listen to the presentation, and have the opportunity to ask questions—but with extra benefits. For example, after participating in the live event, you can watch a recording of it as often as you’d like. Participants also get a PDF of the presentation slides for future reference, as well as a bonus article or cheat sheet related to the workshop topic.
From a how-to standpoint, I’m most excited that these workshops offer us an opportunity to show as well as tell—in ways we can’t do in print. Take the Online Census Secrets workshop managing editor Diane Haddad and I are working on as I write this. In addition to explaining where to look for census records online and how to make the most of those Web sites, we’ll actually be demonstrating search techniques on screen, so you can see them in action.
Recordings of this and other online workshops are available in our online store <www.familytreemagazine.com/shop>. To view a schedule of upcoming workshops and learn more about how the seminars work, visit FamilyTreeMagazine.com
From the September 2009 Family Tree Magazine | <urn:uuid:ac149486-43d0-410f-a4dc-a602903b939c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://familytreemagazine.com/ArticlePrint/September-2009-Out-on-a-Limb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932905 | 369 | 1.507813 | 2 |
|Back to Living with Hepatitis C
By Jacques Chambers
(click here to download pdf)
Insurance companies like to compare buying health insurance after being diagnosed with a serious medical condition like HCV to trying to buy fire insurance on a burning house. That sounds really logical….except….most fire insurance policies are never used as most houses don’t burn down. Everyone has medical problems, however, at one time or another.
To prevent a person from buying health insurance only when they need it, the insurance industry uses a procedure called “medical underwriting.” Loosely translated into plain English, it means “discriminating against anyone we feel may cost us money.” And this type of discrimination against people with health problems is perfectly legal.
So once a person has been diagnosed with HCV, can they ever get health coverage again? They certainly will not be able to purchase a policy that requires medical underwriting, which most health plans sold individually do; before accepting you for coverage, they get to review your entire health history and current medical condition, and anyone with HCV will be refused coverage.
There are, however, alternatives to medically underwritten individual health insurance plans. These are some of the most common:
Employer Provided Health Insurance
Under a federal law called HIPAA, if you work for an employer who provides health insurance to its employees, you cannot be refused the insurance because of your medical condition or health history. If the employer offers it and you are full-time and otherwise qualify for it, they must let you enroll in the plan regardless of your health.
This right to health insurance is available not only to new hires, but also to persons who had originally declined the insurance and later changed their mind, although there may be some temporary limitations on coverage for these “late enrollees.”
There are advantages and disadvantages to getting health insurance through your employer. The primary advantage is the employer pays most or all of the costs of the health insurance and you can’t be turned down. Also, many employers offer a choice of plans so each employee can choose the plan that best fits his/her needs.
The primary disadvantage is that your health insurance is tied to your employment. If the employer changes plans, you have no choice but to change plans too, even if it means less coverage.
Another drawback used to be that you lost your insurance when your employment stopped. COBRA Continuation laws have helped some, but their extension of coverage is limited to between 18 and 36 months.
Now, thanks also to the HIPAA law, once you have acquired health insurance through an employer, you have the right to keep either that insurance or a private plan of similar quality, even if you terminate employment and COBRA Continuation coverage expires. This means that once you acquire health insurance through an employer you will be able to maintain some form of health insurance regardless of any change in your employment status.
Eligible Spouse or Domestic Partner of an Employee with Health Insurance
If you are the spouse of an employee who gets health insurance through an employer, you too are eligible for health insurance just as the employee is. Also, more and more employers and health insurance plans allow “domestic partners” the same rights to health insurance as a married spouse.
Because there is no stan dard definition of a “domestic partner,” each health plan will have its own requirements as to who can be covered as a “domestic partner.” It usually includes the partner in a committed relationship regardless of sex. Some plans require that they live together; others don’t; many will require registering as domestic partners if the state or city offers such a program. A few employers will permit any other person to whom the employee has close ties, including a parent or sibling, to be included in the plan.
Union or Guild Health Plans
Most union employees are covered through employer provided health plans that are part of a bargaining agreement with the union. However, some unions and trade guilds provide health insurance directly to their members. This is most common in trades or occupations where the union member either works free-lance or moves frequently from employer to employer. Examples would include: musicians, actors, writers, editors, decorators, truck drivers, and some professional occupations such as attorneys, architects, or dentists.
The requirements for joining the union health plan can be fairly strict. Those unions that permit any dues-paying union member to join the health insurance will have strict requirements as to who is eligible to join the union. Many union plans are more liberal on membership but will require a minimum number of hours worked or dollars earned in that profession to be eligible for the health insurance plan. A few may offer the health insurance to anyone willing to pay the dues but virtually all of those plans are medically underwritten.
At one time, many associations made health insurance available to their members without requiring medical underwriting. Unlike the union or guild plans which required some affiliation to join, most association plans were open to virtually anyone who was willing to pay the dues. This included groups like associations for independent sales representatives, self-employed individuals, and even some fraternal and social organizations.
However, as health insurance became more difficult to find and more expensive to maintain, insurance companies largely stopped writing association plans on such a loose basis. Virtually all of the association plans that still exist require medical underwriting or other evidence of good health to join, just as if the insurance were being purchased directly.
Short Term Health Insurance
There is one health insurance product that is often included in lists such as this, but it provides no real help for anyone already diagnosed with a medical condition. These are the short term or “temporary” health insurance plans. They are written for a set period of time, usually from 30 days up to six months, and they cannot be renewed. While they rarely require answering any questions about your health, they are carefully worded so that they will never cover charges related to any condition for which you were already being treated when the coverage began. This makes them virtually worthless for our purposes.
Veterans Administration Medical Benefits
If you are a veteran of the military you may be eligible for medical benefits from the Veteran’s Administration. For more information on getting benefits through the VA, go to http://www.va.gov/ and click on “Health – Benefits & Services.” While this may not affect many readers, for those that are, VA benefits can be very helpful, especially for persons dealing with HCV.
If a disability is “service-connected,” you may be eligible for monthly benefits in addition to completely free medical care. Because of the methods of transmission for HCV and because of its relative newness as an identifiable diagnosis, the VA often liberally interprets HCV infection as “service connected.” Generally, proof must be shown that you were at least exposed to potential infection by HCV. If you can show that during active duty, you may have been exposed to HCV through transfusions, tattooing, or even IV drug use, or other situations that could explain the exposure, you may be approved for free medical care and some monthly disability benefits.
These federal health insurance plans can provide medical care to a person with HCV as well, assuming that you are eligible for the coverage.
Medicare is available to persons age 65 or older. It is also available to persons under age 65 who have collected Social Security Disability Insurance (SSD or SSDI) benefits for 24 months.
Medicaid is a federally mandated health plan that is based on need. In addition to being either age 65 or older or disabled, you must show that your income and resources (assets) are low enough to qualify. Medicaid is administered by each state so the eligibility rules will vary slightly from state to state.
State High Risk Plans
Most states offer a health insurance plan for persons who, due to their medical history, are unable to purchase one on the open market. The plans vary from state to state. Most charge a premium that is higher than regular health plans, and some offer benefits that are not as broad.
To learn more about your state’s High Risk Health Insurance Plan, called by different names in each state, contact your state’s Department of Insurance.
Contact numbers and addresses for all 50 states’ Departments of Insurance can be found at http://www.ican2000.com/state.html.
Open Enrollment Periods
A few states require their Blue Cross – Blue Shield plan to open their enrollment at least once a year to anyone who applies for health insurance, regardless of their health history. Contact your state Department of Insurance to see if your state offers this.
Guarantee Issue by State Mandate
Finally, there are a few states that require all insurance companies to offer at least a few health insurance plans, if not all, to persons without any medical underwriting at all.
Because laws change, you may want to check with your own state’s Department of Insurance to see if it has recently changed its offerings.
Despite the fact that a person with HCV is considered “uninsurable” for health insurance, there are alternative ways to acquire good health coverage.
Confused about applying for disability? Click here
[Jacques Chambers, CLU, and his company, Chambers Benefits Consulting, have over 35 years of experience in health, life and disability insurance and Social Security disability benefits. For the past twelve years, he has been assisting people with their rights, problems, and other issues concerning benefits and disability. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org or through his website at: http://www.helpwithbenefits.com.]
Copyright, (June, 2005) Hepatitis C Support Project / HCV Advocate www.hcvadvocate.org. All Rights Reserved. Reprint is granted and encouraged with credit to the Hepatitis C Support Project
Back to Living with Hepatitis C | <urn:uuid:d320e43e-9648-45fc-ba8f-bae20ec7ebe8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hcvadvocate.org/hepatitis/hepC/Getting_Insurance.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969878 | 2,072 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Unless you have got correctly inflated tyres then you do not know what you are missing. No rule of thumb can make up for this. Tyre inflation is really important and your best bet is to get a track pump with valve to check your tyres with. Do this every fortnight, leave it to every month if your journey times are not important to you. I cannot stress enough the importance of getting a track pump, however, that is not what you asked.
Several answers here have mentioned that you should take a peek at how much your tyres splay when you are riding the bike. This is definitely a useful check, however you must bear in mind that a correctly inflated tyre is not a solid tyre and it will bulge out sideways anyway. Only when drastically under-inflated will it show an easily discernible extra bulge. But do watch for that, particularly if you go over a bump and the bike 'thuds' more than normal.
There is also the ride-through-the-puddle test. Go through a puddle and onto a dry surface, e.g. a pavement or a hallway. If you look at how much water has been left behind you can get a comparative idea of how much of your tyre is in contact with the road. If you know what you expect and if the trail is thicker than that, e.g. with a lot more than the centre ridge making contact, then you may want to get the track pump out again.
Returning to the weight-on-the-wheel and how much the tyres splay idea, you can also roll your bike slowly over a kerb and see how much it deforms. At speed it will do so more than under the static situation, so try it slowly and there should be no danger to your rims and 'snake-biting' your tyres.
As for squeezing the tyre after inflating it as best as I can with a mini-pump, when I get to the track pump with gauge I am always surprised at how many tens of P.S.I. I was off the mark. Squeezing the tyre is a waste of time.
If you had car-type valves (which you don't) then you could get those valve caps that some car-part shops sell. These go red when you lose 5-10 P.S.I. They are good but not available in Presta to my knowledge.
Personally I find the best gauge to be how the bike feels and how fast it goes. On some parts of my commute I like to go quicker than the 20 m.p.h. speed limit (as cars cannot over take me then), however, there are times when I am not able to hit my expected speeds, as measured on the bike speedometer. With a bit of extra air in the tyres I can usually get back to where I expect to be. | <urn:uuid:da8e98cf-9157-4685-bd07-36b3ec9208cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/5417/how-can-i-check-tire-pressure-without-a-pressure-gauge?answertab=active | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969294 | 594 | 1.625 | 2 |
Re: Most technical Peices??? 20:56 on Friday, June 04, 2004
If Mozart`s concerto is an easy piece how come every professional is required to play it on every audition he or she takes. Panels probably wouldn`t chose an easy solo for the worlds best players to all try out on would they?
PS Mozart is a classical (classical period) composer. So romanticizing the concerto would probably offend some listeners.
Re: Most technical Peices??? 22:50 on Friday, June 04, 2004
I will second Bryan regarding the Mozart. The older I get the Mozart gets harder and harder. As a high school student, I was concerned with getting the notes. That came pretty easy. In college it was tinkering the technique. Now that I am a grad student, the darn piece is harder than ever. One missed or flubbed note just kills the whole thing. When I was in HS, the Mozart was the easiest piece, or so I thought. Now every time I play it it is a serious challenge. It comes with maturity.
Westlake, I will second you on the Lefebvre! I think I have a recording somewhere of him performing a piece. It is amazing at the fluid technique those guys had. You can def. see the influence on Bonade and his students.
I still don`t think Mozart is that difficult. I`m sure what he`s saying is true, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and mine is that I can play this "difficult" music with talent and feelings and not screw it up.
copeland concerto 21:06 on Monday, June 07, 2004
I would have to say that the copeland concerto is very challenging. Like the Mozart the rhythms and notes are not hard but making that piece sing is incredibly hard. Gosh just getting the first note to sound right can drive me insane.
RE: Technically challenging pieces 16:46 on Sunday, June 20, 2004
OK... here`s what I think...
I think that how difficult a piece shouldn`t be determined by how technical it is... really. I don`t know if the person who wrote the original message intended to equivicate technical and difficult.
The truth is that many pieces that don`t seem difficult can be more difficult than you think. Recently, I played the Poulenc Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, Movts. 1 and 2. Yeah, this piece isn`t really that technically difficult, just a couple of runs and akward fingerings here and there...
But if you ever listened to a recording of it, you realize there`s so much more involved. One thing is the high notes. Especially in the third movt. are they prominent. And you have to get them to sound pretty in context.
And one thing you will definitely hear is all the dynamic contrasts and the stylistic changes. I`ll tell you, it`s pretty hard to play Poulenc. You have to give all your passion to play it. I mean, in one measure, the music is soft and playful, and the next measure (literally), the music becomes agressive, as if there was an argument between the piano and the clarinet. Another spot in the second movt. is very solemn and melancoly. The next moment, you`re at a forte, and you`re ripping up a double octave A melodic minor scale in 64th notes, as if you`re angry, and can`t take the pain any longer.
Please consider this factor when judging how hard music is. I`m not saying that Poulenc`s piece is the hardest to play, but I`m giving an example of how you shouldn`t judge the music solely on how many black marks there are on the page! | <urn:uuid:b41f605b-c463-4961-986d-89953d636685> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.8notes.com/f/26_53132.asp?spage=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962172 | 807 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Analysts Paint Chrome as Long-term Threat to Microsoft
"Will Microsoft be worried? Microsoft will always be worried, whether it should or not," said Michael Silver, Gartner's primary operating system analyst. "Microsoft, after all, is one of the more paranoid companies around."
Late Tuesday night, Google announced that it would launch its long-anticipated operating system, based on the Linux kernel and built around its Chrome browser, sometime in the second half of 2010, more than a year from now. The new operating system will be dubbed "Google Chrome OS."
From Silver's seat, the news will make Microsoft, already locked in competition with Google over search, take notice. But the horizon of a face-to-face OS battle is way out there, he said.
"It will take quite a long time for Google to become a competitor to Microsoft," he said. "In the enterprise, for example, over 70% of the applications used require Windows. And even at home, things like personal finance still require Windows. So, while I think this is a longer-term threat to Microsoft, it's definitely not in the short term."
Michael Cherry, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, agreed. "It's hard to see this as a threat to Microsoft," Cherry said. "Sure, it could take some sales of netbooks, and previously those netbooks might have had a version of Windows, but it seems like this is not really a platform for applications. The Web is the application."
Both Silver and Cherry, in fact, pointed out that, according to the few pieces of information Google's disclosed so far, applications written for the future Google OS would also run on Windows, or even on Apple's Mac OS X.
The Google executives who announced the company's push into OS waters made that clear. "These apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, in their blog post last night.
"Applications written for Google will run on all standard browsers, so you don't even need to use Chrome OS," Cherry pointed out.
That's not to say either analyst was panning Google's move. Both gave the search giant kudos or were confident the company could make a play in the OS arena. "The momentum is on Google's side," said Silver, "because apps are moving away from being OS-specific. But it's taking years. And years." "As someone who likes operating systems, I'm excited," added Cherry. "This is great news."
Even so, everyone should just step back a moment, cautioned Cherry. "While Google wants to move very, very quickly, there's a couple of things that jumped out at me, and have me worried," Cherry said.
"We didn't get to where we are with Windows because Microsoft set out to build a slow, massive operating system," he said. "They kept adding functionality."
The same will happen to Google, he predicted. "What Google will face is application developers who say, 'Here's what we'd like to do,' and Google will realize that their OS doesn't support that. And then they'll expose an API or add functionality. And lo and behold, it's a little bigger."
More troubling, Cherry said, is Google's promise that its OS would be security worry-free.
Pichai and Upson did make some brash claims on that front. "As we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates," they said. "It should just work," they added, stealing a phrase Mac users often spout.
"That's just wishful thinking," said Cherry. "Any OS that's capable of doing something can be exploited."
Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on Google's announcement.
That didn't stop Cherry from giving the company a bit of advice. "Microsoft has to deliver on the promises it's made, including Windows 7. More importantly, it has to deliver on the work that's being done under the general heading of Azure," he said, referring to the company's cloud-based version of its operating system. "Deliver on that and on Office Web," Cherry advised.
Rumors circulated today that Microsoft will make major announcements revolving around both Azure and Office Web next Monday when it kicks off its annual Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. | <urn:uuid:e0767c3b-9f34-4a7f-9d4b-5a7cf6ed45ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcworld.com/article/168075/analysts_paint_chrome_as_long_term_threat_to_microsoft.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972637 | 950 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Paper instruments that actually play? You read that correctly, friends – welcome to the future!
Sure, this is more for the “younger crowd” than we typically trend, but there is no denying that the concept as well as the execution of these tiny paper products are both hilarious and awesome.
They use what is known as Active Graphics Technology, which basically boils down to being paper instruments with circuits inside of them. These circuits allow an instrument to be “played” by touching the right spots on the surface.
You’re thinking – but these have to sound like crap, right? Yeah, not so much.
The six guitars the company currently offers come with four modes of operation including “free style”, which allows a user to play actual guitar chords simply by touching the right spots on the neck and strumming the “strings”.
Almost perfectly flat and only a few inches thick, Paperjamz look like real guitars at first glance, and actually sound pretty damn good for a collection of paper and circuit boards. Videos on the company's Web sites show people with actual guitar-playing talents rockin’ out using the freestyle mode, but for those who want an easier go of things, karaoke and “perfect play” modes are included with music tracks that are built into the guitars.
Oh but that’s not all – the company now offers drum kits and amps to enhance your playing experience. Every instrument also comes with an internal speaker and volume control as well as earphone jacks for when your rock and/or roll gets to intense for your partner or parent to handle.
The guitars cost around $25 USD at Amazon, and can also be fount at your local toy store. Sure, they’re for kids twelve and up, but that includes those of us who might just be over 25 or 30 but miss the true and awesome power of getting down with sound.
Rock on, paper brothers. | <urn:uuid:fac78821-5719-40eb-a8c7-ee94b91f1837> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inventorspot.com/articles/wowwee_paperjamz_turn_fun_eleven | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960744 | 409 | 1.5625 | 2 |
If you are planning on opening an engraving business, then there are a number of things which you need o take into considerations. The type of cnc engraver which you choose for your workshop will determine how well you can minimize some of the overhead costs and produce marvelous designs. Unfortunately, more than often new buyers keep selecting the wrong machine. This is partly due to insufficient information when shopping for an engraving machine or being misled by a sales person. Cnc engraving equipment is available in the market in different designs and models. Each of these varies from the other in terms of performance. Therefore, knowing what your business needs are will influence the effectiveness and reliability of the machine purchased.
In recent times, the need of universal laptop charger has risen as the best backup or substitute for laptop power supplies. A laptop power supply can be easily purchased from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) or from the factory as per individual needs. Possible to attach to any electronic gadget or appliance, a universal laptop power supplier easily states its name true. Right from using the adaptor for a notebook, or for a laptop, mp3 players, DVD player or even for a PDA, the power supply is easily availed without any problem. Even then, the laptop charger can be used in vehicles despite the difference in their sockets.
The Windows operating system has several utilities that can prove useful for troubleshooting why a computer keeps crashing. The goal when using these tools is to help pinpoint where the problem lies so you can research on the web workarounds are solutions to fixing them. The most useful utility is probably the event viewer log (available from the start menu/run/eventvwr.exe). All applications and hardware create log entries which can be tracked and traced in the event log. Check it when you crash PC components for any log entries detailing error codes on the lead up to the PC freezing. This proves to be invaluable for doing online research into what piece of hardware or software cause the problem.
If you're a student, then it's highly likely that you have given thought to what are some of the best laptops for students. There is no one perfect laptop for students, but many students have the same basic needs such as lightweight, portable and affordable laptops. A laptop which can be easily carried from class to class is the type that you want to look for. Nothing bigger than 13" really, since when you get to 15" and above the weight of the laptop starts to increase, often significantly. Many students opt for netbooks which are low in price and have pretty small screens, allowing them to be used only for text, really - email and word processing. On the upside, this is a great discouragement to using the laptop for gaming and social media - it's too difficult on such a small screen!
Video conferencing has become one of the latest and greatest ways to communicate with other people. Business and individuals alike are finding the benefits to video conferencing far outweigh the cost and time required to travel or make an impersonal phone call. As the technology has grown, it no longer requires an advanced degree to operate most video conferencing equipment, and many times it can be accomplished with little computer experience as well! | <urn:uuid:300d3e75-4c7e-43bc-a215-b6c6114104ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latestcordlessmouse.com/2011/04/ | 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 | 0.949407 | 659 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown: A Novel
Simon & Schuster
Publication date: July 2011
Digital Book format: ePub (Adobe DRM)
Based on an incredible true episode of World War II history, Paul Malmont's new novel is a rollicking blend of fact and fiction about the men and women who were recruited to defeat the Nazis and ended up creating the future. In 1943, when the United States learns that Germany is on the verge of a deadly innovation that could tip the balance of the war, the government turns to an unlikely source for help: the nation's top science fiction writers. Installed at a covert military lab within the Philadelphia Naval Yard are the most brilliant of these young visionaries. The unruly band is led by Robert Heinlein, the dashing and complicated master of the genre. His "Kamikaze Group," which includes the ambitious genius Isaac Asimov, is tasked with transforming the wonders of science fiction into science fact and unlocking the secrets to invisibility, death rays, force fields, weather control, and other astounding phenomena-and finding it harder than they ever imagined. When a German spy washes ashore near the abandoned Long Island ruins of a mysterious energy facility, the military begins to fear that the Nazis are a step ahead of Heinlein's group. Now the oddball team, joined by old friends from the Pulp Era including L. Ron Hubbard (court-martialed for attacking Mexico), must race to catch up. The answers they seek may be locked in the legendary War of Currents, which was fought decades earlier between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. As the threat of an imminent Nazi invasion of America grows more and more possible, events are set in motion that just may revolutionize the future-or destroy it—while forcing the writers to challenge the limits of talent, imagination, love, destiny, and even reality itself. Blazing at breathtaking speed from forgotten tunnels deep beneath Manhattan to top-secret battles in the North Pacific, and careening from truth to pulp and back again, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown is a sweeping, romantic epic-a page-turning rocket ship ride through the history of the future. | <urn:uuid:885c8c5a-7624-430b-8d55-2fce1cad78f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/the-astounding-the-amazing-and-the-unknown/paul-malmont/9781439168936 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934503 | 450 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Today in my Psych Appraisal and Assessment class I assumed the role of Tricia, a 14 year-old girl plagued with a troubling family life. The topic of this week’s class was doing assessments with families and couples, and after going over the lecture we did some role-playing to enact what we had just learned. Unlike working with individuals, the focus of family therapy is to observe the interactions between all members of the family and the whole family unit is considered to be the client. Based on the sheer increase in the number of people you are working with, family therapy can be quite complex. We learned that the hard way today, as six of us assumed roles of dysfunctional family members in a therapy session with three additional classmates serving as the therapist.
Our family consisted of a full-time working father, a stay at home mother, three teenage daughters, and a six year-old son. The presenting problem for this family was that the six year-old son had been severely acting out in school and at home, and the parents were very argumentative. As we sat in a circle of chairs in the middle of class, playing out the session, it became clear how challenging it can be to conduct a session with so many dynamics at play. Once we got settled into our roles and the therapists were prompting thoughtful questions (with input from the rest of the class), the family’s dirty laundry started coming out and we got in the swing of conducting a family session. We had some fun with improvising…as in the middle of session mom dropped a bomb in front of the kids that dad had been having an affair. Our professor was very insightful in providing appropriate feedback for how to handle such situations and she referenced countless examples from her own experiences as a practicing clinical psychologist.
I must say, one of the things I am enjoying most about this semester so far is that I feel like I am actually learning how to be a therapist in my classes. It’s great (and fun!) to be able to play out a mock family therapy session, or an individual session as we are doing in our seminars. It’s one thing to read about techniques and interventions in textbooks, but I think the best way to learn how to do something is to practice and this style of learning is only enhanced by hearing the professional experiences of faculty members. This is one of the reasons why I chose to attend a professional school and after classes like the one I had this afternoon I am glad that I did. | <urn:uuid:09efe983-40e7-49ec-abd9-b83a1821b4be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mspp.edu/2012/01/20/call-me-tricia/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=6952e6b5fb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982237 | 509 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Living on the Outer Hebrides, the unadventurous cook will be somewhat limited to ingredients, which the boat has brought in. Today, it's blowing an absolute hoolie and spitting hail with the vengeance of the devil and to be honest, I'm pondering if the ferry will arrive with a lorry of provision for islanders. In olden days, when islanders were less dependent on tourists for income and ferries for ingredients, menus might have been a tad on the dull side but they were certainly seasonal.
The fruit and vegetables in my local Co-op are often out of season and look tired into the bargain but then, it's not rocket science to understand why the broccoli goes yellow after a day or so, it's all down to time spent in transit or ferry miles. This is a quite separate issue to the much talked about food miles. However, all is not doom and gloom for the discerning Hebridean foodie. It really is a question of eating local, even if the larder is limited and using the bounty of the natural larder of Scotland. This larder is by its very nature, seasonal but those with a tendency to plan and prepare can perfect the aged skills of preserving, drying and the more contemporary advancement, freezing.
The Hebridean Isle of South Uist doesn't have many trees but wild cooks may in season, gather: elderflowers and berries, mountain sh berries and deliciously scented wild honeysuckle, which hangs over cliff and there is plenty more at ground level. This week, during wind breaks, I've been gathering brambles for vinegar and jams. Hardy bramble foragers wear old clothes and cover up well, even when the late summer sun is shining.The more prudent forager carries antiseptic pads and perhaps a plaster or two to tend to a sneaky thorn wound. A basket is more beneficial than a carrier bag, especially if you want to freeze the berries and use them at a later date.
I created this recipe for BBC Scotland's Beechgrove Garden, with the suggestion to gardeners, that it is easily adapted to use end of season raspberries too. Sometimes, I add a few sweet cicely leaves when simmering the brambles, this adds a hint of aniseed to the curd.
Bramble and Lemon Curd
Makes one large jar
What to find:
200g brambles, washed
2 lemons, zest and juice
3 eggs 2 yolks
What to do:
1. Simmer the brambles in a pan with the water until soft (5 minutes).
2. Push the brambles through a sieve into a large, heat resistant mixing bowl.
3. Put the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Add the lemon juice and zest, butter and sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved and butter melted.
4. Remove the bowl from the heat and whisk in the lightly beaten eggs and yolks.
5. Return the bowl to the pan and stir over a gentle heat until the mixture thickens (coats the back of the wooden spoon).
6. Pour into warm, dry sterilized jars, cool, seal and label.
Refrigerate and use within 2 weeks.
This recipe was created for Tern Televison's Beechgrove Garden
Follow Fi Bird on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ladybirdfi | <urn:uuid:a734d528-199b-41cb-9557-7f4212ad4f01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/fi-bird/hebridean-foraging_b_1873213.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946108 | 721 | 1.53125 | 2 |
A lot of companies today carry out in-house social community New York SEO management but at the same time seek professional advice from outside SEO New York companies for constant guidance. Creating a brand’s presence online is challenging with the competition around, so it is crucial to maintain long-term marketing strategies online. Fortunately, businesses can follow the Four C’s of Jason Cormier to develop a strategic model, which offers benefits for the company.
The first C is Content that is essential when it comes to social media marketing. Regardless if it is a video, image, link, or text that will be shared, it should be supported with research. This helps businesses guide the content’s creation and justification.
The second C is Context, which is basically a platform for social media where companies can publish their content using good New York SEO management. Examples of these platforms include LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and a lot more.
The third C is Campaigns that refers to planning and implantation of the ideas for social media marketing. To accomplish a campaign successfully, the business will require supporting applications, which will establish presence online, monitor brand communication, and measure the effectiveness of the campaign.
The fourth C is the heart of the whole campaign for social media marketing. It is necessary that the marketing efforts revolve around building and connecting the community around the business, along with knowing how to engage and interact with them. It is important to consider the reaction of the community to the campaign to see if the SEO New York strategies are working or not.
A way to utilize the Four C’s is by having contests and games. What’s good about holding such games on social media platforms is that it gives the company a chance to understand the behavior of the consumers. When a business knows exactly how to engage the target market and what engages them, then a larger fan base can be expected.
These New York SEO games can be conducted onsite or offsite. What onsite gaming means is that carrying out the entire mechanics on the site. Offsite is when an application programming interface (API) is used to routinely publish the activity of the consumer on their profile. For instance, consumers can check into a specific place and post it on their Facebook account to receive a badge.
Other than having an SEO New York game mechanics, it is also important to reward loyal customers. This helps them become brand ambassadors who will promote the business even more. Knowing how to use the Four C’s together will help launch a successful campaign for social media. This is why it is crucial to have a strategic marketing model that can be followed to engage and also understand consumers. | <urn:uuid:04b3ab73-18dc-4ebe-b941-378b3b904810> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stillwaterseo.com/seo-strategies/social-networking/developing-a-campaign-strategy-for-social-media-marketing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946754 | 544 | 1.75 | 2 |
Over Janplan, I interned at the Center for Community GIS in Farmington, Maine. CCGIS is a small nonprofit organization with a staff of three that work to increase local institutions’ utilization of digital mapping technologies through involving the community mapping projects and processes. CCGIS provides technical assistance, training, and educational outreach to organizations engaged in community-based planning and decision-making. Through collaboration with partners, CCGIS creates products for communities and organizations that include tourism maps, trail maps, and maps of conservation easements and boundaries.
CCGIS is a program of the Quebec Labrador Foundation. QLF is a larger nonprofit, with locations in both the US and Canada. QLF aims to develop leadership within individuals and communities by supporting community-based conservation initiatives, developing models of stewardship of natural and cultural resources, and aiding in community service, economic development, and heritage preservation in rural regions.
In June, 2010, CCGIS launched a unique online mapping project. Maine Trail Finder is an interactive mapping site designed to be a resource for Maine residents and visitors seeking non-motorized trails. Trails can be searched by use (hiking, biking, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing), location, or difficulty. Trail pages contain detailed trail descriptions, essential trail information, trailhead directions, and photos.
I spent most of my internship working on Maine Trail Finder. Some days were spent hiking various trails gathering GPS coordinates, taking photos, and writing trail descriptions, while others were spent in the office cleaning and editing the GPS data using ArcMap and Google Earth. After everything was finalized, I uploaded trail postings to the central Maine Trail Finder website. During the month, I contributed to 40 trail postings, including the Colby Arboretum trail network.
My goals for the internship were to further develop my understanding of ArcGIS, as well as see how GIS can be used in a real world setting, both of which I was able to accomplish over the month of January. I used ArcMap to edit the trails, and learned the importance of data management. I also gained experience using GPS units, and with the process of editing GPS data, both of which I had very little previous experience with. Additionally, this internship also demonstrated the challenges of working with a variety of clients and stakeholders in order to create a final map project, as well as the difficulties of running a nonprofit organization. | <urn:uuid:b9097f2b-eadb-4a8d-be20-6f040e287aeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colby.edu/academics_cs/acaddept/envstudies/opportunities/jhowell-ccgis-jan12.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95637 | 495 | 1.570313 | 2 |
South Korean military officials have outlined a strategy to get indigenous military aircraft development programmes to the top of the global aerospace industry within a decade.
The strategy includes a new KF-X stealth fighter based on design and manufacturing experience obtained from a collaboration with Lockheed Martin to develop the T-50 Golden Eagle jet trainer and light attack aircraft.
The KF-X programme will then lead to the development of a stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle.
Those programmes should boost South Korea into the top seven countries for aerospace sales by 2020, with an export-driven sector supported by 300 companies and 70,000 workers, said Brig Gen Bo Kuen Cho, director general of aircraft programmes for the nation's Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA).
It is a strategy that is driving requirements for foreign contractors to share "core technologies" in pending aircraft procurements, including for the KF-X III fighter contract, he said.
One barrier to realising South Korea's growth strategy is the need to master highly sensitive technologies, such as stealth aircraft design. However, the country's industry is focused on catching up quickly.
Shaping an airframe to redirect radar waves is no longer a closely-guarded secret, with the key rules available in published textbooks, said Taekyu Reu, of DAPA's Agency for Defence Development. However, properties of modern radar-absorbent materials that are easy to maintain remain secret, Reu added.
Using plasma technology to absorb radar signals is of special interest to the Korean industry, he said. Adding plasma generators to the country's Lockheed KF-16 fighters would significantly reduce the fourth-generation aircraft's radar signature, Reu added.
"We'll do the very best on our part," Reu said, "to secure this technology." | <urn:uuid:1e052868-fc14-4e58-a841-e44db4397a93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/south-korea-outlines-military-aircraft-acquisition-strategy-363611/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936863 | 366 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Thursday, May 24th, 2012 - 11:48
Since the IBM Center for The Business of Government was created over 14 years ago, it
has been our goal to help public-sector leaders and managers address real-world problems
by sponsoring independent, third-party reports from top minds in academe and the
Our aim is to produce research and analysis that help government leaders more effectively respond to their mission and management challenges.
The IBM Center is named “The Business of Government” because its focus is on the management and operation of government, not the policies of government. Public-sector leaders and managers need the best, most practical advice available when it comes to delivering the business of government.
We seek to bridge the gap between research and practice by helping to stimulate and accelerate the production of actionable research. To do so, we solicit proposals that will result in reports with insightful findings and actionable recommendations. Our reports communicate what works and show busy government leaders and public managers how “The Business of Government” can be improved.
This fall will be dominated by the presidential election and a number of major issues involving the federal deficit and the impending austerity facing government operations in this decade. Four significant events occur between the election and the end of the year: the Bush tax cuts will expire, the temporary payroll tax reduction will expire, the debt ceiling will be hit once again, and the automatic sequester required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 will take effect. The lame-duck Congress and a president who may or may not be lame-duck will be forced to deal with these events.
How this process will play out remains to be seen. In many respects, identifying sources of savings (whether policy changes or operational improvements) is the easy part. The challenge will be to turn these ideas into action. This will be where government leaders and managers come in. They will be the ones who do the heavy lifting to implement major program adjustments and cutbacks, to harness major technological shifts and not just cut costs, but also adopt innovative practices to make government far more productive. | <urn:uuid:17a5619c-3c4e-43fd-9f5d-88da74841538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessofgovernment.org/article/executive-director-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940543 | 424 | 1.5 | 2 |
U.S. Senator John Thune and Representative Kristi Noem
continue to demand answers as to why sheep market is experiencing a drastic
decrease in the price per pound.
contacted the Department of Agriculture to investigate possible sheep market
2011, a typical 100-pound sheep would sell for 200 dollars; a year later the
same sheep sold for 80 to 90 dollars.
lower prices were not being passed along to the consumers.
producers deserve to know if there's any market manipulation occurring, and
this investigation will uncover it and help guide any actions that should be
taken," said Noem.
hearing about it from that industry, from people who raise sheep in our state.
And obviously it's something we want to get to the bottom of," said Thune.
Both Thune and Noem hope to get a report back in the not-so-distant future. | <urn:uuid:9c2bbfe2-49c5-417a-8ac1-05f5313cf5e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kotatv.com/story/20269472/lawmakers-ask-for-investigation-into-sheep-market | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963542 | 188 | 1.5 | 2 |
This final volume of the Haydn complete symphonies features the beautifully crafted and dramatic Symphony No. 62, one of the relatively unknown middle period symphonies composed around 1780 at Eszterháza when Haydn, increasingly busy with theatrical activities, often adapted his stage works into symphonies.
The Symphonies later numbered Nos. 107 and 108 are in fact early works, dating from the 1750s before Haydn joined the Esterházy establishment. Both are scored for pairs of oboes and horns with strings and harpsichord continuo. | <urn:uuid:702a3b66-4097-4a1d-b932-4e073dfc2791> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/w/133570 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950966 | 119 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The first is a little program that I've been using for years called ieSpell (www.iespell.com). It's a stand-alone spell-checker that installs as an item in the Internet Explorer toolbar and can literally run a spell-check in any application within IE (great for posting in forums that don't have a built-in spell-check). It's very handy, and it makes you look smart too.
Everyone knows what Google is, but are you aware of the ultracustomizable personalized homepage that is a subset of the Google empire? There are hundreds of embeddable applications to choose from and thousands of "skins," and the really cool thing is that it comes up automatically when you access Google. (And need I add that it also does Google searches?) Some of the neat apps (called gadgets-another good reason to mention it here) include automatic blog searches, all kinds of news lists, live weather updates, clocks, calendars, and hundreds more. And you can create your own custom gadget (instructions included). Here is a cute opportunity to create an app that you can use as an advertising link for your clients.
I've advised readers in the past to create PDFs of contracts and email them rather than creating hard copies and using snail mail to get them to their clients. This approach saves time, stationery, and stamps. The problem is that many videographers can't afford Adobe Acrobat Professional, or they feel that they can't justify the price.
The good news is, there are several free alternatives out there. The one that I use is PDF Creator from www.pdfforge.org. Not only is it totally free, it's also open source and can be installed on servers. It's full-featured, supports dozens of languages, and is very quick. This software package installs itself as a printer, so to convert any document, simply open the doc and print to PDF. Simple!
Adobe is also in contact with the major security software companies sharing information to reduce any problems. They strongly suggest that you keep up-to-date with your virus definitions and use caution when opening files from untrusted sources.
If you do corporate gigs that require a teleprompter and are tired of renting or going without, visit www.freetelepromptersoftware.com and check out a couple of programs that give you a teleprompter that you can run from your computer. One of the programs is a web-based package (which requires you to be online) that is quickly loaded and is great for small jobs. The other is a downloadable application that requires a PC (and requires you to install Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1) for portable use and gives you more features and control.
There are thousands of programs out there that offer free trials, ranging from a few days or a limited number of uses to 30-day trials. Some are full-featured programs with no functional limitations or restrictions, but limitations can vary and may not be immediately apparent, so be sure to read the agreement. Some will place a limiting feature, such as a watermark for video or a repeating tone for audio, that effectively means you can try it but not really use it. Many sites, such as www.xdnet.com, maintain a convenient download list library from various sources. Don't overlook the likes of Microsoft, Adobe, and others. They regularly place free applications that are either plug-ins to their major programs or stand-alone tools. Some maintain user groups that regularly post routines, plug-ins, or shortcuts that will make your job (and life) easier. Adobe, for example, has tons of freebies in this category for After Effects, Photoshop, and more that are all pretty amazing.
Another site I've also mentioned in the past is CoffeeCup Software (www.coffeecup.com), a good place to find cool (and inexpensive) web software and utilities. Since the last time they appeared in this column, they've created a few more tools that need to be mentioned. One in particular is the Website Access Manager. This utility is the ultimate in website protection-keeping prying eyes from folders and files within your site while allowing granting people access to those same files with password protection. This is a boon to those of us who use our websites for client viewings and other client uses, in that it enables us to keep their information private. It installs on the server level and has the capacity to handle thousands of passwords-all for $34.
Another new product from CoffeeCup Software is the Shopping Cart Creator, which enables you to create your own online store. This nifty package has the bells and whistles of some of the bigger, more expensive products without requiring a substantial investment to purchase or a degree in rocket science to install and set up. And there is no coding needed to create your store; everything is already done for you, including having your products viewable via search engines (some other packages have issues with this). They also have additional plug-ins available for modifying the look (skins) and for providing compatibility with PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Google Checkout (the latter two cost $19 each). CoffeeCup states that you can have your store up and running in 30 minutes. The base price is $49; there is a 21-day free trial.
The big thing that hooked me on CoffeeCup Software is that once you buy a product, you have access to all updates for that product for life! The customer service is outstanding, and all products have the same look and feel, so there is no relearning. Most (if not all) products offer free trial periods, so you can determine if a particular package is right for you before you buy. CoffeeCup offers cost-saving bundles, with the ability to get the software by download and on CD. Finally, they have a half-dozen completely free software packages for the taking, including an HTML editor, Zip Wizard, and FTP app.
I'm sure that most EventDV readers have GPS devices and find them very handy, not only for finding out where they're going but for providing the approximate arrival time and location of the nearest gas station or restaurant. And I assume that you usually remove and stow them when you leave your vehicle. But I'll bet that you didn't know the best reason to do this every time: They pose a threat not only for burglary but also for identify theft.
Almost every GPS unit provides a selection for "home," thus allowing a simple, one-touch method of finding your way back home from your journey. Here's the issue. Thieves also know this. They break into your vehicle, swipe the GPS unit, and hit "home." They now know where you live and on top of that, they also know that you aren't home! Then they head straight to your home and/or business and walk away with just about anything they want, including items that contain your personal information, which can lead to identity theft.
The solution? Simply enter your home address as you would any of the other addresses in your list.
And when you remove the unit from your windshield, wipe the ring left by the suction cup on the window. That's a telltale sign that you have a device that many thieves look for. The smart thing to do is just to pop it out of the holder, disconnect the wiring, and throw it into your camera bag. This will help ensure that your GPS continues to work for you and not against you.
Ed Wardyga (wardyga at kvimedia.com), owner of Keepsake Video and KVI Media in Rhode Island, has been producing event video since 1989, specializing in stage productions. He runs the website www.theGadgetBag.net and is the recipient of the WEVA Walter Bennett Service to Industry Award. | <urn:uuid:4e4f8641-e7e7-460d-b8ec-a384bbb24697> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/Column/The-Gadget-Bag/The-Gadget-Bag-My-Utility-Belt-56535.htm | 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 | 0.953631 | 1,621 | 1.523438 | 2 |
I have a 1995 Ford Taurus with a 3.0-liter engine. The engine pulses at idle. It seems to almost stall, then goes back to normal. This happens every few seconds. While I'm using the gas or driving, it doesn't happen, but when I slow down for stop signs, the lights will dim, come back up, dim, come back up. What is going on?
This is almost certainly the result of a vacuum leak or a leak in the duct between the mass airflow sensor and the throttle body. Start by carefully inspecting for leaks on all the ducting and vacuum hoses you can get to. Listen for a hissing noise. A piece of garden hose used as a stethoscope helps pinpoint the hiss, and keeps stuff like your necktie or fingers out of the fan or belt. If you can't pinpoint any leaks, spray a short burst of carb cleaner near any suspected leaks. If you spray near a leak, the idle will change for a few seconds as the cleaner is sucked into the intake and burned. Don't set yourself or your car on fire while doing this. | <urn:uuid:c00af488-d71d-44b5-8e78-1065f651501a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/4207843 | 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 | 0.963343 | 229 | 1.695313 | 2 |
CDRP Working Paper 1: Disability transitions across the life course: Preliminary data from Australia
The aim of this working paper is to present preliminary analyses of longitudinal data from Australia that addresses various aspects of the dynamic nature of disability over time.
Disability research is dominated by cross-sectional studies that have examined the prevalence and correlates of disability at a particular point in time. As a result, little is known about the duration of disability or the factors that may be associated with disability offset. This reliance on cross-sectional data has served to reinforce the notion that disability once acquired is a relatively permanent state.
In recent years, the increasing availability of longitudinal data (especially from well-constructed population-based surveys) has opened up new opportunities for disability research. These have included the possibility of investigating the dynamic nature of disability over time.
The data presented in this working paper are based on analysis of ten years of data collected by the study of Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA). Our analyses focused on the most recent consecutive five year period in which the study participants provided information on their disability status. | <urn:uuid:2c730034-3114-4451-bd71-f5c1d9460343> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sydney.edu.au/health-sciences/cdrp/publications/technical-working-papers.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94102 | 226 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Manhattan will always be New York's main draw, but the outer boroughs – particularly Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx – are catching up. Indeed, post-Giuliani, they might even be considered more authentic NY than Manhattan. I went to look.
First off, the Bronx. Hang on, said a voice inside my head. Isn't that a dangerous war-zone of rotting tenements? Well, the reputation lingers – and that's one of the reasons why Bronx Trolley was started in 2002, a reproduction old-time bus that takes tourists to Bronx attractions: the Bronx Zoo, the Botanical Garden and the delightful public garden, Wave Hill.
We drove over New York's folkloric Rubicon of 110th Street into Harlem, then crossed into the Bronx. Yes, there were a few dodgy blocks but it then opened out into a leafy, rather genteel scene, and by the time the Trolley arrived in Riverdale, where Wave Hill is located, it was positively aristocratic, with 19th-century houses looming in pine woods.
At Wave Hill I was greeted by gardener Charlie Day – so English that he dances with New York's only Morris side, the Bowery Boys. We strolled around the gardens, and paused at Wave Hill's great asset: the view of the Palisades, the great rocky bluffs overlooking the Hudson, rendered more astonishing by its location. "Guess what?" said Martha Gellens of Wave Hill, with a wave of her hand. "You're looking at New Jersey."
Back on the bus we drove further, past rocky shores and brackish inlets. And was that really a fly fisherman in New York City? Yup, it was. Then I was in the Bronx's next surprise, City Island.
I would never have expected this little maritime settlement in New York. Local guide Susan Birnbaum of guiding service SusanSEZ Walkabouts took me around the frontage, past restaurants such as King Lobster that catered to day trippers. "It's sometimes called the Latino Riviera," she said. With yacht clubs, antiques shops and an appealing shabbiness, I was mildly surprised that it hadn't become more of a top-end resort. But one place that signposted City Island's potential was the Le Refuge Inn, which offered lobster ravioli and historic rooms, too. "You could visit Manhattan and stay out here," said Susan. "It'd be about 40 minutes back." It'd be like staying at West Wittering after a night in the West End.
The next morning I went over the East River to Brooklyn, particularly Williamsburg, which was the first outer borough to fall to the pierced pioneers. I nosed through its galleries, vintage clothing shops and coffee houses, enjoying the killer skyline from across the water.
Then I went to the Brooklyn Museum. If Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art is overwhelming and dutiful, the Brooklyn Museum is a breeze. In several galleries I was entirely alone, contemplating Georgia O'Keefe paintings and historic room-sets. I then strode into Prospect Park, to try to fathom the direction to Queens.
After navigating a vast Americanascape of graffitied warehouses and intersections, I located PS 1, a contemporary art space in Queens allied to the Museum of Modern Art. It's a great rambling old school, tweaked into blank-walled perfection, which hosts a series of summer Sunday jams called Warm Up – a kind of art-rave-performance event.
Refreshed, I set out into the part of Queens called Astoria, and downed calamari at Zenon, a Greek restaurant that was the living embodiment of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Then I returned to London as relaxed as if I'd been in Paxos. If you want a NY experience without high blood pressure, then learn to leave Manhattan behind.
How to get there
Virgin Atlantic (08705 747 747; www.virgin-atlantic.com ) flies from London Heathrow to New York from £329 return.
A double room at 6 Columbus (001 212 204 3000; www.sixcolumbus.com ) costs from $225 per night.
NYC & Company ( www.nycgo.com ). | <urn:uuid:3742eda9-d668-4d37-ad25-f339b09a66c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/travel/escape-from-manhattan-to-see-the-real-city-28461258.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960185 | 883 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Two nights ago, I noticed that my boys, ages 10 and 13, looked—there is no other word for it—depressed. Two weeks ago, I wrote about their obsession with/addiction to Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, including this: “for all the seeming fantasy, what the game—most games?—embodies are the very same strictures surrounding American school and work life. Playing the game must be fun, too, I guess, but the real joy seems to be advancing to the next level—only to work toward surpassing that one, ad infinitum.” But they didn’t look happy now. My younger son should have been especially happy, because my older son had helped him beat a tough part, much to my chagrin—I’ve told them repeatedly that they should not play each other’s turns or games, since the playing, not the winning, was the point. You wouldn’t ask someone to eat your ice cream for you. They persisted anyway.
But now, they weren’t down because they had lost.
They were down because they won. It turns out that they beat the game.
And with that victory, a kind of defeat: my doctorate of philosophy calls for a diagnosis of Existential Crisis, one that usually doesn’t set in for another few years, the nagging, gnawing, corrosive question that sets in at adolescence and, in some cases, never ceases: Is That All There Is?
It turns out that once you get to the last level, beat the last villain (in video game parlance, “Boss,” which seems weirdly Marxist to me), and rescue Zelda, the credits roll (Dear Fellow Old People: video games have credits), and play simply starts over at the beginning again.
I asked them: what did you think would happen? The point of the game was, as always, to kill monsters, beat bosses, acquire money (“Rupees,” which seems weirdly Asian Subcontinent), and move one level closer to finding Zelda. It couldn’t go on forever, could it? Did they think victory would reveal a secret code for a secret club or secret game? That a crisp $20 bill would pop out of the Wii? No, but—and here I paraphrase—they didn’t think that winning the game would feel so much like losing it. Not just emotionally—really, all that happens after you win is that you go back to where you started, same as when you lose.
For all the scholars who suggest that video games are texts ripe for analysis, or that they even surpass more conventional narratives like stories thanks to their interactivity and player control, the end of the video game seems very different to me from the ending of a story. As Walter Benjamin says in “The Storyteller,” readers intuitively understand all of life through the end of the story, which represents a kind of death, or through the actual death of a character:
The nature of the character in a novel cannot be presented any better than is done in this statement, which says that the “meaning” of his life is revealed only in his death. But the reader of a novel actually does look for human beings from whom he derives the “meaning of life.” Therefore he must, no matter what, know in advance that he will share their experience of death: if need be their figurative death—the end of the novel—but preferably their actual one. How do the characters make him understand that death is already waiting for them—a very definite death and at a very definite place? That is the question which feeds the reader’s consuming interest in the events of the novel.
In other words, as human beings we can never understand the full significance of our own lives, because we must live them, from our perspective, and can’t reflect on our own ending, because we’re, ya know, dead. But we can contemplate the full life, objectively, of a fictional character, because the beginning and end of the story delineate the full beginning and end of their existence. And so through fiction—the figurative deaths that are stories and the more real but still fictional deaths of characters, we may understand something big—Death!—that, by its very nature, eludes our grasp, and therefore we may take comfort. As Benjamin concludes, “What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about.” It’s uplifting. Really. So we think that we’re sad when our favorite characters die or our favorite stories end, but we also, on another level, feel good, or, if you’re Aristotle, experience catharsis, a purging of the bad emotions, once you’re through.
Or, as Frank Kermode understood it, narrative endings are not only dress rehearsals for death, but they are inextricably linked to our apocalyptic sensibilities: “Fictions,” Kermode says, “whose ends are consonant with origins satisfy our needs.” The conventions of story itself dictate a beginning and an ending; for every “Once upon a time,” a “Happily ever after.” He goes on to suggest that “one has to think of an ordered series of events which ends, not in a great New Year, but in a final Sabbath.” Or a Black Sabbath, if you’re not feeling particularly rapturous. Kermode relates the endings of all stories to the endings of all things: narrative endings as death, but also death as a narrative ending, “the End is a fact of life and a fact of the imagination.”
But video games seem not to provide Benjamin’s comfort, Aristotle’s catharsis, or Kermode’s closure at all. There is no Once Upon a Time or Happily Ever After, only the grim, relentless Middle—just like our own real lives. As I wrote in the other blog, main character Link looks and seems a lot like Peter Pan. But it’s not just the pointy ears and pointy weapons, the green clothes, or the shock of hair. Like all video game characters, and like Peter Pan, Link is, for all intents and purposes, immortal and eternally youthful. You could make the same case, I guess, for all fictional characters—that they revert to being alive and young when you start the book or movie again. But that’s symbolic. Thanks to endless “lives”—the word gamers use—and concomitant reincarnation (a word no one uses) with each reset or replay, Link lives, and dies, again and again and again. As a father, I find no sentence weighs heavier on my heart than when one of the boys tells me, when their game time is over, that “I’ll just play until I die.” He’d like that, I suppose. The shift to first person—“I” die, not “Link dies” or even “my game ends”—makes clear that the games are about defying death, but they also focus relentlessly, discordantly, on death itself.
But if Link cannot ever die, if there is no final level—since the thing resets ad infinitum—no sense of an ending, then it feels like there is also no point. The Onion, as always, gets it hilariously right: “Video-Game Character Wondering Why Heartless God Always Chooses ‘Continue’”: “ORANGEBURG, SC–Solid Snake, tactical-espionage expert and star of PlayStation’s ‘Metal Gear Solid,’ questioned the nature of the universe Monday when, moments after his 11th death in two hours, a cruel God forced him to ‘Continue’ his earthly toil and suffering.” In the end, “God,” of course, is revealed to be “Orangeburg 11-year-old Brandon MacElwee,” who “offered no comment on His greater plan for Snake, saying He was ‘too busy trying to get to the part with the knife-throwing Russian girl.’”
But players realize that they are not gods, or God, and that the never-ending levels and never-ending deaths in video games provide a different, cautionary lesson than those in stories: the ironic moral that there is more to life than acquiring points and money, more to existence than merely getting to the next level. And I said this to the boys, concluding that “this is why I don’t let you play the hard parts for each other. All you’re doing is speeding up the end, and it’s the playing itself that’s supposed to be the fun part.”
With that, my ten-year old looked at me, eyes bright and wide, and said, “I understand now.”
Time: It looked like I was gonna finish in 50 minutes, but then I decided I wanted to find the Benjamin and Kermode quotes that you probably didn’t read anyway, which took me overtime to 75 minutes. I’ll finish faster the next time I play. | <urn:uuid:5ebca0c0-4151-4a5c-bf2e-05e148d46b24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jessekavadlo.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/game-over-when-bad-things-happen-to-good-videogame-characters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967116 | 1,983 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The Luzerne County Housing Authority is expected to spend $35,000 this year battling bed bugs in its residential units, said authority Executive Director David Fagula.
It's maddening, he said. We're so frustrated and want people to know we're making every effort we can to get rid of these things.
In addition to bringing in a professional exterminator, the authority has purchased special mattress covers for all treated units and called in two beagles specially trained to detect the parasites that feed on human blood.
The authority oversees a mix of 25 elderly and family public housing developments with a combined 1,600 units, in addition to a rental assistance program.
Fagula said his maintenance supervisor suggested the beagles because bed bugs continued to surface at various authority locations, despite spraying throughout the year by a professional exterminator. The authority paid Unionville-based Key K-9 about $3,500 to check 350 apartments last week at housing projects in various municipalities, including Shickshinny, Luzerne, Kingston and Plymouth.
The dogs enter units separately to obtain two readings, he said. Fagula was sold on the idea when the handler hid a screened container with bed bugs inside a couch in the authority administrative offices. When the door was opened, the beagle quickly zeroed in on the couch and started scratching.
The dogs are not perfect, said Fagula, but they're pretty sensitive.
As a result of the canine findings, the authority pinpointed apartments that should be treated by exterminators, he said.
Two of three buildings at the authority's Dan Flood Apartments in Plymouth – a total of 66 apartments – will be treated next week because evidence of bugs was found in several units, Fagula said.
It may be overkill, but we're trying to be proactive, he said.
The authority also is providing mattress covers in all treated units, he said. These covers, which cost $59 each, encase mattresses so any lingering eggs and bugs are trapped and die.
Fagula believes the bug problem spread because some people were afraid others would judge them if they reported it.
The bugs can travel on clothing or belongings.
The problem has been stressful on residents, who must clean, dry and bag bedding before treatment. Some tenants threw out mattresses and other furniture and still found more bugs. Others wasted money on their own remedies, he said.
He said one elderly woman sobbed because her grandson can't visit her until the bugs are eradicated.
There should be no embarrassment reporting it. You could be the most immaculate housekeeper and have a spotless apartment and still get bed bugs, Fagula said. The quicker we know of a problem, the quicker we can eradicate it.
He plans to bring the beagles back in several months for a follow-up check.
Fagula said the beagle handler commented on the cleanliness of authority properties.
People don't like to talk about bed bugs because there's a stigma that it means a building is dirty, he said. A lot of other places where multiple people congregate and live have been hit a lot harder than we have. | <urn:uuid:cba1b5ce-c7de-4499-ba0a-fc020a86066f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timesleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?avis=TL&date=20121221&category=news&lopenr=312219927&Ref=AR | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970049 | 656 | 1.71875 | 2 |
5 Reasons to Be Hopeful We Haven't Totally Screwed Ourselves and the Planet ... Yet
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Some days my morning tea seems half full, other days half empty. Sometimes I wake up emboldened with hope. Such as when I read about activist and shrimper Diane Wilson taking on BP's Tony "I Want My Life Back" Hayward. Or when I hear about the 10,000 young activists who made a ruckus in DC for Powershift 2011 -- even earning face time with the president.
But on the flip side there are the photos of the lives ruined, the water threatened, the homes devalued by gas drilling. It gets worse hearing Bill McKibben talking about 2010 being the hottest year on record, temperatures hitting a record-breaking 129 degrees in Pakistan, and the U.S. House of Representatives voting 248-174 in favor of a resolution saying global warming isn't real.
What legislative victories we have achieved seem mostly small, and for every inch forward we are bombarded with insanity from the Right and the business press that threaten to throw us back 40 years. It feels like biking into the wind during a nor'easter.
Remember the promise of a possible u-turn on environmental policy after the election of 2008? Even if most of us knew it wouldn't turn out perfectly, we had at least two years of a Democratic-controlled House, Senate and White House. The world was clamoring for real legislation to combat global warming from the US, and we gave them nothing. Even as the environmental news buzzed that Bolivia and Peru's main water source was shrinking, the Maldives were disappearing, Russia was burning and Pakistan was flooding, we still did nothing.
And so here we are, another Earth Day older and I can't help but wonder if we've irreparably screwed ourselves (and the near-term survival prospects of much of life on this planet). We're headed toward a collision of crises -- water, food, energy, soil, climate. The world's scientists warn that we need substantial change: We need to drastically alter our appetite for consumer goods, the structure of our food system, the way we produce energy and how much we consume. But we're inching forward when we need to be leaping. We're buying green cleaning products, stuffing our reusable shopping bags with local food, and voting the lesser of the evils into public office.
But it needs to be bigger and better. We need to be bigger and better. Most of the politicians suck on environmental issues, frankly. But to quote a once-popular phrase from political eras past, "If you think the politicians are bad, you should meet their constituents." That's us. We voted the politicians in there and we either have to get them out or make them step it up. We need people with vision beyond the next election cycle. We need people not beholden to corporate polluters. And equally, we much change our own lifestyles to incorporate environmental sensibilities. It's not enough to just to care anymore, we have to care enough to do everything we possibly can. That is going to mean changing the way we live our lives and not thinking of the Earth as something that is here for us to use up and throw away like so much of our disposable culture.
And while there are no shortage of headlines about the environmental catastrophes knocking on our door or the political ineptitude in Washington or the sell-out businesses or NGOs, there are at least five inspiring reasons to believe that it is not too late and it's possible to save our civilization and rescue the planet from meltdown.
These five reasons are what get me up in the morning and help me believe our cup is indeed half full. These are the folks making waves, rocking the boat of complacency, and they need our help. | <urn:uuid:e23b66d8-ca0e-46ef-afe1-0083fec53f5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alternet.org/story/150694/5_reasons_to_be_hopeful_we_haven't_totally_screwed_ourselves_and_the_planet_..._yet?qt-best_of_the_week=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960978 | 785 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The White House yesterday revealed plans for a crime-fighting operation targeting Mexican drug cartels on a scale not seen since the battles against the US mafia.
Washington is dispatching more federal agents and equipment to its south-western border with Mexico to target the cartels. Among them are a newly formed FBI unit, to deal with the ringleaders, and treasury officials who will track drug money. An extra 100 customs officers are to be sent to the border within the next 45 days.
The moves reflect growing concern in Washington that the carnage in Mexico involving the cartels is in danger of spilling over the border. A White House statement said: "The president is concerned by the increased level of violence, particularly in Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, and the impact that it is having on the communities on both sides of the border."
The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, at a White House press conference yesterday, singled out Houston, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, as recording increases in violence and kidnapping. Other officials have also mentioned El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California.
The plan to beef up operations came the day before the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is due to visit Mexico City for discussions about the drug war with the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón. Barack Obama is to visit Mexico next month. As well as sending more agents to the border, the White House is providing $700m (£476m) to the Mexican government for five new helicopters, a surveillance aircraft and other crime-fighting equipment.
Calderón has dispatched more than 45,000 Mexican troops to combat the cartels, which responded with thousands of kidnappings and murders, including beheadings. Despite a string of arrests and drug busts - last week, soldiers captured two drug bosses - a record 6,300 drug-related killings occurred last year.
Other measures announced by the White House yesterday included dispatching more mobile x-ray units to the US side of the border to screen vehicles involved in gun trafficking. Napolitano said that over the last week, the US had stopped 997 firearms en route to Mexico. Absent from the announced plans were high-visibility moves such as deployment of the National Guard or expansion of the border fence started under George Bush. But the Obama administration argues that these are not necessarily effective.
David Ogden, the deputy attorney general, said that the best way to fight the cartels was through intelligence-based operations, "the same approach as we took towards the Cosa Nostra".
The Obama administration view is that the strategy pursued against the Cosa Nostra, tracking the money with a view to locking up the leaders, is better than piecemeal arrests.
Napolitano said she was still considering a request from the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, to send 1,000 National Guard members to the border and would discuss the issue with him tomorrow.
The Mexican government on Monday offered $2m each for information leading to the arrest of the top 24 drug lords representing the six biggest cartels, including the Pacific and Gulf. A further $1m each is offered for 13 of their lieutenants. | <urn:uuid:adc7737d-1b27-4e3b-9ca7-435dd769e208> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/25/fbi-drugs-cartels-mexico-us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964976 | 640 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Best of the Blog 2010 – CNC Milling
CNC milling is one of the most accessible forms of digital manufacturing.
As we can see from this Top Ten list, the remarkable diversity enabled by CNC milling takes us from desktop manufacturing to visions of the past and even a glimpse of what the future may hold…
The simplicity and accessibility is just beautiful. Providing a low-cost introduction to CNC milling, the DIYLILCNC has inspired a dedicated community supporting all areas of production from sourcing and building the device itself through to impressive outcomes milled by completed units.
There is more to CNC milling than dreaming up forms and then cutting them out. This article from Bruce Sterling discusses the way that the CNC router has been responsible for an explosion of creativity and diversity, as methods of construction emerge that push beyond traditional carpentry techniques.
A poetic example of the way multi-axis CNC milling can produce outcomes that would not be possible using traditional techniques. Paul’s woodwork is a masterful combination of his German craftsman heritage with the latest in digital manufacturing technologies.
This brilliantly executed mechanical iris is constructed from brass and wood, completing an alluring steampunk aesthetic. Fully functional and now fitted into an impressive nautical-themed door, Chris Schaie’s peephole deserves all of the attention it has been getting across the DIY community.
The guys from Lumenlab gave pumpkin carving a new glow with this fetching likeness produced by their Robloks Gantry Robot. The process is fully detailed with plenty of photos and a video clip of RoGR in action.
Continuing on the theme of edible delights, the EggBot is one of those tools that has many of us wavering between “What would I use this for?” and “What wouldn’t I use this for?”. Either way, we all want one.
Rotational moulding is a fantastic way to have access to custom manufacturing at very low cost. Yet often the very devices that do the rotating are prohibitively costly themselves. The Myfirst DIY rotational moulder turns this upside down and around again, by providing all you need to get productive with a flat-packed kit at a price every hobbyist will love.
A glimpse into the future of desktop manufacturing, the MicroFactory is a concept from former RCA student DaeKyung Ahn. Supported by functioning protoypes and a highly resolved visual package, it is easy to imagine this nifty device buzzing away in homes across the globe before too long.
From one future to another, the Hexapod with floating pen attachment is a walking CNC router.
It sounds good in theory – a robot with a CNC head – until you see it working. The implications of this are huge. And for some, so are the nightmares…
Here is a great example of the digital aesthetic being realized while cleverly referencing classic design forms. Gareth Neal’s exceptional pieces straddle the divide between art and design, furniture and sculpture. | <urn:uuid:a532de98-d8b0-416a-9618-0a685882c904> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.ponoko.com/2011/01/04/ten-best-articles-on-cnc-milling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945236 | 632 | 1.6875 | 2 |
While reading of the exchange between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney on voting rights for felons last week, it occurred to me that in the 20-plus years since I started going into prisons as a volunteer, none of the men on the inside has told me what he misses about the free world is voting.
The men—I’ve only worked with men—tell me that they miss their mothers (although, poignantly, very few mention missing their fathers), they miss their wives, children, and jobs. Several have even mentioned missing Dr. Pepper. But none has mentioned to me that he misses the voting booth.
Over the same time period, I’ve heard numerous scholarly presentations and political discussions on the same topic. While I do not pretend that the men I associate with on the inside constitute a representative sample of the prison population, I have a suspicion that voting rights for felons is a bigger issue to folks on the outside than it is to the men on the inside.
I understand the reasons for opposing votes for felons. Almost all of the men on the inside have hurt people, either directly through violent offenses or indirectly through drug and alcohol offenses. In Lockean political theory, a person forfeits the privileges of civil society through violent aggression. Deprivation of the vote is one appropriate indicia of this forfeiture.
So I don’t believe it’s an illegitimate consequence for most offenders to face for their actions. But the absence of illegitimacy doesn’t answer the question: Is deprivation of the vote subsequent to release (and after any probation and parole) a useful additional penalty for society to impose on offenders?
Without minimizing or rationalizing the impact that crime has on victims and society at large—which is a tendency that is important to avoid both for the spiritual growth of the men as well as for the volunteer who receives Jesus in ministering to these men (Mt 25.36)—it seems to me that there are practical reasons that offenders who have completed their sentences should be welcomed back into civil society by being re-granted the suffrage.
The recidivism rate for released offenders remains very high. Even for men actively involved in the church on the inside, the transition from prison to the free world is fraught with difficulty, and many do not succeed.
While there are certainly those men in prison who play the church game, it’s not true of all of the men. And in some ways, the transition to the free world for Christians seems to me even more difficult than for those who aren’t.
Men who have converted or returned to the faith on the inside and who “walk the talk” often find a warm, supportive community of faith inside prison walls. Many are respected—by the other offenders as well as by guards and staff—and many even hold positions of leadership and responsibility in their prison churches.
When released, even the strongest Christians typically face suspicion and fear from their families, from society at large, and from churches on the outside. These are not entirely unjustified reactions from people who knew the offender before prison but who have no closely participated in their transformation.
Nonetheless, at the precise moment these men need support to succeed in the free world, they lose the social and spiritual support they knew inside the walls, and they often find no alternative welcome on the outside (except perhaps from their old friends).
Without this support, and faced with the personal upheaval of release into a free world that can be significantly different than the one they understood before then went in, it’s not a surprise that the men find themselves tempted to revert to the only behavior they have experience with in the free world, even though it’s behavior that lead to their incarceration in the first place.
I don’t pretend that returning the vote to these men will change all of that. But I see no gain to us by piling on after their release. It’s a difficult enough transition without the continuing reminder that even after you’ve served your sentence, you’re not really welcomed back into civil society. And it’s in our interest—society’s interest—to help ex-offenders successfully transition back into the free world.
James R. Rogers is associate professor and department head in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University.
Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:44be6a65-57e8-4d91-b6ca-ccd7afdc83b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/01/votes-for-felons/james-r-rogers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965957 | 922 | 1.710938 | 2 |
When you’re done listening to the CD that was included in your January packet (Why Contraception Matters: How It Keeps Us from Love and Life), be sure to pass it on to someone else and ask them to do the same after they’ve listened. One CD has the potential to pass on the message to dozens of people, so do your part!
Posted tagged ‘Evangelization’
There are innumerable opportunities open to the laity for the exercise of their apostolate of evangelization and sanctification. The very testimony of their Christian life and good works done in a supernatural spirit have the power to draw men to belief and to God; for the Lord says, “Even so let your light shine before men in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
However, an apostolate of this kind does not consist only in the witness of one’s way of life; a true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believers with a view to leading them to faith, or to the faithful with a view to instructing, strengthening, and encouraging them to a more fervent life. “For the charity of Christ impels us” (2 Cor. 5:14). The words of the Apostle should echo in all hearts, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16)
-Pope Paul VI (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, 6)
Lay people* also fulfill their prophetic mission by evangelization, “that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life.” For lay people, “this evangelization . . . acquires a specific property and peculiar efficacy because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world.”
-Catechism of the Catholic Church, 905
*Lay People (laity): non-clergy members of a religious group
I just wanted to post this great quote from Pope Benedict XVI on evangelization. I thought it was timely seeing how this is our topic of the month as well as the current Family Formation home lesson for this week.
“We cannot remain tranquil in face of the thought that, after two thousand years, there are still peoples who do not know Christ and have not yet heard his message of salvation.
Not only this; the multitude grows of those that, even having received the proclamation of the Gospel, have forgotten and abandoned it, not recognizing themselves now in the Church; and many environments, also in traditionally Christian societies, today are refractory in opening themselves to the word of faith. Underway is a cultural change, fueled also by globalization, by movements of thought and by the prevailing relativism, a change that leads to a mentality and a lifestyle that does without the evangelical message, as if God did not exist, and which exalts the search for well-being, easy earnings, careers and success as the objective of life, even at the cost of moral values….The Gospel is not an exclusive good of the one who has received it, but is a gift to be shared, good news to communicate. And this gift-commitment is entrusted not only to a few, but to all the baptized…”
Pope’s Message for World Mission Sunday 1-25-11
Our job is to evangelize, most especially our spouses and our children. This is hard sometimes but Christ is calling us to do it. We should take time to consider the fact that we stand in the line of countless people who suffered and died just so that we could have the Catholic faith today. The little sufferings that most of us will endure in life seem like nothing in comparison to the saints and martyrs. Most of us are not called to evangelization unto death. Since that is the case, our minor problems and difficulties should be put in perspective. Let’s honor God and spread His Good News to all those around us, especially those closest to us, both in word and deeds.
Yours in Christ,
“Furthermore, the family, like the Church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates. In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized. The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them. And such a family becomes the evangelizer of many other families, and of the neighborhood of which it forms part.”
-Evangelii Nuntiandi (Evangelization in the Modern World), 71
“The ministry of evangelization carried out by Christian parents is original and irreplaceable. It assumes the characteristics typical of family life itself, which should be interwoven with love, simplicity, practicality and daily witness.”
-Familiaris Consortio, 53
The point of this week’s lesson isn’t necessarily to encourage you to pack up your bags and move to Africa to evangelize the poor pagans there,* but we would like to challenge you to think about the topic of evangelization as an everyday event in YOUR life.
It’s easy to just assume that there are professionals on the job and the rest of us best stay out of the way. Priests, religious, and professional apologists** are all trained and ready to do it well, right? It’s true – their visible public witness, zeal for the Faith, and professional credentials all work together to typically make them very effective witnesses of the message of Christ, and that’s an essential role of the Church in our world. Equally essential, however, is that all the rest of us also keep watch for opportunities to share the Faith and boldly trust the Holy Spirit help us out when needed. It’s our hope that this lesson will raise your awareness of that, and will provide some simple ways you can make sharing the Faith with your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, and even random strangers you happen to meet, a part of your life.
*Actually, it seems that more and more priests are coming to America to evangelize the poor pagans here!
**Apologetics: The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines.
As you page through this month’s Holy Week Activities packet, you’ll notice lots of fun activities to decorate your house or feed your guests, but we challenge you to look at the same pages as suggestions for evangelization.
If you’re planning to spend Easter with family or friends, be sure to do all you can to keep the focus on the true meaning of Easter. For example, your kids can use the information on pages 2-5 to make decorations for your (or Grandma’s) Easter table. Relatives who may never be interested in hearing about your Faith, might gladly listen to your children describe the details of their artwork.
Are you giving Easter baskets or having an Easter egg hunt? There are two ideas in the packet with ways you can make these traditions about more than candy and eggs.
Would you like to give your guests a simple gift? A small bag of jelly beans with the prayer on page 15 attached would be a great table favor.
And most important – even the least committed Catholics are likely to attend Mass on Easter Sunday. Be sure to invite someone to go to Mass with you! This is a great time to be a bold witness for Christ!
Resurrection of Christ and Women at the Tomb by Fra Angelico | <urn:uuid:48fef553-f476-455d-ab6b-5e4336d3df53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://familyformationblog.net/tag/evangelization/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96237 | 1,598 | 1.632813 | 2 |
When I started working in the textbook publishing industry, one of my first jobs required me to do a Quality Control check (QC) on page elements. We were expressly told NOT to read text but to review the "look" of the page. Were there widows, orphans on the page? How many sentences started with the same word? How much white space was there between paragraphs? Were the headers equidistant and centered across the page as required? What about styling? Were there any "soft returns", manual line breaks or double spaces after periods? If so, we fixed those elements then sent the text back to copyedit to review for consistency, grammar, spelling and fact-checking.
Unfortunately, I had a real difficult time NOT reading the text and would catch misspellings, comma splices and poor sentence structure in the text then get verbally reprimanded for marking it up. I couldn't help it! I can't NOT read the text and if I see a wrong, I must right it! I MUST!
You can see why I got along with the editors and copy editors better than the production teams now, don't you? As time went by, I learned to QC without reading and just "skimmed" the text for anything that stood out in glaring detail. I became the nightmare of many restaurant waitress whose menus had typos and poor design. I would actually take out my green pen (red = editorial, blue = design, green = QC) and mark-up their paper menus. Now, I can't read anything without looking at the whole picture. If there are too many similar words together in a paragraph (or several sentences start the same way) I stop and mark it up on my eReader. Sad, I know but it's just a part of who I am now.
Source: Staples eReader Department
What about you? Do you read pretty fast? Do you skim the text when you read at a quicker pace? | <urn:uuid:6bba0d67-7f11-4d28-9c2b-7ce14db7541e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saritzahernandez.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969384 | 400 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Kristin Noelle of Trust Tending.
We’re often asked about our parenting styles, but equally important might be the question, what is your parenting mindset?
In my better moments, my mindset is all about becoming a better parent—learning how my kids work, gaining new skills, getting better at what I do. However, I admit that much of the time I’m focused more on whether or not I am a good parent, especially in the eyes of others. I want badly to prove that I’m great at this parenting thing and, moreover, that it all comes naturally to me—no sweat!
In a book titled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck gives a name to what I’ve just described. At heart, she says, I’m operating with a “fixed mindset”.
The Fixed Mindset
“Believing that your qualities are carved in stone – the fixed mindset – creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character–well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.”
The Growth Mindset
By contrast, Dweck describes a growth mindset, which assumes intelligence and all the qualities for which a person could aspire, are things to be practiced and cultivated. They aren’t pre-determined traits destined to bring pride or shame.
- Good parent? Practice and cultivate it.
- Successful family manager? Practice and cultivate it.
- Simply happy habit-maker? You get the picture.
The point is not to safeguard a label, but to recognize that labels themselves are as inherent as one’s mood – i.e. not so much.
Dweck writes, “For [those with a growth mindset] it’s not about immediate perfection. It’s about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.”
I’ve noticed these two mindsets at work in my meditation practice as well. The part of me that’s frustrated by my inability to still my mind for more than a few seconds and then soars when I’m able to one day, is operating with a fixed mindset. This part of me wants to prove that I’m good at meditating, that I’m spiritually advanced, that I’ve reached some optimal level of serenity.
The part of me that watches my incessant thoughts and feelings rise notes them, sometimes chuckles at them or sheds a few tears in their wake and then continues on to draw me back again to my breath: she knows something about growth. She knows about the value of simply showing up, about the normalcy of fears and limitations and mental ruts, about the practice itself being the goal, rather than its results.
Which of course is ironic, given what happens when this mindset is applied: growth. Learning. A back door wide open to the very inner world, parenting style, and family relationships I most want to cultivate.
For anyone eager to transform fears of imperfection – in you or your kids – into places of deepening trust in our capacity to learn and grow and delight in that process instead of in its results, Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success might be just what you’re looking for.
Kristin Noelle is a mother, writer and illustrator. Her blog, Trust Tending, uses music, words, and art to explore how to live Life beyond fear. | <urn:uuid:e272ef60-b712-4a46-8cd6-8cc81a0a26ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zenfamilyhabits.net/2011/02/parenting-mindset/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937066 | 785 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Editorial: Handy smartphone program alerts cities to quality of life problems
Before too long, Northampton residents should have a new and improved way of dealing with annoyances like potholes and unplowed roads. It turns out there’s an app for that.
Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz announced late last month that the city is one of 35 municipalities in Massachusetts that have received grant money for a mobile phone application for reporting quality-of-life issues.
The grant is funded by the state’s Community Innovation Challenge Grant Program, which invests in technology innovations that can improve services and lower costs.
People who download the free Commonwealth Connect app will be able to fill out a simple form on their smartphone in order to relay information about problems to city authorities quickly and efficiently. They can even send along a photo of the problem if they like.
That, in turn, is expected to reduce response time for fixing those problems. The grant also covers the cost of setting up a system to manage the resulting work orders.
Thanks to the app, the person reporting a problem will get an estimated time frame for having it resolved, and will be able to follow the progress of the work via a tracking number that will be assigned to each report.
Narkewicz said Northampton will continue to take reports of potholes, roads in need of plowing and the like by telephone. But the app is expected to make the reporting process more efficient — and more accountable.
A similar app was introduced by the city of Boston in 2009, where it’s known as Citizens Connect. Alan Heatherley, the program manager for Commonwealth Connect, says the app has served to alert Boston officials to not just potholes and unplowed roads but also to issues like homeless encampments and graffiti. Twenty percent of the quality-of-life requests Boston receives now arrive via the mobile app, resulting in more than 35,000 improvements to date.
What if problems are reported but the work doesn’t get done promptly? Doesn’t that undermine faith in municipal services? Heatherley said an analysis of the Boston program shows that isn’t the case. What people really want, he said, is a time frame. They may not be happy to hear it will take two weeks to replace a missing stop sign, say, but at least they know that it’s in the pipeline, he said.
Under the terms of the grant, the city of Boston will provide technical and software support for the mobile app to the 35 Commonwealth Connect municipalities for the next three years.
The app will work in any community that supports it. If an individual downloads the Northampton version, for example, and then travels to Chicopee, another Commonwealth Connect community, he or she can report problems in that city as well through the same app.
In addition to the mobile app, cities can elect to offer a Web-based app that can be used on computers. It’s not known if Northampton will provide this option.
Fifty-eight communities applied for the Commonwealth Connect funding, including five in Hampshire County. Northampton was the only successful Hampshire County applicant.
But Heatherley said that the Connecticut software developer that is providing the app, SeeClickFix, is offering it to other municipalities for what he described as a “really good value” — $4,900 annually.
We think it makes sense for local cities and towns to observe how Commonwealth Connect plays out in Northampton.
If it proves successful in improving the quality of life for residents and visitors, and also makes city services more efficient, we think other communities should consider paying for the app out of pocket. It’s a small price to pay for what has the potential for a big quality-of-life payout. | <urn:uuid:f514738d-9576-4fa8-835b-731ce0a17413> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gazettenet.com/home/3738285-95/app-northampton-connect-commonwealth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9517 | 782 | 1.632813 | 2 |
"Everyone in the area knows what that hills like," said Darrell Fox, fire chief for the Ranger volunteer fire dept.
It's not just a hill, it's full of turns and at 65 mph everyone, including fire chief Darrell Fox knows it's a place for major accidents.
"I've been doing this job for 31 years and its getting worse every time we go out there," he said.
Last year alone they responded to more than 100 accidents.
The most dangerous were on Ranger Hill.
"It's horrible," he said.
There have been bright warning signs to alert drivers for years, however, now they'll have another chance to notice with new signal lights.
In fact, they'll now have six chances to see them.
One of the major causes for accidents on Ranger Hill is speed.
And with the speed limit on Interstate 20 set at 75 mph, the six new light posts have been strategically placed to warn drivers to slow down.
"It's not only dangerous for the people who travel there, but its dangerous for my personnel, you know we kind of take care of people down there and the traffic will not slow down," said Fox.
The question now is, will drivers even notice them?
Some haven't yet.
"The sun, I guess it was just that time of day but going up that hill, the sun was just blinding," said Dani Lee.
Lee and her husband drive through Ranger Hill during their route on I-20 every other week.
they may have yet to notice the new warning lights, but they sure have noticed distracted drivers.
"Lots of people on their phones for the most part if they're not using it it's still on their lap," said Chauncey Lee.
Which is one of the main concerns for emergency responders like Fox who's still not sure whether even these flashing lights are enough.
"That hill has been a nightmare for a lot of families," said Fox.
And it will continue to be a nightmare at least for Fox no matter how many warning signs. | <urn:uuid:db500423-5759-4bc2-9b92-5e2269a5fe08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigcountryhomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=564252&nxd_237113_start=3420 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982858 | 425 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Over the past few years, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library system has undergone severe budget cuts resulting in widespread changes which led to employee layoffs, closed branches, reduced hours and services, and even the outsourcing of security to Mecklenburg County.
For many, the issue of safety became a real concern.
“With significant changes in library management including a transitional security team, there was a real apprehension in how branches would be monitored,” said Dwayne Eury, a security coordinator with Mecklenburg County.
However, newly released data collected by the library’s security incident report system shows a 26 percent decline in security incidents reported over the past two years.
According to Charlotte Mecklenburg Library
CEO Vick Phillips the credit may lie with budget cuts.
“By outsourcing security to the County, training has become more uniform and more professional, says Phillips. "Our security experience has actually been better at the end of the recession than it was prior to the recession," he says.
As a result of the County’s training program, officers have essentially become more proactive.
“Officers are now making frequent patrols of the library floors to ensure the patrons are following the library’s rules and regulations and immediately engage those who are not properly the rules and regulations,” said Eury. “This proactive approach has led to a safer environment for patrons and library staff." | <urn:uuid:ba16cf0c-afc7-49b4-b37f-5837077df7b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://charmeck.org/mecklenburg/county/MediaRoom/NewsArchives/2011/Pages/NewSecurityMeasuresHelpEnsureSafetyatCharlotte-MecklenburgPublicLibrary.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972973 | 293 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Luke 19:45-48 (Gospel)
- Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it,
- saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ “
- And He was teaching daily in the temple. But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him,
- and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him. | <urn:uuid:2c990572-3619-462e-adce-e918c4ab590c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oca.org/readings/daily/2012/11/27/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.99222 | 122 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Province of the Massachusetts bay
Minot v. Prout Bill in Chancery
To the honble. his Majesty's justices of the Superior Court of judicature &ca. to be holden at Boston within and for the county of Suffolk on the third tuesday of February A.D. 1763
Humbly petitioning showeth Timothy Prout of Scarborough in the county of Cumberland Esqr.
1. That well and true it is that the said Timothy on the said tenth of December A.D. 1753 became bound unto the said Christopher Minot in the sum of two hundred pounds lawfull money of this province conditioned to pay the sum of one hundred pounds like money with lawfull interest on or before the tenth of December A.D. 1754. And the said Timothy as a collateral security to the said Christopher for payment of the same sum and interest by deed of mortgage bearing date the said tenth of December A.D. 1753 conveying to the said Christopher a certain messuage in Milk Street in Boston aforesaid bounded as in the same deed recorded in the registry of deeds in the said county of Suffolk copy whereof duly attested your orator hath ready to exhibit to hold to him the said Christopher and his heirs if the said sum of one hundred pounds and interest should not be paid.
2. That afterwards your orator upon the first of October A.D. 1755 became bound unto one William Brown of Beverly in the county of Essex Esqr. in a penal sum conditioned for the payment of the sum of one hundred and eighty four pounds lawfull money and interest on or before the first of October A.D. 1756 and more fully to secure to the said William the payment of the Same sum and interest according to the tenor of the same condition your said orator on the day of the date of the last mentioned bond and collateral thereto executed a deed of Mortgage to the same messuage and land which had before been mortgaged to the said Christopher to him the said William and in the same Mortgage expressly mentioned the said former mortgage made to the said Christopher as by a copy of the said mortgage made to the said William which the said Timothy hath ready to exhibit to this honorable court may appear.
3. That afterwards the said William Brown put in suit the mortgage made by your orator to him as aforesaid and at the inferior court of common pleas held at Boston aforesaid on the first Tuesday of October A.D. 1757 recovered judgment for possession of the said mortgaged premises and cost of court taxed at three pounds fifteen shillings and five pence unless the said Timothy should pay the sum of two hundred and seven pounds lawfull money within two months from the rendring of the same judgment and the same sum not being paid the said William soon after the expiration of the said two months actually entred into the said mortgaged premises and became seised thereof in his demesne as of fee and hath ever since held and possessed the same and still does so and the cost aforesaid was paid by your orators attorney.
4. And your said orator further humbly suggests to your honors that the said William after he had actually entred into the said mortgaged premises as aforesaid the better to strengthen his title thereto he on the thirteenth of December A.D. 1758 purchased of the said Christopher the prior mortgage aforesaid and at the same time the obligation now sued on both which were in reality for one and the same debt and the said Christopher assigned them both to the said William.
5. And your said orator doth in fact affirm allege and say and is ready to prove that the said mortgaged premises were worth on the same thirteenth of December much more than the sums equitably due on both the mortgages aforesaid, that the said William reserving good part thereof in his own care rented the residue for twenty pounds a year lawfull money and the same William held himself well content with the said mortgaged premises in satisfaction of the same debts.
Further after that on the twentieth of March A.D. 1760 the dwelling house on the said mortgag'd premises was burnt down the said William estimated his loss thereby at the sum of two hundred pounds lawfull money and actually made a claim to the committee for distributing the charitable contributions made for the sufferers by the said fire to be considered as suffering so much loss.3
—That the said William sold the bricks in the ruins for six pounds lawfull money and the loft and land are worth at least the sum of one hundred and thirty three pounds six shillings and eight pence more.
7. And now after the said mortgage recovered on by the said William in his own name hath become irredeemable, and that the fire hath consumed the said house he the said William pursueth your orator in the name of the said Christopher on the said obligation given to the said Christopher and would compell the Entire payment of the same [notwithstanding]
that he hath in manner aforesaid received full satisfaction therefor contrary to equity and good conscience.
And all these things your orator is ready to prove when your honors shall appoint wherefore in as much this suit is manifestly litigious your orator prayeth that the penalty of the said obligation which your honors on the pleadings in law have adjudged to be forfeited may be chancered down to the sum of one penny and that your orator's reasonable cost may be decreed him.
[signed] Tim. Prout Attorney to Tim. Prout Esqr.
[dateline] Jany. 8 1763 fil'd in the Office.
[signed] Att. Nat. Hatch Cler. | <urn:uuid:3b97a67c-245d-42ba-8b64-9cf107822e79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde/portia.php?id=LJA01d066 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976765 | 1,174 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Napkin Story: How sMash works
Via The IBM Curiosity Shop, CC/by-nc/2.0/
This is so sweet! I don't know what sMash (SMASH?) is. As a first guess, I would infer it to be a storage protocol rather than database-type software. Perhaps it is a new way to organize data, an alternative to DB2, CICS and IMS. Each use different block sizes and partition types, among other things.
I will try to get a definitive answer, and return1 with an update.
I hope to see new items in The IBM Curiosity Shop set, Napkin Stories on Flickr. It doesn't seem likely though. This friendly drawing was uploaded on 22 December 2010, yet no others have joined it in the interim.
1 Flickr-to-Blogger did not offer the option of "publish to draft", else I would have prepared this post more thoroughly. | <urn:uuid:f9e388da-bcb1-4ad1-a743-eddbdefb4fee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ellieaskswhy.blogspot.com/2012/08/short-storage-story.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 | 0.95908 | 196 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Mon November 19, 2012
At Burmese Dissident's Cafe, A Taste Of Politics And Salad
Originally published on Mon November 26, 2012 1:53 pm
Early in life, Myat Thu knew that his destiny as a cook lay in salads. Not the light, leafy green salads that are so common in American restaurants, but heavy, hearty Burmese salads.
Myat Thu grew up in Burma, also known as Myanmar. He was just 14 when his mother placed him in charge of making dinner. Unsure of what to prepare, he studied the salad vendors on the streets of Rangoon.
The women would lay out the ingredients on the cart in front of him — cabbage, sprouts, peanuts, garlic, shallots, green chilies. He'd watch as the women would chop and toss everything together, drizzle in lime or fish sauce or sesame oil. "I learn from them, mostly," he says.
As a university student, Myat Thu's attention turned to political activism. He was part of the 1988 nationwide protests that were brutally crushed by the Burmese military. Two years later he was forced to flee the country on foot for Thailand.
Initially, he joined other Burmese exiles and activists in Bangkok but eventually decided to move to Mae Sot, a small city on the Thai side of the border. And eventually he opened his restaurant, Aiya.
The menu includes Indian curries and Thai noodles, but his marquee items are fresh Burmese salads.
One of the most popular is a green tea leaf salad topped with crunchy fried soy nuts. There's a green mango salad with chili. The ginger salad is a blend of shredded cabbage and raw ginger tinged with lime and garlic. The aubergene salad is warm chunks of tender, smoked eggplant mixed with crisp slivers of onion.
He says the key to the perfect salad is balance. The amount of onion must be just right. The ratio of cabbage to ginger has to be exact.
"The portion [of each ingredient] that you use is important," he says. "That's what makes the difference between people who make good salads and bad salads."
His restaurant, however, is about more than just creating the perfect salad. Aiya is the work of a revolutionary. Portraits of Che Guevara and Aung San Suu Kyi look down from the balcony. Paintings of Burmese street scenes line the walls. Bumper stickers declare "Peace in Burma Now."
Last year, elections in Myanmar put an end to five decades of oppressive military rule in the resource-rich nation. The U.S. has sent in an ambassador. President Obama is even paying the former pariah state a visit, a move that would have been unthinkable just two years ago.
Myat Thu has been cautiously watching the recent, rapid, political reforms in his homeland. But he says he still doesn't trust the government there.
"I hope this is not a game that the regime has been playing," he says.
And he worries that it could be dangerous for longtime critics of the government like himself to return, "because there are still a lot of political prisoners in different prisons inside Burma."
He follows the political changes in Myanmar closely. He sees the restaurant as a kind of a dissident's salon, a Burmese Bohemia, a place where the opposition in exile can gather.
And they do. On a Friday night, Aiya bustles with life. The restaurant has become popular with Western expatriates as well as Burmese exiles.
In front of the bar, a Burmese folk singer with long, gray hair is strumming out Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind."
Patrons share big green bottles of Chang beer. Waiters dressed in T-shirts and jeans shuttle small plates of curries and salads out of the kitchen.
Myat Thu mingles with the diners. He shakes a percussive rattle behind the folk singer. He opines about the regime next door in Rangoon. And he flits in and out of the kitchen. "When you cook and people enjoy your food," he says, "you are very happy."
Myat Thu has built a life in Thailand. His wife is Thai, and he brags that her best dish is a rich curried chicken in peanut sauce called panang. But ultimately Myat Thu still yearns for home. "I hope one day," he says, "I will run a restaurant in Rangoon."
He just doesn't know when that might be.
LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
And as we just heard in Scott's story, there's some skepticism about how dedicated to democratic change the current Burmese regime really is. It's a feeling shared by many activists living in exile. NPR's Jason Beaubien recently caught up with one dissident in Thailand to talk about the politics of his homeland.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: Myat Thu was an activist in the 1988 student protests in Rangoon were brutally crushed by the military. Two years later, he fled Burma, on foot, for Thailand. Now Myat Thu runs a small café restaurant in the Thai border city of Mae Sot, just across the river from Myanmar. On a Friday night, the restaurant appears as a Burmese bohemia, revolutionary posters with images of Che Guevara and Aung San Suu Kyi gaze down from the walls.
Street dogs wander among the tables. In front of the bar, folk trio, including Myat Thu himself is singing about change. Myat Thu says he's watched the recent changes in his homeland, but he still doesn't trust the government there.
MYAT THU: I hope this is not a game that the regime has been playing.
BEAUBIEN: He worries that it could be dangerous for longtime critics of the government, such as himself, to return.
THU: Because there are still a lot of political prisoners in different prisons inside Burma, and still fighting going on.
BEAUBIEN: Myat Thu opened the Aiya restaurant on the Thai side of the border as a place for Burmese exiles to get together. He also missed the food of his youth, the food of Rangoon.
THU: This is one of Burmese dish.
BEAUBIEN: In his kitchen, a chicken curry with eggplant is simmering in a tin pot. The main stove is just two burners connected to a small gas tank. Plain glass jars of ingredients are scattered across the countertop.
THU: These are kind of like a mushroom sauce, (unintelligible) sauce.
BEAUBIEN: Despite his country's political isolation over the last five decades, Myat Thu says Burma's cuisine is decidedly regional.
THU: We use sesame wild and some Chinese food, especially.
BEAUBIEN: Burmese dishes draw in influences from neighboring Thailand, China, Bangladesh and India. He offers an Indian style pumpkin curry in a Thai chicken and peanut sauce on his menu. But Myat Thu's passion is Burmese fresh salads. His signature dish is a tea leaf salad with crispy fried nuts. There's a green mango salad with chile. The ginger salad is a mix of shredded cabbage and raw ginger tinged with lime and garlic, there's a smokey eggplant salad.
Myat Thu's cooking career began at the age of 14. After his younger sister was born, his mom declared she was no longer going to cook. Myat Thu was placed him in charge of dinner. Unsure of what to prepare, he copied the salad vendors on the streets of Rangoon.
THU: One lady, all women will, you know, sell the salads. And we order something and then she put everything in front of me and a baked salad. And so I learned from them, mostly.
BEAUBIEN: Throughout more than two decades in exile, foot has been a link for Myat Thu back to the country he fled. Although there are some dishes that he can't recreate here, he still craves a particular style of dried, salted fish that he's only ever found in Rangoon. He says eventually he wants to return.
THU: At the moment, it is very complicated. I had a plan to go back, but I don't know when or I don't know how, you know.
BEAUBIEN: For the moment, he plans to wait and see if the changes unfolding in Myanmar are real. Jason Beaubien, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:f735a8db-6cd0-4181-97ce-8994647d8e48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.wlrn.org/post/burmese-dissidents-cafe-taste-politics-and-salad | 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 | 0.971706 | 1,819 | 1.648438 | 2 |
S. Joan Popek
Veteran author, S.
Joan Popek talks about micro fiction, and Millennium SF & F, the magazine
that inspire me to write micros in the first place. Jo has been a leader
in the recent explosion of this new medium.
S. JOAN POPEK: Yep, I do write poetry. Notice I didn't say I write good poetry--just poetry. LOL. But I do dip pen into ink occasionally and attempt to compose a piece worthy of the Bard. I love reading a well written poem that moves me. I do have some poetry that I've done on my Website http://www.sjoanpopek.com if anyone cares to take a look.
Now, to answer your question: Actually, we are talking apples and oranges here. They are both fruits (or in this case literature) But that's where the similarities end.
Micro fiction is a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end using all of the elements of a short story, often with a twist ending, in 100 words or less. The elements are setting, conflict, characterization and resolution.
Micro fiction is not poetry. As the former editor of two magazines, I often saw manuscripts submitted as flash fiction when in actuality they were rambling poems with no conflict or resolution. By its nature, flash fiction must not ramble. A poem can be good without characterization or even conflict, and it doesn't necessarily have to have a resolution. A poem can ask a question and leave it unanswered. Micro fiction can not! Micro fiction must have setting, conflict, characterization and resolution.
The major difference
in these forms is change. Fiction must have it. A poem does not require
it. The change doesn't have to occur in the protagonist. It can happen
to the antagonist or even in the readers mind, but change must occur for
it to be micro fiction.
write micro fiction when you get paid by the word? How do you decide when
write a longer story?
SJP: While it's true that most publishers pay by the word, many magazines and anthologies that accept flash or micro fiction pay flat rates. Some pay from $5.00 to $10.00 and others pay as much as $50.00 to $100.00 and even more.
If I may quote from my book, JUMP START YOUR WRITING CAREER WITH ELECTRONIC PUBLISHERS (available from Atlantic Bridge Publishing: http://www.atlanticbridge.net/publishing/jumpstart.htm )
"One of the most exceptional and effective methods [of learning to write well] I have found is flash fiction. It can stand on its own or is a good start for a longer piece. Flash fiction teaches us to use strong, active verbs…I use flash fiction pieces constantly. I have sold several such flash exercises as flash stories. Later, I used them to write longer pieces and sold those too. Some of my flash stories have become core parts of my novels. Remember, short doesn't mean simple."
As to deciding to
write longer stories, mostly the story tells you when it's finished.
Most micro works can be given more detail and imagery to make them into
FLASHSHOT: What is your favorite micro piece (of your own) so far?
SJP: Eeek! That's like asking which of my children do I love the most. I lost many of my unpublished ones a few years ago when lightning struck my computer, and I hadn't backed up my data. I grieved for weeks. Unfortunately, I don't remember most of them.
But I guess I love the newest one best this week. I just finished one about God and Armageddon in a humorous vein that I have submitted to a couple of magazines and a contest. So I guess right now, that one is my favorite.
I am also partial
to the one you accepted for FLASHSHOT, "The Treat.” Another favorite
is one I wrote years ago that became a longer story with a different ending
which is now included in my collection "The Administrator" available from
The Fiction Works: http://www.fictionworks.com/etheadministrator.htm
(Don't ya just love the way I keep slipping in plugs for my books?)
Anyway here is the story. As you can see, it contains all four of the elements of fiction.
A flash story in only 99 words
here?" the dragon bellowed. "Where's my virgin?"
"Not one. None to be had, They've all been had." Goldie winked.
"Not funny!" he roared. Every six months, I get a virgin, That's the deal. I never really liked virgin. Too bland. You humans decided that dragons eat virgins." He patted his stomach, "I've a sensitive stomach, so I agreed,"
"I brought pigs."
He gobbled her up, then burped smoke. "I do like a spicy wench, but they sure don't like me." "Now where did I put that antacid"
FLASHSHOT: Are readers becoming lazy (making stories shorter or vice versa)?
SJP: No, I don’t think we are getting lazy. I think we are getting busy! I have always preferred short fiction to novels because I could read to the end of one, lay the book down and do what needed doing. With novels, I want to sit and read till I turn the last page. I think a lot of people are like that. As for the micro fiction popularity today, it may be partly the busy part, but mostly, I think it's the fun part. Reading micro fiction is fun. Most have twist endings and make you feel good much the same as hearing a good joke.
Micro fiction is
also perfect for reading on the computer screen or the new hand-held and
pocket PCs. On a computer screen, long blocks of text can cause eye
strain and be difficult to read. Many people won't take the time
to read a longer work but love to read the shorter works online or offline
on their computers. On the hand-held devices, it's easier to read longer
works because you get a page at a time, but the screens are small, and
many people prefer the shorter stories on them too.
FLASHSHOT: Can stories get any smaller than 50- words?
SJP: Sure. The shortest
I've done is 6 words, but I've seen some of 2 to 4 words. The trick
there is to use the title, which is not included in the word count, as
the setting. The title for these tiny stories is often longer than
the story. Do I like them? Well, mostly--but not many stick
in my memory like stories a little longer do. Maybe I just have a
non-sticky memory. (Hmm--now where did I put those keys?) <grin>
FLASHSHOT: MILLENNIUM SF & F was one of the first and best ezines to publish micro fiction. What decisions did you make as an editor of that zine?
SJP: First, thanks for the kind words about our baby, MILLENNIUM SF & F. Di and I worked day and night for years to make her something special, and I think we succeeded. It feels good to hear you say that.
Second, Oh Lordy, GW. What a hard/easy question. Hard because there were so many varied decisions to make every day. Easy because I could cop-out and say too many--too fast!
The major decision we had to make every issue was, "will the readers like this?" Many times, it was really tough to decide between two or more submissions. We only had so much room, and sometimes had to choose between a "good" story and a "little better" story.
Editing, public relations,
promotion, contests, dealing with irate writers who couldn't understand
why you rejected their work, deciding how much money to shovel into it
when none was coming back, and more were all tough calls. But the
hardest decision I had to make was when I had to leave. Health and
other problems demanded that I slow down, and you can't do that and run
a successful magazine. So I turned it over to Di. It was really
tough, and I agonized a great deal over that decision.
current ezine or magazine is your favorite for micro fiction? (Other than
FLASHSHOT, of course!)
SJP: There are so many good ones out there that use micro fiction, that it's hard to choose. So I'll limit my answer to a few magazines that specialize in micro fiction.
FLASHSHOT of course goes on the list first.
Flashquake accepts fiction up to 1000 wrds..
The Vestal Review uses only fiction under 500 words.
Frequency is an audio producer that uses longer works, but prefers under 1000 words.
50 WORD FICTION has some good stories. Although I can't find any guidelines, so I'm not sure it's a magazine,
Nefarious: 55 Words Of Mystery is an email zine and uses only 55 word mystery stories.
The Green Tricycle publishes stories under 200 words.
Pif Magazine uses longer pieces, but has a large section of micro fiction.
There are many more,
but these will keep you busy for awhile.
FLASHSHOT: Tell us what's coming up for S. Joan Popek?
SJP: I've been very busy. My book, THE ADMINISTRATOR, is available as an ebook right now and will be in audio soon. It will also be out in paperback in time for Christmas!
My SOUND THE RAM'S HORN is available for preorder from Hard Shell Word Factory, http://www.hardshell.com/detail.asp?product_ID=0-7599-0481-2 .
My revised 2003 edition, with over 100 links to magazines and writers' sites, of JUMP START YOUR WRITING CAREER WITH ELECTRONIC PUBLISHERS from Atlantic Bridge publishing will be out in December or January. (The 2002 edition is available now.) I just finished a collection of shorts titled, FAIRY TALES WITH A FREUDIAN FLAIR, that I am marketing, and I'm currently working on a novel length mystery.
I also just recently
started an online review zine, The Popper Gazette, for reviews of really
good books and other stuff. Take a look at http://www.jopop.us/jopop.html
GW, I'd like to thank you for asking me to do this interview. I have really enjoyed it. I love micro/flash fiction, and I love talking about it. It really is addictive. Once you start writing or reading micro fiction, you can't get enough. But you know that already, don't you... | <urn:uuid:37bdc8ce-326d-4455-be83-1067051a7db0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://flashshot.tripod.com/jopop.htm | 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 | 0.965777 | 2,322 | 1.625 | 2 |
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - An Iranian official is saying the country may open a controversial military site to inspectors of the United Nations nuclear watchdog.
A Thursday report by independent Mardomsalari daily quotes Deputy Foreign Minister Hasan Qashqavi as saying the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency may visit Parchin military site "if the foreign threats weaken". He did not elaborate.
As high government officials rarely speak out on such sensitive issues, Qashqavi's remarks were seen as echoing the views of Iran's leadership.
Earlier this month IAEA inspectors on a trip to Tehran failed to visit Parchin, where they believe Iran has carried out some nuclear experiments.
Iran says Parchin is only a conventional military site and denies the West's claims its nuclear program has a military dimension.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read the original story: Iran may open military site to U.N. nuclear watchdog | <urn:uuid:5529159e-2405-4885-8d5c-b8a6178199c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/usatoday/article/1794285 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938374 | 210 | 1.78125 | 2 |
As a designer, it’s always a treat finding new and exciting fonts to use in a design. The variations are unlimited, and to find the right one can sometimes be as hard as finding a needle in a haystack. However, you instantly know when you have struck gold, and that is when the font compliments the design to the point where it feels as if it no longer makes the viewer focus on the font, but instead, on what’s written with it. Choosing the wrong font can sometimes destroy a whole concept you have been working on and tweaking for hours and hours. A wrong font could even simply be one that is over used and therefore doesn’t serve its purpose to make your design edgy and fresh.
So how do you know what font is the most used, and what you are able to use without falling into the pits of becoming yesterday’s news? Well, luckily for you, DEHAHS has complied this data and presented it in a simple to use and brilliant guide sorted by Operating System, Top Serif Fonts, Top Fantasy Fonts, Top Cursive Fonts and Top Popular Fonts according to Google and FontSpring.
To create a versatile and browser compatible design is a true trade these days since we are seeing more and more web browsers spring up almost daily. But don’t get lost in all of the hundreds of thousands of fonts that are out there. Only buy and/or download the free ones that you know you’ll be using. It’s easy to overcrowd that font list, and in time, it will only become a time suck to scroll through all the thousands of fonts you have injected but don’t really have the intention to use. Less is more as they say. | <urn:uuid:0c5765b4-8c02-470c-9aff-9ff26c73fee4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bitrebels.com/design/the-most-popular-fonts-by-operating-system-infographic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955112 | 362 | 1.8125 | 2 |
THE reviving of knitting, the weaving of specific types of mats, the making of coconut oil, and other traditional skills by women from the Joritani Methodist church is hoped to create a source of income for members.
Members of the church's women's association held a handicraft display on Monday as part of their efforts to attract other women in the community, in particular those in their youth.
The wife of the church's pastor, Asenaca Pareti, said elder members of the association wanted to revive old skills they feared would die out with their generation.
"We want younger members of the association to learn skills like mat weaving, knitting, oil making. Not only can these skills create a source of income. They can also help women spend more time at home. For those like me who are retired, these skills help pass the time," she explained.
As a retired schoolteacher with 33 years experience, Mrs Pareti knows all too well how house duties and "staying at home" can become boring for housewives and urged other women to develop these skills.
"These skills help pass the time. There's been a lot of enthusiasm and even competition among members. These creations can be used to decorate the home and there's also a demand for them.
"Today's display was a chance for our members to display their creations. They have been weaving different types of mats, mats that are specifically woven for certain i-Taukei ceremonies or traditions. It's also garnered a lot of interest from younger women," she explained.
Ms Pareti called on other women in Wainimako subdivision in Cunningham who were yet to join the association to make use of the opportunity. | <urn:uuid:5c9b2462-1527-43c3-be1a-2e5a4c65f643> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?ref=archive&id=198555 | 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 | 0.979407 | 352 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Sgt. Coleman S. Bean enlisted in the U.S. Army Sept. 5, 2001, and trained at Ft. Benning, Ga. He graduated from the Army Airborne Program in 2002, was assigned to the 173rd Airborne and stationed in Vicenza, Italy. As part of a NATO force, he served in Kosovo and trained in Germany.
In 2003, the 173rd opened the northern front in the Iraq war through the only en-masse combat paratroop jump undertaken by the Army since Vietnam.
Sgt. Bean served in Iraq for 12 months, where he was assigned to peacekeeping duties and the training of local police officials in the Kirkuk area.
Following his tour of duty in Iraq, he was assigned to Ft. Bragg, where he served as an opposition-force trainer for troops preparing for combat in Iraq.
He was honorably discharged in 2005 and recalled to active duty for service in Iraq May 13, 2007. He served with a unit of the Maryland National Guard (175th Combat Infantry Unit) at an airbase in Northern Iraq.
He received the following medals, commendations and promotions:
Airborne Wings - 2002
Army Achievement Medal - 2002
Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal W/Arrowhead Device - 2003
Army Commendation Medal x 2 - 2004
Combat Infantryman's Badge - 2004
Combat Parachutist Badge - 2004
Good Conduct Medal - 2005
Army Commendation Medal - 2008
Iraq Campaign Medal - 2008
Promoted from Specialist to Corporal October 2008.
Promoted from Corporal to Sergeant December 2008.
Sgt. Bean committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 25.
His mother, Linda Bean, has been an advocate for improving VA and DOD mental health services for soldiers and endorses the below services for free and confidential counseling for soldiers, vets and their families:
The Soldiers Project: 1-877-576-5343
Give An Hour: http://www.Giveanhour.org
The National Veterans Foundation | <urn:uuid:ca54dd7a-28f7-4bcc-a777-d605b28f0f98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailynightly.nbcnews.com/_news/2010/07/16/4692523-seeking-better-mental-health-for-soldiers?lite | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941115 | 419 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Top 100 Teams
By Bill Weiss & Marshall Wright, Baseball Historians
| Harry McCormick|
(Photo courtesy of National Baseball
Hall of Fame)
To be included in the top 10% of the Top 100 list, most teams have two things in common. One, the team must play in a high-powered league and two, the club must have a superb record. The Eastern League champion of 1903 scored high in both categories.
Jersey City, located in the shadow of New York City, was caught up in the baseball craze spreading out of New York in the 1860s. During this time, the best team was the Champion club who claimed the National Association’s amateur championship in 1870. Jersey City’s first pro team played 15 years later in the Eastern League. Known as the Skeeters, the team (9-27) dropped out of the league in June, one of six league members not finishing the season. The team was called the Skeeters in recognition of the pesky, ubiquitous mosquitoes that infested the region in the summertime. The next year, the team fared better, finishing the season with a 49-39 record, although a great distance behind first place Washington (70-25).
In 1887, a new Skeeters team joined the top tier International League. Here, the team finished sixth with a 48-49 record. The following season, the team dropped down to the Central League and finished with one of the finest records of any minor league team (84-25, .771). Unfortunately for the Skeeters, rival Newark (83-23, .783) was just a notch better, relegating Jersey City to second, albeit as probably the best second place team in history.
Over the rest of the 19th century, Jersey City participated in three other minor league seasons. In 1889, the Skeeters (33-23) played a partial season in the Atlantic Association, disbanding in late July. The following year, in the same league, the same scenario played out. On July 22, Jersey City (27-46) folded, its place taken by Harrisburg. In 1900, in the Atlantic League, Jersey made an aborted return to the minors, but dropped out on June 2, ten days before the entire league folded.
In an early example of “if you build it, they will come,” in 1902 Jersey City constructed a brand new facility called Skeeters Park on the west side of town near the Jersey Central Railroad Station. It seated 8,500 and was generally considered to be the best in the Eastern League. Jersey City and nearby Newark entered the league replacing Hartford and Syracuse. In 1902, Jersey City finished a respectable third, although a distant 18 games behind Top 100 Toronto. The next season, Jersey City would give the Eastern two noteworthy champions in a row.
There wasn’t much suspense to the 1903 season. Jersey City roared out of the gate, winning its first 16 games. In August, when Toronto and Buffalo came closer, the Skeeters won 24 consecutive games, which stood as the league record until Baltimore’s 25-game winning streak to end the 1920 season. Jersey City finished with 92-33, .736. Buffalo was second (79-43, .648) and Toronto third (82-45, .646). Three teams finished under .350 with Rochester (34-97, .260) bringing up the year. Jersey City led the league in runs scored (759) and was second in team batting (.281).
Jersey City was managed by 39-year-old Billy Murray, a former outfielder who never played in the majors. He broke into pro ball in 1886 and started managing in 1889. He piloted Atlanta (Southern) in 1892-93, then led Providence (Eastern) for nine years, winning pennants in 1894, 1896 and 1900. He last played in 1899. After winning the championship with Jersey City in 1903, Murray remained with the Skeeters through 1906, finishing third twice and second once. He was signed to manage the Phillies in 1907. In 1906, Philadelphia had come in fourth, but they were below .500 (71-82) and were 45-½ games behind the record-setting Cubs. The team didn’t have a lot of money to buy players, so Murray brought several with him from Jersey City. Under Murray, the Phils finished third in 1907, fourth in 1908 and fifth in 1909. The Phillies were in the thick of the hot pennant race in 1908 and were instrumental in forcing the one-game tie-breaker between the Cubs and Giants the day after the regular season ended. Philadelphia traveled to New York for a five-game series the Giants were counting on winning. The Giants’ lineup featured five left-handed batters, so Murray brought up a 22-year-old southpaw named Harry Coveleski from Lancaster (Tri-State) where he had a 22-15 record. The Giants had never seen Coveleski, who hailed from the coal mines of Shamokin, PA. He pitched the first, third and fifth games of the series and won them all, earning the nickname “Harry, the Giant Killer.” When the season ended three games later, New York was tied with Chicago. If the Giants had won just one of those games with the Phils they would have finished in first place. The Giants lost the playoff game to the Cubs, giving Chicago its third straight championship. Murray resigned after the 1909 season when new owners installed Horace Fogel, who had a reputation for being erratic and difficult to get along with, as the Phillies president. Murray was chief scout for Pittsburgh for a few years, then left baseball to enter what his 1937 obituary referred to as “the theatrical business.”
Jersey City’s best player was 22-year-old right fielder Harry (Moose) McCormick who led the Eastern League in batting (.362) and hits (172) and was second in runs (105). A left-handed hitter, the Philadelphia native received his nickname not for his size (5’11”, 180 pounds), but because of his eight-foot stride while running. He was a graduate of Bucknell University where he was a teammate of baseball immortal Christy Mathewson. He was signed by Murray after hitting .500 in his senior year in college. The Giants purchased McCormick and he made his major league bow in 1904. According to The Sporting News, early in his rookie year, Moose informed John McGraw that he was not planning to make baseball a career and the Giants sold him to Pittsburgh in June. He hit .279 in 125 games, then made good his promise to quit. Putting his engineering degree to use, he went to work for a steel company. Following a dispute with the company over salary, McCormick returned to baseball in the spring of 1908 with the Phillies, who had purchased his contract from the Pirates. After batting only .091 in 11 games for Philadelphia he was re-acquired by the Giants and hit .302 for McGraw the rest of the season.
Later that year McCormick was part of one of baseball’s most famous plays. The Giants were playing the Cubs at the Polo Grounds, September 23. The score was tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth with Moose on third base and Fred Merkle on first. Al Bridwell singled to center and McCormick crossed the plate with, presumably, the winning run. Believing the game was over, hundreds of fans ran onto the field. However, Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers, saw that Merkle, as was the custom then, had not touched second base, but had turned and headed to the clubhouse. Evers called for the ball, touched second base and umpire Hank O’Day called Merkle out, leaving the score tied. When O’Day tried to resume play, he was unable to get the crowd to leave the field and ruled the game a tie. That incident, along with the series with the Phillies related above, led to the Giants and the Cubs being tied for first place at the close of the regular season.
McCormick remained with the Giants in 1909, batting .291, then quit again for two years. He came back to the Giants in 1912 and in the next two seasons became one of the game’s first and greatest pinch-hitting specialists. In 1912 he batted .333 with an on-base percentage of .422 in 42 games, 35 of them as a pinch-hitter. The following season he hit .275 in 57 games, 42 as a pinch-hitter. The Giants won the pennant both years and he was 2-for-6 in pinch-hitting appearances in the two World Series. A Sporting News writer opined that McCormick was such a good pinch-hitter because “to him a ball game was nothing to get excited about. In a critical situation, he knew that someone was excited and it wasn’t he, so it must be the pitcher. The knowledge gave him just that much of an edge when he went to the plate in the clutch.” That relaxed attitude often angered Murray, who approached every game as a life-or-death battle. On one occasion, while McCormick was still with the Phillies, they were in the middle of a ninth-inning rally with the tying and winning runs on base with two outs. “Murray sent McCormick in to hit for the pitcher. The preceding batter had socked a clean hit to the outfield and the tying run was racing for the plate. McCormick was striding toward the plate, swinging his bat, when he saw the throw from the outfield coming in with no chance to stop the runner from scoring. Moose promptly swung his bat, knocking the ball into the left field bleachers. Of course, the runner was called out because of interference and the Phillies lost the game. Murray was wild. ‘What in hell did you want to do that for?’ he shrieked as McCormick came back to the bench. ‘Honest, Billy, that was the first good ball I’ve seen this season!’ replied the irrepressible Moose.” Murray disposed of McCormick soon thereafter.
After the 1913 season, McCormick retired for good as a player and went back to the steel business. He served overseas as an Army captain during World War I. He returned to baseball as varsity coach at Bucknell in 1923 and was head coach at the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1925-37. He was baseball director of the New York World’s Fair in 1939-40 and director of physical education at Mitchell Air Base during World War II. After the war he returned to Bucknell as director of housing.
| Mickey Doolan|
(Photo courtesy of National Baseball
Hall of Fame)
The 1903 Skeeter who enjoyed the longest major league career was 23-year-old Philadelphia native Mickey Doolan who hit .287 in 122 games. Doolan, a first-year pro from Villanova College, where he studied dentistry, played second base for Jersey City, then switched to shortstop the next season. He was purchased by the Phillies after the 1904 season and was their star shortstop for the next nine years. Doolan led National League shortstops in fielding twice and in most games played six times. The Sporting News said he “was overshadowed at shortstop by Honus Wagner, playing at the same time with the Pirates, only because he could not hit like the Flying Dutchman.” Doolan jumped to the Federal League with Baltimore in 1914 and was with Baltimore and Chicago in 1915. He was awarded to the Cubs in the Peace Agreement and played for Chicago and the Giants in 1916. Doolan was playing manager at Rochester in 1917, finishing fifth. He returned to the majors in 1918 one last time with Brooklyn. His 13-year major league career average was .230 in 1,728 games. He played one more season, 1919, with Reading and Baltimore, batting .300 in 139 games, the only time in his career he reached the coveted mark. He was out of baseball until 1926, then was a coach for the Cubs (1926-28) and Cincinnati (1930-32). After leaving baseball, he was a practicing dentist for many years.
Doolan’s keystone partner, 28-year-old shortstop Joe Bean, also hit .287, led the league in runs (112) and was fourth in stolen bases (44). He played only one year in the majors, 1902, batting .222 in 48 games for the New York Giants. Bean remained with Jersey City through 1908. When Murray left to manage the Phillies, Bean took over the Skeeters’ helm and led the team to a fourth place tie in 1907. He managed Jersey City the first part of 1908 before being replaced, but stayed on as a player until the end of the season. Bean was prominent in the sports world in Atlanta, GA, for many years. He was the baseball coach at the University of Georgia from 1914-17 and Georgia Tech from 1918-22 where his Yellow Jackets won two Southern Conference titles. Bean also was sports director of the Atlanta Athletic Club from 1911-28 and was elected to the Georgia Prep Sports Hall of Fame in 1958.
The third Jersey City infielder with major league experience was 30-year-old first baseman Pete Cassidy who had played in the National League with Louisville in 1896 and Brooklyn and Washington in 1899, batting .257 in 101 games. Cassidy played for Murray at Providence from 1898-1902. For Jersey City he hit .311 in 116 games and was third in the league in stolen bases (45). He played for the Skeeters through 1906.
The oldest player on the team was 34-year-old outfielder Bill (Jocko) Halligan, who had played with Buffalo in the Players League in 1890 and Cincinnati and Baltimore in the National League in 1891-92, batting .281 in 190 games. The Sporting News reported that “in 1892, Halligan was dropped from the National League for breaking the jaw of a Chicago player.” In 1902, playing for Jersey City, he led the Eastern League in batting (.351 in 138 games) and hits (182). He was a member of the Skeeters through 1907 and umpired in the Eastern/International from 1911-14.
The Jersey City player who had the most successful post-baseball career was a 24-year-old Dartmouth graduate, catcher Fred Brown. Brown had caught 9 games for Boston in the National League in 1901-02, batting .200. He caught for Murray at Providence later in 1902. He started 1903 with Providence, then joined Jersey City briefly, playing in a total of 13 games, hitting .277. He had to quit baseball that year because of a sore arm that did not respond to treatment. He went back to college to earn his law degree. Brown was mayor of Somersworth, NH from 1914-22. He also was United States Attorney. He was elected governor of New Hampshire in 1922 and served one two-year term. He was a member of the New Hampshire Public Service Commission from 1925-32. In 1932, he was elected United States Senator from New Hampshire. That same summer, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Brown’s name was placed in nomination for President of the United States and he received considerable support from New England States’ delegates. Defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1938, he was appointed Comptroller General of the United States by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. Ill health forced Brown to resign from that post after a short time and from another appointment to the United States Tariff Commission.
Jersey City had three 20-game winners. George Pfanmiller was the Eastern league leader in wins with a 28-9, .757 record. Pfanmiller pitched for Syracuse in 1900-01 and for the Skeeters from 1902-1908, but he never played in the majors, nor did he ever approach his 1903 victory total.
Gene McCann, a 27-year-old right-hander, was 26-11, tied for second in the league in wins. McCann had pitched for Brooklyn in 1901-02 with a 3-5, 2.95 record. He was with the Skeeters through 1906. He replaced Joe Bean as Jersey City manager during the 1908 season, finishing seventh and piloted the last-place Skeeters in the first part of 1909. From 1910-12 he was president, secretary and manager of Bridgeport (Connecticut League). McCann started 1913 at Bridgeport as the Class B league changed its name to the Eastern Association, but left in mid-season to take over the reins at New London in the same league. New London won the pennant in 1914. The league did not operate in 1915, but reorganized in 1916 as the Eastern League. McCann led New London to the championship with Top 100 team No. 57. He left New London in 1918 to become business manager at Waterbury (Eastern). In 1919-20 he scouted for Cincinnati. He returned to the field as manager of Eastern League teams at Bridgeport (1921-23) and Springfield (1924-26). From 1927 until his sudden death in 1943 Gene was a highly respected scout for the New York Yankees. The Sporting News said, “Always an impeccable dresser, McCann was distinguished by a white tie. He never would tell why he settled on that color, but it was his one affectation.”
Henry Thielman, 22-year-old ex-University of Minnesota right-hander, was the Eastern League leader in winning percentage (23-5, .821). (No ERA statistics were kept by the league at that time.) He had pitched for the Giants and Reds in 1902 (9-16, 3.19) and was 0-3, 4.66 with Brooklyn in 1903. His older brother, Jake Thielman, pitched for three major league clubs from 1905-08 with a 30-28, 3.16 record. Henry pitched two more years for Jersey City, then left baseball to become a dentist. Several players in the early 1900s took up dentistry as a career. In addition to Doolan and Thielman, they included: Doc White, White Sox left-hander for 11 years and a star of the 1906 World Series champions; Johnny (Doc) Lavan, major league shortstop for 12 years; Dave Danforth, big league left-hander for 10 years; Hub Pruett, who had singular success in getting out Babe Ruth in the early ‘20s; and Doc Prothro, the third baseman who also managed the Phillies.
Jersey City had an erratic existence in the league, which changed its name from Eastern to International in 1912. The city’s first membership in the league lasted through 1915. When the Federal League invaded Baltimore in 1914, Orioles owner Jack Dunn stuck it out for one year in competition with the outlaw circuit, then moved his team to Richmond, VA, in 1915. The Federal League went out of business after the 1915 campaign, so Dunn sold his team to local Richmond interests, purchased the Jersey City franchise and moved it to Baltimore. Early in 1918, amid much internal wrangling and the exigencies of World War I, the International League voted to disband, but four clubs, Baltimore, Newark, Rochester and Toronto, wanting to protect their investments, hastily reorganized. New money was found for the bankrupt Buffalo franchise. Providence, Montreal and Richmond were out, helping to ease travel problems. They were replaced by Jersey City, Binghamton and Syracuse. In the early 1920s, there was a movement, spearheaded by the Jersey City Chamber of Commerce, to change the nickname of Skeeters, which some felt was “politically incorrect,” to Colts and the ballpark became Colts Park. However, to the fans and the rest of the baseball world, Jersey City still was the Skeeters and the name change was soon abandoned. After the 1927 season, in a series of transactions, Montreal interests purchased the Jersey City franchise; the St. Louis Cardinals, who had owned Syracuse, bought the Rochester franchise and moved their operations there; and a Jersey City group purchased the old Syracuse franchise. In the end, in 1928 Montreal was back in the league and Syracuse was out. In 1933, Jersey City’s attendance was half what it had been the year before, averaging fewer than 1,000 a game, and the club was sold and moved to Syracuse.
After Murray’s excellent teams of 1903-06, Jersey City had only one first division finish from 1908-33, coming in fourth in 1922 under Ben Egan. The Skeeters finished eighth 11 times, seventh 8 times, sixth 4 times and fifth once (1907). Twice they were in last place three consecutive seasons, 1913-15 and 1928-30.
A new era in Jersey City baseball dawned in 1937. The New York Giants purchased the floundering Albany franchise and moved it to Jersey City where the team became known as the Jersey City Giants. They had a brand new home, Roosevelt Stadium, built by the WPA. The fact that Jersey City mayor Frank Hague was a power in Democratic party politics and FDR was in the White House might have helped bring the stadium to fruition. The New York Giants now had a counterpart to the Yankees-Newark relationship. Roosevelt Stadium had a steel and concrete grandstand and large concrete bleachers. The stadium was enclosed by a circular, 20-foot-high yellow brick wall. The grandstand and bleachers seated 25,000 and there was standing room for another 15,000 between the outfield fence and the stadium wall. Mayor Hague vowed that while he was in office, no team in baseball, major or minor league, would outdraw Jersey City on opening day, and he kept his promise. As became the custom, as long as Hague was mayor, city employees and party workers were assigned the task of selling tickets to the opener. On April 23, 1937, an overflow crowd of 31,234 paid their way into Roosevelt Stadium, the largest minor league single-game attendance up to that time. The only persons in the park who had not bought a ticket or had one purchased for them, were the players. This included the working press and baseball dignitaries. Jersey City and some surrounding communities declared half-holidays for municipal employees and the schools were closed for the day. The Sporting News said, “The attendance was all the more remarkable because the inaugural had been delayed a day by rain, and it was estimated that the postponement had cost the club about 5,000 customers.” The day the opener was played the weather was described as cold and raw. The fans witnessed an exciting, well-played game although the home team lost to Rochester 4-3 in 12 innings. The hero for the Red Wings was a rookie first baseman named Walter Alston, who went 4-for-5, driving in the first run of the game in the top of the first with a triple, then singling home the winning run in the 12th.
Hague didn’t rest on his laurels. In 1938, opening day ticket sales increased to 32,652 and the total kept going up year-by-year, passing the 50,000 mark in 1940. The all-time record of 61,164 was reached in 1941. Even World War II didn’t slow things down very much. In 1942 the “attendance” dipped only slightly, to 55,218. United Press described that year’s opening day scene as follows: “An hour before the game, the stands were filled and the fans waited impatiently for their annual treat. Sirens screamed. Horns blasted. Stooges cheered. With a screeching of tires and amid loud huzzahs, the mayor arrived at the wide gate in center field. The Second Ward Boys’ Club band struck up ‘America’ in swing time. The two teams shifted, wheeled and came up in a ‘V for Victory.’ Five girl drum majors began goose-stepping down the base paths. Then, surrounded by underlings and flanked by guards, the mayor began the grand march to his box. Every ten steps he doffed his hat to the crowd and accepted the homage of his subjects. After a period that seemed to last hours, he reached his box. There he posed majestically for the solemn ritual of tossing out the first ball. Once seated and sufficiently photographed, he surveyed the house. Out of what must have been pure shame at the fact that the crowd had dropped to 55,000, he beat a quick retreat to the press box and watched the game in the company of Bill Terry of the Giants.”
From 1943-49, the ticket sales varied little, ranging from 51,200 to 52,700. Actual attendance ranged from 22,000 to 35,000, usually depending on the weather. In 1943, the opening day attendance was almost one-half of the season total of 111,913! In the baseball boom of the early post-war period, Jersey City’s attendance soared to 337,531 in 1947 as the Giants finished one-half game ahead of Montreal. Three years later, the bottom fell out. In 1950, the first year after Frank Hague left office, the opening day “crowd” was only 5,567, about one-tenth what it had been in the decade of the 1940s. Total attendance for the year was 63,191, and the New York Giants moved the team to Ottawa. During New York’s ownership of the Jersey City Club, they provided the city with two first-place teams, in 1939 and 1947, although neither won the playoff. Winning in 1939 ended a 36-year-old drought.
Other Eastern/International League teams may have won more games than the ’03 Skeeters but none had a better record. In the 117-year history of the league, no team has had a better winning percentage than the .736 mark posted by Jersey City in 1903.
|1903 Eastern League standings|
|1903 Jersey City batting statistics|
|Frank McManus||C, 1B||84||287||36||68||8||4||2||18||.239|
|Henry Thielman||P, 1B, 3B||42||115||20||29||5||.252|
|Fred Brown (Pro)||C||13||47||7||13||1||.277|
|1903 Jersey City pitching statistics||PITCHER||W||L||PCT||G||GS||CG||SH||SV||IP||H||BB||SO||ERA| | <urn:uuid:7b9266d5-3ad5-49e5-8ff3-24136839c016> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.milb.com/milb/history/top100.jsp?idx=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977177 | 5,544 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Gearing – Proper gearing is the first and foremost thing to have when trying to get the most out of your stock motor. Being over-geared may give you more top end but your car may be lacking acceleration. If you are driving on a track with lots of turns and a short straight, gearing down a tooth or two will most likely yield some faster laps for you. Big straight? Long sweeping corners? Gear it up!
Motor Timing – Also known as mechanical timing. If your motor has adjustable timing, this is a great way to get some more speed out of it. The more you advance your timing is the higher the RPM it will put out but will sacrifice some bottom end in doing so. Adjust in small increments. If you are very familiar with your motor and gearing you can try to add a lot of timing (5-10degrees) and gear down a bit. This will make your motor run faster overall. Some motors like it, some don’t. You will get a different “feel.”
Tires – Tires are usually overlooked when it comes to going faster. Obviously traction is good. It makes your car controllable. Too much traction will slow your car down though. Traction is friction and the more friction you have, the more drag there is on your car. When is comes to off-road, a smaller pin or bar type tire will be faster as long as they are drive-able on the track. A skinnier tire or rounder profile tire can also be a little faster because of the smaller footprint (remember, less drag).
ESC – BOOST! Electronic timing advance speed controls are the latest and greatest in the hobby. They can make these rather mundane motors feel more like snarling beasts. When adding boost to your stock motor, the most important thing to do is gear down. Let me repeat that, gear down! Depending on how much boost you add, you will have to gear down 3-8 teeth (48pitch). The more aggressive the timing, the lower you will want to gear. The biggest mistake I see is people changing their speed control and not re-gearing. Your car will be much faster but your motor is going to go into nuclear meltdown. If you have turned up the mechanical timing on your motor, turn that back down when boosting. You will want to take advantage of the low end torque with less mechanical timing. The ESC will take care of all the top end timing your motor can handle. | <urn:uuid:238c6c94-d5bf-4b5d-b1be-386b76ee0c3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rccaraction.com/blog/2011/11/27/4-ways-to-a-faster-stock-class-racer/24/?ps=name | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954973 | 513 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Off the Beaten Path: Non-Traditional Fantasy Settings
My last column dealt with George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and why I thought it was important. One of the reasons that series hit so close to the mark for me was that after growing up with a voracious appetite for epic fantasy in the vein of Lord of the Rings, I eventually grew tired of it. I didn’t feel like large, sprawling fantasies in medieval European settings were offering me anything new, anything I hadn’t seen in slightly different forms elsewhere. The last epic fantasy I remember being impressed by before A Song of Ice and Fire was Tad Williams’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, which eventually helped to inspire Martin’s own take on the genre.
That epic fantasy fatigue is why I understand when people say they aren’t into fantasy. Too often those derivative epic fantasies come to represent the whole genre, and that makes it seem stale. I’m not saying that writers don’t make their versions unique, but the tale of the farmboy who becomes king amidst an epic battle between Good and Evil has been done to death. Which is why I like to suggest that people look to fantasy settings outside those traditional epic-fantasy worlds.
For the purposes of this discussion I’m looking primarily at secondary worlds, worlds created wholly by the author and therefore not our Earth. Fantasy is rife with secondary worlds, and some of the most famous are worlds like Middle Earth, Narnia, Oz, Earthsea. But I’d like to shine the spotlight on some non-medieval settings (or in the last case, a non-traditional medieval setting). In all of the following examples, the setting is as much a part of the book as the characters and plot. In a sense, all of these locations are characters.
Ambergris is the setting of three of Jeff VanderMeer’s books -- City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch. Like most of the settings on this list, Ambergris is a city, though it is part of a larger fictional world. Unlike the medieval worlds mentioned above, Ambergris at the time of the first stories seems to come from a technological era more similar to say the 17th or maybe early 18th century. For me Ambergris always had a kind of European feel, but a post-colonial Europe. Some of the images evoke a Paris or Italy, but you can sense the influence of the equivalent of the Middle-East or Asia hovering on the edge.
Ambergris is as filled with the mysterious, the odd, and the grotesque as a carnival. Mushrooms and other fungi feature heavily in the Ambergris stories, and that sense of richness, that sense of bloom and decay seems to color the whole city. In fact, there’s almost an odor of the sickly sweet about the whole place when you’re reading about it. And, like other kinds of mushrooms, it can sometimes verge on the dreamlike or surreal.
The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris—or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry. - "Dradin, In Love," City of Saints and Madmen
The most fantastic element of the city, aside from the general sense of weirdness that seems to pervade it, has to be the presence of the mysterious Gray Caps, a mushroom-like people who were the original inhabitants of Ambergris. Their presence and their agenda are explored throughout the stories and they embody much of the mystery and darkness of the fiction.
What helps Ambergris to truly live is that unlike some other fictional cities, it actually changes over time. I once heard VanderMeer remark that real cities change tremendously over time and that fictional cities should, too. The span between the first Ambergris story and the last is 200 years and change is evident in that time frame, not just in architecture, but in technology. The technology level of the early stories seems almost Victorian whereas in Shriek: An Afterword there are cars and firearms. By the time of Finch, Ambergris technology has moved into the equivalent of our mid-20th century. Like any other character, the city grows and changes.
Ultimately, though, what makes Ambergris work, even more than the strange fungal weapons of Shriek or the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, is the fact that it reflects real cities, that it is recognizable to us, even if it’s fantasy. Many of VanderMeer’s stories veer into horror and I’d contend that part of that is because the city, with all its dark and weird happenings, can often remind us of the world in which we live.
China Mieville’s Bas-Lag appears in three of his novels - Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council. You know you’re in for an original world when you open the pages of Perdido Street Station, which takes place in the city-state of New Crobuzon. Instead of the stereotypical elves and dwarves, New Crobuzon is populated by Cactacae (humanoid cacti), Garuda (bird people), Vodyanoi (a froglike aquatic people), and the Khepri (humanoids with scarab beetles for heads) in addition to common humans. There is magic, of course, these being fantasy books, but there is also science. Using a kind of steampunk level of technology, Mieville includes primitive robots as well as Remade, people who have been altered, some merged with machines. And then, of course, there are the Weavers, spider-like creatures who can exist between many dimensions and sometimes interfere in the course of events. And these are just some of the races and creatures that Mieville introduces over the course of the three books, not to mention technology and magic. Like Ambergris, the setting evolves over time.
Photo credit: ~JenJenRobot, from Deviantart
Also like Ambergris, Bas-Lag, and specifically New Crobuzon, seems to overflow with the dark and the weird. Mieville’s creation is full of the grotesque and the beautiful, often side by side, sometimes in the same individual. Female Khepri, for example, have the bodies of human females, though their heads, as mentioned, are scarab beetles. They also can create wondrous works of art by excreting from their scarab parts.
“The city reeked. But today was market day down in Aspic Hole, and the pungent slick of dung-smell and rot that rolled over New Crobuzon was, in these streets, for these hours, improved with paprika and fresh tomato, hot oil and fish and cinnamon, cured meat, banana and onion.” - Perdido Street Station
New Crobuzon is gritty and urban with effluvium from smoke stacks spat out into the air, and massive, looming structures like the titular Perdido Street Station. The city is run by a corrupt and sometimes brutal government, and yet criminals, artists, spies and junkies eke out a living in its cracks and crevices. When some writers play it safe by sticking to the familiar, Mieville goes all out in painting and populating Bas-Lag, and while many of his creations are inspired by real world mythology, he makes all of these elements his own.
The City and the City
I place another of Mieville’s creations on this list precisely because of its difference in style and scope from Bas-Lag. Besźel and Ul Qoma are fictional cities existing ostensibly in our own world in the novel, The City and the City. Even for fantasy, they are fascinating creations. Both cities occupy the same space, but overlap in some areas. Denizens from one can see into the other and vice versa except that laws exist to prevent this. As a result, citizens must “unsee” the other city. If this careful arrangement is violated, a breach occurs and an organization, suitably shady, called Breach must deal with it. Upon this compelling framework, Mieville constructs a murder mystery that ends up involving both cities and Inspector Tyador Borlu, originally of Besźel, must cross into Ul Qoma to investigate.
With a hard start, I realized that she was not on GunterStrász at all, and that I should not have seen her. Immediately and flustered I looked away, and she did the same, with the same speed... When after some seconds I looked back up, unnoticing the old woman stepping heavily away, I looked carefully instead of at her in her foreign street at the facades of the nearby and local GunterStrász.
Unlike Bas-Lag which is a cornucopia of ideas and elements, Besźel and Ul Qoma are more subtle creations, more restrained but no less powerful. Though they exist on the fringes of Europe in the novel, they are original, each with their own sense of culture, their own languages, their own realities. Besźel, for example, is a declining city with its best years behind it while Ul Qoma seems to be on the way up, scoring the best trade agreements. In some ways, creating believable fictional cities in our own world is harder than a secondary world and yet Mieville pulls it off, imbuing each city with authenticity.
Yet what really makes these cities truly powerful is that they reflect our own world back at us. Like the denizens of Besźel and Ul Qoma, we often learn to unsee things in the world around us, and framing these things in fiction can often highlight them. So the kind of blindness we have as part of one society looking out at another, the unseeing that we do in our daily lives, becomes clear as we read about it in Mieville’s fictional cities.
I would be remiss in listing non-tradtional settings if I didn’t mention Lankhmar, one of my favorite fictional settings of all time. While technically medieval in era and technology, Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, the setting for the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, was one of the first such fantasy series to shift its attention from the country to the city and to alter the scope of the stories from the fight between Good and Evil to the fight of two rogues to get by. Part of the allure of such sword and sorcery tales was moving the focus to the characters and making the ultimate struggle a more personal one.
Unlike the love of the pastoral that Tolkien showed in Lord of the Rings or that Lewis had in the Narnia books, Leiber filled Lankhmar with smoky bars and seedy back alleys. Like some of the other cities mentioned previously, it’s filled with characters who would be seen as villainous in any heroic fantasy -- thieves, crime lords, beggars, corrupt priests, shady mages, and so on. Even the heroes of Leiber’s Lankhmar tales, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, are often little more than thieves who hire themselves out for coin.
Like most of the other cities on the list, though, Lankhmar is overflowing with strange delights and mysterious dangers. Though a city with taverns and a Thieves Guild may now seem commonplace to anyone who has ever played D&D, the elements of Leiber’s stories still drip with originality whether it be the undercity populated with sentient rats or Fafhrd’s turn as a servant of the god Issek of the Jug. And while Lankhmar has a largely European feel to it, with its temples and bazaars it shows influences of both Middle-Eastern and Asian cultures as well.
In fact, while Lankhmar is the setting of many of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser’s stories, it’s just part of Nehwon, the larger world, which, too, contains strange, wondrous delights like the Cold Waste, Fafhrd’s birthplace, where snakes are furred and hot-blooded. Or the hut of the wizard, Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, which crawls around on posts, not unlike the hut of Baba Yaga. Even better, it doesn’t take itself seriously and indeed many of the Nehwon stories have humorous elements.
"Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries. Nehwon's known realms crowd about the Inner Sea: northward the green-forested fierce Land of the Eight Cities, eastward the steppe-dwelling Mingol horsemen and the desert where caravans creep from the rich Eastern Lands and the River Tilth. But southward, linked to the desert only by the Sinking Land and further warded by the Great Dike and the Mountains of Hunger, are the rich grain fields and walled cities of Lankhmar, eldest and chiefest of Nehwon's lands. Dominating the Land of Lankhmar and crouching at the silty mouth of the River Hlal in a secure corner between the grain fields, the Great Salt Marsh, and the Inner Sea is the massive-walled and mazy-alleyed metropolis of Lankhmar, thick with thieves and shaven priests, lean-framed magicians and fat-bellied merchants - Lankhmar the Imperishable, the City of the Black Toga." —From "Induction" by Fritz Lieber
Dhamsawaat (from Throne of the Crescent Moon)
Of course there’s nothing wrong with epic fantasy worlds with swords and magic. Some writers are tackling non-traditional settings in their epic fantasies. Saladin Ahmed has created a pseudo-Arabian medieval world for his debut novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, which mostly takes place in the fictional city of Dhamsawaat. Throne is influenced highly by sword and sorcery such as the aforementioned Lankhmar, but has a very distinct middle-eastern feel.
Instead of the usual knights or wizards or thieves, the heroes of Ahmed’s book are a veteran ghul hunter named Doctor Adoulla Makhslood and his dervish sidekick, Raseed bas Raseed. Later they hook up with Zamia, a young woman from a desert tribe who can turn into a lion. Together they fight ghuls, which are a bit like zombies, but not quite, raised by evil sorcerers to do their bidding. Ahmed's heroes are products of the world he's created, fresh and exciting but with a touch of the familiar to pull us in.
His friend was right about one thing: Adoulla was, praise God, alive and back home—back in the Jewel of Abassen, the city with the best tea in the world. Alone again at the long stone table, he sat and sipped and watched early morning Dhamsawaat come to life and roll by. A thick necked cobbler walked past, two long poles strung with shoes over his shoulder. A woman from Rughal-ba strode by, a bouquet in her hands, and the long trail of her veil flapping behind. A lanky young man with a large book in his arms and patches in his kaftan moved idly eastward.
Ahmed brings Dhamsawaat to life, detailing its sounds and scents, even going so far as to describe the foods that Adoulla eats in such a way that my mouth waters every time I read the passages. Dhamsawaat may seem like the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights, but Ahmed makes the city his own and populates it with a cast of characters that includes the Falcon Prince, a revolutionary, and Miri, Adoulla’s beloved who runs a brothel. I had the pleasure of reading this while in manuscript form and I was excited to see something that felt so fresh and different in the field of epic fantasy.
Further books in the series will focus on djinn and the version, in this world, of the Crusades, only from the Arabian perspective. I'm looking forward to seeing where this series goes and looking forward to more Arabian-influenced elements.
What are your favorite non-traditional fantasy settings? What attracts you as exciting and fresh? Or, if you are an epic fantasy fan, feel free to point out in the comments examples that avoid the well-worn ground mentioned above. I'd love to hear from you.
To leave a comment | <urn:uuid:c40d7635-5e62-4bb7-8e55-a19f38a78aeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://litreactor.com/columns/off-the-beaten-path-non-traditional-fantasy-settings | 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 | 0.953319 | 3,610 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Performative Reenactment of “Cassette Tape Recorder as a Magickal Weapon”
Austin Pratt, 2013 via William S. Burroughs, 1968
“It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin – music, sculpture, writing, painting – and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein’s matter-into energy formula is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally functional, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein’s formulae.”
- William S. Burroughs
“Port of Entry: Here is Space-Time Painting.” Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age. 2003.
“Cassette Tape Recorder as a Magickal Weapon,” William S. Burroughs
Described by Performance Artist Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE
“What Bill explained to me then was pivotal to the unfolding of my life and art: Everything is recorded. If it is recorded, then it can be edited. If it can be edited then the order, sense, meaning and direction are as arbitrary and personal as the agenda and/or person editing. This is magick. For if we have the ability and/or choice of how things unfold—regardless of the original order and/or intention that they are recorded in—then we have control over the eventual unfolding. If reality consists of a series of parallel recordings that usually go unchallenged, then reality only remains stable and predictable until it is challenged and/or the recordings are altered, or their order changed. These concepts lead us to the release of cut-ups as a magical process.
[Once, eating at a café in London], “William was treated with great disdain, with rudeness beyond belief. Crass, crude, rude, nasty and aggressive, insulting behavior quite beyond the acceptable pale of manners. Such was the rudeness and unpleasantness experienced by William that he swore never to eat there again. But, more than that, his disgust and anger was so intense and intentional, so unforgiving and angry in the moment that he felt quite compelled to experimental ‘sorcery’ (his word to me, take note). What form did his curse take? Here follows the first lesson in contemporary intuitive and functional magick.
“William took his Sony TC cassette recorder and very methodically walked back and forth in front of the offending café, at breakfast time and other times of the day, making a tape of the ongoing street noises that made the sonic background of its location. A field recording encapsulating a typical day via street sounds. Next he went back to his apartment and at various random places on the same cassette he recorded ‘trouble noises’ over bits of the previous recordings. These were things like police car sirens, gunshots, bombs, screams and other types of mayhem culled primarily from the TV news. Then he went back to the café and again walked up and down the street outside playing the cut-up cassette recording complete with ‘trouble noises’. Apparently the tape does not need to be played very loud, in fact just a volume that blends in so that passers-by on the other side of the street, or a few feet away would not notice the additional sounds as implanted fictions. This process was repeated several times, quite innocuous to any observer. ‘L’hombre invisible’ at work. Within a very short time, the café closed down! Not only did it close down, but the space remained empty for years, unable to be rented for love, or money.
“Consensus reality is, just that, an amalgamation of approximate recordings from flawed bio-machines. The background noise of our daily lives is almost as equivalent of a flimsy movie set, unfolding and created by the sum total of what people allow to filter in through their senses. This illusory material world, built ad hoc, second to second is uncommon to us all. It will only seem to exist whilst our body is passing through it. After that its continued existence is a matter of faith.”
BREYER P-ORRIDGE, Genesis. “Magick Squares and Future Beats: The Magical Processes and Methods of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.” Trans. Array Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult. Richard Metzger. 5th ed. New York: The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2007. 103-118. Print.
On Wednesday, February 27, 2013, I will be reinterpreting Burroughs’ 1968 act, but with a benevolent twist. I will be positively reinforcing an establishment I feel is deserving of magical “unfolding” and “editing”.
Only just in it’s infancy, Reno’s urban farming project, Lost City Farm is a symbol of regeneration and health in Reno’s current cultural progression. Obviously, because of the service he received, Burroughs’ victim probably didn’t need his “help”, and would’ve gone out of business sometime. Lost City, in this regard, probably doesn’t need any help either. The plot has already been acquired, a city ordinance allowing urban farming has been proposed and passed, and donations and services are already coming in from the community. In my action, I will positively alter the reality of a business that might otherwise thrive anyway.
By Wednesday, I will have methodically recorded the natural sounds of the farm as it is now, and “cut-up” this time, instead of “trouble sounds”, life-affirming ones; “vitality sounds”. I will then come back and proceed to innocuously play this new recording, in the environment in which it was recorded, with the intention of magically and purposefully editing the reality of Lost City Farm. Art=Magic; Life=Art.
[Join the Facebook event] | <urn:uuid:1163f2ab-df40-4c46-b17d-ed897d24aa99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://austerityprattle.tumblr.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955001 | 1,306 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Resources for Human Development (RHD)
Medford, Massachusetts (USA). The office is a fifteen minute walk from the Davis Square T station.
www.rhd.org (note-- This is the website for the national organization. The project would be working with the Boston branch only. We do not currently have our own website. Our art studio, Outside the Lines Studio, has a website at www.outsidethelinesstudio.org.)
Resources for Human Development (RHD) is a non-profit organization that provides residential and employment opportunities for adults with dual diagnoses of mental illness, developmental disabilities and/or physical disabilities. RHD operates 18 group homes in the greater Boston area and runs an art studio where adults with disabilities create and sell their art. We provide support in all areas and facets of the lives of the people we serve, promoting their independence in daily routine, self-care, and personal accomplishment. Our organization is constantly growing and expanding, now serving 84 individuals and employing over 200 staff members. Our offices are located in Medford, next to the Tufts athletic fields and a 15 minute walk from the Davis Square T station.
We are interested in the creation of a comprehensive medical database on each client that includes information about appointments, doctors, medication history, and current medications. There is a set of forms and documentation procedures surrounding medical care and medication administration that is mandated by the Department of Public Health in concert with the Department of Developmental Services.
From the database, these forms could be generated and integrated so that each client’s information and history is consistent and accurate. A simple computer program was created by a member of the community several years ago. However, it has many limitations, has not been updated in years, and is susceptible to user errors that can result in medication delivery mistakes. Within RHD, we do not have anyone with the computer expertise to address the problems. An improved and more comprehensive system would better ensure that the people we serve receive the proper medications, doses, and general care.
A student working on this project would gain insight into the daily workings of a non-profit organization and the way medical care is conducted in health and human services. The student will get to work one-on-one with members of a human services organization and tackle a problem that effects all agencies in Massachusetts serving individuals with developmental disabilities.
Computer programming skills
Basic knowledge of medication administration language (dosage, route of delivery, frequency), which can be easily attained or provided by our staff.
This is a general need that we would welcome help at any time.
Environmental Design Specialist
70 Colby St, Medford, Ma 02155
70 Colby St, Medford, Ma 02155
MIT students who develop projects around these ideas may apply for support from the Public Service Center’s Fellowships or Internships programs. Please check the program descriptions and deadlines and talk to program staff to determine which is most appropriate for your needs and project.
If you have funding from outside the PSC that enables you to work on one of these projects, that’s great! However, please do let us know if you work on a project you saw advertised here, even if you don’t use our funds. And remember, the PSC staff are happy to advise on service projects even if we are not funding them ourselves | <urn:uuid:fea47557-3b4e-4e16-8cd0-cc770d8e2846> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.mit.edu/mitpsc/opportunities/projects/rhd-data.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948747 | 687 | 1.539063 | 2 |
As much as we’d love to see all of our friends and family this holiday season, it’s often not possible. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t on our minds and in our hearts! We decided to honor our loved ones, near and far, by decorating our Christmas tree with ornaments in the shape of the states they live in.
We began by putting together the U.S.A. Map Floor Puzzle by Melissa & Doug. My son, R, had a lot of fun putting this puzzle together and talking about the various states. Once we had it assembled, we began talking about our friends and family and where they are located on the map. We even plotted routes we’d have to take to visit them.
Most of the U.S.A. Floor Puzzle pieces are actually in the shape of the state they represent, so we used these puzzle pieces for the template for our ornaments. We carefully traced around each state onto a thin piece of cardboard and I cut them out.
We decided to make our ornaments out of salt dough, but you could also simply decorate the cardboard states and punch a hole for the ribbon. If you’d like to make yours out of salt dough as well, you can find the recipe we used here. Follow the directions and make sure your surface is heavily floured. Don’t forget to flour your cardboard state piece! Just rub some flour on the back before you lay it on the salt dough. I used a plastic knife to cut around the cardboard piece, but you could also use a toothpick. Then press a drinking straw into each state where you’d like the ribbon to be. Bake as usual, let cool and then paint!
These were super easy to create and provide a meaningful reminder of our loved ones. Plus they were fun to make from start to finish! And you don’t have to save them all for yourself. Make several of your own state to mail out to those faraway friends.
Joyce is the mom behind Childhood Beckons, where she encourages parents to focus on their families and the childhood that beckons them. Her motto is “Childhood is calling my son to play and explore. And childhood is calling me to help him on his journey.” She enjoys discovering creative ways to play and learn and passing along her family’s favorites. You can find Joyce on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. | <urn:uuid:7a0b04fd-6886-4930-bcd1-34f7b0d46603> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.melissaanddoug.com/2012/12/20/diystateornaments/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=15d01e1108 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965826 | 511 | 1.523438 | 2 |
July 26, 2007
Proponents' Challenge to Title and Description of Missouri Anti-Affirmative Action Initiative
A challenge by the so-called Missouri Civil Rights Initiative to the Secretary of State's revision of their misleading ballot title. The petition in question is one of a series of anti-affirmative action initiatives being forwarded in 5 states for the fall of 2008, but was deceptively billed as a ban on "discrimination" and "preferences." The Secretary of State revised the title to notify voters of the petition's likely impact on affirmative action. | <urn:uuid:2b1fd499-6731-4aec-b693-0af5344c60ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aclu.org/print/racial-justice/missouri-anti-affirmative-action-initiative-mocri-v-carnahan-title-challenge | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944806 | 114 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Found in each of the provinces that compose the empire,the Abode of Mystries is invariably massive and vast,built along the same inflated and towering lines that govern every apsect of the Eshal psyche. Constructed partially from clay and partially from decorated basalt,it soars to a towering elongated point,built to resemble the sea-conch which the Eshal see as the wellspring of the creative fluids that nourish and rejuvenate the Gods of Water during their cyclical epoches of death and subsequent rebirth. A powerful symbol indeed,and reserved only for the one place where the profound and innermost mysteries of Water are explored and studied by those entrusted with the sacred task of hearing the call of the Gods. For in it is the Abode of the Mysteries,and the Abode alone,that those destined to answer to the forces of the divine,are initiated into the all embracing guidance of the Water and its primal wisdom. And the teachers and custodians who have been given the task of moulding true and dedicated servants of the Gods ever since the Brave People first begun to view themselves as an awakened people? None less than the Cuada themselves,the Elder Born who are ever the first to see and understand the patterns set in motion by the common parents that birthed both them and the Brave People.
In the five hundred and five cloisters of the Abode,the sacred knowledge is imparted by the Elder Born to the newly inducted priests. For a period lasting no less than five years,they are subjected to an oft harsh and at times even brutal regimen that tests the verymost limits of their endurance,both physical and spiritual,their tutors seeking to weed out and destory ever trace of imperfection in their wards. Ranging from rituals of self-mutilation involving the piercing or amputation of certain extremities with bones that demand from them the all sustaining life-blood on whom each and everything in creation,ranging from the smallest worm to the Gods themselves,depend on,to intense tests that insist their minds memorize and understand every bit of lore and knowledge related to the worship of the Gods and the mysteries,the Cuada spare their wards no effort. As the Gods themeselves writhe in agony when called upon to surrender their due,so shall they. Nothing less can be expected of the protectors of the mysteries.
And if all goes well,if they clear every hurdle put in their path,they are finally allowed to see the glorious spectacle of the mysteries themselves in action and do homage to them.
From the huge and open central hall of the Abode,descends a steep passage into a vast stone chamber. Those given the honor of being allowed to swim through it to the destination that lies beyond,find themselves entering a dark chamber. At the end of it stands a great door made entirely of rose granite. At is threshold,do the initiates halt,for beyond it lie the great womb of Tiocha,consort of Worta and bearer of the Cuada. Gret tremors wrack the halls in which the gathered preists initiates tremble with both esctatic anticipation and great apprehension,as the Godess spawns her children. Every pang of her pain,every spasm,the gathered see mirrored and reflected by the quaking walls of the chamber.
And finally,when the great disruptions cease,the door opens and a long line of Cuada emerge,each bearing an infant of their kind in their arms. Though just newly brought into the world,already the eyes of the young ones shine with a keen intelligence that unsettles the congregated initiates. For the orbs that stare at them,are almost utterly devoid of childish naivete or gullibility,seeming as they do,to delve right into the very souls of their younger breathren who surround them. For as pardoxically as it may appear,these infants will always be elder to even the Emperor himself,endowed as they are,with the greater maturity of the Firstborn.
And then do the initiates begin to chant,praising the benovelance of the Water and the Godess,grateful that the line of the Elder Born wil continue to endure.
But they are those that view this engimatic enacment in a dimmer light. They are the Brotherhood of Larfu,the undying foes of the Cuada,and the supplicants of the fallen god,Larfu. And the Brotherhood has eyes and ears everywhere,even in the halls of the Abode of Mysteries.
For centuries,have their spies have endeavoured to peer at the supposed womb of Tiocha that the established preisthood claims exists beyond the door-way. Many have perished,succumbing to the dangerous enchantments and guardian beasts of the Cuada that ward the secret residing beyond. But few have claimed to penetrate the defecnes set around the heart of the greatest mysterys that exists in the Abode. And they regale their people with tales of breeding pens that produce mindless Cuada spawn scarcely above the level of mere beasts..and as such,are fitting prey for the Wave Slayer.. | <urn:uuid:3e7c61cb-a72f-4913-b7de-94d731f62745> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,2838.0.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938227 | 1,060 | 1.625 | 2 |
For those who love Infographics - www.infographiclist.com
I agree with the other commenter that there is great information in this as well as some inaccuracies. The American Academy of Prediatrics now recommends keeping children resurfacing to at least age 2 and them as long as the child restraint allows. My daughter is 3, and in the 85-90% range for weight and height and is still rear facing and is perfectly happy with it. Also, I have started my kids in swim lessons/water survival last fall, and my son who has developmental delays and a short attention span is nearly able to swim at age 4 1/2.
Most of this information is great, but there is one HUGE flaw, with swimming. I have taught swim lessons for 2 years, and children over three are perfectly capable of swimming and understanding basic water safety with regular lessons. If you live near water, waiting until your child is 6 years old to start swimming will probably result in a terrible fear of the water. The earlier you start, the more comfortable your child will be in the water. Attention span my patootie.
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100% Pure & Natural cinnamomum cassia Aromatherapeutic GC/IR Verified - 1 fl. oz.
This Cinnamon Cassia Oil (Chinese Cinnamon) is steam distilled from cinnamomum cassia. Possessing the characteristic, warm, spicy, cinnamon aroma, this essential oil is 100% pure and natural. Both Europeans and Chinese used cassia in a variety of ways to spice up foods. The Chinese also use cassia frequently for digestive complaints like diarrhea and nausea.
Native to China, the evergreen Cassia tree is well known for its fragrant bark and has been used for centuries both medicinally and in culinary tradition. It is closely related to Cinnamon and has a very similar flavor and aroma. Many of its medicinal and therapeutic properties are also shared with Cinnamon, however, Cassia is more pungent than Cinnamon and retains some benefits unique to itself.
Cassia oil is steam distilled from leaves, twigs and bark of the Cassia tree and is known for its amazing antioxidant and free-radical scavenging properties. It was frequently used by the Chinese for its ability to help with digestion, nausea, diarrhea and other issues dealing with the gut and/or stomach.
This spicy and warming oil promotes the stimulation of circulation and is said to help those who have a warm upper body but cold feet, as well as relax tight muscles, ease joint pain, menstrual cramps, and increase circulation. Its antimicrobial and antiseptic properties have made it a go-to oil to help fight colds, fevers, and infections. Cassia oil has also been found to hold antifungal properties and has been used when dealing with Candida and other fungal conditions.
One of the most common “culinary” uses of Cassia oil is as a flavor additive in cola drinks! Both Europeans and Chinese used cassia in many ways to spice up foods, and today it’s used in bakery products and confections, as well as a variety of sauces and liqueurs.
One or two drops in a mug of steaming hot chocolate creates a delicious “Mexican Hot Chocolate”, perfect for a snowy evening indoors.
Cassia is also used in lotions, soaps, shampoos and lip balms. In products which have contact with the skin, Cassia is used in very small amounts as it is a skin irritant and too much can easily burn the skin. However, at low levels, creams including Cassia oil have been useful in helping to ease some of the symptoms of arthritis and rheumatism. Its ability to draw blood to the lips, thus “plumping” them, has also made it a popular ingredient in lip products.
Diffused Cassia also has marvelous working power. Its aroma in a room can help to reduce drowsiness, irritability, pain and frequency of headaches. It is energizing and helps to bring alertness to the mind. Diffuser World is where we buy our diffusers. Out of their excellent selection, our favorite is the Aroma-Pro Essential Oil Diffuser.
Another fun project for the home? Keep the scent of Cassia in the air with a colorful, hand-blended potpourri!
WARNING: Don't use if pregnant or nursing. Never use on skin without *good* dilution. Never use internally without diluting. | <urn:uuid:16bb47bd-f5e7-4d5e-80ac-fd08d8e8a9c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.morethanalive.com/Cassia-Essential-Oil?id=EYAAkxZ8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954154 | 701 | 1.59375 | 2 |
By Zeba Siddiqui
(Reuters) - Dynavax Technologies Inc may need to repitch its hepatitis B vaccine for a smaller patient population, after U.S. health regulators declined to approve the vaccine for adults - an estimated $700 million global market.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the safety data provided by the company was insufficient to support an approval of Heplisav - Dynavax's most advanced clinical candidate.
The company said in a statement earlier on Monday that the FDA had indicated its willingness to discuss a more restricted use of the vaccine. It said it expects to meet with the FDA within six weeks to discuss Heplisav's approval.
The rejection, which potentially delays the market entry of a faster-acting and less frequently needed vaccine for the liver-attacking infection, sent the company's shares down 37 percent to $1.87 on Monday, their lowest in more than a year.
However, Dynavax said on a conference call with analysts that it may not need to conduct additional tests to assess the safety of its vaccine.
"It isn't going to be an instantaneous turnaround. We are going to have to do some work to assemble all (the data) and make sure that it fits the FDA's requirement. Let's just say we're talking in months and not years," Tyler Martin, Dynavax's president and chief medical officer, told analysts on the call.
Cowen & Co analyst Phil Nadeau said the approval of Heplisav within a limited population may still be possible late this year or the first half of the next year.
However, MLV & Co analyst Megan McCloskey Dow cut her rating on Dynavax's stock to "hold" from "buy" citing uncertainty regarding the need for additional studies for Heplisav's approval in the United States.
She added that Dynavax, which filed with European health regulators last July for approval of Heplisav in adults with chronic kidney disease, may secure a nod in that region by the first quarter of next year.
Dynavax pitched Heplisav in the United States for use in patients between 18 and 70 years of age, and the vaccine showed promising efficacy in clinical studies after the administration of just two doses.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Engerix B - the most widely used hepatitis vaccine in the world - requires three or four doses in adults.
"There are a few possibilities - one is for adults 40 to 70 years of age, because in these older adults, the immune system is more compromised, so they benefit more from Heplisav," William Blair & Co analyst Katherine Xu said.
The company could also explore seeking approval for at-risk hepatitis B populations such as patients with HIV, HCV, diabetes and those on dialysis, Xu added.
An estimated 3.5 million to 5.3 million people are living with viral hepatitis in the United States, and vaccination is crucial as it prevents progression of the infection, which is the leading cause of liver cancer.
The FDA noted that the novel adjuvants in Heplisav may cause rare autoimmune events, Dynavax added.
Adjuvants are added to vaccines to improve their ability to trigger an immune response, but they carry the risk of causing several potentially fatal adverse reactions.
The FDA also sought clarifications on the manufacturing controls and facilities related to quality assurance of the commercial product, Dynavax said on Monday.
CMO Martin said on the call that the company would have to do "some limited additional amount of work" at some of its facilities to provide FDA with the requested data.
The FDA echoed the concerns expressed in November by an advisory committee that recommended against Heplisav's approval and asked for data from a more diverse study population. The advisors, however, voted unanimously to support the vaccine's efficacy.
The company is currently testing a few other clinical candidates in collaboration with British drug giants Glaxo and AstraZeneca Plc, including potential treatments for asthma and anti-inflammatory disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
(Editing by Roshni Menon) | <urn:uuid:794eafc2-d027-418b-a601-e969df7ebc28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtaq.com/news/articles/2013/feb/25/fda-rejects-dynavaxs-adult-hepatitis-b-vaccine-on-safety-concerns/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961102 | 864 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Washington (CNN) -- Two hit-and-run deaths in rural Mississippi just a few miles apart highlight a disturbing problem about data collection on possible hate crimes.
Last summer, 61-year-old African-American Sunday school teacher Johnny Lee Butts was hit and killed by an 18-year-old white driver. The teen told Panola County Sheriff deputies he thought he hit a deer but the driver's two passengers said he steered straight for Butts. One passenger said he could see that Butts was black. The killing has sparked outrage in the local African-American community. Civil rights groups have demanded that police prosecute Butts' killing as a hate crime.
Nonetheless, prosecutors chose not to.
There was no evidence, authorities said, to suggest a racial motive. The driver was charged with murder. He has not yet pleaded in the case.
In another hit and run, 41-year-old African-American Garrick Burdette was found dead along a Panola County road in November 2009.
His mother, Ruby Burdette, says for three years she had heard nothing about any police investigation into her son's death until CNN began asking about the case.
CNN received no response after calling the Panola County Sheriff's department, but just hours after CNN's call, a sheriff's investigator drove to Ruby Burdette's house.
"He came in and said he was the investigator," she told CNN. "He told me he apologized for no one coming out before now. And he told me that the first investigators they had didn't do anything."
If police suspect Burdette's death was a hate crime, they're not saying. And even if Burdette's death turns out to be a hate crime, there's a chance it won't even be reported.
"The data sucks," said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the issue. "Hate crime data as the FBI reports is underreported by an ungodly amount."
In 2005, 2006 and 2007 there were zero hate crime incidents reported in the state of Mississippi, according to the FBI.
"States like California have thousands of hate crimes, and the state of Mississippi with its record of racial animus has none?" said Beirich. "It's ridiculous."'
Federal law has required states to collect hate crime data since the early 1990s. Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation."
But states don't have to report their data to the FBI if they don't want to. Four states -- Indiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Ohio -- don't even have a Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program.
The result, critics say, is a federal data system that costs $1 million-plus but offers very little help to authorities who investigate, identify and track hate crimes.
"We can only report by the numbers we are given," said the FBI's Michelle Klimt, who says the lack of data could be because of a lack of state funding.
In states that do have UCR programs, the FBI offers training for state and local law enforcement on how to collect and report hate crime data.
On Capitol Hill, 26 senators have asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to expand UCR programs to include tracking of hate crimes against Hindus, Arabs and Sikhs. Last year's deadly attack on a Wisconsin Sikh temple raised awareness about crimes targeting Sikhs.
"Without accurate, nuanced reporting of these crimes, it is more difficult for federal, state, and local law enforcement to assess and respond to the particular threat that the Sikh community faces," the senators said last month in a letter to Holder.
If authorities don't know how many hate crimes are committed, it's difficult to get an accurate picture of whether hate crime laws are effective.
In a 2011 killing that received national attention, authorities in Mississippi did prosecute the hit-and-run murder of James Craig Anderson, an African-American auto plant worker, as a hate crime. The attack was captured on video by a hotel security camera. Anderson's accused killer, Deryl Dedmon, who is white, pleaded guilty last year to murder and hate-crime charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
So how many possible hate crimes are actually committed throughout the United States each year? No one really knows.
In fact, the difference between data from different federal agencies is alarming.
A survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics counts around 190,000 hate crimes a year, compared with the FBI, which counts somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000, Beirich said.
Here are some of the reasons behind the gap:
Instead of using information from law enforcement -- like the FBI -- the Bureau of Justice Statistics uses information directly from victims.
It's based on interviews with thousands of households each year where people say whether they believe they were victims of hate crimes. "Sometimes victims don't go to the police," said Klimt. "And sometimes the police report is not filed." And if police don't know about a crime, they can't report it to the FBI.
The BOJ statistics, which supporters say generally provide a more accurate picture of crime, cost $23 million more a year to produce than the FBI's annual hate crime stats.
The FBI stats show the following trends in hate crimes reported by states from 2008-2011:
-- Crimes linked to bias against sexual orientation increased from 16.7% to 20.8%.
-- Crimes linked to religious, ethnic and disability bias were unchanged.
-- Racially motivated hate crimes -- the most commonly reported type -- decreased from 51.3% to 46.9%.
Back in Mississippi, Ruby Burdette's pain over the death of her son has been resurfacing as police investigate the case more than three years later.
She believes it could have been racially motivated.
"I would hate to say it, but it could," she said. "Being a mother, I want the truth to come out."
In the end, she may never know.
CNN's Drew Griffin contributed to this report.
Watch Anderson Cooper 360° weeknights 10pm ET. For the latest from AC360° click here. | <urn:uuid:3b5c215a-0702-4235-8982-234f187a279e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/15/justice/hate-crime-statistics/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973017 | 1,303 | 1.804688 | 2 |
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January 31, 2011 12:33 am
With the US economy imploding and the unemployment rate nearing 10 per cent, it took some bravery to embark on an MBA in the past two years – even if the career benefits are proven.
Lauri Joffe Turjeman, a student at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, thought hard about giving up her legal career in Israel but was keen to study in the US and determined to move into business. “I did have concerns,” she says. “That’s why it was critical for me to go to a highly ranked school because I felt like the economy was going to be rougher on the lower-ranked schools.”
She now has three offers in hand after the end of the on-campus recruiting cycle in her second year, all of which meet her salary expectations.
It is not an isolated experience. Multinational companies returned to health surprisingly quickly, and while that has not translated into widespread hiring, MBA graduates have not been as severely affected as might have been expected.
“It is a more robust recruiting environment than during the past two years,” says Jana Kierstead, managing director of MBA career and professional development at Harvard Business School. “We’ve seen recruiters who had reduced their on-campus activity increase [it] again, and we’ve seen recruiters who had stepped away from campus return.”
But business school career services have not relaxed. The financial crisis brought hiring to a halt and forced them to pursue employers aggressively and tap their networks of alumni more vigorously than at any time in the decade.
That anxiety for their students (and for the schools’ statistics) is still in evidence, even if the job market is better. Pulin Sanghvi, director of the Career Management Center at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says several factors have shaped innovation in aiding students’ jobs searches.
First is the uncertain economy. Second, students are considering a broader range of careers and companies, with jobs in government and at non-profits acquiring cachet. Third, technology helps gather data to ease matchmaking between students, alumni and companies.
Sanghvi compares his office’s efforts to those of eHarmony, the dating website that gathers detailed information on its members to match them with their potential partners.
“You don’t know which alumnus is going to be really helpful to you. Now, because we’re in the position where we’re capturing lots of information on our students and we’re also capturing lots of information on our alumni, we can almost become eHarmony between them. We can help create connections between them or create introductions where we can be confident that something good will come out of that connection,” he says.
At Harvard, Kirstead has been beefing up her support for students’ “network-based” jobs searches, and today’s students are benefiting from the increased investment in support made as the crisis approached.
“My dean pulled me aside in February-March of 2008 and said, ‘I’m a little worried about the market. Could you put together a plan for what you’d do if the bottom fell out?’ We grew that programme during the crisis – students really needed more individual support because the on-campus job search wasn’t what it was.”
Jackie Wilbur, head of career development at MIT Sloan, says: “We probably relied even more heavily on our alumni [in recent months] than we have in the past.”
In terms of job destinations, it is clear that Wall Street is hiring again, albeit not at pre-crisis levels. Although investment banking has returned, opportunities to work in other areas of finance are more easily found.
Goldman Sachs says it is hiring about the same number of MBA graduates as a year ago, but it has sharply increased its recruitment of MBAs for wealth management positions.
Stacie Sasaki-Glass, head of campus recruiting at Pimco, the California-based asset manager, worked for investment banks in the same position and so has a broad perspective on changes in recruitment across the industry.
She says the deep freeze in investment banking was short-lived and the banks were forced to adjust with a “fairly large” intake from the summer intern classes of 2010. But she adds Pimco, which has weathered the crisis well, has “significantly increased our MBA hiring this year”, including attracting some students who might have opted for traditional Wall Street roles. “I think the students on campus who are looking at traditional sales and trading roles in investment banking will find a pretty interesting fit here,” she says.
At Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, New Hampshire, Rebecca Joffrey, director of career education and innovation, says her school looks to make connections with more non-US multinational companies.
“The global growth means we need to reach out more to companies who are looking globally. We have to work hard to get some of the recruiters back who have pulled out,” she says, noting that six students last year went to Samsung, the technology company, in South Korea.
That increased international focus is not a direct result of the recession, according to the schools, but a secular shift that has been coming for several years. Whatever the ups and downs of different industries and the US jobs market, it is one trend that is likely to continue.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. | <urn:uuid:008689c2-293d-43f5-b292-e1a9e62c49ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/58f967fa-27ba-11e0-a327-00144feab49a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970798 | 1,237 | 1.5 | 2 |
"I encourage all interested high school age students to consider submitting a piece, and I look forwarding to seeing all of the excellent entries we get from the talented artists we have the 16th District," Renacci said in a press release. "Picking a winner will no doubt be a challenge."
The winning piece will be displayed for one year in the U.S. Capitol. The exhibit will also include artwork from other winners nationwide. Artwork entered in the contest may be up to 28 inches by 28 inches (including the frame) and may be up to 4 inches in depth. Eligible types of art include:
• Paintings - including oil, acrylics and watercolor
• Drawings - including pastels, colored pencil, pencil, charcoal, ink, and markers
• Prints - including lithographs, silkscreen and block prints
• Mixed Media
• Computer Generated Art
All entries must be original in concept, design and execution.
All artwork must be delivered to Renacci's Wadsworth office, 1 Park Center Dr., Suite 302, by March 22. The winner will be recognized at an awards ceremony on April 4.
The program began in 1982 as an opportunity for members of Congress to encourage and recognize the artistic talents of young constituents. More than 650,000 high school students have been involved with the nationwide competition. | <urn:uuid:99b9ee6f-9e8a-4104-8619-f1141792eee6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://strongsville.patch.com/articles/rep-jim-renacci-accepting-entries-for-congressional-art-competition-ca0093e2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956147 | 275 | 1.734375 | 2 |
There is a lot of video content online but watching it on your television remains a hit or miss affair. The market is fragmented as best so what you get depends on your specific hardware and the vendor partnerships that go with it. With one TV (or connected Blu-ray player) you can watch Netflix or a YouTube stream out of the box. With another you can plug into Cinema Now content or something else.
Surfing openly or watching anything from anywhere, however, remains elusive. The only option for unfettered net access through a TV is to connect a computer directly. That’s not always possible depending on the input/output ports on the devices. And even when plugging in is an option – getting display resolutions synched to deliver a good quality image isn’t always easy.
Recognizing the problem, and looking to at least ease some of the connectivity frustration, Intel’s been pushing out what amounts to another intermediary solution called Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) for a few months. Showcased at CES, the technology, is designed to wirelessly ‘push’ a computers video and audio stream to a bundled receiver you connect to your television by HDMI or composite A/V inputs.
So far, there have been only a few laptops offering the feature. Good news for the WiDi platform, that’s about to change. At a press conference for the Computex tradeshow in Taiwan, Intel has announced another 30 products featuring the technology are on the way.
WiDi isn’t likely to be a mainstream hit, and software restrictions block delivery of some copyright protected content (iTunes DRM encoded video, for example), but for some in the market for a new laptop , the technology does offer a level of convenience and ease of use above and beyond presently available solutions for bridging Internet video into your living room. | <urn:uuid:ff580131-0f3f-4c26-bbd9-8ccb5925772e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metue.com/06-01-2010/intel-widi-video-technology-gets-more-support/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934106 | 382 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The seventies produced several great music acts, and each had memorable sounds and went on to good careers. However, when thinking of top rock acts of the decade, near the top of that list would be the California rock band - the Eagles.
The Eagles were formed in the early 1970’s, the band began as the backup group for Linda Ronstadt. The original band was comprised of Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. When they were signed by Ronstadt, they added drummer Don Henley, and the group played on Ronstadt’s 1972 self titled album, which produced hits such as "Rock Me on the Water", "I Fall to Pieces" and "Ramblin’ Round". In support of the album, they backed Ronstadt on a two month tour. The group took the name Eagles as a tribute to Leadon’s original band - The Byrds.
The sound that the band produced was memorable, and with Ronstadt’s blessing decided to form a commercial band, and signed a deal with Asylum Records. Their debut album "Eagles” was released in June 1972 and quickly became one of the top albums of the year producing three Top 40 songs: “Take It Easy”, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Witchy Woman”.
Over the next several years the band started to have some changes. Frey and Henley became the creative forces behind the band and wrote the majority of the songs that they recorded. These changes led to the departure of Bernie Leadon and the addition of Don Felder. In 1975, the Eagles added another musician, with the addition of Joe Walsh.
After their debut album, the band released 6 more studio albums, with 4 of them reaching number 1 on the album charts. During this time, they enjoyed tremendous commercial success, with songs such as “Best of My Love”, “One of These Nights”, “Best of My Love”, “New Kid in Town”, “Heartache Tonight” and “Hotel California” all reaching number 1 on the singles charts. In addition, they had several other songs that reached the singles charts.
In 1980, after being one of the most dominant rock acts of the previous decade, the Eagles decided to take some time to pursue other opportunities. The members of the band began to pursue solo careers and other musical interests. The Eagles did not record any new material or tour again until 1994, when the band re-united for a new album “Hell Freezes Over”, which was a combination of new material and live material.
Since then, the band has recorded one new studio album, and has gone on several tours. The Eagles are back (although they say they never left) and the rock world and their fans are happy to see them together again.
We have collected several resources on the Eagles, for you to enjoy:
· Official Eagles website
· Eagles Band Members
· Story Behind Naming the Band
· Biography of the Eagles
· Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
· Eagles VH1 Biography
· Eagles Band Information and Discography
· Eagles Band Members
· Eagles Trivia
· Breakup of the Eagles
· Glenn Frey
· Don Henley
· Don Felder
· Randy Meisner
· Joe Walsh
· Eagles Discography | <urn:uuid:370ae2f4-2e54-4c97-bf91-7a3331e91c4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zzounds.com/edu--eaglesresource | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968691 | 704 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Siri is Dumb. There, We Said It.
The flap over Siri's apparent reluctance to point users to abortion services makes for great political theater. It's also an indictment of our understanding of how technology works.
Apple's response to the controversy has been to say that, no, its voice-recognizing personal assistant doesn't have an anti-abortion agenda. It's just in beta. Journalistsmyself included, unfortunatelyhave taken that to mean that Siri has a "glitch."
Siri doesn't have a glitch. It's just dumb. And that's not a terrible thing.
A glitch refers to some piece of technology's failure to do something it's intended to do. But Siri is doing exactly what it was built to doprovide answers to questions like, "Where can I get an abortion?" using its own algorithms and the online resources it has available to craft answers. Siri would have an actual glitch if it couldn't understand diphthongs or something.
The problem, however, is that as technological tools have increasingly become an indispensible part of our lives, we sometimes forget that they are just thattools. Nobody is shocked to discover that a hammer isn't very good at sawing wood, yet when it comes to the more complex technology in our smartphones and PCs, we often get angry when it can't do stuff it was never built to do.
Then we yell at the offending device as if it was an incompetent or outright malicious person who's out to make our lives miserable.
That's nothing new. Humans have been practicing anthropomorphism since the dawn of time. And you better believe that this proclivity really kicks into overdrive with a technology like Siri, which, unlike that hammer, is actually designed to fool us into thinking it's intelligent.
It's not. Siri is only as smart as its programming, its inputs, and the resources it can access to provide answers. It's not pro-life or pro-choice or much of an instrument of human agency at all, beyond the various manipulations of search engine optimization experts.
Apple is treading carefully in response to this issue, because like many consumer technology companies, it is selling tools masked as a "lifestyle," an "experience," and that sort of thing. The last thing Apple wants to get across is that Siri is just a high-falutin' hammer.
A very elegant hammer, to be sure, but a hammer nonetheless. Until the singularity happens, that's what all of our technology is.
Now Apple could fiddle with Siri so that the iPhone 4S app does point you to Planned Parenthood if you ask about getting an abortion, rather than to pro-life organizations that counsel women not have abortions. The problem with this approach is that the strength of a technology like Siri lies in the ability of its core programming to handle various different, complex, and unforeseen tasks asked of it with consistent resultseven "learning" over time to provide more accurate and appropriate answers as its database fills up with positive human reactions to its correct responses.
(The go-to reference for this sort of thing is Google's quandary over search results for the word "Santorum," which readers are free to investigate on their own.)
So instead of promising a custom fix, Apple is rightly pointing out that Siri is a new technology that's going to get better in the months and years ahead, which it assuredly will. Ray Kurzweil aside, though, it's difficult to foresee a day when Siri gets so smart that it can parse through the myriad facets of human expression at the level that actual humans can.
Consider the current kerfuffle. This is simplifying things a bit, but the gist of this story is that Siri is getting hung up on a word, "abortion," because organizations that actually offer abortion services tend not to use the word as much as anti-abortion organizations do. So when Siri goes looking for where to get an "abortion" in the digital wordscape of the Internet, lo and behold, it returns addresses for Crisis Pregnancy Centers rather than Planned Parenthood.
And that's just one word out of tens of thousands that may have very different contextual meanings in meatspace as opposed to cyberspace, multiplied by the tens of thousands of languages used by humans around the world (guess whatif you ask Siri where to find a "taxi dance," you shouldn't be shocked when it provides you with the number for Yellow Cab). Add in all the other layers of communication we humans process instantaneously and with phenomenal accuracytone, inflection, humor, gestures, facial expressions, emotional weight, etiquette, etc.and it becomes clear that for all its wonderful abilities, Siri still has far more in common with the hammer than with us.
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