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Is there an American and German breed of Rottweilers ? What's the difference between the two?
on Dec 11th 2012
- Cast your vote for which answer you think is best!
Nope. It's all just the Rottweiler.
Kolbe answered on 12/11/12. Helpful? / 2
If the Rottweiler is born in America, it's called an "American Rottweiler", if the Rottweiler is born in Germany, it's called the "German Rottweiler".
The German and American Rottweiler does not exist, they just go by where the dog is born so if the dog is born in America, they call the dog an American Rottweiler since it was born in America and if the dog was born in Germany, they call the dog a German Rottweiler since it was born in Germany.
The only Rottweiler is a Rottweiler. There's no such thing as German or American Rottweiler.
Howard answered on 12/11/12. Helpful? / 0
Actually, there ARE subtle differences...like the differences between West German Shepherds and American German Shepherds or between English Labradors and American Labradors or many other breeds.
Much of these differences won't be noticed by the average pet owner but they are there and usually consist of amount of bone, height, slight differences in the head and back skull, differences in angulation, etc. They are still recognized as the breed in question by most everyone no matter what country they originate from and the standards are very similar, if not the same.
An American Rottweiler and a German Rottweiler would still be judged together in a CACIB type show and the winner would most likely depend on the country the judge was from.
In some breeds, like the GSD and the Labrador, these differences are more pronounced and usually lead to them not being shown together in the same venue, but they are less so at the present in the Rottweiler.
Toto, CD, RN, CGC answered on 12/11/12. Helpful? / 1 | <urn:uuid:e1f9311e-0ebe-4660-88f6-8525974d02bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dogster.com/answers/question/is_there_an_american_and_german_breed_of_rottweilers_whats_the_difference_between_the_two-68003 | 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 | 0.977642 | 454 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Columbia's Business School has long been associated with leaders of with Fortune 500 companies, consulting firms and Wall Street. But for more than 100 students, assisting local small business owners and nonprofits has become an eye-opening and rewarding part of their education.
Through the Small Business Consulting Program, entrepreneurs, small businesses and nonprofits in New York are matched with teams of business school students who offer their consulting services pro bono for several months during the academic year.
Jake Troy, Business'05, and his team worked with Harlem World Sports Club, an upscale fitness club opening in Harlem this spring at 115 Street and Fifth Avenue. The team helped the club owners create a business plan that included a description of the market, competitors, financial information, identification of specific opportunities and a plan for approaching the market. "This club is more focused than Equinox or New York Sports Clubs," says Troy. "They met with community leaders and are working with North General Hospital to offer physical therapy to patients. They are also catering their spa services to the local residents."
Business owners are happy with the partnership. "Harlem World Sports benefited in that the ideas instantly impacted our business development," says Grady Fuller, co-founder. "We were very impressed with the program. The Columbia team really took the time to investigate our needs and strengths and work with us. We took the advice of streamlining our business plan to make it more fluent to investors. This has already struck a key with a number of angel investors and lenders."
Students found the relationships rewarding, too. "Overall the project has offered us a great opportunity to work with energetic people who are starting a business and to learn the challenges they face," says Troy. "It also allowed us to combine our marketing, strategy and finance classes and skills to create a business plan."
Harlem World is one of 17 projects students completed last year; half of them for-profit businesses, half nonprofits. Last year, more than 50 groups applied for assistance. A similar number applied this year. This year's program began on Nov. 1, when clients seeking assistance set up booths in Warren Hall, creating a trade show environment. Students then had the opportunity to meet potential clients.
Some clients seek assistance writing or refining their business plan or putting the plan in place. Others need to develop a strategic vision, create a marketing plan or identify and retain customers.
"All of the projects provide a great challenge for students to stretch their consulting skills and the opportunity to take hard problems and develop solutions," says Lindsay Schmid, Business'05, who assisted a Business School alumna in starting a cooking school with a social element.
Ben Monnie, Business'05, agrees: "Often business school students are focused on large corporations and forget the countless opportunities to be creative and have a high impact in a small business environment."
Monnie's team worked with the Little Pie Company to create and implement a business plan and financial model for the company. Unlike many of the participating clients, this small company has three locations in New York and has been in business for 20 years. The project began by investigating the founders' idea to open a commissary to consolidate the baking, increase capacity and lower costs. The team began to look at the company's overall strategic direction, put together a business plan and offered operational improvements.
The team recommended that the commissary was premature and that the company instead make some basic operational improvements to increase profitability. Over the next few years, the team sees the Little Pie Company opening two more small shops in Manhattan. Although the project officially ended in April, Monnie still works with the company. "I see enormous potential," he says.
Reflecting on the program as a whole, Schmid says, "It is incredibly rewarding to work closely with small businesses because our knowledge and skills can make enormous contributions. Frequently, these are one-person organizations, and student groups can really help to further their business and see an impact in a short period of time." | <urn:uuid:b3f028dd-d936-45ae-92c7-8a8bc0f6d46c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/04/11/smallbusiness.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970747 | 814 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Adm. Frank Kelso, the officer in charge of America's Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, ordered his men to carry out the mission. In no time flat, Tomcat fighters had taken off from the U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga. After refueling in midair and guided by Hawkeyes, the Tomcats caught up with the EgyptAir flight. The fighters stealthily trailed their target for a while in total darkness, their lights off, even in the cockpit. Then the Tomcats swooped in on the EgyptAir flight, surrounded the plane, and forced it to land at a NATO base on Sicily controlled by the United States.
The New York Post headline the next day was: "GOT 'EM." Reagan said: "I salute the Navy."
And then Abul Abbas was released by the Europeans – whom liberals insist on approval from in this war. Abbas dashed to safety in Iraq under Saddam Hussein – whom liberals have assured us was not harboring terrorists. Republican presidents keep catching terrorists while liberals keep sending them back.
If there is a parable of how liberals support the enemy, this is it. Adm. Kelso, whose men carried out the dauntless EgyptAir interception, was cashiered out of the Navy because of "Tailhook." Feminists don't care about Saddam Hussein and his rape rooms. But they were hopping mad at Adm. Kelso for walking through the Tailhook convention to say hello to his boys – boys who captured Leon Klinghoffer's murderers.
To jog the memory of the horror that was Tailhook, Lt. Paula Coughlin was the officer who made the most lurid allegations, accusing a black Marine of molesting her. But then she kept identifying different black males as the perpetrator. Liberals managed to put their concern for racist accusations against blacks on the back burner in this one case. When liberals get going, the ironies never end.
Though Adm. Kelso was cleared of any wrongdoing after an official Navy investigation, liberals wanted him punished. Former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo., engaged in a hysterical witchhunt of Kelso, marching with her fellow termagants to the Senate to encourage them to deny Kelso retirement with four stars. Naturally, the New York Times editorialized against him.
After a lifetime of honorable service to his country, Adm. Kelso was barely permitted to retire with four stars, in a 54-43 Senate vote. A majority of Democrats opposed Kelso, along with all the Republican women in the Senate – Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Arlen Specter, Bob Packwood and so on. Had the Senate denied him his retirement with four stars, this American hero would have received a pension of $67,000 per year, rather than the princely sum of $84,000 per year given a four-star admiral.
The left's relentless attacks on Oliver North hardly require elaboration. He was endlessly investigated, charged with crimes, indicted by Lawrence Walsh, and his Senate campaign destroyed. Al Gore compared North's supporters to Down syndrome children.
Now liberals are demanding that the Europeans be let into Iraq so they can release some more terrorists, while liberals do their part at home, carving up the colonels and admirals who capture people who murder Americans. | <urn:uuid:da120faf-8e88-49c1-af93-e65d89a38de9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2003/04/17/at_least_saddam_wasnt_at_tailhook!/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963983 | 683 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Off Broadway's Swimming with the Polar Bears is a poignant, sometimes funny, very touching and deeply personal look at the dangers of global warming. Stage and Screen Actor Mel England returns to the autobiographical one-man arena, with director Jill André, to explore the parallels between contemporary life, ancient Eskimo mythology, and the tragic loss of an endangered species.
Premiering Off Broadway in New York in April 2009 as part of an Earth Day benefit for The Climate Project, Swimming with the Polar Bears has now been seen around the world, in Los Angeles, at the 2009 UN Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, and on the National Mall in Washington DC as part of Earth Week, sponsored by the Earth Day Network to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.
In the tradition of Spaulding Grey, England takes an introspective examination of his battles with extinction – from surviving childhood abuse to overcoming Cancer – as a backdrop for larger questions of how we all can survive on our precious planet. A 20-year AIDS survivor, England struggles against the odds—to understand our own denial, grasp justifications, and ultimately accept responsibility to save oneself.
England takes us on a fantastical journey bringing Polar Bears to life -- with video and images by National Geographic’s Tristan Bayer and original music by Thomas Silcott – and, in the end, we find we are all Swimming with the Polar Bears. | <urn:uuid:c2f4dd03-6a0b-4731-8003-d9ed8c4b4356> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.swimmingwiththepolarbears.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930232 | 288 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Eagle Bay by Christy Wood
Price: $8.99 USD. 129890 words.
Published on July 21, 2011. .
Eagle Bay is a work of fiction based on a true story, with a look at management ethics (or lack thereof) in a Nuclear Power Plant. The two main characters must solve a reactor blockage with the reactor running at full power. A fatal accident occurs at one of the plants that uses their fix. It’s an inside viewpoint of a nuclear incident and how far people are willing to go in a conspiracy. | <urn:uuid:8802b986-3fe2-416c-a34a-b50f068a7515> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/nuclear_disaster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948442 | 116 | 1.75 | 2 |
The death toll on the flash floods caused by Tropical Storm Washi has reached 450 with hundreds more missing as fast-rising floodwater hit low lying villages in Mindanao, Southern Philippines.
Floodwater cascading from the mountains after a 12-hour heavy downpour hit the affected villages Friday night as residents were asleep.
Flooding was widespread in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan as rivers and streams there have overflowed due to continuous rain last Thursday and Friday.
More than 2,000 people have been rescued so far while some 100,000 residents have been displaced, according to military authorities.
Benito Ramos, chairman of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, said most of the dead bodies were found in Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro.
"It's overwhelming. We didn't expect these many dead," Ramos said.
Mindanao is seldom hit by typhoons and floods unlike the other parts of the archipelago which are situated along the so called typhoon path. It is uncommon for the people of Mindanao to experience such a big magnitude of rainfall and resulting floodwater that hit most part of islands last Friday.
Rescue and relief operations are ongoing with the assistance of the Philippine National Red Cross headed by former Senator Richard Gordon and Dinky Soliman of the Social Welfare department.
Defense authorities and the military have deployed some 20,000 troops in the affected areas of Mindanao to assist in the evacuation of residents.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines through its spokesman Col.Leopoldo Galon said they have already dispatched three Huey helicopters, military trucks, rubber boats, speed boats, and motor boats to be used in the on-going search and rescue (SAR) operations.
The death toll is expected to rise as rescue operations by different government agencies continue as flood water in low-lying areas are expected to recede after the storm make its exit from the Philippine area. | <urn:uuid:bdcda73f-06c8-4134-a84f-ac708631314c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitaljournal.com/article/316285 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970397 | 403 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Generation Burton rises! Beware the Ides of March--Is what many schools fear when facing the Georgetown Hoyas. On this March 15, 2001, the Hoyas defeated Arkansas 63-61 to reach the Sweet Sixteen. In a game that was the highlight of the Escherick years, Nat Burton, the kid from PG County MD, became part of Georgetown basketball lore. It was a year when the Hoyas were undefeated early in the year behind the play of Lee Scruggs, Kevin Braswell, and Anthony Perry. It would see the Hoyas lose a close game to Maryland in the Sweet Sixteen. However, this March 15th, 2001 would belong to the Georgetown Hoyas. Facing a difficult opponent in the Arkansas Razorbacks, the Hoyas came out on fire. It was a close battle throughout with neither team taking control of the game. It seemed as if the Hoyas would go down to defeat, except for a last second sweeping layup by Nat Burton that kissed off the glass. After that shot, the Georgetown players piled up & dove on the court in great jubilation. After that great day in Boise, Idaho the legend of Nat Burton had begun.
We are Georgetown! Hoya Saxa!
Dr. Thomas A. Wong
Hoya Hoop Club Vice President--Communications
Proud Member of Generation Ewing | <urn:uuid:b87a1011-e817-4710-84d2-2a78ee7acd71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gu82hoyasaxa.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968966 | 279 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Frank M. Rinderknecht, the man behind Swiss design house Rinspeed, is no stranger to the Geneva Motor Show. He's also no stranger to building futuristic, sometimes wacky concepts. This year's show was no different, as Rinspeed unveiled a car called the iChange that actually adapts its body according to the number of passengers on board.
"The iChange is a signal for the coming global changes to individual mobility," said Rinderknecht. "We need to be ready to meet these challenges with new ideas." His solution is a teardrop-shaped 1-seat sports car that has the ability, at the touch of a button, for the rear of the car to instantly expand, increasing space inside the cockpit to allow one or two more passengers to climb aboard.
Rinspeed says the most important factors in designing an energy-efficient car are the car's weight, the type of engine it uses and its aerodynamic properties. Therefore, Rinspeed chose electricity to power the iChange, making it a zero-emission vehicle. It uses a 204-hp electric motor receiving power from a lithium-ion battery pack solar panels on the roof help charge the batteries. The car's 6-speed "pre-selector" gearbox comes from a Subaru WRX. Despite the car's battery pack, the iChange is extremely light for an electric car just 2315 lb. Due to this, and its aerodynamic shape, Rinspeed says the iChange concept would be capable of hitting 62 mph (100 km/h) in "slightly over 4 sec." with a top speed of 137 mph.
You'll note the iChange doesn't have doors; instead, the entire roof section raises electrically to allow passengers to enter the cockpit. There also isn't a key; its replaced by an Apple iPhone, which controls many of the vehicle's functions. Much of the interior is covered in wool, while the floor is diamond-coated. The Harman Kardon infotainment system is designed to minimize power consumption, while the audio system, despite 12 speakers, was designed to be extremely lightweight. | <urn:uuid:fecae0c4-bdb0-4cd8-bbec-b6be892e2c48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-shows/2009-geneva-auto-show/rinspeed-ichange | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959763 | 441 | 1.84375 | 2 |
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — The United Nations warned yesterday that violence is spreading across Ivory Coast, citing nearly two dozen rapes in the country’s west and one case where a political opponent was sexually tortured.
Local UN human rights chief Simon Munzu said yesterday that 23 women have been raped in the past week in western Ivory Coast, where 16,000 people have taken refuge since the disputed Nov. 28 presidential runoff vote. Another 29,000 people have fled across the border to Liberia.
“We regret that as a result of the ethnic crashes that we witnessed in Duekue in particular recently, a number of rape cases have come to our attention,’’ Munzu said.
In the almost two months since the presidential election, incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo has refused to cede power even though the international community says his rival Alassane Ouattara won the vote.
African nations have also voiced support for Ouattara. Yesterday, Ouattara received an invitation to pay a state visit from President Seretse Ian Khama of Botswana.
Khama said the invitation to visit the southern African nation was “in recognition of [Ouattara’s] victory of the presidential elections.’’ | <urn:uuid:b6d4406a-f18c-415c-aa95-f8d587522d7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2011/01/21/un_cites_violence_rape_in_ivory_coast/?camp=pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957828 | 259 | 1.75 | 2 |
An anonymous reader writes "Project Glass made a big splash not too long ago at Google's annual developer conference when they showed several users falling on to the Moscone West in San Francisco. Google's pretty bent on showing us the sharing possibilities with Project Glass, but it feels like in time that technology could become a ubiquitous part of our lives. Fortunately for those of us who lack a hyperactive imagination, a short film popped up recently that can help fill in the blanks. The world created in the film was made possible by wearable tech. Games, cooking challenges, information in real-time about the person you are talking to, all made possible by the contact lenses being worn. And of course there's a darkside to the equation, the potential to hack and therefore influence the actions of others. Ultimately, it's a realistic idea of the future we all face." | <urn:uuid:dd3911d3-7c13-46f2-a722-81475e786753> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/07/29/1441207/the-future-of-project-glass?sdsrc=nextbtmprev | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955882 | 175 | 1.78125 | 2 |
In divided Egypt, US plays all sides
Washington – The ambiguous outcome of Egypt’s revolution leaves Washington no choice but to deal with the country’s both major players, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its disagreements with each.
Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement long held at arm’s length by the United States, was declared on Sunday to have won Egypt’s presidency.
He assumes an office whose powers have been whittled away by the military, whose recent actions are seen as anti-democratic but which remains the country’s most powerful institution.
The military and the Muslim Brotherhood are wrestling over how to share power in a country that for the time being has no sitting parliament, no permanent constitution and no clear path toward democracy after last year’s ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a long-time US ally who banned and oppressed the Brotherhood.
As a result, current and former US officials say, the United States faces a multidimensional diplomatic challenge. It must deal with everyone as it tries to sustain strategic co-operation with Egypt on its peace treaty with Israel and US access to the Suez Canal, while advocating for democracy in a country whose dominant popular force is an Islamist party.
Working with the Muslim Brotherhood is particularly sensitive for the Obama administration.
The group has renounced violence itself, but has spawned violent spinoffs in the past. Some of its officials have previously questioned Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and the rights of women and minorities such as Egypt’s Coptic Christians.
“We’re keeping the lines open” to all sides, said one US official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The deliberate even-handedness was visible on Sunday when US President Barack Obama took the rare step of calling both Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, the former Air Force chief and prime minister who lost the presidential election.
‘A tough problem’
The United States has limited ability to influence events in Egypt, Middle East analysts say, and is better off letting the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of the society work out an accommodation.
“This is not a made-in-America issue,” said Rob Danin, a State Department official under president George W Bush now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The United States can’t really affect it too much, nor should it try in the short term.”
The power struggle playing itself out in Egypt is visible in a series of recent events.
These include the Supreme Constitutional Court’s 14 June ruling to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament – an outcome widely believed within Egypt to have been engineered by the military.
On 18 June, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces gave itself the power to legislate until a new parliament is elected, a veto over a new constitution and the right to choose a new assembly to draft a constitution if need be.
Both institutions are problematic partners for the United States – the military because of what analysts regard as their recent anti-democratic actions and the Muslim Brotherhood because of the uncertainty about its long-term policies.
“It is a tough problem. I think in some ways the Brotherhood is the easier side of the equation,” said a congressional aide.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the aide said the White House appeared willing to deal with the Brotherhood as long as it acted democratically and inclusively and did not cross US red lines on issues such as peace with Israel and the Suez Canal.
“We’ve been there before. We’ve seen Turkey. We’ve seen Tunisia. We’ve seen that people who call themselves Islamists might be OK,” he said. “We are going to judge behaviour, not history.”
In a televised address on Sunday, Morsi pledged to be a president for all Egyptians and to unite the nation and, in a gesture directed at Israel’s concerns, he promised to uphold all international treaties.
Still, there is ambivalence within the US foreign policy community – notably among pro-Israel conservatives – about the Brotherhood given its officials’ past statements calling for a review of the peace treaty and pledging to implement Islamic sharia law and its vociferous criticism of Israel.
“The fear is that rather than setting standards for the Brotherhood, we’ll just jump in and say ‘Well, they won; now let’s all be friends,’” said Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser under Bush.
“I think we need to put pressure on them on questions like the role of women in society, the role of the Copts in Egyptian society, Egypt’s relations with Hamas,” he added, referring to the Palestinian Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made some of those points, calling on Morsi to include women, Copts and secular liberals as he forms a government.
“We’ve heard some very positive statements thus far, including about respecting international obligations, which would, in our view, cover the peace treaty with Israel. But we have to wait and judge by what is actually done,” she said.
While he Brotherhood, a sprawling religious, political and social movement, has officially renounced violence, its militant spinoffs include Hamas and al Qaeda leaders such as Ayman al-Zawahri.
US officials acknowledge strain between their desire to deal with an array of Egyptian politicians and their ambivalence about the Muslim Brotherhood’s history and its members, some of whom have been barred from visiting the United States.
“There is this tension. More people want to see us. We want to see more people,” said one US official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Our relationship is evolving even as the individuals evolve and the nation [Egypt] evolves.”
Despite US visa bans and sanctions on Brotherhood leaders, US officials sporadically conducted low-key contacts with Brotherhood representatives for years, often through Egyptian parliamentarians affiliated with the movement.
Last year, following Mubarak’s ouster during the “Arab Spring” of popular protests, US officials resumed what were described as formal diplomatic contacts with the movement.
Representative Mike Rogers, Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the United States should be wary.
“There was a whole host of al-Qaeda leadership that had been Muslim Brotherhood that graduated to al-Qaeda,” Rogers said.
“Do I think there are moderate Muslim Brotherhood individuals we are going to have to reach out to and talk to? Yes. But we are going to have to watch it carefully,” he added. | <urn:uuid:e3fbc01d-4634-4e0f-b991-d36233f2e354> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indepthafrica.com/in-divided-egypt-us-plays-all-sides/ | 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 | 0.959368 | 1,401 | 1.75 | 2 |
Welcome speech of Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, Minister of Education, Nigeria
The following is the welcome address by Professor Rufa’i, the Federal Minister of Education, Nigeria, at the conference “Establishing a Culture of Coexistence and Mutual Understanding: Exploring Fethullah Gülen’s Thought and Action" on 18 November 2011 in Abuja:
I am delighted to be among you this morning, my colleagues in the academia, and policy makers from around the world, to brainstorm and come out with solutions to some of the most challenging problems facing humanity: how to coexist harmoniously in a highly heterogeneous and fractured world. The Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission, and the six Federal Universities are strategic partners, along with The Fountain magazine the Ufuk Dialogue Foundation all from Turkey in the successful organization and hosting of this conference. We in the Ministry have worked assiduously with the partner universities of: Modibbo Adama University of Technology Yola, Federal University of Technology Minna, Bayero University Kano, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto, and the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi, whose dedicated staff have served as the Local Organizing Committee to ensure a smooth and hitch-free conference.
The theme of this conference, “Establishing a Culture of Coexistence and Mutual Understanding” is apt and could not have come at a better time than now in our history.
I am happy to note that the fundamental objective of this conference is to provide the medium to articulate, discuss, and consequently nurture cultural, political, socio-economic, and educational programs that would foster sense of understanding and respect between cultures. This, I believe, is the orthodox prerequisite to achieving the desired socio-political harmony necessary for the advancement of human civilization.
The Federal Ministry of Education is dedicated to contributing its quota to ensuring peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding through knowledge and understanding, not only in Nigeria, but throughout the world. One way to realize this objective is through the provision of quality education devoid of negative values of dogmatism, intolerance, and stereotyping. For knowledge is the basis of understanding and if people are sufficiently enlightened they are bound to resolve conflicts peacefully rather than by violence.
As part of our commitment to peace and of using education as a vehicle to fostering understanding, the Government of Nigeria through the Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission have advised all Nigerian Universities to introduce courses on peace and conflict resolution and entrepreneurship skills at the undergraduate level. I am delighted to inform you that all universities have gladly begun implementing these recommendations with tremendous success.
The world renowned Turkish Islamic scholar and opinion moulder, Fethullah Gülen, whose ideas largely provided the inspiration for this conference has used his ideas successfully in moulding a multi-cultural, multi-religious Turkey with some success. The most important lesson for us in the educational sector is not only his commitment to reaching out to the “other,” but his civic service of using education as a tool for fostering good governance, enhancing understanding, and building a community of educated people dedicated to world peace based on knowledge, understanding, and the universality of human values. For the uninitiated, the Nigerian-Turkish International Schools across the country and similar institutions around the world are using education for social engineering and societal development.
These dynamics, I would concur, are some of the core concerns of our Ministry. In fact, they are integral part of our transformational agenda. Consequently, therefore, government will take keen interest in all the relevant key findings and the appropriate recommendations arising from the conference proceedings.
Mr. Chairman, other distinguished dignitaries, I have already alluded to the contemporariness of the theme of this conference. The theme is further complimented by the line-up of distinguished speakers from within Nigeria and their colleagues from Europe, Asia, and the US. I therefore have no doubt that at the end of this conference, some of the most obvious and salient challenges facing our society will be addressed squarely. And may I please suggest that in doing this, you should come up with viable solutions and new or alternative lines for research and policy.
I therefore challenge the participants at this conference to dispassionately examine the various dimensions of the subject matter and come up with answers to the very questions that informed its focus: How can we make it possible that our encounters with one another be perceived as enriching experiences rather than gatherings full of animosity and fear? Is it possible that we will ever be able to achieve sincere understanding of the “other”? Can “dialogue” emerge from being just a mere formality that we put up with to something that actually pleases us? What methods should we implement if we are to achieve tangible results from theoretical discussions or to realize in practice the good wishes that are uttered at such gatherings? How will future generations respond to the rise of global dynamics vis-à-vis local identities and cultural riches? And how, in making such a response, can education and cultural activities play a role?
It is my fervent hope and desire, that these questions and many related others would be adequately answered during your discussions. In addition, I also envisaged for your recommendations – arising from concrete analysis for your recommendations – add new body of knowledge that would help the academia to come to grips with the dynamics of intercultural and inter-religious coexistence.
Let me assure you that the Federal Ministry of Education and indeed the Nigerian educational system is geared towards producing well educated young men and women, well-grounded in democratic values and committed to national unity and universal peace.
Thank you very much for your attention. I wish you a very fruitful deliberations and a memorable stay in Nigeria.
|< Prev||Next >| | <urn:uuid:2c7a1d4d-80ed-4030-b307-6d01d744ff25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.fgulen.com/press-room/news/3821-welcome-speech-of-prof-ruqayyatu-ahmed-rufai-minister-of-education-nigeria | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94401 | 1,204 | 1.695313 | 2 |
*Reposted with permission of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, http://philanthropy.com*
By Jennifer C. Berkshire
When Heather Jack went looking for a charity where she and her then 5-year-old daughter might volunteer together, she didn’t find many takers. While plenty of nonprofit organizations were eager for Ms. Jack’s help, few showed any interest in accommodating a very young volunteer.
Her frustration at the experience prompted Ms. Jack to start the Volunteer Family, a nonprofit network in Boston that helps families identify charities where they might give time—together. The online service currently lists 30,000 such opportunities in 40 states.
“Parents really want to teach their kids to give back,” says Ms. Jack. “My goal was to make it easier for them to find meaningful volunteer opportunities for the whole family.”
A growing number of charities are responding to the emerging demand for family-friendly volunteering. Nonprofit leaders note that parents today often grew up volunteering—and want their children to have that same experience.
“The parents understand that volunteering puts you on a path to service,” says Kathy Saulitis, interim associate executive director of GenerationOn, in New York, the new youth-service division of the Points of Light Institute.
And with parents and kids alike at the mercy of busy schedules, allowing families to volunteer together provides them with something that’s often missing from their hectic lives: time spent together. “Offering families a way to share a meaningful experience is a real draw,” says Ms. Saulitis.
Even very small children help with landscaping and other safe tasks involved in creating the charity KaBoom’s playgrounds across the country.
For charities still feeling the recession’s pinch, the trend toward family volunteering can mean a new pool of potential helpers. But providing opportunities for these intergenerational volunteers—and getting the most out of their service—takes work. Following are some tips from charity leaders on how to create chances for families to give their time together:
Take an incremental approach. When Judy Musa began to offer family volunteering opportunities at the German School of Monmouth County, she admits that her initial expectations may have been too high. “There was a lot of trial and error involved,” says Ms. Musa, who oversees volunteers for the German-language private school in Red Bank, N.J. “In order to get people to commit to anything, you have to start small and let people pick and choose things that fit into their schedules.”
Ms. Musa offers volunteering opportunities in increments as brief as an hour, then asks families to commit to multiple hours throughout the year. And all of those hours add up. “Whether it’s helping teachers in the classroom or setting up for Oktoberfest, we’re getting the work done,” she says.
At Heading Home, a charity in Cambridge, Mass., that finds housing for homeless families, staff members have tried to break down the entire process of moving into steps.
“Just as moving can seem overwhelming, we found that our volunteers felt overwhelmed by what we were asking them to do,” says Wendy Jacobs, the group’s chief development officer.
Today families that volunteer together can choose from a menu of options, including donating a household item for the new home, outfitting whole rooms, or holding a donation drive at their churches or schools to raise money for the move. The step-by-step approach has smoothed out the group’s moving days, says Ms. Jacobs, and broadened Heading Home’s appeal to volunteers.
Offer age-appropriate opportunities. Many charities—including food pantries, homeless shelters, animal shelters, and hospitals—have strict age limits that prevent the youngest volunteers from providing direct help. “Those restrictions exist for a reason,” says Ms. Jack. “There are a lot of places where kids don’t belong.” But even charities with age restrictions can still involve volunteers of all ages. The key, she says, is a creative approach: “Maybe kids can’t work at the animal shelter, but they can get together with their friends to make cat toys.”
KaBoom, a charity with headquarters in Washington that builds playgrounds across the country, makes a point of recruiting family volunteers to its projects. But there’s a catch, says Carrie Ellis, director of project management. Because the playgrounds-in-progress are considered live construction sites, children below the age of 15 must be kept at a safe distance on “build day.”
Still, KaBoom makes sure that young volunteers have a role to play throughout the process. Children are often involved in planning and designing the playgrounds, helping with landscaping, even painting murals that reflect some aspect of the local culture.
“We try to provide a long list of age-appropriate activities for kids so that they’ll feel that sense of involvement but stay safe at the same time,” says Ms. Ellis.
Recruit volunteers where families congregate. When Lynda Schueler goes in search of helping hands for the homelessness organization she runs near Chicago, she heads straight for the churches.
“Churches are filled with families who are looking to participate in something meaningful,” says Ms. Schueler, executive director of West Suburban Pads. Every weeknight, one of 11 congregations in Chicago’s Oak Park suburb opens its doors to the homeless men, women, and children served by the charity.
The effort relies on a rotating cast of more than 1,000 volunteers, including families that volunteer together, says Ms. Schueler. Typically families will purchase ingredients, prepare meals at home, then bring the food to the church where it is served to the homeless guests restaurant-style.
“The families are helping to provide an essential service, and we’re creating an ethic of volunteering at the same time,” says Ms. Schueler.
Let young volunteers serve as spokespeople The Diabetes Research Institute Foundation, in Hollywood, Fla., increasingly calls on young volunteers who suffer from the disease to serve as spokespeople for the charity. “We’re asking kids to talk about an issue that’s important to them,” says Tom Karlya, a vice president of the organization who came up with the idea for what the charity calls Diabetes Diplomats.
The network, started last February, now boasts 200 young volunteers, who range from kindergarten to high school age. In addition to talking to their classmates and friends about diabetes, the diplomats have also proved to be very effective fund raisers, says Mr. Karlya, whose children have diabetes. “Kids are hearing from someone they know about this disease. They go home and they want to help because there’s a face on the cause.”
Don’t count out teenagers. A growing number of high schools across the country now require students to fulfill community-service hours to graduate. That’s a potential gold mine of volunteer labor, says Emma Bonanomi, associate director of patient outreach and services for the Pulmonary Hypertension Association in Silver Spring, Md. When the charity created a volunteer night to help staff members with administrative tasks, the organization approached the local high school.
“Now they know about us,” says Ms. Bonanomi. “If you make it easy for teens to volunteer and fulfill their community-service hours, the program will quickly become self-sustaining.”
Until three years ago, the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas didn’t allow anyone under age 18 to volunteer unless a parent came along. That’s changed thanks to the efforts of a high-school student who convinced the charity to create a “board” for teenagers—essentially a group of teens who volunteer at the charity.
“High-school students can now apply to be part of the board, and we get to know them really well,” says Emilie Peloubet, the charity’s volunteer coordinator. Sixty-five teenagers now serve on the board, and every week groups of up to 10 adolescents come to the house, which provides lodging to families with children undergoing medical treatment.
The teenage volunteers prepare meals under the supervision of an adult and provide some much-needed entertainment for family members staying in the house. While Ms. Peloubet notes that involving adolescents can mean a lot of staff coordination—their schedules change constantly, for example—she thinks that the payoff is well worth the investment.
“They’re a great group,” she says. “Hopefully they’ll end up on a big board someday and remember the connection they had with us.” | <urn:uuid:1cebaba5-7f6d-46fc-948d-4e19e555ef75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pointsoflight.org/current-news/recruiting-families-volunteer-can-help-overstretched-charities | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956892 | 1,853 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Jul 27, 2007 (01:07 PM EDT)
Wikia Search Gets Distributed Web Crawler
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek
Wikia, Inc., a provider of community Web sites that users can edit, said on Friday that it had acquired distributed search software called Grub to enhance the company's forthcoming wiki-inspired search engine.
At the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced the acquisition of Grub from search engine Look Smart and the release of the software under an open source license. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In much the same way that Wikipedia relies on the distributed brain power of the Internet community, Wikia Search aims to make use of distributed processing power of Internet-connected computers.
"That's a very loose analogy but the idea is that you have a lot of spare bandwidth that you're not using a lot of the time, and if you want to use it to do something, this would be something you could do with it," said Wales. "This tool, it's not really a tool where people will be making editorial judgments, so it's different."
As a distributed program, Grub benefits incrementally from each user that installs and runs the software. The Grub client will make local bandwidth, processor time, and storage space available so that Wikia Search, once it launches, can crawl and index Web pages.
"Of the various pieces of the puzzle that we need to create the full search engine, this is one of them," said Wales. "We're planning to have first public Web site available by the end of this year."
Wikia Search will rely on Lucene, a Java-based open source indexing and search library that powers search services at sites like Digg and Joost, and will probably use Nutch, an open source search engine built atop Lucene.
Though the components of Wikia Search are still being decided on, people will play a major role. "We're definitely intending to have human input into the search results, through the social Web site that we're designing right now," said Wales.
Despite the potential problems of involving people in the search process, Wales believes that search engine spammers can be kept in check by the community. "If people are abusing the system, then they should be kicked out," he added. | <urn:uuid:116185ff-64d7-4557-9375-6b06e9a60aec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techweb.com/news/201201641/wikia-search-gets-distributed-web-crawler.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951233 | 485 | 1.78125 | 2 |
It was a free sample, so it was only two chapters.
But the file was huge, a whopping 985 MB. That's almost a full gigabyte for just a fraction of a textbook. It took about 10 minutes to download.
That feels like a big problem.
Apple gives publishers a 2 GB file size limit for textbooks. (Although 9to5 Mac says some of Apple's partners have books as large as 3 GB, so they do make exceptions.) If a textbook like "Life On Earth" (the one we tested) crams in as many videos, 3D models, etc. into the full version as it did in the first two chapters, there's no way the file size will be under Apple's limit.
That means textbook publishers will have to dial down all the fancy content in order to meet Apple's requirements.
Still, that's not the biggest problem with the large file sizes. Today's iPads have relatively small storage with just 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB models available. It'll be tough to fit a semester's worth of 2 or 3 GB textbooks plus all your apps, music, videos, and games on one iPad, even if you do have the most expensive ($699) 64 GB model.
If you have a 16 GB model, you'll only be able to fit about six or seven textbooks on it at most. And that's assuming you don't store anything else on your iPad. Keep in mind you have to account for iOS, which takes up almost a gigabyte of space too. | <urn:uuid:bd03b17c-940f-42cb-bca1-6cb3970f33ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/one-glaring-problem-apple-didnt-think-of-when-it-comes-to-textbooks-2012-1?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959936 | 316 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Confessions and Contradictions
by Christopher Hitchens
Over the last thirty years Christopher Hitchens has established himself as one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His originality, bravery, range and wit made him first a leading iconoclast of the political left, and then later ...
How We Were Made for These Times
by George Megalogenis
Australians are generally uncomfortable in the global spotlight - outside of sports stadiums. But after seeing us negotiate the Asian financial crisis, the tech wreck and the Global Financial Crisis that bred the Great Recession, the world is now ...
An Autobiographical Account of Stolen Generations
by Deborah Dickman & Heather Vicenti
Too Many Tears gives a sad but clear account of the loss of identity felt by a half-caste infant removed by Native Welfare from her desert tribe to a mission farm only to have her own children removed by Child Welfare a generation later.
by Michael Savage & Pete Larkin
<p> Trickle Down Tyranny is the single book you need to stop Obama's emerging dictatorship before we lose all of our constitutional, God-given rights. These pages show you the dangerous laws and powergrabs of the Obama administration ...
The Only First Hand Account of the Navy SEAL Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden
by Mark Owen & Kevin Maurer
For the first time anywhere, a first-person account of the planning <br>and execution of the Bin Laden raid from inside the US Navy SEAL <br>team who carried out the extraordinary mission to kill the terrorist <br>mastermind. <br>From the streets ...
How Australia Made Its Own Luck - and Could Now Throw it All Away
by Peter Hartcher
Australians now officially have the best living conditions in the world. Our country is both fair and free - and the only developed nation to have avoided a recession in the past twenty years. So how did it happen and why don't we care?
by Luis Carlos Montalvan
A heartwarming dog story like no other: Tuesday, a lovable golden retriever, changes a former soldier's life forever. A highly decorated captain in the U.S. Army, Luis Montalvan never backed down from a challenge during his two tours of duty in Iraq.
A Wake-Up Call for the Post-9/11 Era
by Russ Feingold
Champion of progressives and liberals, former U.S. Senator Feingold explains from his unique view where America went wrong after September 11th and how to fix the mess.
Choosing Between Progress and Planet
by Andrew Charlton
"We shouldn't be too hard on ourselves," my German colleague said to me. "We have to be realistic about the problem. The world is split between those who want to save the planet and those who want to save themselves." In QE44 , Andrew Charlton ...
The Real Story of the 2010 Election
by Barrie Cassidy
Barrie Cassidy picked a hell of an election to cover: changes of leaders on both sides of politics, Australia's first woman Prime Minister, a hung parliament and a country not knowing who its Prime Minister was for nearly three weeks.
by Anthony Hill
Young Bill is the true story of the suffering - and survival - of an underage prisoner-of-war during World War II. Bill Young, who is still alive, enlised in the army in July 1941 aged only 15, though he said he was 19. He went to Singapore, was ...
A Short History of Modern Delusions
by Francis Wheen
An entertaining, impassioned polemic on the retreat of reason in the late 20th century. An intellectual call to arms, Francis Wheen's Sunday Times bestseller is one of 2004's most talked about books. In 1979 two events occurred that would shape ...
by Maxine McKew & McKew Maxine
At the 2007 federal election former journalist Maxine McKew won a spectacular victory against John Howard and wrote herself into Australian political history as only the second candidate to have ever defeated a sitting prime minister in his ...
The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes
by Steven Pinker
Do we really care about each other less than we did in the past? This myth-destroying book shows that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less, not more, violent from prehistory to today. Even the twentieth century, ...
The Great Operations
by Michael Bar-Zohar & Nissim Mishal
The secrets behind Mossad, the world's most respected and enigmatic Secret Service Organization This book tells what should have been known and isn't - that Israel's hidden force is as formidable as its recognised physical strength.
The Self-Destruction of a State Labor Party
by Rodney Cavalier
Written by former minister and Labor historian Rodney Cavalier, Power Crisis is an explosive account of the self-destruction of the New South Wales Labor government, which has seen a turnover of four premiers in five years, and is heading for ...
by Kevin Blackburn
Japanese World War II POW camps conjure up a notorious picture of deprivation and brutality. The idea that sport, of all things, flourished in such hellish conditions is hard to envisage but the truth is, it did. Captives played Aussie Rules ...
by Steven L. Taylor
30-second Politics will help dispel this fog of mistrust and paranoia. It challenges political theorists of all colours to come up with no-frill, no-spin, tell-it-like-it-is explanations of the 50 most important political -isms, -archies, and ...
The Australian War Memorial Battlefield Guide
by Peter Pedersen & Chris Roberts
A lavishly illustrated account of the ANZACs involvement in the Western Front--complete with walking and driving tours of 28 battlefields <br> <br>With rare photographs and documents from the Australian War Memorial archive and extensive travel ...
What the New Republican House Must Do to Reject, Repeal, and Replace Obama's Socialist Programs... and How to Make Sure They Do it
by Dick Morris
President Obama's legislation has increased the federal government's massive, crippling debt - and resulted in a tidal wave of Republican victories in the 2010 midterm elections. Fueled by popular anger and a demand for fiscal responsibility, ... | <urn:uuid:75fcc273-70ff-4553-9a11-8f05451923e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.collinsbooks.com.au/All-Categories/Books/Politics-%26-Government/c/POL000000?q=:relevance:category:BIO000000:category:HISWOR001:category:HISZEUGRA:author:Deborah%20Lavin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938254 | 1,296 | 1.632813 | 2 |
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
An interview with He Jianjun, director of River People
25 June 2009
At the recent San Francisco film festival, we had the opportunity to view He Jianjun’s River People, a film about an extended family of fishermen living on China’s Yellow River. The existence depicted is a harsh, almost entirely joyless one, of floating on or slogging through the broad river’s muddy waters. [See “San Francisco International Film Festival 2009—Part 1: Painful truths,” 20 May 2009]
At the center of the film are two young cousins, Baowa and Laba. The latter is resigned to his condition. He hated school, sleeping through his classes. Laba also narrates River People. “I am good at rowing a boat. I like fishing. I am doomed to fish all my life,” he tells us at one point.
Baowa, on the other hand, has had a few years of schooling and longs to leave the river behind. He comes into conflict with his father, Laba’s uncle, who has already lost various family members to the lure of the outside world.
The film is fiction, but very close to documentary in look and feel. The performers come from the fishing family itself. River People is a serious, honest work. At this point some of the most determined efforts to reproduce social life, and the life of the oppressed in particular, come from China. Given the history of the Beijing regime and Maoism, that a good deal of ideological confusion is admixed with the artistic realism should not come as a surprise.
He Jianjun (born in Beijing 1960) is an interesting figure, who made the remarkable Postman—a portrait of Beijing’s shabby “Happiness District”—in the mid-1990s, a film that was banned by Chinese authorities until 2004.
He was kind enough to agree to respond to a number of questions sent by e-mail. The filmmaker’s answers were subsequently translated into English.
* * * * *
WSWS: Can you explain why you chose to make a film about these “River People”?
He Jianjun: Initially, I had no plan for such a movie. In the summer of 2005, I met this family [of fishermen] when I was doing pre-production scene selection on the banks of the Yellow River in Dali County in Shanxi province.
I was preparing another film, Da Feng Shou [The Harvest]—a movie about the contemporary living conditions of Chinese peasants, which received a Hubert Bals Fund script development grant from the Rotterdam Film Festival.
At the time, I already knew the basic conditions of this fishing family as a result of talking to them. First, they were not locals, but came from Yangcheng in Jiangsu province [on China’s east coast]. For three generations, they have been dependent on the water and live on boats, making a living by fishing.
They initially fished in the Yangtze River, but were forced to relocate to the Huai River [midway between the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers], because of the water pollution. When the Huai River also became polluted, they shifted to the Wei River [the largest tributary of the Yellow River], only to encounter the same pollution. So they ended up on the Yellow River.
They are not alone—along the banks of the Yellow River, there are nearly a hundred households, comprising several thousand people, living like them. And all of them come from the same place, Yangcheng in Jiangsu province.
Later, after Da Feng Shou was shipwrecked because of a lack of money to film it, I took up the idea of making a movie about these river people. Their extremely fierce determination to stay on, and their love for and connection to the water generated respect in my mind, which encouraged me to finish making this movie.
WSWS: Are their conditions typical of people fishing on rivers in China? Are their conditions worsening or improving?
He: In fact, I think the conditions of these people are typical of the fishermen’s life. Genuine fishermen are unwilling to leave the water, just as fish cannot be separated from the water or they die. Therefore, I think the living conditions of these people, for better or worse, will be determined by the quality of the water.
If the water quality is bad, life will be naturally hard for them. Of course, if the water quality is good, their life will improve. This is because apart from fishing, these people know no other kind of work.
WSWS: The relations of these people with nature are harsh, and the relations between the people are harsh. It is understandable why one of the characters wants to leave the river, but this does not help the others, who are still stuck in these difficult circumstances. What is your own attitude toward these social conditions?
He: This movie is entirely constructed from the standpoint of Laba [the film’s young narrator] who chooses to stay on, which was also my original idea in making this film. I believe even people who are not living on a river will encounter the same problem—how to make important choices in their own lives and inevitably paying a price for the choices they make.
In the film, Baowa decides to leave home, but he didn’t in real life. It was an assumption I made, which was based on his actual thinking—leaving [the river] is a possible decision and choice he will make in the future. I know this because during our private conversations he repeatedly told me that he does not want to take over his father’s work and continue to fish in the Yellow River, but he wants to find a job in the city, in order to make a new life.
However, even if he did eventually take such a step and leave home, it would actually be a very hard choice, because his elder brother, who left home, was crushed to death in a coal mine. In other words, there are so many factors involved in making the decision to leave his family. But I believe he will certainly leave home in the future.
WSWS: How do you view the relationship between fiction and documentary? Which do you prefer, and which provides more artistic freedom?
He: That depends on what kind of subject is involved, and the meaning that needs to be expressed. I would consider any means of artistic expression, in an eclectic fashion, even combining forms [fiction and documentary], as long as they were helpful for the chosen subject and assisted in bringing out its meaning.
WSWS: What is the impact of the present global economic crisis on Chinese filmmakers and the Chinese film industry?
He: There is almost no impact. In recent years, many filmmakers have been trying every means, sparing no effort, in an attempt to lure audiences into the cinema. Today, films backed by major investors are dominating the major Chinese markets.
WSWS: You had censorship problems in the past, what is the general situation now in regard to official censorship and freedom of expression?
He: The censorship regulations and methods in a country are determined by the given national conditions. Now Chinese films are becoming more commercial, so for a film to be commercial and wholesome entertainment is the major criterion for making it through the film censorship system.
WSWS: Which films do you plan to make, or would you like to make, in the future?
He: I am preparing one to two subjects at the moment; discussions with colleagues in the film industry will determine which one we will begin taking through the filming process. | <urn:uuid:6b3e41cf-538a-434d-92c1-cfb20f4eb377> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wsws.org/en/articles/2009/06/hein-j25.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976575 | 1,599 | 1.59375 | 2 |
In many of the states that have waged marriage equality fights recently, opponents have often coalesced around a coalition consisting of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the state’s Catholic conference, and the state’s “family policy council” affiliate of the Family Research Council. In Illinois, however, these typical players have not united in the same way, seemingly in part because the state social conservative group is the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a hate group in its own right associated with the American Family Association.
IFI’s rhetoric is quite a bit more brazen than what anti-gay groups have used in other states, which may have scared away its would-be allies. As a telling example, NOM posted pictures from an IFI rally last week, but didn’t mention the organization by name nor link to its own post about the rally. Otherwise, NOM’s rhetoric has mostly been limited to threats of retribution against Republicans who might support marriage equality. The Illinois Catholic Conference has issued its own materials opposing marriage equality, and Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki has made his share of negative comments, but there seems to be no coordination with IFI.
Today marks three months since the Illinois Senate passed the marriage equality bill, and with only three weeks left for the House to pass it, here’s a look at some of IFI’s rhetoric that is dominating the opposition:
- Today, IFI posted numerous photos from its rally this weekend, including a sign that reads, “The crime against nature will never be equal.”
- Speakers at the rally included ex-gay advocate Linda Jernigan and another hate group leader, Peter LaBarbera, who told the crowd that homosexuality is “unnatural and wrong,” citing HIV rates among men who have sex with men as evidence of “the dangers of homosexuality.”
- In February, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote that gay people shouldn’t even be allowed to teach because they’ll put pictures of their partners on their desk that students will see.
- In fact, IFI believes that parents should pull their children from any classroom that attempts to create a safe environment for LGBT students.
- IFI has claimed gays and lesbians already have equality because they can marry the opposite sex like everyone else; same-sex marriage is thus a demand “to be treated specially.”
- IFI recommends language that demonizes the gay community, encouraging opponents of equality to frame their resistance as compassion.
This extreme rhetoric extends beyond the talking points conservatives have traditionally used in these fights, which tend to focus on supposed protections for children, gender norms, and the institution of marriage. By openly condemning homosexuality as unnatural and curable through therapy — as well as enabling the bullying of LGBT youth — IFI sets itself apart. It remains unclear how many votes short the Illinois House is from passage or what is motivating those opponents, but with IFI’s strong presence in the fight, opponents’ will struggle to deliver a cohesive or approachable argument as the vote approaches. | <urn:uuid:d045a0ec-3761-4e76-86dd-41aaf5472cd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/tag/national-organization-for-marriage-nom/page/2/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967945 | 644 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Despite intense anti-union pressure from their employer, 1,200 poultry processing workers in Russellville, Alabama voted overwhelmingly to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The workers, employed by Pilgrim’s Pride, voted 706-292 in favor of the union. Control over their work lives was the main issue that motivated workers to unionize.
“We had no respect from management and absolutely no voice in anything that affected us,” said Cheryl Kowalski, who works in the plant’s sanitation department. “They told us what to do and when to do it, and there were no questions allowed. And if there any problems, you couldn’t go to management because they did not want to deal with resolving them, and workers here were left bitter and angry. The bottom line was ‘do what you are told or you don’t have a job’.”
“The key issues at Pilgrim’s Pride was the right to redress grievances at work and the ability to have some input into how the place is run, said John Whitaker, RWDSU Mid-South Council president. ”(The workers) knew the difference it would make to have a union their side.”
Working in poultry processing plant where workers wield knives and scissors to split open poultry that can move past them on conveyor belts at speeds approaching 90 birds per minute is hard, dangerous work made even more so when your boss controls everything. These conditions have been well documented in a series of articles that ran in the Charlotte Observer.
Pilgrim’s Russellville plant is no exception. In 2010, it was fined $135,000 for health and safety violations by the US Occupational Health and Safety Administration. An OSHA official said that the violations were part of a historic pattern.
“This company has been cited numerous times in the last five years and should be aware of the safety and health measures that need to be addressed to protect its workers,” said Roberto Sanchez, OSHA area director in Birmingham in a statement about the 2010 fine.
RWDSU began getting calls from workers at the Russellville plant frustrated by the dangerous working conditions, excessively high speeds of the production line, and the unwillingness of plant management to listen to their concerns or address their grievances.
“I finally got a call from a couple of guys who wanted to meet with me,” said Randy Hadley, RWDSU organizer to TimesDaily.com. “You could tell things had gotten way out of control.”
When the organizing drive got started in earnest, the company pushed back. As the union election approached, workers were forced to attend captive-audience meetings at which company representatives, according to RWDSU, threatened layoffs and implied that the plant could close if the workers voted for the union.
The company put other obstacles in the way of the organizing drive. The company contacted local establishments where workers gathered to discuss the union campaign and asked them to bar union activists.
It also threatened hotels with a boycott if they rented rooms to union organizers and as the election drew near booked hotel meeting rooms, so that the union could not use them to hold meetings.
Despite the company’s efforts, the workers, most of whom are African-American and Latino, voted by 71 percent for the union.
The National Labor Relations Board has yet to certify the results of the election that took place on June 7 and 8, but it is expected to do so soon. When it does, Pilgrim’s management has said that it will recognize the union.
Pilgrim’s Pride is the second largest chicken producer in the world and is owned by JBS SA, a multi-national corporation headquartered in Brazil. | <urn:uuid:07c9fbb3-4218-42cf-8752-8afb357fd78c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leftlaborreporter.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/alabama-poultry-workers-vote-to-unionize/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976129 | 785 | 1.570313 | 2 |
I've been traveling all over the state of Massachusetts visiting Registry of Deeds, Probate Courts, libraries, cemeteries and whatever else I can find for my house history research. I have been particularly lucky to have visited the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) several times in the last few weeks.
NEHGS is an exciting place to research because they have so many resources that span many geographic locations. For the first time in a long time I actually got some research done on my own family thanks to NEHGS. Many of my ancestors come from New York, a place I can't get to very often. Luckily NEHGS has New York records available that I can't easily get access to.
It seems that my visits to NEHGS have really got me considering my own family history again. I've been so inspired that I'm going to attempt to tackle two of my biggest brick walls.
The Immigrant Ancestor
Brick wall #1 is my immigrant ancestor William Edwards.
William came to America some time before the Revolutionary War from Wales so the story goes. He is said (according to a DAR application) to have served as a patriot in the Revolution but I've never seen any conclusive evidence that separates him from others also named William Edwards. I have no birth, marriage or death records for him. I do however, have baptism records for his first three children, Elizabeth Edwards (born on 6 Apr 1788), William Edwards (born Oct 1789) and my ancestor John Edwards (born 6 Jan 1792). All three were born in Germantown, New York. William appears in the 1800 US Federal Census in Charleston, NY but not in 1810. More children were born in Montgomery County New York with the last one being born in 1808.
- Did William die before 1810 and is that why there is no further trace of him?
- There is so much information about his eight children, yet there is virtually no oral history passed down about him or his wife, Christina. Why is that?
- Did William arrive in America alone or with other family?
My research strategy, given the sparsity of information about William is going to be to focus on his children. I will attempt to hunt down every bit of information, including migration patterns and fans (friends, associates and neighbors) in my attempt to find clues about William. I anticipate this will be a long, slow process.
The Young Mother Who Died too Soon
Brick Wall #2 is my great, great grandmother, Charlotte (Hill) Learned.
There is a very old Learned family Bible that provides marriage and death dates for Charlotte who married William Chandler Learned in 1855. Charlotte had two daughters before she died in 1862. While I have a death date and location for her I have yet to discover where she is buried. I believe Charlotte to be the daughter of Orange Hill of Pompey, Onondaga County, New York. There is quite a bit of information about the Hill family but I have found nothing to link Charlotte to her father. The Hills came from Massachusetts a few generations earlier and I'd like to be able to link her to them conclusively.
- When was Charlotte Hill born and where?
- Where is she buried?
- Is there a document or enough indirect evidence that proves her connection to her father, Orange Hill?
My research strategy with this brick wall is going to be focused on location-based research. I will learn everything I can about Pompey, NY. In addition I will try to track down every document possible associated with the Hill family in Pompey for three generations back from Charlotte in an attempt to prove the connection between Charlotte and the Hill family. If I'm lucky, perhaps her grandfather left a will that makes mention of her.
The Road Ahead
I'm excited about researching my own family for a change. It's going to be fun to try to chip away at these brick walls. Hopefully it will take me into some uncharted territory. I imagine my quest for Charlotte Hill's father is going to be easier than my search for William Edwards. I'll share thoughts on my research process on my blog along the way. | <urn:uuid:0ff452be-fc2c-4ecd-973f-778c9e703ff3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rootsandrambles.blogspot.ca/2011/06/my-new-york-brick-walls.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98067 | 858 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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Obama broke his promise to cut spending. (instead, he added $5 trillion to our debt)
Obama broke his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Obama broke his promise to lessen our dependency on Middle East oil by getting more oil from our neighbors.
Obama broke his promise for a new era of bipartisan cooperation in all matters.
Obama broke his promise to not force Americans to buy health insurance.
Obama broke his promise that 90% of the stimulus jobs created would be in the private sector.
Obama broke his promise that that if you like their current health plan you can keep it.
Obama broke his promise to put all bills on the White House web site for five days before signing them.
Obama broke his promise to have the congressional health care negotiations broadcast live on C-SPAN.
Obama broke his promise to end earmarks.
Obama broke his promise to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent.
Obama broke his promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo in the first year.
Obama broke his promise to make peace with direct, no precondition talks with America 's most hate-filled enemies during his first year in office, ushering in a new era of global cooperation.
Obama broke his promise to never allow Iran the ability to create nuclear weapons.
Obama broke his promise to end the hiring of former lobbyists into high White House jobs.
Obama broke his promise to end no-compete contracts with the government.
Obama broke his promise to disclose the names of all attendees at closed White House meetings.
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June 5, 2013 by Chris Sturgis
iNACOL is putting the final touches on the iNACOL’s Symposium competency education strand of workshops and sessions. An incredible group of practitioners (some emphasizing online/blended learning and others not) are going to be leading sessions. In addition to the formal sessions there will be a CompetencyWorks lounge area near the exhibitor hall that you can use for informal discussions and meet-ups. In fact, we’ll be meeting there Sunday evening during the opening reception just so we can introduce ourselves (thanks to Tom Willis Cornerstone Charter Schools who called me and said we needed this to happen.) The iNACOL Symposium is a big, exciting meeting, so knowing each other’s faces early on will make a huge difference.
Although we know things always change, here is how the competency education strand looks now:
Design Choices for Competency Education will be for experienced innovators and newbies alike. We’ll walk through all the different choices districts and schools make, sharing what worked, what you learned, and what you might do differently.
Overview of Competency Education – What is it, what are the models, and who is doing it? – Susan Patrick, iNACOL and Chris Sturgis, MetisNet
The Building Blocks of Competency-Based Learning: Competencies, Assessment, Learning, and Grading – Rose Colby, Education Consultant
Session 1 and 2 (Workshop)
Transparency = Ownership: A Model for Student-Centered Learning – Alison Hramiec, Boston Day and Evening Academy (more…)
December 14, 2012 by Chris Sturgis
Photo by Jorge Machado
It’s getting popular. Many schools claim to be using competency education. Does offering adaptive software or blended learning immediately make a school competency-based?
It’s getting confusing. Blended/online learning and competency education are often used interchangeably, even if the blended learning is being used in a totally time-based system.
What to do? We need some common language. So here is a first cut using a competency-based grading model. (A note: I use course to describe a unit of learning and level to describe a band of learning along the full K-12 learning progression, which we refer to as grades such as 1st or 10th grade in the time-based system) :
June 26, 2012 by Shelby Edwards
The Donnell-Kay Foundation (DKF), Colorado Department of Education (CDE), and the Colorado Legacy Foundation (CLF) recently hosted a three-part blended learning series. Each part highlighted one component of blended learning: best practices and barriers to implementation, professional development and collaboration, and national policy and next steps for Colorado.
The third session had direct discussions surrounding competency-based education with speakers Utah State Senator Howard Stephenson, and New Hampshire Deputy Commissioner Paul Leather both presenting the progress in their respective states. You can watch the archived webinars and access presentation materials at the Donnell-Kay Foundation’s website.
It may have been a series on blended learning, but it was clear that a competency-based education system is a goal for Colorado. Educators and (more…)
June 22, 2012 by Tom Vander Ark
Carrie Morgridge kicked off the 4th Sharefair at the University of Denver’s Richie Center with a description of the benefits of blended learning. The Morgridge Family Foundation has been a big supporter of DU and the adoption of personalized learning technology by Colorado and Florida schools.
Carrie introduced Sal Khan whose videos have been an important contribution to global learning. His 3100 videos receive about 6 million views (more…) | <urn:uuid:e811841f-20e5-450e-a927-8e5a37bd2bf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.competencyworks.org/tags/blended-learning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944031 | 778 | 1.734375 | 2 |
An 8-year-old girl Afeefah Patel from Evans Park, Johannesburg, won the prestigious SANParks Kudu Award for wildlife conservation for writing a letter to President Jacob Zuma asking for his assistance in saving endangered rhinos.
Afeefah Patel, who has just finished Grade One, attracted the attention of SANParks who celebrated her efforts by making her the youngest ever winner of the SANParks’s Corporate Contribution to Conservation Award: Individual category at the 8th annual Kudu Awards in November 2012. Afeefah was concerned that her prize money was not doing anything to help save the rhinos.
Together with her family, Afeefah generously decided to donate R 5 000 of her prize money to the Unite Against Poaching Trust Fund to further contribute to the fight against rhino poaching. Unite against Poaching is an initiative of Unitrans Volkswagen whereby funds are donated to the trust for each vehicle sold within the participating dealerships. The pledges are channelled effectively and efficiently to fight the war against poaching through the SANParks Honorary Rangers.
On Friday 18 January at THE GLEN Volkswagen, Afeefah , supported by her sister Aminah handed over a cheque for R 5000 to Kevin Gillmer, Divisional Chief Executive of Unitrans Volkswagen ( member of the Board of Trustees, Unite against Poaching trust)
Since the inception of the project in September 2011, Unite against Poaching have pledged over R 5,7 million to the fight against poaching within SANParks. For information on how the funds have been used or how to participate go to www.uniteagainstpoaching.co.za
In her letter in the The Times new paper addressed to Zuma, Afeefah asked the president to look after the rhinos. Her letter sparked interest from the presidency and she subsequently received a letter from President Zuma which said: “I want you to know that our government has just been as highly concerned at the staggering numbers of rhinos that have been killed just this year alone. We are delighted to receive support from people like you who love the environment and want to see it protected for future generations. Please continue playing a part in promoting the safety of our endangered species. I am very proud of you! You are a very good South African.” | <urn:uuid:f7fd1021-2bad-42f0-8f4c-432ca54b7b91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.africageographic.com/africa-geographic-blog/events/8-year-old-heroine-donates-r5-000-to-unite-against-poaching/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967918 | 483 | 1.601563 | 2 |
October 8, 2012
The Limits of Advance Directives
While it is important for people to express their wishes about end-of-life care in advance, a court case in Hawaii reminds us that advance directives do not always ensure that patient's wishes will be followed. Karen Okada wrote a living will, which the hospital ethics committee found to express a desire not to have a feeding tube in her current condition. A family member has objected, on the basis that he is acting in accordance with his authority as an appointed surrogate. Unfortunately, patients' preferences can be frustrated by their families or their health care providers.
October 8, 2012 | Permalink
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Limits of Advance Directives: | <urn:uuid:7b4dc312-d866-4299-aa8d-294e0db4214e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/healthlawprof_blog/2012/10/the-limits-of-advance-directives.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954241 | 157 | 1.710938 | 2 |
There was a year of my life, first grade, when I literally ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every single day without fail, even on weekends. It’s not that I was a timid eater—at that age I was happily sampling my mom’s macrobiotic vegan experiments and even requesting some favorites of my own—it’s just that when you find a good thing you stick with it.
And I did, tenaciously. Though other meals made it into the lunch rotation after a year or two, peanut butter and jelly was a mainstay throughout my childhood, along with its attendant variations: peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and Fluff, peanut butter straight-from-the-spoon-hold-the-bread.
It wasn’t a bad thing, nutrition-wise. While peanut butter is high in fat and is a concentrated source of calories, it’s not fattening—you just don’t want to go overboard. Luckily, you don’t need much to feel satisfied: just a tablespoon (90 calories) or two of peanut butter goes a long way. Plus, peanut butter provides protein and folate, a B vitamin important for the healthy development of new cells.
Related: 9 “Bad” Foods You Should Be Eating
But there came a point in adulthood when I started paying attention to things like grams of sodium per serving and just what “hydrogenated soybean oil” is. I’d read the long, trailing list of ingredients on favorite products and wonder, “What the heck is this stuff?” What exactly makes my favorite creamy peanut butter so creamy? Do I even want to know?
Don’t Miss: How to Avoid Unhealthy Oils in Packaged Foods
That’s why I’m such a fan of natural peanut butters. Take all the extra junk out of a normal jar and what you’ve got left is just plain old mashed-up peanuts with a pinch of salt. Delicious. Some might be turned off by the way oil separates out, but I’ve found that if you simply leave the peanut butter upside down for about an hour, the oil will migrate up to the jar bottom so it’s easier to stir without making a mess. After stirring, you can store it in the refrigerator.
Of course, not all natural peanut butters, or jellies for that matter, are created equal. EatingWell taste-tested different brands of smooth natural peanut butters to find some of the best of the bunch that are nationally available. We put a range of low-sugar strawberry jams and jellies to the test too. (Why strawberry? I think I speak objectively for PB&J fans everywhere when I say that strawberry is obviously the best.) Our guidelines: Anything containing high-fructose corn syrup was eliminated right off the bat. The ingredients had to list strawberries first or second, juice concentrates were the preferred sweetener and a tablespoon of jam had to contain 40 or less calories.
So, savor our results! Next time you get a hankering for creamy, toasted peanuts and sweet, sticky jam, you can feel confident knowing you’re reaching for reader-approved favorites.
The results of our natural peanut butter taste test:
Smucker’s Natural: Creamy
The omnipresent Smucker’s brand garnered high marks in all categories. Tasters called its grainier texture “the crunchy-lover’s smooth” and said it had “more peanut butter taste.” It was one taster’s top pick for natural peanut butter.
Woodstock Farms Organic: Smooth/Salted
This selection was a bit too grainy and sticky for some, but one taster said, “It’s perfect! It has a nice, sweet taste the others don’t really have.” Another taster liked its looks and “great flavor,” while others found it grainy, bitter and too thick or said it tasted really good but “looked like Dijon mustard.”
Teddie Old Fashioned: Smooth
Tasters loved this peanut butter’s “very peanuty” taste and “good consistency.” While some found it “too salty,” and one taster commented that “it was so sticky it was hard to swallow,” the general consensus was that this was a well-flavored and textured option.
Other natural peanut butters we liked:
MaraNatha Organic: Creamy & Roasted
Peanut Butter & Co.: Smooth Operator
The results of our low-sugar strawberry jam/jelly taste test:
Polaner All-Fruit Strawberry
The top pick, Polaner All-Fruit, has graced the supermarket shelves with its fruit- and fruit-juice-sweetened jams for nearly 20 years. Two panelists selected it as their favorite in taste and it was one panelist’s top for texture. One taster waxed poetic about its, “Explosive taste, rich texture.” Another added, “Its tart taste was honestly strawberry.” A third loved its “nice chunks of berries.”
Smucker’s Low Sugar Strawberry Preserves
The ubiquitous supermarket staple, Smucker’s Low Sugar option was the panel’s second-favorite. The only sample containing added color, it received the highest marks from our panel in the appearance category. One taster thought it had a “smooth vibrant color,” while another added that its “color and texture were appealing.” Tasters enjoyed its “nice fruit taste—most like a real strawberry.” Alas, some saw through the “red 40” in the ingredient list: one taster complained, “This is way too red.”
365 Organic Strawberry Conserves
The child-friendly house brand of natural-foods giant Whole Foods also made the grade with our panelists, particularly one who cited it as his favorite in all three categories. A second taster praised its “delicate and rich strawberry flavor” and a third said it had “a good strawberry taste” without being “overly sweet.” But another wasn’t a fan of its appearance, noting it “spreads a bit too thinly for great jam.”
Make It Yourself: How to Make Fruit Jams, Butters and Chutneys
Other low-sugar strawberry jams we liked:
Bionaturae: Organic Fruit Spread
Cascadian Farms: Organic Fruit Spread
Don’t Miss: The Best Milk to Buy
What’s your favorite natural peanut butter? Tell us what you think below. | <urn:uuid:ea27d1f1-6b66-4f6e-8128-1a6df610f0cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eatingwell.com/blogs/healthy_cooking_blog/the_best_natural_peanut_butters_and_jellies?quicktabs_1=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942314 | 1,436 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The following is derived from a thread on the Catholic Answers Forum. The regular text is from soflochristmas, the italics text is from other commenters, and the bold text at the end is from me.
My sister is the ONLY person in my family that has maintained a solid practice of her Catholic faith; probably because she's the only one with a family (two girls). She's at a very heterodox parish in Tampa but she at least attends Mass fairly regularly and my nieces are receiving the sacraments. ...
When I spoke with my sister on Sunday, she mentioned that she attended a "sunrise service on the beach". I was stunned because I was certain the Catholic Church on St. Anastasia island does NOT have such a service. She must have picked up on my "pause" and silence and she offered, "it wasn't a Catholic service...but....".
My heart sank. ... If my sister had a choice between receiving Christ in the Eucharist on the most holy day of the Christian calendar, or attending a "sunrise service on the beach", why would she choose one over the other? What is it about the "sunrise service on the beach" that would make her choose it over Christ in the Eucharist?
On another note why would one have a Easter service on a beach? What connection does the Resurrection of Christ at have to do with a beach in Florida? Were they there to glorify the Lord or just there to be in a really "neat" place?
Well, other than it's as far east as you can get (i.e., the first place the sun rises).
Look at that! People want to worship "in the east"! It's funny, but Catholics have been doing that for 2000 years. It's called worship ad orientem, facing the east. (Traditionally, the altar is at the eastern end of the church; this is still the standard, although it's not as common in the Latin Church as it is in the Eastern Churches.)
As Pope Benedict pointed out in a book he wrote back in the 80s, once upon a time church architecture was such that the light from the rising/risen sun would shine in through the eastern side of the church building during Mass in the morning. This allowed even the architecture and the sun to join in the worship of God. He called it a "cosmic liturgy".
How sad that we don't have that anymore in our Roman parishes and people have to walk out to the beach to try and satisfy that latent desire! | <urn:uuid:558b5dde-b959-4f19-90cc-7d52e4bf536d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecrossreference.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-on-facing-east-latent-desire.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984476 | 532 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Drifting: a driving movement or force; impulse; impetus; pressure.
This is just one of the many definitions of "Drifting" in Dictionary.com. And an apt one at that.
In street racing terms, you can't get a more succinct definition of this type of driving - though it does lack specifics. So, for the purpose of this brief article I must defer to Wikipedia:"'Drifting' refers to a driving technique and to a motorsport where the driver intentionally oversteers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels through turns, while maintaining vehicle control and a high exit speed."
As with many fast-paced sports, it is far easier to see than to describe:
While it looks pretty fun, I'd have to carry around a few spare pairs of underwear if I were in one of those cars. I think I'll stick to this instead:
I couldn't find a video... so this'll have to do. Pretty cool lookin', eh?
This is the Radio Control Drift Attack Stunt Vehicle
from Discovery Channel
- and I'd venture to say that it out performs a real vehicle. This little sucker can power slide, drift, twist, and even perform upside down maneuvers and 360-degree spins all thanks to high-torque dual tread wheels and high speed capability.
It is controlled much like any other R/C vehicle, via a remote joystick system.
Looks pretty easy...
At just shy of $50, this zippy little car makes for a great Christmas gift - though I wouldn't recommend it for really tiny kids due to the high speeds it can reach. That could be asking for a hole in a wall... And that would be quite a costly stunt...
You can get your Radio Control Drift Attack Stunt Vehicle at Amazon.
SOURCES: Dictionary.com, Wikipedia | <urn:uuid:f03bc89c-855c-41c2-9e1e-c103bd22cf58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inventorspot.com/articles/rc_car_built_highspeed_drifting_34885 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951703 | 380 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Man convicted of spiking trees in northern Minn.WALKER, Minn. (AP) — A jury has convicted a Backus man for his role in "spiking" hundreds of trees in northern Minnesota.
WALKER, Minn. (AP) — A jury has convicted a Backus man for his role in "spiking" hundreds of trees in northern Minnesota.
Cass County Attorney Christopher Strandlie says 52-year-old Stephen Thomas Olson was convicted Friday after a three-day trial.
Jurors deliberated about three hours before convicting Olson of felony criminal damage to property and gross misdemeanor damage to timber.
Last November, the Cass County Land Department found more than 500 trees had been damaged with 6-inch pole barn nails. A sign posted near the gate read "II in each tree!" next to a smiley face.
Jurors heard evidence that Olson was angry that red pine trees on county land were going to be logged. The county attorney says Olson and two teenage boys pounded the nails into the trees over the next week.
Olson was sent to jail to await sentencing Oct. 18. | <urn:uuid:2df763c2-6039-44b5-9b85-91dbd8e6bf60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/38873/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97284 | 235 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Field Programmable Counter Arrays (FPCAs) have been recently introduced to close the gap between FPGA and ASICs for arithmetic dominated applications. FPCAs are reconfigurable lattices that can be embedded into FPGAs to efficiently compute the result of multi-operand additions.
The first contribution of this work is a Design Space Exploration (DSE) of the FPCAs and the identification of trade-offs between different parameters which describe them. Methods for analyzing and pruning the design space are proposed to enable a smart exploration. Finally, a set of best performing architectures in terms of area and delay is determined.
Secondly, a study of possible integration schemes to build a hybrid FPGA/FPCA chip is performed. The goal is to find a solution with optimal usage of on-chip silicon area. The advantages and disadvantages of each solution are studied and a new integration solution based on properties of FPCAs is suggested. A VLSI implementation proves the applicability of the proposed solutions.
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By Team Backbeat
By Amber Taufen
By Jon Solomon
By Tom Murphy
By Jesse Livingston
By Alejandra Loera
By Stephanie March
By Tom Murphy
Even musicians who've played hundreds of concerts can usually cite a single show that was pivotal to their careers. The members of Colorado's Fiddlin' Foresters are no different--but their definitive gig certainly was. "One of the big turning points for us that really helped us gel," notes Foresters guitarist Jane Leche, "was when we played the fiftieth anniversary for Smokey the Bear."
Why was this 1994 date so important? Because everyone in the Fiddlin' Foresters maintains ties to the United States Forest Service. Leche and fiddler Lynn Young both work as public-affairs specialists for the organization, and banjo player Jim Maxwell and stand-up bassist Doug Wagner (a 1995 Foresters recruit) serve as a hydrologist and a computer technician, respectively. And while guitarist Tom McFarland, who also came aboard in 1995, makes his living as a local attorney, he volunteers his musical talents to the Forest Service during his off-hours. As a result of these commitments, the opportunity to honor America's furriest firefighter took on extra significance for Foresters Leche, Young and Maxwell, who were part of the lineup at the time. And the location of the show (the pedestrian mall near the nation's capitol) and the dignitaries in attendance made it even more special.
"We played for the secretary of agriculture and the chief of the Forest Service, so it was a big thing for us," Young recalls. "Plus it was the first time we played in uniform as representatives of the U.S. Forest Service."
An indication of how seriously the Foresters take this responsibility is a phrase that's printed on both sides of their self-titled cassette: "The Program Is Morally Good." Thanks to transfers and the like, the act's membership has shifted since its unofficial formation in 1978. But everyone who's performed under the Fiddlin' Foresters banner has been a true believer in Forest Service ideals--and because they are frequently invited to perform at Service events in Colorado and other states, the band has become a unique blend of vocation and avocation.
"Where some people have to give up their jobs to have a career in music, we've made it a part of our job," says Young, a thirty-year veteran of the Service. "And if you don't have to get paid from your music, it simplifies things. Every band that ever broke up argued about money, but we don't have money fights, because we don't have any money." Furthermore, he continues, "if we had to make a living doing this, we'd have to play mainstream stuff. We couldn't play obscure music."
The brand of obscurity most favored by the Foresters goes by the name of old-time music, a term coined by Twenties-era record companies to describe the rustic hillbilly airs that initially took root in Appalachia and the American South. The genre's golden age took place during the Thirties, when bands such as Gid Tanner and the Skilletlickers enjoyed widespread popularity. Young, an amiable encyclopedia of roots-music arcana who befriended old-time pioneer Grandpa Jones during a rangering stint in the Ozarks, describes the style as "folk music before Joan Baez got ahold of it. It's traditional rural music of the plain people, and much of it was handed down by word of mouth."
Old-time eventually gave birth to bluegrass, a format with which it shares a great deal. "The instrumentation is similar to bluegrass--banjo, fiddle, guitar and bass," Young divulges. "But we don't play breaks or anything like that. Old-time is an everyday style. Plus it's simpler in that it stays on the beat, and typically, the banjo and the fiddle play the melody together, rather than a bunch of counter parts and taking turns."
To Young, old-time's key instruments have everything to do with its appeal. "You can't be sad listening to a banjo, and you sure can't be sad playing one," he says. As for the fiddle, he notes, "In the Appalachians today, the fiddle is still called 'the devil's walking stick,' because it leads to frolicking, drinking and good times. The devil is supposed to be in that fiddle, and I'm not sure I disagree. If you consider the things a staunch fundamentalist considers bad, like dancing and jumping around and letting your hair down and having a good time--well, the fiddle can sure do it to you." He adds, "We get so many comments when we play these songs. People come up and say, 'By God, now, that's music,' or 'That's what I grew up with--you just took me home.' All those kinds of things. It's plain old fun."
It's also an appropriate type of music for Forest Service workers to play, since its roots run parallel in many ways to those of the Service itself. "We've got two kinds of shows," Young remarks. "One is just entertainment. But we also do educational shows, where we talk about the Forest Service and its history. And the early forestry service and the conservation movement started at around the same time as much of this music, so we can relate to these songs. 'Fire on the Mountain' and 'Mississippi Sawyer'"--two vintage offerings frequently included in the Foresters' sets--"are forestry terms.
"The first rangers could all shoot and ride--and I can imagine them also playing fiddle and banjo and singing around the campfire at night, for the same reasons we do. And they played some of these same songs."
In fact, the most recent number the Foresters play is the Smokey the Bear theme, which was penned in 1952. It's an unsophisticated little ditty, but to Leche, it's one of the most meaningful in the Foresters' repertoire. "I just talked to 75 kindergarten kids, and I taught them that song," she reveals. "And when I sang it to the kids for the first time before teaching it to them, all the teachers sang it with me--they all knew it. It bridges gaps."
Regional forester Elizabeth Estill, who oversees the work of Leche, Young, Wagner and Maxwell, believes that performances like this one demonstrate why the group is so valuable an adjunct to the Forest Service. "Individually, they all contribute through their regular jobs, and they do super work," she insists. "But on top of that, doing the Fiddlin' Foresters thing is just an added bonus and a terrific public-relations tool for us." In her view, "You've almost got to have a hook to get an audience to listen to you--and they provide that hook. They're a unique and different way for us to get an audience that we normally might not reach."
Young concurs. "We're a morale booster for the Forest Service--and we put a face on the faceless bureaucratic establishment. Keep in mind, we're the feds. We're government employees, which means we're right down there with journalists, used car salesmen and lawyers. We're part of that government that we all like to complain about."
When crowds catch a Foresters show, however, Young believes that they get an opportunity to view the Forest Service from a new perspective. "We're a bunch of people who are having fun, doing something that requires some talent and work, and we're real people. People can see that. We think that's an important thing." During the shutdown of the federal government a couple of years back, Young acknowledges, such sentiments seldom occurred to the average citizen. "Some people said, 'Good. They ought to just stay home.' Well, that was a real hard time for us, because we think what we do is a very important job. It's important for the health of this country, for the environment and for the economy. So we felt like nobody knew who we were or what we do."
At a recent show in Broomfield, an appreciative audience found out. The setting was perfect: Rather than appearing in a bar under hot lights in a fog of cigarette smoke, the Foresters performed under the clear blue sky near enough to a series of horse stables that the aroma of manure was easily discernible. (Fortunately, the Fiddlers have experience playing under such circumstances: They provided musical accompaniment for the appearance of a Forest Service mule team at the Great Western Stock Show last year.)
With green pastures spreading out before them and the snowcapped Rockies in the distance, the players presented a delicious array of tunes that ranged from giddy rousers like "Cluck Old Hen" and "You Ain't Talkin' to Me" to tearjerkers such as the stirring "Vacant Chair," which features lush harmonies (all the members sing) and Young's lonesome harmonica playing. "We think that's a real pretty song," Young tells the crowd, in a whopping understatement. Just as memorable were "Banks of the Ohio," a haunting standard that finds the Fiddlers wrapping their angelic voices around a grisly tale of love turned to murder--a frequent old-time motif--and poignant numbers of the West like "Song of Wyoming."
Throughout the set, the effusive Young hooted and hollered in a gloriously rough-hewn voice and danced an occasional jig between fiddle parts. Meanwhile, Maxwell knocked out an earthy claw-hammer-style banjo, McFarland delivered tasty acoustic guitar, Wagner provided steady bass-playing and Leche contributed dependable strumming and gutsy vocals that lent heavenly grit to the whole affair.
By the time the Fiddlers closed with a rendition of "Mountain Dew," those in attendance were clapping along with great fervor--a credit both to the Fiddlers themselves and to the material they choose. "There's a reason 'Mountain Dew' has been around for so many years," Young states. "Because it's simple, it's a good tune, and you can stomp your feet to it. And it's about a subject, moonshine, that's sort of romantic, too. Plus it's a song that everybody can play. It's not Yanni or anything like that. That's why these tunes have gone so far and wide. They've been passed down like a good joke."
The Foresters are doing their bit to keep these songs circulating--and if the reaction they received at a performance in Estes Park earlier this year is any indication, their efforts are appreciated by their peers. The band was invited to play at a meeting of district rangers from the five states that make up the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain region--a group that, in Leche's words, "could make us or break us if they didn't like us." Making the musicians' mission even more difficult were the circumstances of the show. The Foresters were slated to perform on the last day of an intensive, week-long session of policy-and-practice meetings, and Leche recalls that her colleagues "were tired and stressed out--and they'd been away from home for a week. A lot of them didn't want to even be there."
Nonetheless, the Foresters wowed their fellow rangers, earning several standing ovations. "It was probably the most spiritually connecting experience for the band," Maxwell says, "because here we were, playing for the folks who touch the land--who represent what the Forest Service is all about."
At the conclusion of the band's set, the Foresters played "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and the response from the crowd came as a huge surprise to the bandmates. "They joined hands and made a big circle and started circling around the room while singing the song," Maxwell remembers. "It ended up as one big ol' family.
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Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:ae8dae2a-24c8-4c4a-8260-3cd056996783> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westword.com/1997-06-05/music/fiddling-about/full/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975796 | 2,582 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Momentum and baseball
Published: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 12:58 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 12:58 a.m.
Momentum is a word often bandied about, especially when it comes to sports like basketball and volleyball where several hoops or kills can be strung together quickly.
It can happen in baseball, too.
On Sunday, when San Francisco closer Sergio Romo froze Detroit Tigers slugger and Triple Crown winner Miquel Cabrera with an 89 mph fastball, the Giants had won their second World Series in three years.
The Giants almost didn't even get close to the World Series, let alone sweep it.
First they had to win the Division Series against the Cincinnati Reds and that didn't start off very well. The Reds won the first game 5-2 and then annihilated the Giants 9-0 in Game 2 — both at home.
So the Giants had to go to Cincinnati and sweep the Reds to stay alive in the playoffs. That didn't start off very well, either, as Homer Bailey had a no-hitter for 5 2/3 innings and the Giants had one hit through nine innings. But they won 2-1 on Scott Rolen's error in the 10th.
Given a little bit of life, the Giants won Game 4 8-3, setting up the deciding Game 5. The Giants held on for a 6-4 win after nearly blowing a 6-0 lead. Buster Posey, who once played against former Ledford star David Thomas in the minor leagues, had the biggest hit, a grand slam.
The Giants fell behind the St. Louis Cardinals 3-1 in the National League Championship Series. They needed to win three in a row to make it to the World Series. Well, it wasn't like they hadn't won three in a row before.
Not only did the Giants win all three, it wasn't even close. The combined score was 20-1. The Cardinals may have overcome a 6-0 hole against the Washington Nationals in Game 5 of their Division Series but they weren't about to do that to the Giants.
It was Panda Power in Game 1 as Pablo Sandoval blasted three home runs in an 8-3 win. Sandoval is incredibly strong. Built like an NFL nose tackle, he hit a ball into the Ohio River against the Reds, so his power display was no shock.
Madison Bumgarner got the start in Game 2 and though the lefty from Hudson, N.C. had struggled toward the end of the regular season and the NLCS, he threw a two-hitter for seven innings in the Giants' 2-0 win. Just like in the 2010 World Series.
The name Madison Bumgarner will always have a local connection. Bumgarner and his South Caldwell teammates battled North Davidson in a tremendous 4-A state semifinal series in 2007. It took a four-hitter with 15 strikeouts by Bumgarner in the deciding Game 3 to finally end North's season. Even so, it was only by a 3-2 score. The Knights scored twice in the sixth inning and nearly pulled it out. A couple of breaks and North would have won that series. Zach White can always look back and remember he doubled off a pitcher that has two World Series rings. It's almost hard to believe that Bumgarner is still only 23.
Levi Michael was an integral part of that great North Davidson team. After a stellar career at UNC, Michael was drafted in the first round by the Minnesota Twins and just completed his first pro season at the Advanced-A level. Michael is on the fast track with the Twins. He may get to bat against Bumgarner again some day. That would be fun to watch.
Mike Duprez can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 218 or email@example.com.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:7fe1fe2c-d94a-428d-9781-6d81ebc99dc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20121031/COLUMNISTS/310319993/1044/section/mike.duprez@the-dispatch.com | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97777 | 850 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Forget Football, Sexism Is Still Everywhere; the Scandal over Sexism in Football Claimed Two High-Profile Scalps Last Week - the Debate Divided the Country. but as the Furore Subsides, We Investigate the Reality of Sexism at Work
Byline: Katy Weitz
A bit of lads' banter - that is how some described the sexist comments made last week by football pundits Andy Gray and Richard Keys about a female assistant referee.
Just a bit of fun. But what may be banter to one person can be horrific bullying to another.
It was just this kind of 'lads banter' which saw PC Barbara Lynford sue Sussex Police for sexual discrimination after she was forced out of her job, suffered stress, became mentally ill and unable to work. The tribunal awarded nearly pounds 575,000 to PC Lynford, the highest such award to a public sector worker. Sexual comments, lower pay and discrimination are still rife in the workplace.
During PC Lynford's tribunal, she described her ordeal. "In all my life I have never been treated as badly as I have been at Gatwick," she said.
"I survived backpacking around India at the age of 19 for a few months where I was even kidnapped and held against my will for a few days in Bombay.
Nothing prepared me for the people at Gatwick."
Women in the UK typically earn less, own less and are more likely to live in poverty than men. They are under-represented in Parliament, in boardrooms across the country and in public life.
Unless they are young and pretty they don't …
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Forget Football, Sexism Is Still Everywhere; the Scandal over Sexism in Football Claimed Two High-Profile Scalps Last Week - the Debate Divided the Country. but as the Furore Subsides, We Investigate the Reality of Sexism at Work. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: The Mirror (London, England). Publication date: January 31, 2011. Page number: 30. © 2009 MGN LTD. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means. | <urn:uuid:6ed7284f-d7f2-42f4-b65a-5e59636015ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.questia.com/read/1G1-247941264/forget-football-sexism-is-still-everywhere-the-scandal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96045 | 493 | 1.546875 | 2 |
We never fall in love with ugliness.
It's beauty; it's always been beauty. Whether elegant lines or seductive shapes, beauty attracts us.
And for most people, that attraction is based on the past. We want to look younger. We want to be younger. We want to reflect the age that we feel inside.
Which is why there is plastic surgery.
Dr. Bruce Connell is a world-renowned, 84-year-old "retired" plastic surgeon and Laguna Beach resident. He is regarded as the father of the modern face-lift. Over the years, he has trained or influenced thousands of other plastic surgeons. Called "Connell Fellows," they continue to practice his techniques around the world.
What Connell teaches, among other things, is that people just want to look natural.
"Usually what they want is to have a restoration of the good looks they had 15 years before or so," he said. "That makes most people happy."
People just want to fit in and look refreshed.
"There's been a fortunate big change for people to have a natural look," he said. "And it's considered very objectionable now to have a nose that's been bobbed or have face-lift surgery that looks like they've been caught in a permanent wind tunnel and can't get out of it."
Beauty is no longer perfect. In fact, according to Connell, it never has been. While the definition of beauty has been debated for thousands of years, there are basic rules. There is geometry and proportion.
"There are many parameters that are variable," he said. "If you look at any person, male or female, there will always be one eye larger than the other, one side of the face larger than the other. If you wreck those natural asymmetries, it just doesn't look good."
Like viewing a painting or photograph, there are normal ways that the eyes see things.
"When you get the proportions that have been described years ago by the art of da Vinci — that if you have equal thirds — it is more pleasing to the eye than any other combination," he said.
However, "equal" is not exact, nor is it the final word. It's just the foundation.
"Then you get into variations, like a man may look feminized if his nose is made too pretty, too straight, or have no irregularities," he said. "Also, when you're changing the location of the brow … you can take some of the actors like Brad Pitt and others, they have practically no pretarsal skin (eyelid) showing, and they have no problem getting a date on Friday night."
What ends up being beautiful is not in the eye of the beholder, but it's pretty close.
There's a reason dog owners resemble their dogs — or spouses sometimes look like brother and sister.
While we are encouraged to reach beyond our grasp, we rarely do. And people are fine with that. People are happy. They feel comfortable.
"You have some people carry all their problems because of some physical flaw, and yet you have people with many physical flaws that adjust to life and are very happy, with more associations with friends than other people," said Connell. "So their attitude is probably more important than some minor flaw or major flaw."
Connell's views on attitude are not just academic. At one point in his career, it was said he wouldn't perform surgery on someone who didn't have a sense of humor. | <urn:uuid:e97b1cce-24d6-48a1-a3c7-e15678f6a916> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wsbt.com/topic/tn-cpt-0706-hansen-20120705,0,2387729.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986017 | 729 | 1.570313 | 2 |
JACKSON, Miss. – Mississippi's only abortion clinic was open Monday after a federal judge temporarily blocked a law from being enforced that the clinic says could regulate it out of business.
The owner of Jackson Women's Health Organization said it was "business as usual" and the clinic's two physicians will continue to see patients and do abortions unless a court orders them to stop.
"Mississippi is still part of this country and still does have to abide by the Constitution," Diane Derzis told reporters inside the clinic as several abortion opponents prayed and sang hymns outside.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan issued a temporary restraining order Sunday to stop Mississippi from enforcing a law requiring any physician doing abortions at the clinic to be an OB-GYN with privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. The order came the same day the law was to take effect.
Because of the judge's order, the state Health Department canceled an inspection it originally planned to do Monday to see if the clinic is complying with the new law, a department spokeswoman said.
The two physicians who do abortions at the clinic have applied for hospital privileges but haven't been granted them. Derzis said she doesn't expect them to be given the access, partly because she believes hospitals don't want abortion protesters outside on their sidewalks.
The clinic filed a federal lawsuit June 27, challenging the law's constitutionality under Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a nationwide right to abortion. The lawsuit also says the admitting privileges requirement is not medically necessary.
Derzis said that since she took over the clinic in 2010, no patient has been taken from there directly to a hospital. She said a local physician who doesn't do abortions at the clinic has been available to meet patients at a hospital, if necessary.
Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said he believes the new law will protect women's health. He has also said he wants Mississippi to be "abortion-free."
Jordan will hear arguments July 11 about issuing an injunction to extend his block of the law.
Derzis said the clinic was busier than usual last week because some patients thought they wouldn't be able to get an abortion in Mississippi if the new law were in effect starting this week. She said the patients were "absolutely aware" of the law.
"They were insistent that they been seen," she said.
Neither of the physicians who do abortions at the clinic was working Monday, but Derzis said that was normal for the first day of the business week. Clinic employees were taking calls from prospective patients.
With temperatures above 90 degrees, some abortion opponents carried large umbrellas for shade as they stood Monday outside the clinic in the Fondren neighborhood. Among them were members of the groups Pro-Life Mississippi and Personhood Mississippi.
Some carried signs with slogans such as "Let us help you love your baby" and "It's easy to be pro 'choice' when you're not the one being killed."
One of the abortion opponents was Melissa Steen, 25, who lives in the Jackson suburb of Pearl.
Steen she had an abortion at the clinic in August 2007, when she was in an abusive relationship. She said her boyfriend threatened to hurt her unless she ended the pregnancy. Now, Steen said, she goes to the clinic often to try to persuade women not to have abortions.
"It's something that I live with, but I regret it," Steen said. "Sometimes at night, I will go outside and sit in my driveway and look at the stars and cry."
The abortion opponents prayed and sang "We Shall Overcome" and hymns such as "Amazing Grace" and "It Is Well With My Soul." They could be seen and heard through the tinted windows as Derzis talked to reporters.
"This is life in America for a woman seeking an abortion now," Derzis said inside the clinic's waiting area. "It's not just Jackson, Miss. These here may be a little crazier than some other places. But this is the reality of a patient having an abortion in this country today, is she is going to most likely cross a picket line. She is going to be screamed at, harassed." | <urn:uuid:bd1ca920-7fdf-4328-90ca-201555f49ab1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/02/miss-abortion-clinic-owner-business-as-usual/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980654 | 876 | 1.789063 | 2 |
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — In the market for a pregnant buffalo? Then western South Dakota’s Custer State Park is the place to be Saturday.
More than 250 buffalo will be sold at the park’s annual auction, including 43 2-year-old pregnant heifers. The auction follows September’s jaw-dropping roundup in which more than 1,000 of the beasts stampeded across the prairie.
The sale raises money for the park system while reducing the herd to a sustainable size — something that is especially important after a mild winter and dry summer left the grassland parched and at risk for over-grazing, said Gary Brundige, the park’s resource program manager.
“We’d started to rebuild (the herd) a little bit, but this past year we were probably two-thirds normal on rainfall,” Brundige said. “So we upped the sale a little bit more than we’d initially planned.”
The auction, set in picturesque Black Hills prairie, is part of a carefully planned bison management program. The park aims to keep the herd at about 1,300 bison. Each September, cowboys and cowgirls help corral the rumbling animals in a stampede that draws thousands of spectators from across the world.
The animals are sorted, branded and checked for pregnancy. As many as 400 are sold each year — most to supplement existing herds and help start new ones. Some are used for meat.
Though Saturday’s event doesn’t draw the same crowds as the stampede, a few hundred spectators from the region come each year, said Craig Pugsley, the park’s visitors services coordinator. They’ll gather around the buffalo corrals on Wildlife Loop Road.
“It’s kind of a cool event to see if you haven’t witnessed one,” Pugsley said. “My grandpa would take me to see cattle sales when I was a boy. Watching live bison getting sold is not something you get to see often, and you don’t see it just anywhere.”
But there’s more to buy than buffalo. Custer State Park also has a famous herd of burros. Visitors feed the animals, which have become so friendly with passers-by that they stick their heads inside cars and lick windshields in hopes of getting a treat. Seventeen will be auctioned Saturday, reducing the park’s count to about 35.
Most burro buyers like the idea of a novelty pet or use the donkeys to guard sheep herds, Pugsley said.
The bison business took a hit in 2009, when bull calves fetched an average of only $580 a head. Prices have risen since then, to about $1,300 for a bull calf last year. The highest-priced animals were 2-year-old bred heifers, costing $2,740 on average, and 2-year-old breeding bulls at $2,645.
Last year’s sale of 214 bison, 18 burros and one horse brought in nearly $320,000 for the state park system.
“We’re anticipating that the prices should be pretty comparable to what we saw last year,” Brundige said.
Custer State Park waives its usual entrance fee to accommodate spectators and bidders. The auction will end when the last animal is sold — likely around 2:30 p.m. MST, Pugsley said.
(© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) | <urn:uuid:bbbac158-6556-43d1-9ffe-407415e1c4f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2012/11/16/more-than-250-buffalo-to-be-auctioned-in-s-dakota/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938485 | 781 | 1.78125 | 2 |
MILWAUKEE -- The home of the Brewers took a break from hosting baseball on Saturday to hold an event with a more meaningful purpose.Miller Park set an attendance record for a movie premiere when 28,442 people showed up to watch a screening of "Honor Flight," a documentary following a group of volunteers who help World War II veterans reach Washington D.C. to see its war memorials in person. "I've been anxious waiting, like a bride waiting for a wedding," said Julian Plaster, one of four veterans featured in the film. "I'm very excited today about this. I'm honored that they asked me to take place in this documentary." The movie relays the stories told by Plaster, who was a cook on a burial disposal ship in the Navy from 1942-45, and his fellow veterans as they made their journeys to the nation's capital. Plaster, a Milwaukee native, said it was "wonderful" that so many people came to Miller Park to take in a message he said needs to be heard. "I think it brings to light for everybody, they can see what has gone on, what the World War II veterans went through," Plaster said. "And also to let people know that all veterans, whether in the Korean War, Vietnam, wherever they are, they're going through the same thing that we went through, and we got to remember them. We also got to remember the families that are left behind." Although the movie focuses on the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight division located in Milwaukee, there are six Honor Flight hubs in Wisconsin and 120 total throughout the country. Started in 2005, Honor Flight has sent 81,000 World War II veterans to Washington D.C. free of charge, with Stars and Stripes Honor Flight having been responsible for 2,130 of those veterans since it was started by Joe Dean in November 2008. Dean, the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight Chairman of the Board, said the movie helped veterans open up regarding their experiences during the war. "We recognized through this process so many heroic stories, but we didn't want to lose the fact [that] what's also heroic is that these men and women came back home and found a place for what they had seen and been forced to do, spiritually and mentally," Dean said. "They raised families and were active participants in our community. ... That in and of itself is extraordinary, that they were able to come home and find a place for this." Following the trips, Dean said some of the veteran's families often contact him to let him know their parents or grandparents tell stories they've never told before upon returning. Plaster said it's not always easy to talk about his time during the war, but the movie provided an outlet for him to feel comfortable enough to do just that. "You don't forget that," said Plaster, recalling his experiences. "It's something that stays with you a long time. It gives a different prospect about what war's all about. There's nothing beautiful about it. It's a very cruel thing for everybody that's concerned." Saturday's event featured various activities to celebrate World War II veterans, including fireworks and multiple flyovers. Brewers players also helped welcome patrons to Miller Park on the video board, and Corey Hart said he and his teammates were "so proud" the ballpark was used for such an occasion. "This really is a special thing," Plaster said. "Today is a great day for me and all of us."
Rogers not upset by bunt that broke up no-no
HOUSTON -- Is it a breach of baseball etiquette to bunt to break up a no-hitter in the fifth inning of a two-run game?Apparently not. Because nobody on either side of the Astros-Brewers rivalry seemed to mind when Houston's Scott Moore dropped a bunt single to dash a no-hit bid by Milwaukee's Mark Rogers on Friday night. "I wasn't really thinking about [a no-hitter] that early, but I was a little bit surprised he bunted, to be honest with you," Rogers said. "I didn't expect Scott to bunt, and I've known him for a while." In fact, they used to share an agent. Since then, Rogers and Moore have met as Minor League opponents. "I've faced him quite a few times, and he's never bunted on me," Rogers said. "But he put down a good one. They're trying to get baserunners at that point. ... More power to him." The Brewers were nursing a 2-0 lead in what became a 4-3 loss. Moore said he got the idea when the teams met 10 days earlier at Miller Park. "In Milwaukee, I noticed that [third baseman Aramis] Ramirez was playing back and I tried to bunt there as well," Moore said. "It wasn't a pitch for me to bunt and I pulled it back. My first at-bat [Friday] he was playing me back again, so my second at-bat I took a peek and he was still back. It's a 2-0 game and we're trying to get baserunners, and it worked." Was it a breach of etiquette? "If they're down two runs, his job is to get on base," Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. Rogers brushed it off. "It was a close game and they're trying to get baserunners, so I should have done a better job of getting off the mound and making a play on it," he said. Rogers was denied his first Major League win when reliever John Axford suffered a blown save. However, the starter was pleased with a seven-inning outing in which he allowed only one run on three hits. Rogers struck out eight batters and walked two. He said Friday's outing was "the best I've felt" in the big leagues. "I felt good," Rogers said. "I worked a lot during the week on fastball control, throwing my sinker to both sides of the plate, and I think that helped me with all of the lefties in the lineup. I felt like I was able to pitch 'in' and that helped me open up the outside of the plate later in the game."
Rogers and catcher Jonathan Lucroy also changed their pitch selection as the game wore on. Rogers threw almost exclusively fastballs in his early innings, then mixed in his slider and curveball late.
"I was trying to take them off that fastball a little bit," Rogers said. "To be able to get [breaking pitches] over for strikes, that's made a big difference for me. I'm going to keep working and continue to try to get ahead of these guys with both pitches -- or all three."
Roenicke received a positive report after right-hander Shaun Marcum's start at Class A Wisconsin on Friday. It was Marcum's first game action since he suffered tightness in his elbow in mid-May.Marcum will return to Miller Park this weekend to throw a bullpen session before pitching again for Wisconsin on Wednesday, on the road in Beloit, Wis. If he successfully reaches the 60-pitch mark in that game, Marcum could rejoin the Brewers' rotation during the Aug. 20-22 series against the Cubs. Rickie Weeks tied a franchise record by hitting three doubles in Friday's loss. It was the 34th three-double game in Brewers history.
Adam McCalvy is a reporter for MLB.com. Read his blog, Brew Beat, and follow him on Twitter at @AdamMcCalvy. Jeremy Warnemuende is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs. | <urn:uuid:e542389d-fe1e-4f9d-abb4-bf91a77016eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120811&content_id=36519310¬ebook_id=36547860&vkey=notebook_mil&c_id=mil | 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 | 0.990051 | 1,592 | 1.5 | 2 |
HIFU is one of the breakthrough technologies in the history of medicine and has produced wonderful results. This procedure is different from radiation therapy and uses clean and non-ionizing energy to destroy the cancerous tissues. HIFU in prostate treatment is a simple procedure and can be performed as an out-patient basis in a period of 2-4 hours. HIFU uses sound as a source of energy along with a transducer.
HIFU is a precise procedure and is easily customized according to each patient. The physician can decide the prostate treatment plan according to the diagnosis of that particular patient. Some of the benefits of HIFU procedure in prostate treatment are that more than 92% of the patients are treated successfully. Continence in men can be retained for up to 99%. It is not a surgical procedure and no radiation is used. HIFU is considered to be safe and can be repeated if necessary.
Another new breakthrough in the prostate treatment is the Focal HIFU. Here, only the tumor is targeted and not the entire prostate gland. This procedure reduces a lot of side-effects. This is suitable for men, who are at low and intermediate risk of prostate cancer.
About D-Mannose Ltd
D-Mannose Ltd has a knowledgeable and efficient research team, who are pioneers in using the latest technologies of medicine. They develop equipment and medicines to aid the prostate treatment ( http://www.dmannose.co.uk/ | <urn:uuid:b5fce19b-3ea5-4c49-92c5-b6138a204fe8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prlog.org/12005836-hifu-destroys-target-tissue-in-the-aid-of-prostate-treatment.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953494 | 301 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Mobile phones are still on a growth spurt throughout world. With our phones by our sides at all times, virtual assistants can gain traction and become a critical part of how we function and utilize technology. The point of technology is to make things easier and more efficient for us, right?
With the introduction of Siri, Apple's new virtual assistant platform for iPhones, the bet for the future is on! If you're thinking "Why does this matter? Speech recognition and task dictation is nothing new," you're absolutely right. However, there is one great differentiating factor in that Siri is the first to actually understand what you mean. Rather than passing blunt commands, you talk to it and hold a conversation. More after the jump...
Siri board member and investor, Gary Morgenthaler, says that Siri challenges the very nature of Google's search domain and shakes it down to the foundation. Siri would directly connect users to merchants, services, and content providers to bypass the ad-ridden, blue link results frenzy that is Google. What can/will Google do to adapt to this paradigm change? Publicly denying it can't be right, can it?
"Google has made a huge contribution to all of our lives … they’ve made search comprehensive and instantaneous … but the whole paradigm is wrong,” he says. “People don’t want a million blue links, they want one correct answer. All the rest is noise that you’d rather have go away."
Having said that, where do advertisers fall into the picture? The competitive nature of keywords and search terms is virtually eliminated in favor of directly connecting users to very specific providers of services and products. In a CNET interview, Morgenthaler states:
"Because Siri provides that semantic layer that can take you all the way to the specific goal you are seeking, cost-per-action ads become much more achievable for service providers--in this case, Apple--and also for e-commerce sites. If you're an e-commerce site, why do you want to sprinkle ads everywhere in hopes of bringing someone in the funnel if you have someone right here who wants to make a transactions?"
If search for knowledge, information, and solutions become so linear and specific, how will "discovery" be handled? We often learn and find things through search that we generally wouldn't if single answers were always given. Will this in turn make us lazy, or smarter and more productive? Could Siri promote curiosity by providing various answers and "suggestions" for our requests? If so, then Google can remain relevant in the future, but with a few tweaks.
While Siri sounds and performs impressively, it's important to note that the current implementation is relatively de-featured compared to what Siri used to do when it was just a downloadable app. Once Apple opens the APIs for Siri, the possibilities are endless, just as Apple opened up the iPhone to software developers. Targeted queries vs. general search, will be the name of the game.
Will searching the "old school" way start to vanish with the presence of Siri and the likes to come? Will virtual libraries and encyclopedias be accessible through an artificially intelligent computer, allowing new ways of learning and discovering knowledge?
Please share your views of the future in the comments below. | <urn:uuid:89812fde-d22a-46bc-9235-bd71a3e002a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onefusedlife.com/2011/10/30/future-virtual-assistants-siri-approves/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946497 | 677 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Name: Shashi Kapoor|
Date of Birth: 18 Mar 1938
Place of Birth: Calcutta
Shashi Kapoor was born Balbir-Raj Prithviraj Kapoor on 18 March 1938 in Kolkata. He is an award-winning Indian film actor and producer. and a member of the Kapoor family, a film dynasty in India's Bollywood cinema, is the younger brother of Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor, the son of Prithviraj Kapoor, the widower of Jennifer Kendal, and the father of Karan Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor, and Sanjana Kapoor.
He is remembered for many hit Hindi films, including ones he starred in with Amitabh Bachchan, such as Deewar, Do Aur Do Paanch and Namak Halaal. He has also played leading roles in a number of British films, including several Merchant Ivory productions such as Shakespeare-Wallah. In 2011, he was honoured with the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India.
Shashi Kapoor started acting in films as a child in the early 1940s appearing in several mythological films. His best known performances were in Aag (1948) and Awaara (1951) where he played the younger version of the characters played by his older brother Raj Kapoor.
He made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 Yash Chopra film Dharmputra and went on to appear in over 100 films. He was a very popular debonair actor in Bollywood during the 1960s, 1970s and the early 1980s with his most famous movies include Waqt (1965), Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), Kanyadan (1969), Haseena Maan Jayegi (1968), Aa Gale Lag Jaa (1973), Roti Kapda Aur Makan (1974), Chor Machaye Shor (1974), Deewaar (1975), Kabhi Kabhie (1976), Fakira (1976) Trishul (1978), Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978), Kaala Patthar (1979), Suhaag (1979), Shaan (1980), Kranti (1981) and Namak Halaal (1982).
In most of his successful films in the 1970s and early 1980s he co-starred alongside Amitabh Bachchan.
He was also known internationally for starring in many British and American films, notably Merchant Ivory productions, such as Shakespeare Wallah (1965) opposite his future sister-in-law Felicity Kendal, Bombay Talkie (1970), and Heat and Dust (1982) in which he co-starred with his wife Jennifer Kendal. He also starred in other British and American films such as Pretty Polly (1967) opposite Hayley Mills, Siddhartha (1972), and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987).
In 1980 he set up his production house, Film Valas, which produced critically acclaimed films such as Junoon (1978), Kalyug (1981), 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), Vijeta (1982) and Utsav (1984). In 1991 he produced and directed a fantasy film titled Ajooba which had his frequent co-star Amitabh Bachchan and nephew Rishi Kapoor in the lead.
His last and most recent film appearances were in Jinnah (1998), a biopic of Mohammed Ali Jinnah in which he was the narrator and another Merchant-Ivory production titled Side Streets (1998). He has now retired from the film industry and not appeared in any film since. He has been seen in the limelight at the "Shashi Kapoor Film Festival" held in Muscat, Oman (Sept 2007). He has lost a considerable amount of weight and looked healthy. Recently, at the 55th Annual Filmfare Awards, Shashi Kapoor received the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award.
Attended Don Bosco High School in Matunga, Bombay. In July 1958, he married the English actress Jennifer Kendal and they acted in a number of films together, most notably in the Merchant Ivory productions. He had three children with Kendal; Karan Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor and Sanjana Kapoor all of whom for a short while became film actors. Kendal died of cancer in 1984. The English actress Felicity Kendal is his sister-in-law.
His son Kunal is married to director Ramesh Sippy's daughter and Sanjana to wildlife conservationist Valmik Thapar. | <urn:uuid:f3133e7f-3aca-4512-ace6-4b47f7ea7a31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solutionastrology.com/articledetails.asp?articleid=1192 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976624 | 947 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Dress It Up
Instructor: Terry Hoffman
Date: Wednesdays, April 23rd - May 28th
Time: 7:30 pm
Price: $120, early bird discount is available*
Dress it Up will introduce you to new ways of playing familiar chords, adding colour to folk, blues and pop songs. In effect, you will learn to transform a “vanilla” song into one with a richer sound. Each week focuses on one chord, and how it can be applied to a variety of songs and song types using grace notes, chord inversions and rhythmic techniques to “dress up” your playing. By the end of the term you will know how to play E, A, D, C, G D chords in at least 3 positions.
Dress it Up also covers some minor keys, basic bass runs, walk-ups and walk-downs, and a smattering of blues. The class makes extensive use of online videos that demonstrate key points covered in each class. Handouts are also supplied to illustrate chord shapes, and students receive mp3 play-along recordings via email, to aid their practice.
This class is geared to intermediate guitar players who can navigate basic folk, pop and blues chord changes smoothly (i.e., C-F-G, E-A-B, D-G-A, etc.). Finger picking will be an asset, but isn’t necessary. Note reading isn’t required.
You can view a sampler video of some of the course material at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5ZkTaSimF0 .
* Save $10 if you send in your cheque before Monday, April 8Check For Space In this Course!
Terry Hoffman has been playing guitar since the Beatles were still a working band. He has taught guitar privately and is a member of Mike and The Mellotones. | <urn:uuid:8d6ad9fb-4492-4d2b-a5ad-0e6ca9febab9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moveablemusicschool.ca/courses/dress-it-up/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944505 | 398 | 1.640625 | 2 |
English classes for immigrants
The government keeps telling immigrants to learn English but won't pay for it
THE English are notoriously reluctant to study other people's languages but increasingly anxious that immigrants should learn theirs. This week the government proclaimed that from April the 40,000 job-seekers who say their poor grasp of English prevents them from finding work will have to show they are trying to learn it or have their benefits docked.
This followed months of rumbling about the need for better integration of ethnic minorities, especially Muslims, who, the government worries, are not embracing British ways. Since 2005 would-be citizens have had to pass a test in English about life in Britain, which from April will also be compulsory for those seeking merely to settle. In his leadership pitch at the Labour Party conference in September, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, banged on about Britishness and declared: “It is right that people who come to...this country to stay learn English.”
Quite right. Life is easier and work more profitable when you speak the local language. Immigrants who are fluent in English are more than 20% likelier to get jobs than those who are not and on average earn almost 20% more, according to a recent report by NIACE, an adult-education charity. Given the pay-off, why aren't immigrants learning English?
Actually, they are. The number of students enrolled on courses in “English for speakers of other languages” (ESOL) more than trebled in the four years to July 2005, to nearly half a million. Even these impressive numbers do not tell the whole story: colleges in some parts of the country have waiting lists of up to two years and find students queuing at dawn to sign up. Tower Hamlets College in east London only accepts students who can manage 80% attendance, yet its waiting list is often more than a year. In 2002 the Department for Work and Pensions asked refugees what help they most wanted in order to find jobs. English lessons came top.
Demand is racing ahead of supply: if there is an under-achiever in the class, it is the government. Funding has increased substantially but has not kept pace: in the year to July 2005 it amounted to £577 per student per year, compared with £648 in 2000-01. The result, says NIACE, is patchy teaching standards, especially in the new landing areas for refugees and eastern European migrants, which are not used to large-scale immigration. Instead of forking out still more money, the government has decided to introduce course fees in order to “manage demand more effectively”—ie, put off some students. From September everyone except the unemployed and those on income support will have to pay for lessons. Colleges are still doing their sums, but most reckon the average part-time learner will face a yearly bill of some £300.
The government says that firms which employ migrant workers should contribute, but it has not come up with a way of making them. (“I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for gangmasters signing their workers up for ESOL classes,” says one teacher.) And among the victims of “demand management” could be other people the government is especially keen to reach.
Shamim Nizami, an ESOL lecturer at Bradford College, has in her class some of the “imported brides” from south Asia that the government fears are most isolated. Many are not registered as unemployed or in receipt of benefits so will soon have to ask their in-laws to pay. Without English they cannot attend parents' evenings at school, visit the doctor unaccompanied or integrate socially in a hundred ways. Spouses are already ineligible for free lessons until they have lived in Britain for a year, a handicap for those who are most in need of settling in and infuriating when they are told they must try harder to mix.
The government pleads poverty. Since 2001 ESOL has grabbed more than half of the “Skills for Life” budget, squeezing the literacy and numeracy courses, aimed mainly at British-born adults, which produce more qualifications that count towards official targets. But while ESOL funding is reined in, ever more government money is spent on translating: in December the BBC totted up the figures and found they came to some £100m a year. The court system's translation budget had trebled in five years. One NHS trust ran anti-smoking sessions in Turkish. Whatever happened to teaching a man to fish? | <urn:uuid:b639d645-2b46-4e11-9328-3ffb1ff83cea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.economist.com/node/8706483 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974659 | 933 | 1.78125 | 2 |
By Jill Dougherty
They don't get much more anti-American than Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
For many Americans, the Latin American president is embodied by his 2006 lashing out at then-U.S. President George W. Bush.
"Yesterday the devil came here and it still smells of sulfur today."
For the United States, the socialist Chavez has been a diplomatic troublemaker ever since he took office for the first time in 1999.
But that doesn't mean the United States has given up on Venezuela. Especially with Chavez - who is undergoing cancer treatment in a Cuban hospital and battling complications - being too sick to attend his own inauguration for a new six-year term.
Asked Thursday to comment about Chavez, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters that the United States has "put forward some ideas about how this relationship could be improved on a step-by-step basis."
"Our sense is that at the moment they are very much preoccupied with internal affairs," she said. "So we are standing by and when they are ready to talk to us about improving things, we're ready for those conversations."
For 14 years, Chavez made it his mission to lambaste the United States for meddling in his country and the region. But Washington does want a better relationship with Venezuela, the fourth biggest supplier of oil to the U.S., providing 10% of oil imports into the U.S.
There are several things, Security Clearance has learned, that the Obama administration wants to work with Venezuela on, including counter-narcotics efforts, fighting terrorism, energy and the rule of law.
But Washington is taking a go-slow approach. After all, even when Chavez is gone, his left-wing ideology, "Chavismo," will live on at least for a while. And his supporters, the "Chavistas," hold all the major levers of power in the country.
"He controls the courts and the media and other institutions," said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue and adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "There are a lot of Venezuelans who view him very sympathetically, see him as the savior of the country even though the conditions are very, very bad in the country."
The U.S. has been talking with Venezuelan officials as well as officials from other Latin American countries during the past few weeks and that has fueled speculation that Washington is trying to engineer a transition to a leader more friendly to the United States. Memories run deep of a coup in 2002 that removed Chavez from office for 48 hours. He blamed the U.S. for trying to overthrow him but Washington has always denied any involvement.
The State Department insists it's strictly hands-off.
Washington wants a "democratic ... transparent" transition, Nuland said, adding that "it's going to be for Venezuelans to decide how that happens."
Shifter said the U.S. is watching from afar.
"I don't think there is any evidence the United States is up to anything," he said. "I think it would be counter-productive. The Obama administration has been very restrained in its position toward Venezuela and has been very careful, I think, to just let the situation play out."
Chavez is friendly with Iran, North Korea, Belarus and Syria but, in spite of that, commercial ties between the U.S. and Venezuela are strong.
"The U.S. is Venezuela's most important trading partner, with U.S. goods accounting for about 24% of imports and approximately 42% of Venezuelan exports going to the United States," according to the State Department.
Venezuela has played a game of musical chairs with ambassadors.
More than four years ago, Chavez ordered the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador. In return, the U.S. kicked out the Venezuelan ambassador.
A year later, both ambassadors returned to their posts, but in 2010, the Venezuelan government refused to accept the credentials of the new U.S. ambassador. Washington took the same action against the Venezuelan ambassador.
Even if relations improve, don't look for the U.S. to send its ambassador back anytime soon. Chavez, by some reports, is nearing death, but "Chavismo" is still alive and well in his Venezuela. | <urn:uuid:a0f781ea-7120-44df-b589-1927192bb083> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/11/waiting-for-post-chavez-venezuela/?hpt=wo_t2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978723 | 890 | 1.648438 | 2 |
DVD tools are more important on Linux than on most operating systems. While Windows or OSX users rarely burn CDs or DVDs except for an occasional backup, for many Linux users, burning a Live CD to investigate a distribution is a common task.
Similarly, although the users of other operating systems may extract audio or visuals from a CD, all the really large local content libraries I have seen tend to be on Linux. What is an occasional convenience to others are standard tools in the free and open source lifestyle.
For this reason, DVD tools are well-represented in both KDE and GNOME. On both desktops, earlier tools like X-CD-Roast that are formidable in their options have been replaced with more user-friendly default tools: K3b for KDE, and Brasero for burning and Sound Juicer for audio ripping for GNOME.
All these tools perform their basic tasks well enough for most users. However, what is striking is how clearly each of them demonstrates the design philosophies of the desktops with which they are associated.
Brasero and Sound Juicer typify the radical simplicity of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, as well as the old Unix principle of designing a separate application for each task. By contrast, K3B reflects the KDE tendency towards centralized applications that include every option and do every task in their categories. As Amarok does for music, or digiKam does for image management, so K3B is an all-in-one application for everything to do with CDs and DVDs.
For several releases, GNOME included a basic burner in Nautilus. However, the Nautilus burner offered few options beyond the selection of files, and some users may have found it mildly confusing to use. At any rate, for the last three GNOME releases, the Nautilus burner has been replaced by Brasero, which is almost as limited in functionality, but has a much less confusing interface.
The virtue of Brasero is that even first-time users can rarely doubt what to do next. Brasero opens on a list of five basic goals -- an audio CD, a data CD/DVD, a video project, a copy of a disk, or the creation of one. Each of these five goals is annotated in half a dozen words on the opening screen to make them clearer.
Selecting a goal moves you to another screen in which the steps to perform the task are clearly laid out. For instance, if you choose to create a data disk (that is, copy files from your hard drive to a CD or DVD), you are presented with instructions about the different ways in which you can add or remove contents from a disk.
Brasero offers a list of five basic goals
All you need to do is to make sure that the space required by the selected files does not exceed the capacity of the target disk, decide whether the file names will be Windows compatible, and click the burn button when you are ready. Checking file integrity, setting burn speed -- all the rest of the details -- are automatically taken care of. You can create a cover, or manually check file integrity, but that is just about all you can do.
If you want to rip an audio CD, Sound Juicer is nearly as straightforward as Brasero. Sound Juicer automatically detects the contents of a disk in the drive, and includes just five tags: Title, Artist, Genre, Year and Disc. Unless you want to unselect a track, all you need to do is click the Extract button.
Users who want more control can go to Edit -> Preferences to set such options as the destination for ripped files and the names of folders and files or the output format. But in many cases, the defaults set by the distribution make such fine-tuning unnecessary.
More experienced users will probably chafe at the lack of options in both Brasero and Sound Juicer. You cannot, for example, change the write speed in Brasero in the hopes that a slower speed will eliminate errors. Nor can you add custom tags in Sound Juicer.
Yet despite the obvious limitations, Brasero and Sound Juicer succeed because they are designed to fit the more common use cases as closely as possible. In the majority of cases, average users do not need more choices than either application provides -- and, often, do not want them. Users do not even need to separate out one set of tasks from another, because the sets are delineated by application.
Both are no-nonsense applications designed to do a small set of tasks moderately well in the majority of cases. If you do want something with more options, then you can search your distro's repositories for other tools.
One of the ways around the issues of security and control that make some businesses wary of cloud computing is to build a private cloud -- one that remains within the corporate firewall and is wholly controlled internally. Private clouds also increase the agility of IT an organization's IT infrastructure and make it easier to roll out new technology projects. Download this eBook to get the facts behind the private cloud and learn how your organization can get started. | <urn:uuid:f05cb10d-8ee1-4cfa-b504-117fef1bf227> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.datamation.com/osrc/article.php/3880076/KDE-vs-GNOME-DVD-Tools-and-Desktop-Design.htm | 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 | 0.935787 | 1,036 | 1.828125 | 2 |
I always lament the end of a month: its rush to be over, its unfinished business, its losses and gains—now history. In contrast, tomorrow’s new page features hopeful squares waiting to be filled. Winters return might bring the same sadness if it were not for my companions on the prairie.
Skeletons of plants, once in bloom, line the driveway and on into the expanse beyond. At first glance they meld into brownish sameness but there are as many variations of hue and girth and height as there are in people.
The spindly switch grass always catches my eye with its long sturdy spine, minute seeds and pale, gracefully arching foliage. This amazing plant often stands upright even through winter’s snow. The big bluestem still towers but its characteristic crows feet are more like tufts, without their dangling seeds. In their old age they seem to have lost some height. Most of the thousands of feathery seeds have flown from the little bluestem but the stalks take on an almost maroon glow. In the summer I could hardly find Canadian rye but now that all green is gone, I see the heavy seed heads bending beautifully. The Indian grass stalks have also lost their seeds but continue to look regal, especially when the early morning light gives them a bronze hue.
Most wildflowers are only little button heads denuded of their seeds but the milkweed pods retain their skeletal remains. I love the way the brittle tear-shaped pods twist on the stem, making artistic arrangements.
I don’t know what goes on within the dying stalks or what’s happening to their long roots below the ground past the frost line. Do they have capillary systems like trees? How do they store the nutrients needed to grow again? But after ten years in this place, I know this much: the flowers and the tall grasses are really only hibernating within their seeds—ready to grow again when warmth, moisture and sun usher them back in spring.
A day comes every season when winter is in the air. All denial, based on unseasonable balmy days and abundant sunshine, fades into gray skies and damp air. It has nothing to do with official dates—those of us who live close to nature just know. On Sunday my husband urged me to take our usual afternoon walk but one glance out the window gave me the chills. Not to be shamed by my preference for warm and cozy, I bundled up. We avoided the woods as several shots had been heard from hunters getting ready for opening day. Looking over the lake from the dock we spotted a large bird gliding through the steely sky—and soon realized it had to be an eagle.
High above us, the splendid bird gave us a show. The sky showed slight variations in hew so that when the eagle soared and floated on the wind currents, it often passed a lighter spot. The movements were so carefree and playful. Shivering from the cold breeze, I should have been walking briskly, but couldn’t take my eyes away from him. I wanted to hold onto what no photograph could portray even if we had been close enough to try. I carry the image of one elegant bird that lifted my spirits by bringing a little “shine” on the day when I knew, from my head down to my boots that winter had come.
And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of His Hand.
Michael Joncas, 1979 – “On Eagle’s Wings” | <urn:uuid:d4338130-30c1-46fd-bcb8-708b707c97ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.carolrottman.com/1/category/winter/1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965105 | 761 | 1.742188 | 2 |
MANAGED CARE February 1997. ©1997 Stezzi Communications
Open a newspaper or magazine or turn on your television these days, and you'll soon see a report that casts an HMO in a bad light. Here are 10 reasons for managed care's current run of bad publicity.
A headline decries kicking new mothers out of hospitals. A TV talk show bemoans gagging doctors. A magazine offers advice on getting the most from your HMO as if readers must be on their guard against victimization. These days managed care seems to lurch from one negative news report to the next. The fact that it has done what many experts said was impossible without a complete overhaul of the health care system — dramatically slowed the growth of medical spending — has been lost in the din of scandals and scares.
Whether bad publicity shapes public opinion or taps into pre-existing views is hard to say. A Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll conducted last summer found that roughly one out of five Americans thought it would be a "bad thing" if they received their health care through a managed care plan. Last September, thirty-three percent of respondents to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll thought the trend toward heavier use of HMOs was a "change for the worse" nationally, and although a heftier 40 percent called the change positive, that 33 percent plainly represented more than a few grumblers or horror-story victims.
What's behind the current trashing of managed care, by the media and to some extent by the public? There are genuine abuses, of course. And ignorance adds fuel to the fire, along with a rosy recall that tends to ignore the problems that long plagued fee-for-service medicine. Debate will rage over how much of managed care's bad rap is an unavoidable cost of bringing change to American medicine and how much is needlessly self-inflicted. But any inventory of the bad rap's causes must touch on these 10 points:
1. Managed care means the spree is over. The sky seemed to be the limit with medical care in post-World War II America. And the combination of low costs, indemnity insurance and, later, Medicare coverage made paying for it relatively painless for many patients. "We had everything we wanted and someone else paid for it," notes John Kralewski, director of the Institute for Health Services Research at the University of Minnesota. Now the party is over. To some extent, whatever came next was bound to feel like a hangover by comparison.
2. Physicians face new pressures — and patients know it. TV's Marcus Welby never had to call anyone for an authorization. One of medicine's most appealing aspects is the physician's ethical duty to do the utmost for the health of the patient, and one reason managed care organizations are under attack these days is that many Americans worry — sometimes with some justification — that their doctors' judgment has been affected by new incentives to limit expense.
"It is important that patients understand why they are not getting an MRI," says Carrie Gavora, a health policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank. "Is it because the doctor doesn't believe they need it? Or because their plan is limiting MRIs for financial reasons?"
Controlling costs is not an unpopular idea in the abstract. But a personal experience with the new boundaries on spending can infuriate patients, their families and their doctors. And that anger is often directed at those in the business of setting the limits — managed care organizations. "Everyone agrees that the cost of medical care must be managed, but nobody wants the cost of their care to be managed," says Paul Bluestein, M.D., senior vice president and chief medical officer of ConnectiCare Inc., a 190,000-member, not-for-profit managed-care organization with headquarters in Farmington, Conn.
Obviously, good managed care organizations let physicians practice good medicine that puts the patient's health first. At the same time, Bluestein says, let's be honest: Physicians are not as free as they once were to decide by themselves what is best for the patient. Utilization review, capitation and other cost-control mechanisms have added lots of gray to what once seemed a black-and-white picture.
3. Practice guidelines sometimes seem stingy. Few things have generated as much ill will for managed care as treatment guidelines. Postpartum guidelines, for example, became such a conspicuous target of criticism that the politicians stepped in. Last year, a federal mandate gave new mothers at least 48 hours in the hospital.
Ophthalmologists fumed about the Milliman & Robertson-generated guideline that restricted cataract surgery in older people to one eye. When Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Rhode Island and Mutual of Omaha went with the one-eye approach, there were howls of protest, and both plans backed away from it.
In 1995, ConnectiCare came under sharp criticism for using a set of guidelines that classified radical mastectomy as an outpatient procedure. Yet Bluestein says guidelines are widely misunderstood. They are supposed to be a target for what treatment should be like, not a hard-and-fast rule. "They are a tool, like a hammer or a screwdriver. They are neither good nor bad. What's important is how they are used."
Managed care organizations have to explain guidelines better, he says. At ConnectiCare, after the mastectomy fiasco, the organization's front-line case reviewers have been told to use precise language when talking to physicians. The response "I cannot authorize this" is not supposed to be synonymous with denial, Bluestein stresses, and the opportunities to "climb the ladder" of authority, to a case manager and ultimately the medical director, need to be spelled out.
Bluestein says he has also learned the hard way that a set of guidelines cannot deviate too much from standard practice in a region, even if a body of research shows the guidelines to be far superior to the standard.
4. Patients often don't get famous-name care. For generations in Texas, if you had cancer there was only one place to go — the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. When the Texas legislature attempted to put "centers of excellence" language into wide-ranging managed care legis- lation a couple of years ago, the final version mentioned only one hospital: M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. And when the legislator who was at the center of that bruising legislative battle hears constituents' gripes about managed care these days, getting access to M.D. Anderson is often the problem. That legislator is Rep. John Smithee, an Amarillo Republican who chairs the lower house's insurance committee. "The most common complaint is about denying access to specialists, particularly cancer cases," he says.
Bluestein asserts that managed care organizations don't save money by denying care, but rather by changing where care is given. That means, of course, reducing utilization of hospitals, by far the most expensive place to provide care. But Texans aren't alone in equating high-quality medical care with quick and easy admission to a hospital and, depending on the disease, often a well-known hospital. Little wonder, then, that some of the strongest criticism of managed care has come from people with chronic illnesses — the people who have the greatest perceived need for access to those institutions and doctors that are widely viewed as the best.
Rep. Smithee understands what many patients don't — that for most conditions fame doesn't necessarily indicate significant superiority. "For most breast, lung and other common cancers — even in life-threatening cases — the treatment is fairly routine," he says. "It is the extraordinary cancers that need to go to M.D. Anderson."
5. For-profit health care sparks controversy. In many places where managed care is relatively popular — the states of Washington, Minnesota and Massachusetts, for example — it grew gradually and was often dominated by not-for-profit organizations such as Kaiser Permanente and Harvard Community Health Plan. The rapid growth of aggressive, for-profit HMOs in recent years has turned managed care into a big business and made it vulnerable to attacks that profit, not patient care, is what the industry is all about.
George Anders, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has done an impressive job chronicling the rise of managed care during the last several years, concludes his recently published book Health Against Wealth with the observation that the HMO/managed care industry deserves credit for bringing about a much-needed change — dampening medical spending — but that the big profits, humongous executive compensation packages and high living of some industry executives could be seen away from Wall Street as "uncomfortable hypocrisy for an industry that publicly preaches the virtues of austerity."
6. Some managed care organizations have blundered. In Tennessee, managed care companies competing for the state's Medicaid business reduced payments to doctors so drastically that in some areas of the state immunization rates actually dropped. In Florida in 1995, almost half of the 29 Medicaid managed care plans were fined for rule violations. In New York, state health investigators posing as people seeking appointments had difficulties arranging for prenatal care and immunizations, the very preventive health services that managed care organizations are supposed to excel at providing.
Dozens of similar stories about corner-cutting and foolish penny-pinching have appeared in newspapers and magazines. Medicaid, where the margins are narrow, has been an especially fertile ground for misdeeds. Efforts to weed out the bad apples and the recent spate of regulation designed to rein in the excesses of the industry may be the best things that ever happened to managed care.
"Managed care is a wonderful thing," says Texas state Rep. Smithee. "But the situation now is just like the beginning of this century, when mass production of food started. Food became more affordable and accessible then, but you had to have some controls to ensure it was safe and healthy."
7. Prevention isn't sexy — or even easy. Even managed care's critics say that for some preventive services, such as Pap smears and mammograms, it does a better job than old-style fee-for-service medicine. "HMOs are a lot better on that basic stuff," says Thomas Bodenheimer, M.D., a San Francisco-area primary care physician who wrote well-argued critiques of managed care last year for two leading medical journals. But as Bluestein points out, "Prevention isn't very exciting." The press, he says, is more likely to dwell on a patient's discharge from the hospital shortly after delivery than the fact that many people didn't get the flu because they got flu shots.
Then there's the confusion factor. It's not always simple to decide who should get preventive services and how often. Take mammograms. The National Cancer Institute says women shouldn't get annual mammograms until age 50, though that recommendation is currently under review. The American Cancer Society says regular mammograms should start 10 years earlier. If an HMO goes with the NCI recommendation (which is based in part on the underappreciated problems associated with false positives) it's an easy target for charges of skimping.
Finally, even if all the recommendations agreed, the individualistic approach many Americans take toward their medical care would cause problems. Some people are going to want to have a no- or low-risk test or a screening just to be the on safe side, even if on a population basis it doesn't make any sense. "You don't care about the population," says Joseph M. Heyman, M.D., an obstetrician and president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. "You care about what is best for you."
8. People don't like being told what to do. Remember how effective the insurance industry's "Harry and Louise" television ads were in turning public opinion against the Clinton administration's health care plan? They played upon apprehension about a faceless government entity limiting health care choices. Part of their success was due to people's distrust of government, but another part stemmed from simple resistance to any kind of dictate from above. For many people, an employer's imposition of a managed care plan can seem just as odious, says Robert Blendon, Sc.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, an authority on public opinion in health care.
Blendon offers an automotive parallel. What if a company did a study and found that Volvos were the best and safest cars, then gave employees financial inducements to drive only Volvos? How might they react? Some might be grateful for their company's good advice. Some might already drive Volvos. But many would resent interference in their choice even on virtuous grounds.
Managed care saves employers money, but few if any employees get a specifically designated "managed care" bonus at year's end. Here, as with preventive services, managed care's strength is shown by a negative: If insurance premiums had continued to rise the way they were rising a few years ago, says Bluestein, many employers might have dropped health coverage altogether.
9. Measuring quality is fraught with hazards. As envisioned by HMO theoretician Paul Ellwood, M.D., one of the HMO's chief benefits was supposed to be the development of objective measures of the quality of care. But this has proved to be philosophically contentious, technically difficult and politically delicate. Satisfaction surveys only tell so much. And the organization set up to measure the quality of care given by managed care plans, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, has come under attack from Ellwood and others for not being independent enough.
The Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) standards that NCQA uses have been widely disparaged by physicians for tallying up easy-to-administer tests rather than getting at core issues of medical care. Heyman's opinion is typical. "I think the way they measure the quality of managed care is ridiculous," he says. "They're not measuring quality. They're measuring the number of Pap smears."
Also, some quality-of-care measurements have come back to haunt managed-care plans. In October, the Wall Street Journal's Anders documented how managed care plans in New York have steered heart patients from more expensive hospitals to lower-cost ones — even though adjusted, hospital-specific mortality data showed that for heart care, the more expensive hospitals were superior. The take-home message of the story was a real black eye for managed care: Given a choice between lower cost and higher quality, some health plans chose the former.
10. Finally, bad news begets bad news. A free, independent press is an important watchdog. But like all canines, the press is a pack animal. And managed care became one of the stories of 1996 in newsrooms around the country. It seemed that every self-respecting newspaper or magazine from the New York Post to Glamour ran some sort of story on managed care malfeasance.
Besides moving in groups, pack animals tend to sort themselves into leaders and followers. The same is true of the press. The top dog, The New York Times, reported aggressively on managed care, particularly as the system made rapid gains in the New York City market. Bob Herbert recently wrote two columns based on a government report critical of managed care formularies. And Anders' reporting at the Wall Street Journal set the pace for critical coverage of the industry.
It may seem that managed care plans can do no right these days in the eyes of the press, physicians and government regulators. But recently exceptions to the doom-and-gloom stories have been popping up, suggesting perhaps the beginnings of a backlash to the backlash. On Dec. 23, the lead editorial in the Boston Globe, titled "Quality Care in Massachusetts," gave an upbeat appraisal of the managed care in the state and warned against regulatory overkill (while also expressing strong misgivings about the conduct of companies it considered too aggressive).
A few days later, a Connecticut legislative committee released a glowing report on HMOs, which it said were the target of only 19 percent of the complaints received by the state's insurance department in the past year. The report credited HMOs with lowering health care costs, generally satisfying customers and allowing longer hospital stays than those previously cited by critics.
If these developments are portents, 1997 may see the rise of a fuller understanding of managed care on the part of press and public alike. Still, for the 10 reasons cited above, critics will always be quick to spot the warts. | <urn:uuid:9afa5a1e-bd33-416e-af0c-212dfa7057bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.managedcaremag.com/print/archives/9702/9702.badrap.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971833 | 3,426 | 1.65625 | 2 |
A nuclear power plant in Massachusetts lost power and automatically shut down late on Friday during a massive blizzard across the northeastern United States, the nuclear regulator said.
The reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth closed down with no problems and
there was no threat to public safety, an official at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
"There was no impact on plant workers or the public," he said.
The snowstorm, which continued on Saturday, disrupted thousands of flights and left more than 200 000 people without power in Massachusetts alone.
It shut down roads and mass transit and blanketed the region with heavy snowfall. | <urn:uuid:d7af92eb-774c-4d44-830e-6a5accd5cf8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/NorthAmerica/US-snowstorm-shuts-down-Massachusetts-nuclear-plant/Article1-1009111.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959635 | 127 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Thursday, December 13, 2012
AccuWeather is warning of a storm possibly bringing snow, power outages and coastal flooding next week.
A "substantial" winter storm could blow its way through Maryland by the middle of next week, according to the weather website AccuWeather. The website’s current forecast predicts a potential for rain that could turn into snow, with coastal flooding and power outages. “While the details are still uncertain, a larger, slower-moving and more powerful storm could slam the mid-Atlantic and New England with heavy precipitation, strong winds and above-normal tides Tuesday (Dec. 18) into Thursday (Dec. 20),” according to an email from AccuWeather. The current forecast from the National Weather Service calls for a chance of rain through the early part of next week, but doesn’t currently predict any snow for the area.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
The next gubernatorial election in 2014 could draw a crowded primary field.
Comptroller Peter Franchot, who was expected to run for governor in 2014, announced Tuesday he would not seek the post. Franchot, whose criticism of Gov. Martin O’Malley lead many to believe he would run, instead announced he would seek to retain his current position. But just because Franchot won’t run, doesn’t mean there won’t be a crowded primary field. Other Democrats who may seek the office include: Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, Del. Heather Mizeur, Attorney General Doug Gansler and Howard County Executive Ken Ulman. What Democrat would you like to see make a run for the state’s top office? Tell us in the comments why you would like to see that person campaign for the office.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
President Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were re-elected Tuesday night, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney and his vice-presidential running mate Rep. Paul Ryan. NBC News called the presidential election for Obama around 11:15 EST. The president sent a message on Twitter at 10:14 saying simply, "This happened because of you. Thank you." The Obama campaign won the most expensive presidential race ever, with both parties raising about $2.6 billion. The race was filled with negative campaigning on both sides, from President Obama attacking Romney’s business experience with Bain Capital to Romney lambasting Obama’s handling of the economy. The race tightened during the final months of the campaign, with gaffes and surges …
Monday, October 29, 2012
Additionally, bridges will close and early voting tomorrow is canceled, Gov. Martin O’Malley said Monday afternoon.
As Hurricane Sandy arrives in Maryland, more than 24,000 state residents are without power, Gov. Martin O’Malley announced in a press briefing Monday afternoon. “This is a very, very dangerous storm and she is intensifying at her center,” he said. O'Malley reiterated that trees, poles and power lines will be knocked down. “The main message of the day is to hunker down and to stay inside,” he said. In the half-hour prior the briefing, which began just after 2 p.m., the number of Marylanders without power rose from around 1,000 to more than 24,000, O'Malley said at Maryland Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Reisterstown. One person died in a weather-related car crash in Montgomery County around 11:30 a.m. Monday, The Washington …
Maryland has released a list of shelters from throughout the state.
Source: Maryland Emergency Management Agency State Shelters Anne Arundel County Baltimore City Baltimore County Calvert County Caroline County Carroll County Cecil County Dorchester County Harford County Howard County Queen Anne’s County Somerset County St.Mary’s County Talbot County Wicomico Worcester County
Gov. Martin O’Malley urged Marylanders to stay inside for the next 36 hours and said the storm will take lives as it moves through Maryland.
Gov. Martin O’Malley said Marylanders will die as Hurricane Sandy moves through the state. “The days ahead are going to be very difficult,” he said in a press conference at Maryland Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Reisterstown Monday morning. “There will be people who will die and are killed in the storm.” He urged residents to stay off the roads and stay inside for the next 24 to 36 hours. High winds are anticipated for the Baltimore-Washington area by the early afternoon, O’Malley said. He expects power outages to start this afternoon and this evening. “There will be many trees that will go down and there will be many power lines that will go down,” he said. The storm has intensified in the past 12 hours, the governor said. “…
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend joined other Catholics in backing same-sex marriage in Maryland.
UPDATE (4:07 p.m.)—Former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—the eldest daughter of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy—joined other Catholics in announcing her support for same-sex marriage in Maryland. Townsend, of Towson, cited the famous speech made by her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association prior to the presidential election in 1960, where he explained his Catholic faith would inform his decisions but that he wouldn’t be beholden to Rome. "But he brought with him the understanding that while the church can’t tell you what to do, the values of the Catholic Church, the values of love and justice that we learn from our faith can influence what we do, and that’s what we’re doing here today," …
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Comptroller Peter Franchot argues the state needs to find a way to build businesses not casinos.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
By Comptroller Peter Franchot For anyone who remains unconvinced that the Maryland economy has lost momentum and is now moving in the wrong direction, the latest unemployment figures released by the U.S. Labor Department should remove all doubt. The State of Maryland lost 11,000 jobs in June – the third highest total in the nation, trailing only Wisconsin and Tennessee. This was our fourth consecutive month of job losses, and it elevated our state’s unemployment rate to 6.9 percent. Disappointing as those numbers are, they don’t tell the full story. Maryland also ranked 48th in Fiscal Year 2012 in both average private hourly and weekly earnings growth, and has actually experienced year-over-year declines in both categories. This means …
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
According to the Maryland Lottery officials, the winners of the historic $656 million jackpot watched the lottery news unfolding, came up with a plan, and went to the lottery headquarters in Baltimore with a financial adviser.
On March 30, a 20-year-old public school employee found a winning Mega Millions lottery ticket among the 60 she had spread out on the floor. "Once I realized one was a winner, I called my two friends right away," she said in a Maryland Lottery news release Tuesday. The three have decided to remain anonymous. She and another winner, a man in his 40s, went over to the third friend's house—a woman in her 50s—to plan how to claim their winnings, the release states. The three friends, all public school employees, had gone in on a pool together to purchase the 60 tickets for the historic $656 million Mega Millions jackpot, lottery officials said. They bought the Maryland winning ticket earlier that evening at the 7-Eleven located at 8014 …
Thursday, February 2, 2012
After Susan G. Komen for the Cure stopped giving grants to Planned Parenthood, supporters and detractors are speaking their minds—and their wallets.
Update (11:25 a.m. Friday)—Susan G. Komen for the Cure has reversed its decision to end grants to Planned Parenthood. In a statement released Friday, the organization apologized and said it will amend grant criteria to avoid political pressure. Despite the national controversy over Susan G. Komen for the Cure ceasing funding for Planned Parenthood, it's business as usual at Planned Parenthood of Maryland. The Maryland affiliate does not receive grants from the national Komen organization or its Maryland-based affiliate, said spokeswoman ChristieLyn Diller. Planned Parenthood of Maryland operates a health center in Loch Raven. Diller said the organization has received an uptick in donations and social media messages this week. "… | <urn:uuid:e1803dd0-59c5-4f3a-9182-2289680e0b1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timonium.patch.com/topics/maryland?page=2&topic=maryland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961597 | 1,793 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Grandparent's Role During Birth
Attending the birth of your grandchild can be a powerful experience and intense bonding opportunity for you and your daughter or daughter-in-law. But it's probably been a few years since you witnessed a delivery and the procedures, philosophies, and equipment have changed a lot. So if you plan to attend the birth of your grandchild (whether it's a hospital or home birth), prepare yourself before the big event.
Take some time to familiarize yourself with current birthing procedures at hospitals, as well as home birth procedures, if applicable. A great way to do this is to attend the hospital tour with the parents-to-be and meet the doctor before the big day. There are also classes just for grandparents and many books available to bring you up to date with birthing practices today and the equipment used. Being well prepared will help you be more relaxed and better equipped to support the parents-to-be during the big day.
It's also important to sit down and discuss your interests and expectations with the parents-to-be in advance. You might want to be much more involved than they are comfortable with, or vice versa. Knowing the role you'll play ahead of time will help avoid disagreements or hurt feelings in the emotionally-charged process that is labor and delivery. Here are a few roles that grandparents may play during birth:
Take over the role of photographer and/or videographer to give the father/partner time to focus on the laboring mom-to-be. Just be sure all your equipment is in working order, full of film or a new digital memory card, and the batteries are fully charged before the big day!
Next Page >> | <urn:uuid:b556d477-9b90-4139-95e2-c581d5aa51dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://parentingweekly.com/grandparents/grandparents_birth.htm | 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 | 0.965496 | 347 | 1.625 | 2 |
Create an Advantage by Developing Alliances
Guest blogger and trusted business associate, Bill Boyer is the President of Tidewater CEO, a consulting/coaching organization for small company CEO's. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org or 757-233-2577.
When we talk about our relationships with organizations or people outside our company, we generally categorize these as customers and suppliers/vendors.
I would like for you to think of some of these organizations or people as alliances, and not just as a customer or supplier. One definition of alliance is a merging of efforts and interests by organizations. This is the way we should approach our business dealings with some of our more important customers and suppliers. We should be working just as hard for their interest and growth as we are our own.
In the most recent Cox Business Executive Discussion Series, Cathy Williams of Wolseley North America reinforced this concept with her comments that businesses need to "team-up" with other businesses. Her concept was very similar, she just used different terms.
Meet with these people and explain that you would like to develop an alliance with them and define some of the benefits for each of you. This at times can be a hard sell as some are afraid of giving you any information that they feel could be used against them. Assure them of your true interest in both of your companies' growth and profitability.
Initially, the growth in business may not be equal for each party in the alliance; but generally, over time, the benefits will be balanced. However, before you propose an alliance, you must "do your homework" and be sure that the relationship will yield benefits for both.
For suppliers, we need to totally understand all of their product offerings. There may be some additional products and/or services that we could use to grow our business. And we may be able to recommend their product and/or service to some of our other alliances. If we can help them grow and expand their business, they will be willing to recommend us to some of their contacts. We may even be able to recommend that they add some products or services that could benefit us, and possibly benefit other potential clients. If we understand their business, there will be many situations where we can be of help to them.
And it is the same for our customers: our relationship should be sufficiently strong that we understand their problems and opportunities well enough that we can recommend additional product offerings. And we should be sufficiently aware of their products and services, and the strengths of their organization, that we can recommend some customers to them.
When your customers recognize that you are trying to help them to grow their business, they will be more reluctant to talk with your competitors and in the long term may not be as price conscious as they were in the past. And suppliers may not increase prices or may offer you a lower price than they charge to others. The suppliers may also give you the opportunity to be the first to use one of their new products or even help in the development of a new product or service.
A real example:
Years ago I owned a company that dyed shirts and pants with some very unique looks for many of the large retail companies. They often sourced the basic garment from many sources. We were able to recommend them to a new garment producer that had very high quality standards and excellent pricing for the quality. Our benefit was our customers directed more of their business to us and this garment supplier recommended that many of their other customers use our services. Additionally, we worked with the garment supplier to develop some new styles and make some modifications in the cloth used for the products that actually caused the product to be more "fit for a customer's specific use". Neither party received any direct financial compensation for the referred business. Each was compensated with the additional business. This truly was a "win-win" for both and resulted in a very long term relationship.
Consider expressing your appreciation to your customers for their support of your business. Also, don't forget to thank your vendors for their products and services, especially when they have "gone the second mile" for you. I would recommend a personal note, or a separate phone call (not related to another business conversation) to thank them. The recipients will know you care, that you are well-informed about their business, that your staff is aware of their importance, and that you will be looking out for opportunities for their growth.
In today's competitive world, there are many ways to create an advantage over our competitors. Developing alliances has proven to be quite successful.
Friday, June 11, 2010 written by JASE Team
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Often advertisements have a negative connotation associated with them by the consumer. Because of this most people do not take the time to look at or read advertisements. The good news is not all advertisements are bad. JASE takes the time to design very clever advertising campaigns that are appealing to your audience. Appealing enough that you are remembered when consumers are ready for your product or service. Or even when they're not. JASE creative advertising campaigns are a powerful tool when properly aligned with ongoing business strategies.
Image. We all care about our image – our personal image – our company's image. That's where our PR team can help you. We help you get the word out about your company. We help you get the word out about your message. We help the public understand you, your vision, and your beliefs. We help the world discover your company and how it can satisfy their needs. How do we do this? Ahh, the big question. It's the combination of the strategic execution that makes JASE stand out above the crowd of PR agencies.
Inbound marketing is a complementary set of marketing techniques focused on driving quality prospects to your business and its products. Inbound marketing has become widely accepted because it supports the way consumers make purchasing decisions - using the Internet to learn more about the products and services that best meet their needs. For this reason, JASE inbound marketing strategies can generate quality leads because it focuses on the audience that is already interested in your brand, company, and product or searching for your services.
JASE brand strategy, creative, software, data, marketing, and IT teams work together to create the most powerful eBusiness solutions to fit your organization's daily tasks. Our team helps you identify your needs, specify requirements, and design a system that will assist your team in optimizing their efficiency and profit margins. Custom software, web applications, Intranet portals, eCommerce solutions, and content management systems are just a sample of what we can do for your organization. | <urn:uuid:bafa1576-4738-47d6-ab87-416b90150152> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jasegroup.com/blog/?create-an-advantage-by-developing-alliances | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974008 | 1,429 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Sethumadhavan Ravichandran, Polymer Science
“At UMass Lowell, students are given an opportunity to take research to the next level where you can actually make something real out of it.”
Sethumadhavan Ravichandran is a graduate student in the Polymer Science Program within the College of Sciences’ Chemistry Department. He and his interdisciplinary team designed and developed a novel, safer and "greener" flame retardant material using a renewable waste product obtained during cashew nut processing. Their project won the 2011 EPA People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) top honor award
. Sethumadhavan in part credits the University's strong collaborations and partnerships for winning the award. Sethumadhavan was excited to join UMass Lowell after earning his bachelor's degree in India because he says the University is "known for" and "very good at actually getting a product out of something" and bringing it to the market: "How many people in the chemistry or sciences department [elsewhere] work on something and then that never sees the light of the day." At UMass Lowell, students are given an opportunity to take research "to the next level where you can actually make something real out of it." | <urn:uuid:c4156b1c-3ee2-4971-aedc-f8f0053a9870> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uml.edu/Research/Student-Opportunities/graduate-research/Sethumadhavan-Ravichandran.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953272 | 257 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Running out of time? Turn a dilemma into delicious!
September 2011 Update: Many thanks to all of you who have taken the time to come back and tell me how much you enjoyed this recipe! Click here to read some of the many green tomato relish rave reviews. If you'd rather have your tomatoes red, check out How To Ripen Green Tomatoes Indoors the Really Easy Way on my kitchen garden blog.
The shorter days and cooler nights of September signify a slowing down for the kitchen gardener. It's a time for reflection: on successes and failures in the garden, on the quiet winter months ahead, and on the fact that all those green tomatoes still out on the vines are never going to turn red.
If you abhor the thought of letting any of your precious garden bounty go to waste, this frightful realization may bring on all sorts of irrational behavior. Frantically struggling to cover your tomato plants with enormous tarps in gusty winds and plummeting temperatures while praying to the garden gods for a late frost is not the way to deal with green tomatoes. Making green tomato relish is.
Tastewise, unripe green tomatoes bear little resemblance to their fully ripened counterparts. They are crunchy and slightly tart and completely lacking in that unmistakable tomato flavor. But when slowly simmered on the stove, green tomatoes come into their own.
Green tomato relish is traditionally a sweet concoction, often made with raisins, ginger, cloves, and lots of sugar. Unfortunately this tends to be the type of thing that people receive in jars as holiday gifts and eventually end up throwing out because they have no idea what to do with it.
The following relish, however, is not sweet at all; in fact, it does not contain any sugar. It resembles a thick salsa but is easier to make, as green tomatoes don't even need to be peeled. Nor do the apples; all you really do is chop everything up and toss it into a pot.
This recipe also takes full advantage of the late summer/early fall harvest; red peppers, onions, garlic, and apples are all called for. Adding the cilantro and jalapenos right at the end helps them retain their bright color.
Green cilantro and jalapenos coupled with red peppers gives the relish a festive color combination that lends itself perfectly to holiday gifts—that definitely won't get tossed into the compost bin.
Relishes are quite forgiving, so don't be afraid to adapt the recipe to what your end-of-the-season garden or farmers' market has to offer. Any type of tomato can be used, and you can mix and match varieties. Paste, or plum, tomatoes will require less cooking time since they're meatier and have less juice.
A touch of red on a few of the tomatoes is fine, as long as they're still very hard. Fully ripe tomatoes, though, will give your relish a completely different flavor and consistency.
Partially green sweet red peppers can also be used, and you can adjust the amount of jalapeno peppers to suit your taste, or leave them out entirely. Other fresh hot peppers can be substituted. Leave the seeds in if you desire more heat.
Green tomato relish makes a tangy alternative to traditional salsa in quesadillas and tacos, mixed into guacamole, or as a dip with tortilla chips. It can be eaten hot, cold, or at room temperature.
Stir it into refried beans or cooked rice for an instant fiesta side dish. For a spicy burrito filling, lightly brown some ground turkey or diced chicken in a skillet, add equal parts green tomato relish and water, and simmer until thickened.
Put green tomato relish on a Monterey Jack cheeseburger in place of ketchup and pickle, or use it to liven up grilled flank steak. Mix a little into diced home-fried potatoes, or even hash, just before serving.
Green tomato relish will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator, or up to a year in the pantry if the jars are processed in a waterbath canner, which is a worthwhile and affordable investment. Canning adds very little prep time because you can set up your canning equipment during the hour the relish is simmering. (I love this inexpensive canning accessory kit.)
And as its zesty aroma fills the kitchen, you'll be secure in the knowledge that although the temperature has dropped and the wind is howling through the garden, both you and your green tomatoes are safe inside and ready for fall.
As always, I urge you to seek out locally grown and organic ingredients. If you don't have a garden full of green tomatoes, you may be able to beg some from a neighbor (many people simply let them go to waste) or ask your favorite vendor at the farmers' market to pick some especially for you.
I don't recommend using supermarket apple cider vinegar, which is often simply distilled white vinegar with caramel coloring. Instead, look for natural (preferably organic), unpasteurized and unfiltered raw apple cider vinegar with 5% acidity that contains the naturally occurring 'Mother' of vinegar.
Organic raw apple cider vinegar is amazing stuff that is rich in enzymes and potassium and has been highly regarded throughout history because of its numerous internal and external health benefits. We drink 1 to 2 Tablespoons diluted in water (with a little local raw honey added) every day and have also started giving it to our sheep (mixed 50/50 with garlic juice) as a natural wormer and overall wellness tonic.
Look for raw apple cider vinegar at natural foods stores and even some supermarkets. I really like Bragg brand, and if you can't find it locally, it's available from amazon.com here.
Farmgirl Susan's No Sugar Green Tomato Relish
Makes about 3 pints
Recipe may be doubled; increase cooking time by 10-15 minutes
**Click here to print this recipe**
2 lb. green tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 lb. white or yellow onions, chopped
3/4 lb. sweet red peppers, cored and chopped
1/2 lb. tart cooking apples, such as Granny Smith, cored and chopped
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cup 5% acidic organic raw apple cider vinegar (or less, see note below)*
1 Tablespoon kosher or sea salt
4 jalapeno peppers, cored, seeded if desired, and finely chopped
2 Tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon ground cumin (optional)
Combine the tomatoes, onions, peppers, apples, garlic, vinegar, and salt in a large, nonreactive pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about an hour.
Stir in the jalapenos, cilantro, and cumin and simmer for 5 more minutes. Carefully purée the mixture using a stick immersion blender (I can't say enough good things about my KitchenAid hand blender; it's one of the best things I've bought for the kitchen) or in a traditional counter top blender, in batches if necessary, until still somewhat chunky. Don't over mix; you don't want it smooth.
If canning, return the puréed relish to a boil, then ladle the hot mixture into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch head space. Process 15 minutes in a waterbath canner. Store in a cool, dark place.
10 calories, 0g fat, 60mg sodium, 0g fiber, per Tablespoon
* October 2009 Update: Since I originally posted this recipe four years ago, many of you written to let me know how much you love it (thank you!), but a couple of people have told me that their green tomato relish ended up tasting much too strongly of vinegar.
The 1 cup of apple cider vinegar called for is to ensure that this is safe for waterbath canning (green tomatoes are acidic, but the other vegetables lower the overall acidity—1 cup is plenty), but if you're planning to store yours in the fridge—where it will keep for several weeks without processing—and are concerned it might be too much vinegar for your taste, you can safely decrease the amount of apple cider vinegar to 1/2 cup, or even less.
If you want to give jars of green tomato relish as a gift without having to process them, just make sure the recipients put the jars directly into their refrigerator.
Can't live on relish alone? You'll find links to all my sweet and savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.
© FarmgirlFare.com, the not always vine-ripened foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, and photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres. | <urn:uuid:b178c0a4-8c8c-41a7-8ff6-b5d3e347723d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.farmgirlfare.com/2005/09/saving-harvest-green-tomato-relish.html?showComment=1175413200000 | 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 | 0.933264 | 1,845 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Wed September 26, 2012
Amid Protests, Iran's President To Address U.N.
Originally published on Thu October 4, 2012 11:45 am
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
And I'm David Greene.
The president of Iran gets his moment in the spotlight at the United Nations General Assembly today. There will be protests outside U.N. headquarters in New York. All week, demonstrators have picketed the hotel where he's staying. The trip by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does have a different backdrop compared to years past. Ahmadinejad is now a lame duck president, and he's in the United States at a moment when Israel is raising the possibility of a military strike on his country.
Here's NPR's Michele Kelemen.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: When President Obama opened the U.N. General Assembly, he was blunt on the issue of Iran. He said, time and again, Iran has failed to prove to the world that its nuclear program is peaceful.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So, let me be clear: America wants to resolve this issue through diplomacy. And we believe that there is still time and space to do so. But that time is not unlimited.
KELEMEN: He didn't go as far as spelling out red lines for Iran, as Israel wants him to do. But President Obama made clear that containing a nuclear-armed Iran is not an option.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OBAMA: That's why a coalition of countries is holding the Iranian government accountable. And that's why the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
KELEMEN: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he's concerned about, as he put it, the shrill talk of war. But The Iranian president has been brushing off those threats, as he did when he met with reporters earlier this week. NPR was there, and PBS "NewsHour" provided this recording of Ahmadinejad, speaking through an interpreter.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "NEWSHOUR")
PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: (Through translator) Fundamentally, we do not take seriously the threats of the Zionists, vis-a-vis, an attack on Iran by them. We do believe that the Zionists see themselves at a dead-end, and they want to be adventurous in order to find a salvation, a way out of this dead-end.
KELEMEN: His anti-Israel rhetoric was quickly dismissed by the White House. Today's speech will come at a particularly sensitive time, as Jews celebrate their holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Outside, on his way to one of his meetings with Ahmadinejad, MIT Professor Jim Walsh predicted the Iranian leader's U.N. speech would be acerbic and biting, as they always are. But he says he has seen some differences in his private contacts with the Iranian leader this time. Walsh been coming to this rodeo, as he puts it, for six years now.
JIM WALSH: You'll see many Ahmadinejad's in a 48-hour period. Because this is a guy, it's worth remembering, who is in trouble domestically back home. He does not have the support of the supreme leader, as he has in the past. He is a lame duck now, right? He - there'll be a new president elected June, June of 2013. So it's an opportunity for him to consolidate himself or try to consolidate himself politically for this last several months.
KELEMEN: Walsh says this is a dangerous time in the Middle East, and he thinks Iranians realize that, despite Ahmadinejad's public bluster.
WALSH: It seems unlikely that Israel will attack, but I think that chance is as high or higher than it's been before. So I think people sense the danger. And then mixed in all this, you've got Syria, which is their main ally, and they're in trouble, and you've got the Arab Spring in turmoil all around the region. So I think there's a sensitivity this year, that maybe there wasn't two or five years ago, that things are different and more dangerous.
KELEMEN: The MIT professor is not expecting any new diplomatic push by the U.S. and its partners or Iran, however. He says for now, everyone is treading water until after the U.S. elections.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:45c75ede-52ba-4314-a775-5a281881c8a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wfae.org/post/amid-protests-irans-president-address-un | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971314 | 1,014 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
Before I got to Denver I had planned to go south to Colorado Springs and west to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. But I heard a report which said there were wildfires in that direction and the roads might be blocked. No thanks. So I went west first, to Grand Junction and spent the night. I had dinner at Moma Longo's out on North Street, and was it good! Besides the food, the attractive young waitress had on a very short skirt, which did this old man's heart good.
The next day I drove southeast to Delta, east and then south to US 50, then west and north back to Grand Junction. That's the northern route to BCGNP.
This is a nice drive, through lots of mountains. At some point you take the North Rim Road, which goes right up to the rim of the canyon, and that's where the real scenery is. This is from the same viewpoint as the photo above, only this one is zoomed in. You can see the formation called "Kneeling Camel" in both shots.
Another shot on the same road. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a new national park, although it was a National Monument for many years. It is developed mainly for hikers and rafters, not so much just for sightseeing. But what you can see from the road is spectacular indeed.
This next shot is from the highest point on the road from Delta to US 50, with Curecanti National Recreation Area below.
Instead of going back to Moma Longo's for dinner, I ate at the farthest west restaurant in Grand Junction, at the West Gate Inn. I forget the name of the restaurant, but it had stained glass windows and panels all over the place. The food was all right too, and the waitress, but it was the stained glass which really impressed me. I didn't have my camera with me, so no photos. | <urn:uuid:eb62ec08-ab17-463b-971f-ab35069f506c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://donaldmark.home.comcast.net/~donaldmark/PhotoJaunt2002/TRBlackCanyon.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981208 | 406 | 1.5 | 2 |
Poll: Latinos more positive about economy
Latino voters considered an important demographic
A new CNN/ORC International poll released Wednesday finds that Latinos are more optimistic about the economy than non-Latino whites, but six in ten see the economy in poor shape.
The poll finds 61 percent of Latinos say the economy is in poor shape, while 39 percent say it is in good shape. The views are generally negative but more optimistic than the views of non-Latino whites, who split 79 percent to 21 percent poor shape over good shape, according to the results of a CNN/ORC International poll conducted between Sept. 28 and 30.
The majority of Latinos -- 56 percent -- believe the government should be promoting traditional values, while 41 percent say it should not. As to whether government is doing too much which should be left to individuals and businesses, 42 percent said yes and 54 percent said no. Among Latinos registered to vote, the split was even at 48 percent.
Latino voters are considered an especially important demographic in the 2012 campaign and are being courted by both sides. A CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday showed President Barack Obama with a significant lead over GOP challenger Mitt Romney among Latino likely voters.
Although six in ten see the economy in poor shape, Latinos appear to be increasingly optimistic that they will achieve the American dream. The difference between data from this survey and a 2010 survey used in comparison overlap within the polls' sampling errors.
The 2010 CNN sample found 45 percent believed they could reach the American Dream, while that number stands at 54 percent today.
Just over one in three -- 34 percent believe they have achieved the American dream already. Just over one in 10 -- 11 percent -- believe they will never reach the American dream.
The survey included 601 Latino adults reached by telephone between Sept. 25 and Oct. 1. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 4 points.
Copyright 2012 by CNN NewSource. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:823779d7-e17e-4694-a4ed-69e235654bf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news4jax.com/politics/presidential-election-results/Poll-Latinos-more-positive-about-economy/-/17249282/16840988/-/view/print/-/t861bx/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946876 | 411 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Oh, good: Americans enrolled in the federal food-stamp program hits a new record
posted at 9:21 pm on March 11, 2013 by Erika Johnsen
After last week’s big February-unemployment reveal, we were treated to a whole heap of ostensible reasons about why the ever-so-slightly eased official unemployment rate of 7.7 percent means the economy is really getting on the right track, and somehow indicates real material improvement in the labor market. Delving into the reports’ numbers a little more closely, however, unearthed a hodgepodge of continued bad news: Even more people dropping out of the labor force meant a stagnant unemployment-population ratio and that the labor force participation rate only fell even further.
In yet another indication that the economy is meandering in the desert of a endlessly weak ‘recovery,’ the number of Americans enrolled in the federal food-stamp program has only continued to increase — and the program’s numbers in December hit an all-time record. Via the Weekly Standard:
On Friday, the United States Department of Agriculture quietly released new statistics related to the food stamps program, officially known as SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). The numbers reveal, in 2012, the food stamps program was the biggest it’s ever been, with an average of 46,609,072 people on the program every month of last year. 47,791,996 people were on the program in the month of December 2012. …
[Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff] Sessions also pointed out that cities like Baltimore, which he said have have been “governed by liberal policies for decades,” see particularly high numbers of participation in the program.
“Despite this fountain of federal funds, 1 in 3 children still live in poverty in our nation’s capital. Two in three children live in single parent homes. In nearby Baltimore–another city governed by liberal policies for decades–1 in 3 residents are on food stamps and in 1 in 3 youth live in poverty. Americans are committed to helping our sisters and brothers who are struggling, but we are seeing the damaging human consequences of our broken welfare state,” said Sessions.
But… how can this be? I thought Agriculture Secretary Vilsack assured us that food stamps are “the most direct form of stimulus you can get,” no? How is it that all of these added enrollees are not translating into more robust job- and wealth-creation? And speaking of, how is it that none of the Obama administration’s voluminous attempts to stimulate the economy seem to be living up to expectations? Do you suppose the premise might be flawed?
Breaking on Hot Air | <urn:uuid:fc56b04c-9711-48f9-a1cd-cc5ec3ca6f37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hotair.com/archives/2013/03/11/oh-good-americans-enrolled-in-the-federal-food-stamp-program-hits-a-new-record/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955239 | 562 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Hackers breach chocolate recipe on Hershey website
Possible data theft
Hackers breached the security of a website operated by US confectionery giant Hershey Company and may have made off with customers' names, birthdates, street and email addresses, and site passwords.
In an email sent to customers last week , Hershey said an unauthorized individual accessed the site and changed a baking recipe for one of its products. The company said it found no evidence any other recipes on the website were affected, but it couldn't rule out the possibility that hackers stole personal data taken when customers create accounts on the site.
“We have no indication that any of this consumer information was compromised,” Hershey's email stated. “However, given the nature of this incident, we are acting out of an abundance of caution and informing you that this server was accessed. We are also outlining some steps to help you ensure your security whenever you use the Internet and email.”
Hershey joins a huge roster of other organizations that have suffered website security breaches that jeopardize the privacy of its visitors. Other companies recently compromised include Sony , Groupon India , email marketer Silverpop , gossip website Gawker , and at least a dozen others.
The rash of security lapses underscores the misplaced trust many people place in the websites they visit. More often than not, these sites have no good reason to store a user's birthdate and street address, and yet visitors dutifully surrender such information. The breaches also demonstrate the liability companies face when they later lose their customers' personally identifiable information, often as a result of easily preventable security vulnerabilities, such as SQL-injection holes and cross-site scripting bugs.
The Reg strongly recommends users withhold as many personal details as possible and use secondary email addresses that are reserved specifically for that website. ® | <urn:uuid:c6ef1754-0cec-4b8e-8a26-889b4a521356> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/08/hershey_website_hacked/print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957135 | 376 | 1.796875 | 2 |
On the website forecast, I can easily tell what the high for the day is; but my question is when is the low temperature? Is it for the morning of that particular day or is it for that night (morning of the next day)? Also, does everybody do it the same way?
Good questions . . .
(1) We post the low for the 24-hour period of the calendar day on the website.
(2) On something like 90% of the days, the low actually occurs sometime closer to sunrise . . . and to me, that is the "morning" of the next day, and not the "overnight."
(3) So, on our graphics, for most days, the posted low represents the early morning temperature and the high is for the afternoon.
True . . . several other sources still say "overnight low," and some will even put the low on today's graphic (representing tonight) rather than on tomorrow's graphic . . . in effect, showing the low on the wrong calendar day. I see that one of our competitors has changed their practice recently to be more reflective our our approach.
In my mind, saying "tonight's low" is misleading . . . and even explains why so many people think the "coolest" part of the day is near midnight rather than near sunrise.
Whether you're planning for the kids' dress for the bus, or just getting ready for your own morning commute . . . posting the low as tomorrow's wake-up temperature is much closer to the "truth" for the vast majority of days.
Yes, it is semantics, but to me, stating "tomorrow morning's Low" is much more representative than saying "tonight's low."
Thanks for the question!
WAFB Storm Team | <urn:uuid:522f8a2d-11a4-47d4-8ef1-5f21d814ebeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wafb.com/story/9864597/low-temperature-and-time-of-day | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95135 | 371 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Girl recovers after pencil pierces skull
Delicate surgery performed by doctors in Boston
A 20-month-old girl from New Boston is making an amazing recovery two weeks after a pencil pierced her skull, penetrating 4 inches into her brain.
The mother of Olivia Smith said she at first didn't know anything was wrong two weeks ago when her other child first alerted her to the problem.
"I didn't say anything, but I remember my 3-year-old saying, 'The pencil is in her head,'" said Susie Smith. "And I said, 'No, it's not.' So I looked on the floor, and because there was only a little bit outside of her eye, I didn't notice at first.
Smith said she didn't notice the pencil until she picked Olivia up. Seconds earlier, the 20-month-old had fallen while coloring with new pencils on a lounge chair.
When rescue crews arrived, Smith was holding her girl, who had an orange pencil coming from her right eye.
"If you go in at a 45 degree angle in the corner of the eye, it was about 2 and a half inches coming out, sticking out," said Fire Chief Dan McDonald. "And we didn't know how long the pencil was."
A helicopter took Olivia from Catholic Medical Center to Children's Hospital in Boston. Doctors there performed the delicate surgery. It turned out that the pencil was full length.
"So there were 4 inches or more impaled between the eye and the back of the skull," McDonald said.
Neurosurgeons said the pencil picked the perfect path, missing the optic nerve and major arteries.
But through the ordeal, Olivia suffered three strokes, leaving her right side motionless.
In the hospital, Olivia's mother said she kept placing things, including a sippy cup, in Olivia's right hand.
"All of a sudden, she moved her right hand all the way up -- shaking, shaking, just like that -- and she started drinking," Smith said.
Each day, Olivia improved. The family said they are grateful to the emergency workers and doctors who worked so hard to let Olivia survive and make a full recovery.
An account has been set up to help the Smith family deal with mounting medical bills. Donations can be made at the Citizen's Bank in Goffstown or sent to:
The Olivia Cecilia Benefit Fund
PO Box 351
Goffstown, NH 03045
Copyright 2013 by WMUR.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:6ed93fee-4a55-4ee2-b722-5a80a31a643b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ketv.com/news/Girl-recovers-after-pencil-pierces-skull/-/9674854/18262488/-/view/print/-/inflvaz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978328 | 528 | 1.578125 | 2 |
You Need to See These 5 Shocking Facts About Money in the 2012 Elections
Not since the years before the Watergate scandal has a small cadre of mega-donors influenced our elections as much as wealthy givers such as casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner did in 2012. These men and a few dozen others pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into super-PACs and shadowy nonprofits and raised tens of millions more for presidential and Congressional campaigns.
Now, a new report titled "Billion-Dollar Democracy" by the Demos think tank and the US Public Interest Research Group, both left-of-center groups, distills all the fundraising and spending on last year's elections and spits out an array of eye-popping factoids about where all the money came from (or most of it, at least) and how it was spent. It is vital information as reporters, activists, and others try to make sense of an election season full of firsts—the first full cycle since the 2010 Citizens United decision, the first $1 billion campaign (Obama), and the first presidential race in which both major candidates rejected public financing. | <urn:uuid:650aebcd-393e-4636-8d5a-577c4024d29d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.demos.org/news/you-need-see-these-5-shocking-facts-about-money-2012-elections | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943423 | 254 | 1.757813 | 2 |
ATLANTA -- This is the first holiday season Georgia shoppers will have to pay sales tax on all Internet purchases.
That's thanks to a change in the state's tax code that went into effect in early October.
Prior to then, online shoppers on national sites like Amazon, Overstock and Zappos were exempt from paying the 8 percent Georgia state sales tax since those retailers did not have brick-and-mortar locations in the state of Georgia.
Internet retailers with storefronts in Georgia like Home Depot, Walmart and Macy's were required to collect sales tax.
Last month, Georgia became the 10th state to modify its tax code requiring online stores to collect sales tax on purchases.
If shoppers use sites that do not collect taxes, they will be hit with a "use tax" paid to the Georgia Department of Revenue at income tax time.
RELATED | CLICK HERE FOR GEORGIA SALES USE TAX FORM
"The sales tax here in Georgia is 8%. So retailers should offer 8% or some kind of equal discount to entice shoppers to continue to shop online through their stores since they are not getting the benefit of saving on sales tax," said Internet shopper Mae Armstrong.
"I would now think twice about buying on the Internet. Maybe if the merchants would subsidize the taxes by waiving the shipping fees that would maybe entice me a little bit more but I have to think about it now," said Stacey Johnson, another Internet shopper.
Small business owners said that is exactly what they wanted to see happen - they want shoppers to think twice before walking into their stores, finding what they want and then going to the Internet and saving the 8% sales tax on their purchases.
The state of Georgia said the changes in the tax code will bring in about $18 million a year in sales tax revenue on Internet purchases. | <urn:uuid:00911975-5148-4b56-a0cc-212d716e2b08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.11alive.com/news/article/259244/24/Georgia-shoppers-now-have-to-pay-sales-tax-online | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974192 | 379 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Mr. W. A. Croffut, communicates to the National Republican of the 26th the following graphic description of scenes at the hospital:
I was on the field of battle at Bull Run on Sunday, and am sufficiently recovered from the complete prostration which followed my march of sixty miles – from Vienna to battle and back to Washington – to be able to give a brief account of what I saw. I was but a civilian; my chief occupation was to help carry off the wounded, and minister, as far as possible, to their comfort.
I assisted to bear several to the hospital at the corner of the woods – near the battle field – perhaps 150 rods from the enemy’s batteries. Such a scene of death and desolation! Men, dying and dead, covered the floor and filled the yard with frightful misery. Civilians and soldiers turned surgeons, and amputated and bound up the wounds of the injured and dying. A shell from the enemy struck harmlessly near the front yard, and cannon balls flew over and around, with their prolonged “whish!” as if the sacred white flag above our heads, honored by all the people besides, was a special target for the hateful and insolent “Confederacy.” I learn that this hospital was burned soon after, with all is suffering inmates by the heartless and diabolical foe.
Soon after, a man was brought along on his way to the other hospital, and I assisted in carrying him thither. It was somewhat farther off, on the road of approach, and was extemporized from a church which we had passed just before reaching the battle-field. It was a scene too frightful and sickening to witness, much more describe. There were in it, scattered thickly on the floor and in the galleries, sixty or seventy, wounded in every possible way – arms and legs shot off, some dead, and scores gasping for water and aid. The pulpit was appropriated for a surgeon’s room, and the communion table of pious anarchy became an amputation table, baptized in willing blood, and consecrated to the holy uses of Liberty and Law! The road and woods, on either side and all around, are strewn with maimed and mutilated heroes, and the balls from the rifled cannon go over us like winged devils. There sits a colonel, with his arm bound up, asking to be put on his horse and led back to his regiment; here lies a captain with a grape shot through his head, and blood and brains oozing out as we touch him tenderly to see if he his dead; and yonder comes in a pale chaplain, cut by a canister, while, sword in hand, he led his brave little parish, in the name of Almighty God, to the fight. And again we enter the hospital with him. Oh, God! What a hideous sight! Step into this gory tabernacle. You may grow pallid and faint, and some even of the strong-hearted do, or you may find yourself cool and self commanding, as I do, against my own anticipations, amid such sights and scenes. I have known men who could walk up to a flashing wall of bayonets unblanched, who would faint at the sight of suffering. Look around you here. The grim chambers, where the deity of a strange despotism was worshipped, is turned into an altar of Freedom, and sanctified anew by the warm life of heroes. Fit choir, that in the galleries – the intermittent yells of the dying and the subdued groans of brave men! Eloquent preacher, in that pulpit so long defiled! Glorious burden on that sacramental tablet, splendid wine there flowing – where Christ has been so often crucified. Precious and acceptable Eucharist! And these are the services to day, in this chapel of paganism, once dedicated, with lying lips, to God. The house what Baal built rises over a holocaust of heroes. And this is the holy Sabbath day – the world’s White Day, so long kept as a blessed symbol of fidelity, purity, humanity, liberty, and peace!
That ghastly picture of carnage will be ever present before my eyes, and those half smothered sobs and groans, will always ring their dreadful chorus in my ears.
And now on, and on past us fly the panic-stricken troops. We are not beaten, but these think we are, which is just as bad for our cause to night. Good generalship and guarded baggage wagons would have saved us, we of the unmilitary corps think, but it is too late now. And so the whole nation is to suffer then, for the dark crimes of years – the South for its terrible guilt of commission, and the North for its moral debauchery which has betrayed it to such fearful complicity. Had we remembered the Divine decree “though hand joined in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.”
May God purify the religion, and warm the heart, and quicken the conscience, and open the eyes of the nation! May we learn now the lesson which a few brave souls of the North have striven long to teach, and speedily wash our bloody hands and begin to do the righteous thing!
W. A. Croffut.
St. Paul Press, 8/2/1861
Contributed by John Hennessy | <urn:uuid:6f175888-65bb-4b50-939b-5d8b064235e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bullrunnings.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/mr-william-augustus-croffut-on-sudley-church-hospital-during-the-battle/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=4ca8fc8c32 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973907 | 1,131 | 1.789063 | 2 |
TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny’s encounter with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo on Saturday passed off without any significant exchange between the two men.
Mr Kenny had attended the papal audience as part of a
delegation from the Centrist Democrat International (CDI) group, which
held a two-day meeting in Rome.
Still tired from his pastoral
visit to Lebanon last week, the 85-year-old pontiff kept the audience
brief, preferring to pose with the CDI delegation for a group photograph
rather than exchange individual greetings with the 100-plus group.
Among those who attended the audience along with the Taoiseach were
Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras, Albanian prime minister Sali
Berisha and the spokesman for the Syrian National Transitional Council,
The Taoiseach had nothing to say to the waiting
Irish media, given that he had had no significant exchange with Pope
On this, his first meeting with the pontiff since his stinging
criticism of the Holy See in the Dáil last summer, many had wondered if
there would be any further “dialogue” with the pope on the clerical sex
abuse issue. However, in the context of a group meeting, that had never
seemed a realistic possibility.
A Government spokesman said Mr Kenny had not spoken to the media after the papal audience because there was nothing to say.
The Taoiseach, he said, had attended as part of a group of European political leaders.
did not shake hands with the pope, nor did he speak to him,” he added.
“The Taoiseach made it clear before the meeting that he would not have
an opportunity to speak to the pope.”
In his address to the CDI
(ex-Christian Democrat) group, the pope stressed the importance of the
involvement of Christians in society, calling on them to act with “a
prophetic spirit” in the face of an “increasingly serious” and complex
economic situation. In particular, Christian politicians must be “strong
enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living and
Arguing that the family, “founded on marriage”,
constitutes the “basic cell of society”, the pope called for protection
of life: “The commitment to respecting life . . . and the consequent
rejection of procured abortion, euthanasia and any form of eugenics is
in fact interwoven with respecting marriage as an indissoluble union
between a man and a woman.” | <urn:uuid:99c81b90-cd60-4ca0-b9f8-cc5d13f1191d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2012/09/taoiseach-remains-silent-after-meeting.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96185 | 554 | 1.617188 | 2 |
closet jemainiac wrote:
A close friend of mine used the word supposibly the other day. I was in such shock (cause she is otherwise a very intelligent woman) I just let it go but im sure I looked like this---->
I had to use all my strength to not laugh at people who would ask for the distemperment vaccine for their dog and then ask if it helps with improve their behavior.
Wow. You just cannot make this stuff up, can you?
I had one employee that used the word ideal in place of idea (both singular and plural forms). At first I thought maybe she did not know when to use "ideal" or "ideally" but then I heard her say something about how meeting guys is so hard and her ideal would be a guy that would take care of her and still let her be independent. Let us not get too sidetracked by that part of the conversation...
Anyhow, that showed me she had some idea of what an "ideal" situation would be yet she would still say things like "I had an ideal about how we could organize the cabinets." or "little kids come up with the cutest ideals!" Blew me away considering she was constantly reminding everyone she had 2 bachelor's degrees (one of which was for teaching high school-yikes!) and is completing nursing school so she is VERY educated. Um, okay. Still don't know how to use the word "ideal" though. | <urn:uuid:987b6b89-db43-4072-a809-7369b5cb87ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whatthefolk.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=126810 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990833 | 308 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Flying on a wing and a chair
Flying is freedom for Dave Jacka. "I’m no different to anyone else up there. In fact, I’m better than most." Photo: Bonnie Savage
Dave and his new wife Linda go flying together sometimes. He escapes to the sky whenever he can; she tags along. Sometimes they fly from Melbourne up to Echuca on the Murray River, three hours away by car, for lunch.
"Who else does that?" Dave Jacka asks. Then he repeats a mantra: "You are only limited by what you think you can do."
Jacka is a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. He is 44 and rode a Honda CB250 motorbike into a tree late one winter's night on a suburban cigarette run when he was 19. He broke his neck, lost the use of all four limbs and his lungs collapsed. He spent three months in intensive care and six in rehabilitation.
Dave Jacka ... "Launch myself off and away I go like a wedge-tailed eagle soaring in the sky." Photo: Bonnie Savage
"Proof that smoking's bad for your health," Jacka says.
He can move nothing below his armpits except for a slight bit of arm movement. He can not put his hand on his head, for example. Seeing him work his mobile phone is like watching an illusionist pull a card trick; it slides and fumbles and somehow comes out true. He has carers in his Melbourne house up to six hours a day, getting him out of bed and back in and cleaning and cooking.
Yet he can fly. In April he aims to be the first person to circumnavigate Australia solo on a mission he has called "On A Wing and a Chair". He's not raising money for charity but raising awareness: he says disabled people can do surprising, amazing things despite copping negativity and discrimination and despite also suffering from higher rates of depression, mental illness and suicide than the able-bodied population.
Jacka began flying only after he had lost the use of most of his body. "When I was a kid I was mad on planes," he says. "I'd collect Qantas models and send letters to them to get information on the planes, and I remember at primary school my bedroom walls were covered in pictures of planes. I always wanted to fly."
After his crash he saw microlight aircraft – "like flying a motorbike" – at an airshow and got one and modified it and got right into it, flying over Uluru and Lake Eyre.
But quadriplegia means you lose control of body temperature, and after a few gruelling flights getting far too cold and taking ages to warm up he decided to fly with a cockpit and a heater.
Flight has a metaphysical appeal for him, of course. He leaves his earthly restrictions behind. "For me it's freedom. Launch myself off and away I go like a wedge-tailed eagle soaring in the sky. I'm no different to anyone else up there. In fact, I'm better than most."
He owns a Jabiru J230 aeroplane with room behind the two seats for his wheelchair. The modifications, which he did himself with an engineer mate before they were approved by the Bundaberg-based manufacturer, mean he can control the plane using shoulder strength and also his mouth – he puts his wrists into clamps on the levers for his rudders and sucks or blows into a tube attached to his headset for throttle. The brakes work by pneumatics through a toggle switch.
Simple. That's how Jacka sees it anyway – no problem. He was an apprentice carpenter before his crash. His father Brian Jacka, a psychologist, says he was always outdoorsy and practical and his dream was to have a ute with a dog on the back and build houses and travel. Things changed radically, "but there was never any thought of blaming life and the universe for what happened".
Jacka retrained himself in mechanical engineering. Now he works for Melbourne Water as manager – wheeling around on project sites a lot of the time "seeing things getting made".
He played wheelchair rugby, or "murderball", for Australia at the 1995 world championships and the 1996 Paralympics. He won a gold medal for Australia for disabled shooting at the 1991 Oceania shooting championships. Since his crash, he also snowskied and kayaked.
His secret both mentally and physically was to break down goals into increments. His first was to be able to put a jumper on by himself. Then feed himself. Get into bed. Drive. Brian Jacka says when his son started driving, he had to work out how to dismantle his wheelchair and get it in the car, a process towards independence that took months, in which he reduced the time it took him down from a hour to about five minutes. "That was inspirational to watch," Brian Jacka says. "It was no mean feat."
Jacka's wife Linda Sands says he constantly needs goals. "He needs to be doing something all the time or working towards something. Flying is Dave's passion. If he hasn't had a fly he gets toey and goes up and comes back happy."
She says his family (Jacka has four sisters) all have a determination about them. Jacka is related to Albert Jacka, the first Australian to get a Victoria Cross in the First World War, for bravery at Gallipoli.
Jacka met Linda online. She's Dr Sands – a former heart research scientist who now has a business installing prayer and meditation rooms in corporate offices. She's able-bodied.
"I'd never been out with a man in a wheelchair before," she says. "It changes the way your life is, that's for sure. But he's hilarious – so funny. A great guy. We hit it off straight away. To me he typifies the Aussie character, he's a real Jacka.
"The way I see him," she says, "is as an independent, whole person who needs a bit of help from carers to be that."
Her role is partner, not carer. The carers turn up at maybe 6am to get him out of bed every day; she might sneak off to the spare room for more kip. They're planning on trying for kids, through IVF. Quadriplegic men generally cannot ejaculate.
I met Jacka a few times. I met Sands once, not long before they got married in November. This was out at Tooradin Airport near Melbourne, where he keeps his plane. After an hour or two out there they had to go back to the city because they were having a rehearsal for their wedding dance. The wedding itself was on a lagoon in Thailand; both of them were making jokes about the sand and the wheelchair. Jacka said he had organised some sort of plank.
He's so upbeat that at first you suspect it's bluff, but this doesn't seem to be the case. Sands says her husband's family would pull him up if he wasn't genuine about his feelings.
When he gives talks at schools he shows a Powerpoint of himself as a kid on a billy-cart, as a handsome young man with a surfboard and then mangled in hospital with the medieval-looking head-tongs and a rope and weight holding his head in place, and tubes everywhere, including one from his neck so he can breathe, his skin yellow, his eyes shut firm.
His one true dark moment, he says, was when he first went into rehabilitation in hospital. He was wheeled into a room by a nurse, who then left. He was facing a pale blue wall. "I thought 'I can't do anything except sit and stare at this wall,' " he says. "It was a huge shock. I balled my eyes out."
Now his goal is to fly around Australia on his own. The trip will have 21 stops for donated accommodation; some legs will be three hours, some will be six hours. He'll go around Tasmania, Cape York, Cape Byron and the westernmost point of Western Australia, Steep Point.
"What I have learnt," he says, "is I have very few limitations." | <urn:uuid:4fac4a9f-8bc6-4fae-a6a9-b221f0c36f77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/victoria/flying-on-a-wing-and-a-chair-20130104-2c8fr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988103 | 1,710 | 1.625 | 2 |
Greetings from the Bank of America Chicago Marathon Health & Fitness Expo! I’m here manning a booth with RAN Chicago volunteers to get the word out about Bank of America’s financing of the filthiest polluting coal plants in Chicago.
That’s right, when 45,000 runners join the Bank of America-funded Chicago marathon this weekend, the route will take them past one of the city’s dirtiest coal plants, the Midwest Generation Fisk plant. Which, as it happens, is also financed Bank of America.
Aren’t you tired of Wall Street banks thinking that sponsorships, fancy ads and commercial gimmicks can buy our favor at the same time that they raise fees, foreclose on homes and fund air pollution?
You’re not alone. We’ve met with many folks at this event who agree and are eager to send a strong message to Bank of America that they want to see the bank quit underwriting the coal industry. Many have signed cards pledging that they will close their BoA bank accounts and boycott BoA’s ATMs if the bank doesn’t act swiftly.
These people fall into three main categories:
Residents of Chicago who are already concerned about their local, dirty coal plants. Chicago is the only major metropolitan area with not only one, but two polluting coal plants within the city limits. The impact of these toxic coal plants is very real. Coal-fired power plants kill between 13,000 and 34,000 people a year — that’s one person every 15 minutes. That staggering figure includes the 42 Chicagoans who die as a result of pollution from the city’s two coal plants.
Nurses, doctors and other people health-sector workers. This community has firsthand experience responding to respiratory illnesses. In fact, many participants in this race are running to raise awareness about lung conditions and thanked us for raising awareness with them.
People who are fed up with bank-fee-hikes. Many have come to our booth to communicate that they are already considering cancelling their BoA accounts because of the bank’s exorbitant charges. Learning about bank-financed pollution gives them one more reason.
We’ve had a few double-takers: folks approaching our booth wondering if we are Bank of America…? And then giving us a smile when they realize that we’re actually here because we care about how Bank of America uses all of our money.
Sponsoring marathons is no substitute for actually being a responsible corporate citizen. Now more than ever, we need banks to show leadership. Bank of America can start right now by ending its financing of Chicago’s coal plants — helping to protect the health of our communities and our climate. We will settle for nothing less. | <urn:uuid:a95fe53e-ee7c-4bd3-9066-ab94a986e3fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://understory.ran.org/2011/10/07/greetings-from-the-bank-of-america-chicago-marathon-health-fitness-expo/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936063 | 580 | 1.65625 | 2 |
BEIRUT // This week's visit to Syria by Saudi King Abdullah marks a potential reconciliation between the two rivals after years of bitter relations that have hurt efforts by Lebanon's political elites to find consensus on a national unity government.
With both Saudi Arabia and Syria maintaining extensive influence over Lebanon's political majority and opposition, many political figures and observers in Beirut and around the region describe the meeting as a critical opportunity to not only resolve Lebanon's years-long political impasse, but also push Syria back into the community of Arab nations and further away from its longtime ally Iran. "It's a pretty big deal," said the Syria expert Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "A good outcome in these talks could quickly facilitate a Lebanese government."
"The visit confirms a shift in Middle East politics," said Paul Salem, an analyst with the Carnegie Middle East Centre. "It is very significant and important that Syria has definitely shifted more towards the middle compared to the old days, where it was closely aligned with Iran." In recent weeks, Syria has embarked on a programme to rehabilitate its image in the Arab world and internationally by improving relations with Saudi Arabia, the United States, Europe and Turkey through a series of meetings, statements and even small concessions.
"These efforts are capped by a high-level graduation ceremony," Mr Salem said. "For the king to come not just for a meeting but for a three-day visit is a major step in calming relations." The relations between the two Arab powers first cracked in 2004, when Saudi Arabia supported the efforts of the United States, France and Rafiq Hariri, who was the Lebanese prime minister at the time, to pass United Nations Resolution 1559, which called for the disarming of Hizbollah, and get Syria to end its multi-decade occupation of its neighbour. But these chilly ties shattered after the 2005 car bomb assassination of Hariri, who had close ties to the Saudi royal family, in an attack that was widely blamed on Syria.
After that rupture both countries used proxies, with Saudi Arabia supporting Hariri's son and political heir Saad and Syria promoting the mostly Shiite opposition led by Hizbollah. After the war between Israel and Hizbollah in July 2006, relations between the Sunni and Shiite political establishments turned even more bitter and violent with street clashes between rival gangs and parties continuing until Hizbollah violently took over West Beirut in May 2008. Lebanon has been calm in the ensuing 18 months since that clash. June elections were held with a minimum of disruption and resulted in a victory of Mr Hariri's alliance with the help of major Saudi campaign donations. The ensuing four months have seen the process stuck over small political issues, however.
With both patrons discussing regional issues for the first time in years, there is some guarded optimism that the groups they support locally will find room to compromise on issues, including the allocation of various cabinet ministries. "At the levels of meetings here in Beirut, the mood has been pretty good," Mr Salem said. "But they are just now getting down to brass tacks and with the meetings in Syria, there's a sense of hopefulness."
Adding to the optimism is a meeting between Mr Hariri and the opposition Christian leader, Michel Aoun, yesterday in Beirut. Mr Hariri's first attempt to build a unity cabinet failed after he could not agree with Mr Aoun on who would control the lucrative telecommunications ministry. Mr Aoun favoured his son-in-law, Gibran Bassil, to continue in the post, a demand Mr Hariri refused, citing his role as prime minister-designate and the right to name his own cabinet.
After yesterday's meeting, Mr Aoun told reporters that the two men found some issues of agreement and that he expected a cabinet would form fairly soon. "It is like putting together a puzzle. Only when it is done will you see it as a whole," Mr Aoun said. Mohammed Raad, a Hizbollah member of parliament, confirmed that he expected talks on ministries in the coming days but another Hizbollah official warned that internal problems in Mr Hariri's March 14 alliance could scuttle the progress.
"There is a consensus on the 15-10-5 formula as we look forward to eliminate a few complications; nevertheless, some March 14 officials do not want a partnership cabinet," the Hizbollah deputy, Naim Qassem, said on Sunday. Mr Qassem was referring to several March 14 allies in Lebanon's Christian community who have criticised Mr Hariri's adherence to a compromise that would give the majority 15 seats, the opposition 10 seats and leave five seats to a neutral presidential bloc, effectively protecting the minority's right to veto major initiatives. Several parties have complained that Mr Hariri gave up too much to earn the co-operation of the opposition and still does not have a cabinet to show for the compromise. | <urn:uuid:6e79b97d-0cb4-40aa-82cf-63351a4e7e5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/saudi-kings-syria-visit-feeds-hopes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976182 | 1,002 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Deficit supercommittee surveys economy
As if the supercommittee’s job wasn’t tough enough.
The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warned the powerful deficit-cutting panel on Tuesday that the economic recovery will continue at a slower clip than expected in coming years and that immediate spending cuts or tax hikes could result in “an added drag on the weak economic expansion.”Continue Reading
CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, testifying before the 12-member bipartisan committee charged with cutting $1.2 trillion from the deficit, said a better strategy would be to significantly slash the deficit later in the decade without making upfront cuts to spending or tax increases.
That approach calls for “changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit now but reduce it later in the decade,” he said.
However, if current policies are not changed over the long term, he said, the aging population coupled with rising health care costs will hike federal spending to unsustainable levels.
“The nation cannot continue to sustain the spending programs and policies of the past with the tax revenues it has been accustomed to paying,” Elmendorf said. “Citizens will either have to pay more for their government, accept less in government services and benefits or both.”
In a Senate Hart Building committee room, Republicans and Democrats clashed over how the nation arrived at its record $14 trillion deficit. Republicans painted the rising cost of Medicare, Social Security and other entitlement programs, as key driver of the nation’s debt. Democrats blamed the economic meltdown, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, recent tax cuts and government bailouts.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said the deficit was “more than just a spending problem,” as Republicans have suggested. He and other Democrats pointed to past deficit-reduction panels, including the so-called Senate Gang of Six and President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission — that concluded a “balanced approach” of revenue raisers, spending cuts and long-term reforms was needed to fix the problem.
“While there may be partisan interpretations of how we got here, there is bipartisan consensus not just about the urgency of action to dig us out of this mess but about the approach it requires,” Kerry said, rattling off a list of past deficit groups. “We benefit from their guideposts.”
Get reporter alerts | <urn:uuid:3a0f9cd5-a03e-48c4-a3b8-f3abb25f9c72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63395.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947158 | 495 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Making Orange Green
When she came to UT Knoxville as a student in 1999, Sarah Surak was a passionate person still looking to find just what her passion would be. As soon as she took Dr. Mike McKinney’s Geology 201 class as a sophomore, she knew that the environment was her niche.
As a student – and now as public relations manager for UT Facilities Services – she has helped guide the Make Orange Green program, which has helped the Knoxville campus earn a national reputation as an environmental leader.
Throughout April, faculty, staff and students will celebrate Make Orange Green Earth Month, four weeks of events and activities designed to highlight UT’s environmental efforts. Click here to view the list of events.
As an undergrad, Surak was the president of SPEAK, the student environmental organization. At the time, the campus had a limited campus recycling program, and Surak volunteered the members of SPEAK to help run the program.
"We spent so much time at those recycling bins that I started having dreams – nightmares really – about them," Surak says. But the program was a success, and by the end of her senior year, the campus needed a full-time recycling coordinator. Surak was the right choice for the job.
Surak points to one event as a vital tipping point in the campus environmental program: the student-led and administration-supported effort to enact the Student Environmental Initiatives Fee. Now five dollars per semester, per student, goes directly to environmental work on campus.
"That took the program beyond recycling, and more importantly, it showed the support of the students and the administration in getting behind the environmental effort," she said.
The fee funds everything from hybrid and electric vehicles to compact fluorescent light bulbs and water-saving plumbing fixtures – all steps, she points out, that help the environment and are also good for the university’s bottom line.
"We can use the Environmental Initiatives Fee as seed money to pay for projects that may be costly upfront, but that will save us far more money in reduced energy consumption over time," she says.
"The same goes for our Environmental Stewardship Fund, which gives faculty, staff and alumni a chance to financially support the Make Orange Green program," she says. "Gifts to it go a long way because they end up multiplying so much over time."
Make Orange Green has garnered national media attention. UT Knoxville has recently become the first campus in the entire country to have its cleaning processes certified green.
The future looks bright. UT Knoxville has embarked on an ambitious project to become carbon-neutral, which would place the university among the nation’s environmentally elite institutions.
"We’re a leader in Tennessee, in the Southeast and in the nation," she says. "As a UT alum, as a staff member, I love UT, and that makes me incredibly proud." | <urn:uuid:05a139b6-4091-4d2b-8408-ddfb495db13e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2008/03/24/Making-Orange-Green/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973076 | 598 | 1.726563 | 2 |
What does it mean to be a member of Central Church?
There’s one thing that Christians worldwide can agree upon: if you have been baptized, you’re already a member of the church. Being part of a particular United Methodist congregation means placing your name officially on its rolls. Our membership affects our voice within the larger denomination. Being a member also allows a person to fully participate in and vote in church conferences.
Are all United Methodist churches the same?
No. While all United Methodist churches follow the Book of Discipline in regard to doctrine and practice, churches are as varied as people. Some have a very conservative nature and others are more liberal.
Can someone attend worship without being a member?
Of course! We welcome everyone!
What are the demographics of Central's congregation?
Our membership comprises individuals of many income groups, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and political persuasions.
What does being a “reconciling congregation” mean?
The United Methodist Church is open to all persons who seek to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. In acknowledging our oneness with all of God's creation, a reconciling congregation invites gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons to share our faith, our community life and our ministries. But it does not stop there. A reconciling congregation affirms the same for all persons without regard to race, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, economic status, or physical or mental condition. We at Central Church seek to be an inclusive congregation. We proclaim our commitment to seek reconciliation of all persons to God and to each other through Jesus Christ. We work diligently to make the larger United Methodist Church inclusive and welcoming of all people.
Are children welcome at services?
Absolutely. We believe that the presence of children make us a more faithful and vibrant congregation. We even have two rocking chairs for parents to use during a service.
Can I get texts or recordings of Sunday sermons?
Yes. Texts of the sermons are posted on our website as well as audio recordings. Sermons are also available as podcasts.
Can anyone participate in communion at Central Church?
At Central Church our Communion Table is open to all. Anyone is welcome to participate in Holy Communion at Central Church. At Central Church we celebrate Holy Communion as a regular part of our worship service on the first Sunday of every month. Communion is served by intinction. The bread is received and dipped in the juice and then eaten by the person receiving the sacrament.
On the Sundays when Holy Communion is not served as a part of the worship service, Communion will be served around the Communion Table following the 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. services. Those wishing to participate are invited to come to the front of the Fireside Room or the Sanctuary at the conclusion of the service to join in this sacred meal. | <urn:uuid:e414a0a9-dfe7-4cd0-b13b-07422f20f3d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cumcstockton.org/resources | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954989 | 596 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Ted Simons: A dedication ceremony was held recently for First Solars new solar panel manufacturing plant in Mesa. I'll talk to the new manager of the plant, Todd Spangler. Why did -- was it the best spot? Texas and New Mexico fighting hard for this?
Todd Spangler: When you looked at the economics, the support of the state, the incentive, the labor force -- a great option for us.
Ted Simons: And as far as the airport being nearby, ASU, the polytechnic out there -- factors?
Todd Spangler: Sure, the greater valley, you know, a great place for us and helped with the supply chain options and also the college being nearby certainly is a great training resource we feel we'll be able to utilize.
Ted Simons: What exactly does this plant build?
Todd Spangler: We -- we follow what is called a copy smart mentality. All of our plants produce the same thing. It's a two foot by four foot solar panel that generates power. That's it.
Ted Simons: That's it? Not a lot of diversification. Make one thing and do it well.
Todd Spangler: Very well, yes.
Ted Simons: The buildings, this is the first of what could be how many?
Todd Spangler: The campus is designed so we could put four buildings. The first is 1.35 million square feet. Yeah.
Ted Simons: And three others could come along the pike?
Todd Spangler: Depending on demand, sure.
Ted Simons: And we're looking at the construction process. Seems like it's going up fast. Are you surprised by how fast?
Todd Spangler: The copy smart mentality help -- the copy smart mentality benefits us tremendously. It's something we're good at.
Ted Simons: When will this be now?
Todd Spangler: Mid year.
Todd Spangler: Mid next year.
Ted Simons: How many jobs?
Todd Spangler: 600 in manufacturing, 500 construction jobs also to start.
Ted Simons: What wages?
Todd Spangler: We're very competitive, company in terms of wages, it varies dramatically because we're hiring engineers to management and we've got finance and a bulk of production workers.
Ted Simons: If the other buildings do get started, is there a timetable for that? Basically waiting for the market?
Todd Spangler: Not at this time. It's market driven.
Ted Simons: Speaking of the market, what is the market for what's being built there?
Todd Spangler: Sure, the market is primarily for first solar, utility escape pouts. There are a -- power plants, there are a few power plants in Arizona we're working on right now, where they're like the traditional forms of power, generating electricity fed to the grid and the other major market is rooftop applications.
Ted Simons: I read somewhere that Germany was number one for now.
Todd Spangler: Germany has been heavy in the solar industry though that's changing as the world recognizes the advantage of having solar electricity.
Ted Simons: You think the United States could be up there close?
Todd Spangler: We think within the next year, the United States could be a primary market.
Ted Simons: Yeah.
Ted Simons: You guys are building in Yuma?
Todd Spangler: There's a large site there, yes.
Ted Simons: Is there a relationship going on here? Is this something you'll be able to use?
Todd Spangler: Sure, as we looked at where to expand our capacity, building in the U.S. was driven largely by some of the U.S. demand, like Yuma.
Ted Simons: So basically, Arizona because of this kind of push for solar power help make this decision for first solar?
Todd Spangler: Certainly a part of it, yeah. The political climate here was certainly a big factor toward the support we got toward the decision we made.
Ted Simons: Plant manager.
Todd Spangler: That's my title.
Ted Simons: What are you going to do? Walking around bossing people around.
Todd Spangler: Hopefully, there's a little bit more to it. We have a great team we've started to recruit and we believe in a team atmosphere and everybody has a voice.
Ted Simons: And from where you sit, the state of solar power in Arizona, in the United States, in the world, what -- what are you seeing?
Todd Spangler: We're on the verge of a major crossroads with solar power. Anyone that does research knows the term grid parody and the fact that we're so close to being to the point where solar power could be at grid parity with other forms of electricity and when that happens, it's a big deem.
Ted Simons: Good to have you here. Thanks for joining us.
Todd Spangler: Thanks for having me, Ted. | <urn:uuid:a44fa52a-856d-4263-952d-260f58e3dbef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.azpbs.org/horizon/detailvid.php?id=3051 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959866 | 1,048 | 1.609375 | 2 |
For the Love of Libros - A Book Fair and a Fortress
By Marina Sitrin at Feb 23, 2009
Imagine yourself in front of a 16th century fortress facing the Malecon in Old Havana, Cuba. The fortress occupies a vast expanse of land with a wall that extends the length of the fortress, surrounded by a deep moat, once legend to have been filled with crocodiles. The fortress is comprised of underground tunnels, old dungeons and hundreds of ancient cannons. It is rumored to have been built to resist pirates, buccaneers and corsairs. Every evening, since the 18th century, there is a symbolic firing of the cannons at 9pm. Once a signal that the walls of the fortress were closing and population was to take refuge, it is now a reminder to Habaneros to check that their watches are in sync. This is an often-frequented spot for visitors to Havana. This week however there is a very different sort of crowd milling about the fortress.
I now bring you to another frequented tourist spot in Havana, el Capitolio. Similar in design to the Capital building in Washington DC, Capitolio was once the seat of Cuban government, but since the 1959 Revolution it is now the Cuban Academy of Science. Facing el Capitolio are a number of modern movie theaters, film being a very important pastime in Cuba. The sidewalk facing el Capitolio is usually filled with hundreds of people waiting on line to see the latest film. Not this week. For the past eleven days it has been witness to a constant flow of hundreds and thousands of people filling buses that never stop arriving and departing. This is the launching site for Habaneros on their way to the 18th Annual International Book Fair, taking place in the 16th century fortress – the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña.
Excited to attend my first Cuban book fair, I piled onto a bus with hundreds of others: men, women, children and tons of young adults and adolescents. There is a feeling of going somewhere exciting, on a trip or to a concert. Once we go under the tunnel we drive along the water, as if on our way to the beaches of Playas del Este. There is that sort of vacation and celebration feel on the bus as well. The adults hold plastic picnic bags and the children their toys.
Now imagine thousands and thousands of people streaming up a hill towards the drawbridge of the fortress. The dirt road is lined with ice cream trucks and food stalls, and the moat is filled with free pony rides for children ... there is a buzz in the air. People are happy, no one is pushing, but there is a sense of anticipation. It is a combination of the excitement and numbers of a massive rock concert with all the calm and cheer of a folk festival.
But this is not a concert, nor is it a festival. This is a book fair. Over 300 publishing houses from over 43 countries have set up stalls and events in the fortress. The book fair happens in Havana for 11 days. It then travels to 30 other cities across Cuba. Last year over 5 million people attended the book fair and purchased over 6 million books. They expect many more this year. To put this in context, Cuba only has a population of 11 and a half million people. That means almost half of the entire population goes to the book fair. Imagine participation on that scale anywhere else in the world. Imagine what that would look like in the United States. That would mean no less than 152 million people coming out to attend, of all things, a book fair.
There were book stalls that held the least expensive books; those that were marked down even lower than the usual remarkably low prices. Many were selling for one peso in Moneda Nacional (the national currency). With 24 pesos in national money to a Convertible Cuban Peso, that translates to roughly $.05 in US dollars. Many of these books were children's books, some were propaganda, and there was an entire table of the collected works of Lenin in Spanish on the bargain table. For myself, I bought a copy of a book by Boaventura de Sousa Santos called "Reinventar la democracia - Reinventar el Estado", "Reinvent democracy - Reinvent the State", and another called Emancipatory Paradigms in Latin America. Cuban publishing houses publish both books. Together they cost less than forty cents US, a price that makes these books accessible to anyone. Along with politics and history, a wide range of topics could be found. A Cuban friend who accompanied me to the book fair bought mainly novels, one of which was written by Senel Paz, a famous Cuban author, globally known for having written the screen play for the acclaimed "Strawberry and Chocolate". This novel includes history, politics and romance, like the film, but in the novel it is a romance between two young men.
And then the children! Half the book fair had to be less than four feet tall. Really. There were countless children, families and children's events. There were readings for kids, spaces organized where they could just open books and look at them, touch them and have adults read to them. There were also play spaces, now reminding me of folk festivals I went to as a child. I can remember feeling like we, the kids, were the center of the festivals, the center of the universe. The book fair in Havana has that feel as well.
Each evening the book fair ended with a concert at sunset, sometimes going until well after midnight. While I enjoyed the first performance of Chilean folks singers, the book fair this year is co-sponsored by Chile, the line up of musicians for the rest of the night was for a much younger crowd. And they were arriving ... as we left the thousands coming up towards the drawbridge were all teenagers and 20-somethings. This modern concert for young people also impressed me. Once I got over my initial disappointment that the old nueva trova folks were not singing, people like Silvio Rodriguez of Cuba and Isabel Parra from Chile, and instead it was the "cool" salsa-meets-reggae and some modern something mix, I realized this was a fabulous thing. This is what was helping to bring in some of the really young people, youth who are sometimes referred to as "la generacion perdida" (the lost generation).
I cannot begin to express what I felt and feel. On the bus ride back to Havana I alternated with playing with the adorable toddler in the seat in front of me, and just gazing out the window, my eyes filled with tears, so moved. I love books. I prioritize books over most all other material things. Most people reading this probably have a love for books as well. But here, it is a nation, a people, who love, appreciate, prioritize and celebrate books.
I cannot paint a colorful enough picture of what the days of the book fair felt and looked like. One can see images of the famous fortress across the water from Havana. The stone walls, hundreds of cannons, dozens of acres ... Now add to the image tens of thousands of people, day after day, all sorts of people, and book stalls and book readings throughout the interior of the fortress. And imagine the grass acreage filled with tents with still more books, exhibits, beverages and food, most of it for sale in the national currency, at rates all could afford. People of all colors and ages. Children and old people. All there for books. Books! To look at what books were there. To buy a book. To listen to people reading from their books. To sit on the grass or on the wall and discuss the books they were holding or wanted to buy. It was all about ideas and imagination. It was a space filled only with the inspiration, passion, adventures and mysteries the written word. Day after day, with people numbering in the hundreds of thousands and then millions. That is the International Book Fair in Cuba.
I was moved deeply by the true love of ideas these past days. The importance placed on reading and imagination. And the clear respect regular people have for the written word. One can be critical and at the same time learn a great deal. There is something for us to learn here. Let us imagine together. Let us dream of how we could create a space of passionate desire for ideas and literature in our country. How might this take place, and who might support us in this endeavor?
Marina Sitrin is a writer, lawyer, dreamer and translator. She has edited "Horizonalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina", and the forthcoming "Insurgent Democracies – Latin America's New Powers."
Marina is currently living in Havana, Cuba. She can be reached by email at: Marina.firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:e4a9b45b-c839-480b-bce8-26ad85c17c39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/for-the-love-of-libros-a-book-fair-and-a-fortress-by-marina-sitrin | 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 | 0.972993 | 1,831 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Potential resale value has been a question raised about electric cars, and the answer, according to two recent used-car pricing estimates, is that two best-selling electrics may lag behind similar conventional vehicles - but not by much.
An all-electric 2012 Nissan Leaf (the 2013 is not on sale yet) is expected to be worth 20% of its new-car list price after five years of ownership, compared with a used price in the low 30% range for a similar conventional Nissan Sentra compact sedan, according to price-tracker Kelley Blue Book.
And an extended-range electric 2013 Chevrolet Volt is forecast to be worth 30% of its sticker price at the end of five years, not far from the similar, conventional 2013 Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan at 38%, KBB says.
Another pricing service, ALG, pegs the resale value a percentage point higher each for the Leaf and Volt. The average resale value of a 2013 compact car over the same five-year period is 36.6% of list, ALG says.
But the comparison looks even closer when federal tax incentives of up to $7,500 to buy new electric cars are taken into account, they say. Those rebates, in effect, shave the actual new-car price for these vehicles, making it worth less as a used car.
"If you only look at residual percentages, it's on the low side," says Eric Ibara, director of residual value consulting for KBB. "But if you look at dollars," how much people actually spend to keep an electric car compared with a conventional one, "it's not."
Predicted depreciation is an important factor for acceptance of electric cars, which have higher upfront prices than similar gas-engine cars and even hybrids.
To get more cars into the hands of customers, Nissan and General Motors' Chevrolet have been offering heavily discounted leases, but Ibara doesn't think the tactic will hurt prices on the used cars when they land on lots in a few years. "It really doesn't hurt the value," he says.
Another resale-value concern about electric cars has been the lifespan of their expensive batteries, but that seems to have been eased by long warranties and the fact that the smaller but similar batteries in gas-electric hybrids, with a longer track record on the road, have shown themselves to be surprisingly robust.
When Toyota rolled out its Prius hybrid in the U.S. in 2000, predicted residual values were low because of questions about the longevity of the cars' then-novel batteries, says Larry Dominique, executive vice president of TrueCar.com and ALG, formerly Automotive Lease Guide. "But it came back."
Now, he says, plug-in cars such as the all-electric Leaf, which is rated by EPA at a range of 73 miles before needing a recharge, and the Volt, which is rated at 38 miles of electric driving before the backup gas engine kicks in, "get the benefit of the Prius experience."
Also helping value retention: Consumer Reports magazine says Volt topped its owner satisfaction survey a second consecutive year, and Leaf also was among the top scorers.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Electric cars like Volt, Leaf hold resale value | <urn:uuid:e5552b71-1621-4de1-a1d5-0d2c5ae7b187> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/usatoday/article/1761805 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962249 | 677 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Comparing Separation Quality of Nonnegative Matrix Factorization and Nonnegative Matrix Factor 2-D Deconvolution in Audio Source Separation Tasks
The Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) is widely used in audio source separation tasks. However, the separation quality of NMF varies a lot depending on the mixture. In this paper we analyze the use of NMF in source separation tasks and show how separation results can be significantly improved by using the Nonnegative Matrix Factor 2D Deconvolution (NMF2D). NMF2D was originally proposed as an extension to the NMF to circumvent the problem of grouping notes, but it is used differently in this paper to improve the separation quality, without taking the problem of grouping notes into account.
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This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers. | <urn:uuid:8f0094dd-6056-43e3-b0b1-47b937067e84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=16543 | 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 | 0.933367 | 232 | 1.507813 | 2 |
It is now beyond the shadow of a doubt that the US is investing in a long-term strategic partnership with India, and has identified China as a threat while declaring Asia as a priority to the US.
In rolling out its new strategy review on Thursday, Pentagon officials made it clear that the fronts for potential conflicts are shifting toward China.
“All of the trends — demographic trends, geopolitical trends, economic trends, and military trends — are shifting towards the Pacific,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said. “So our strategic challenges in the future will largely emanate from out of the Pacific region.”
It was a recurring theme in the eight-page strategic review document unveiled by President Obama. “Over the long-term, China’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the US economy and our security in a variety of ways,” the strategic review noted.
The Asia pivot comes as China has unsettled its neighbours over the past several years with the expansion of its navy and improvements in missile and surveillance capabilities. The Pentagon is worried about China’s strategic goals as it begins to field a new generation of weapons.
“The growth of China’s military power must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region,” warned the strategic review.
The military’s announcement follows a major diplomatic push by the US to expand security partnerships with allies in the region. On December 19, the US, India and Japan held their first trilateral meeting in Washington, in the latest sign of the Obama administration’s drive to push back against rising Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Pentagon practically came out and said outright that it views India as a counterbalance to China. “The US is investing in a long-term strategic partnership with India to support its ability to serve as a regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region,” said the strategic review.
C.Raja Mohan, a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board, pointed out in his essay in American Review that the “potential implications” of a partnership between Islamabad and Beijing have also underscored for Washington what growing Chinese influence means for Asia as a whole.
“While the Obama administration has welcomed a larger Chinese role in stabilising Afghanistan, it cannot but begin to contemplate the consequences of Beijing’s expanding influence in south and south-western Asia in collaboration with Pakistan,” said Raja Mohan.
The Obama administration also sees a big role for India in bridging the Indian and Pacific Oceans. ”The US has always been a Pacific power because of our very great blessing of geography. And India straddling the waters from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean is, with us, a steward of these waterways. We are both deeply invested in shaping the future of the region that they connect,” America’s top diplomat Hillary Clinton recently told her audience in Chennai.
Anyone paying attention to Obama’s November trip to Asia and Clinton’s visit to Myanmar saw Washington pushing back against China. While the US was bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, China had the headroom to expand its influence in the region. For the first time since the end of World War II, America’s dominance is being challenged by China, which is emerging as an engine of regional economic growth.
China has advanced its influence in the region, with allies like North Korea, Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. It has established itself as a growing, and sometimes bullying, power in the Pacific, particularly in East Asia. Most of the countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have festering territorial disputes with China.
Analysts say rising China has spurred America to consolidate ties with regional powers like Japan, India, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines in a policy “pivot” towards Asia. Thursday’s defense review also clarifies that instead of focusing on the Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the US will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific. America’s new emphasis on Asia and the containment of China also stems from the fact that the Asia-Pacific region now constitutes the center of gravity of world economic activity.
Beijing has reacted nervously and warned Washington not to take steps which could fan Cold War-style antagonism. In the first Chinese reaction to the US policy shift, announced by President Obama on Thursday, the Global Times newspaper said China would “pay the price” if it retreated in order to appease the US. “Of course we want to prevent a new Cold War with the United States, but at the same time, we must avoid giving up China’s security presence in the neighboring region,” said the paper, owned by the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily. | <urn:uuid:fd157621-98d9-4675-baeb-7d9a0d7fd36a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defence.pk/forums/americas/151642-us-defence-strategy-focuses-india-ally-china-threat.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954008 | 1,025 | 1.84375 | 2 |
The ECB starts getting helpful with Greece
Stephen Fidler reports that the ECB is kindasorta going to tender its bonds into the Greek debt exchange, thereby helping the country achieve some €11 billion in extra savings.
The details are sketchy, but to a first approximation, it seems to work like this: the ECB has €50 billion of Greek bonds, which it bought for €39 billion. It will sell those bonds to the EFSF for €39 billion, which in turn will “return the bonds to Greece”, whatever that means. Greece, in turn, “will then agree to repay the EFSF” — which may or may not mean issuing new bonds to be held by the EFSF. Since Greece will now have €39 billion of debt rather than €50 billion, that’s an €11 billion savings.
The ECB, under this plan, ends up breaking even, without monetizing any debt. As Zero Hedge says,
The ECB could have taken the loss directly and just printed money for that loss. So this demonstrates an unwillingness to print money. The ECB could take the loss and get capital from the member states. By using the EFSF rather than new capital calls, it is a sign that countries are at the limit of what they will contribute. Hoping for new money is unrealistic – since this was the perfect opportunity to put up new money and tell the world that Europe is truly united and willing to contribute. This just uses up money that was already allocated.
I’m also a bit worried about Greece’s new €39 billion debt to the EFSF — how is that going to be structured? Right now, the €50 billion of ECB debt comprises exactly the same bonds that anybody else can buy, but a big new EFSF debt might well be some kind of senior, bilateral obligation which effectively subordinates the new bonds that Greece is going to issue in a bond exchange.
And more generally, the problem here is that the EFSF, which was created to lend new money to countries in distress, is instead being used to retire debt that Greece issued years ago. That, in turn, hurts the EFSF’s ability to fund Greece — and all the other countries in Europe, for that matter — going forwards.
So there’s not a lot to get excited about here in structural terms. In big-picture terms, however, this is clearly good news, since it’s a signal that Europe is actually finding ways to get everybody on board for a new debt deal between Greece, its bondholders, and the Troika. Will it be enough? No. But it’s a step in the right direction. | <urn:uuid:731a3550-443d-4631-a8d3-3740081a5496> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/02/07/the-ecb-starts-getting-helpful-with-greece/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960878 | 611 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Remember how the crowds at the 2008 Republican National Convention all chanted "Drill Baby Drill," led by the likes of Michael Steele, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and most of all by Sarah Palin? Here's what Palin said in her debate with Joe Biden:
The chant is "drill, baby, drill." And that's what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into. They know that even in my own energy-producing state we have billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas. And we're building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline which is North America's largest and most you expensive infrastructure project ever to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets.
Barack Obama and Senator O'Biden, you've said no to everything in trying to find a domestic solution to the energy crisis that we're in. You even called drilling -- safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore -- as raping the outer continental shelf.
There -- with new technology, with tiny footprints even on land, it is safe to drill and we need to do more of that.
Yeah, it sure is safe:
Coast Guard officials were investigating reports on Friday that crude oil leaking from a well beneath the Gulf of Mexico had washed ashore, threatening wildlife in fragile marshes and islands along the Gulf Coast.
As the vast and growing oil slick spread across the Gulf and approached shore, fishermen in coastal towns feared for their businesses and the White House stepped up its response to the worsening situation.
President Obama ordered a freeze on new offshore drilling leases until a review of the oil rig accident that caused the spill could be concluded, and new safeguards put in place.
“I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security,” Mr. Obama said on Friday, addressing concerns about whether the administration would continue with its plan to increase drilling in the Gulf.
Even so, he said, “the local economies and livelihoods of the people of the Gulf Coast as well as the ecology of the region are at stake.”
Of course, for some people, that's a negligible concern:
Fund managers and analysts in the City said they were deeply worried about the financial cost to BP of the kind of legal action that could be taken in the US by those damaged by the accident.
Why, nobody could have predicted this, right? Even though BP was fined a record $87 million last September for safety violations in Texas.
Well at least Newt Gingrich has remained consistent:
In 2008, Newt Gingrich began American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), the casino-funded 527 that used the slogan “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” to promote the false idea that new offshore drilling could lower gas prices. On its website, Gingrich’s ASWF is continuing its petition while reporting on the inevitable consequences of dependence on dirty oil.
And, as Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room reports, this is shaping up to be a worse environmental disaster than the Exxon Valdez disaster.
We sure eager to hear what the "Drill Baby Drill" crowd will say now. No doubt they'll find a way to blame Obama for the mess.
UPDATE: Sure enough. Limbaugh: Oil spill is "Obama's Katrina". I understand this was the talking point this morning on "liberal" MSNBC's Morning Joe.
UPDATE II: Josh Nelson notes that Palin has tweeted her compassion:
Isn't that special? Gotta love the heartfelt compassion there. That and three bucks will get you a double-tall latte at Starbucks. | <urn:uuid:883fed88-1ca0-41d5-a841-aacb2dd9fe1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crooksandliars.com/taxonomy/term/226 | 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 | 0.962059 | 758 | 1.59375 | 2 |
To the editor:
Who is more deserving of a job in today’s poor economy? My 15-year-old son was applying to Canobie Lake for a summer job this past spring, when he posed a question to my husband and me which just astounded me. He asked if he would be taking a job away from somebody who needed it. What if there was a family man who needed this job (at Canobie Lake) to provide for his family?
Wow. I never expected my child, a freshman in high school, to ask such a sobering question.
Why at his young age of 15, would he be worrying about another man’s family welfare? I realized all too quickly, he has seen his own family unfortunately live paycheck to paycheck and the struggles and anxiety it has brought.
Although sad but true, would he now sacrifice his own job potential for someone else who might have no other options in this job market?
It wasn’t as easy to explain to him in this light that he, too, needed to try to get this summer job. He required a job to earn money to help pay for driver’s ed, back to school supplies, clothing, shoes and, of course, dating cash. It was essential for him to gain work experience as he began to plan his future career, pay for college and the possibility of a family, too. We all need good paying jobs. We all deserve an opportunity to work, to earn our own self-worth, to provide for ourselves and those who count on us to take care of them.
I found myself resenting the fact my son felt guilty for trying to get a summer job. Why should he feel pitted against someone else for the right to work?
As Election Day approaches, my heart is heavy. Our current president has tried but has not been able to provide a better economy for people to not only survive but to live a little, too. This time around I am putting my children’s future as a priority. We need a president who not only tries but can bring his many years of successful business experience to the table.
This is why I will vote for Mitt Romney. My vote is to move our promising nation “forward” and “upward.”
I ask you to please vote, not for a Democrat or a Republican, but for the best person capable of bringing this country out of despair. I am voting for my children’s future.
I am voting for all Americans, both young and old, who are so deserving of a good job in a much better economy.
For the next president of the United States of America, I support Mitt Romney. He believes in America and so do I. | <urn:uuid:7d239255-bdef-44fb-b273-2b0802d7435c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eagletribune.com/opinion/x1133190321/Letter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983688 | 566 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Discovering Places was the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad’s campaign to inspire the UK to discover their local built, historic and natural environments. The campaign was delivered on behalf of The London 2012 Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic games by The Heritage Alliance.
The project ended in September 2012 and over 18 months of public engagement an audience of over 150,000 actively engaged in one or more of our projects, a further 100,000 participated online through interactive websites, blogs, downloads and submissions. Over 29 million people heard about our projects and The Heritage Alliance work, through radio campaigns and TV features.
Discovering Places worked in partnership to deliver 3 major UK-wide engagement programmes and in legacy our partners continue to engage the new audiences we reached:
- Walk the World with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
- Meet the Species with theBristol Natural History Consortium
- Culture Cashing with Ground Speak
The Discovering Places team also developed and delivered a pilot project call Discover Explore. This is an interactive website which encourages families and young people to explore their local heritage locations through the creation of bespoke explorer packs. It launched in Great Glen, Scotland and Lee Valley,London. Online membership and rewards further inspire explorers to head off to multiple locations to collect all the online badges and awards. This project in legacy is currently seeking further funding for expansion across the UK.
Discovering Places through partnership working and small grants delivered over 50 bespoke one off events.
In 2005, when London was awarded the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2012, it was acknowledged that the commitment to delivering a UK wide cultural programme as part of the Cultural Olympiad helped win the bid.
At that time, Ian Lush, the Vice Chair of The Heritage Alliance began to lobby and found support from the DCMS and subsequently London 2012 Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), to ensure that heritage played its part in the Cultural Olympiad.
The Heritage Alliance was awarded a capacity building grant in 2008 from English Heritage to develop a UK-wide engagement project during the Cultural Olympiad period. The Heritage Alliance and LOCOG then worked with key stakeholders in the Heritage, Built and Natural Environment sectors to develop the Discovering Places Campaign.
The innovation of the projects and the use of digital and new technologies helped us successfully to reach new audiences and inspire people to engage with their local and the wider UK environment. Working with over 400 delivery partners to create new ways to deliver events and reach new audiences has left a dynamic legacy of new partnership across the UK.
Our thanks to all our colleagues who have continually supported the project over the last eight years and given their time, expertise and played an active role in making Discovering Places such a success.
For the full report, please click here. | <urn:uuid:6ca71899-b282-49ed-b4b7-2efdc734f0de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theheritagealliance.org.uk/discovering-places-2012-cultural-olympiad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943917 | 578 | 1.828125 | 2 |
My Irish Catholic grandmother may turn in her grave. “The most common name in the Australian handbook of Catholic priests is no longer Irish, but Vietnamese,” said Fr Adrian Farrelly of Clayfield, in Brisbane. “Yes, we have many overseas priests. My Nigerian deacon here has just been ordained.”
One former St Columban priest, Peter Wilkinson, now married with four children in Melbourne, estimates that 20 to 22 per cent of the 1,523 active priests in parish ministries in Australia are on visas or foreign-born – soon it will be one in four. “Sometime between now and 2020 it will reach 50 per cent,” he says. “The average age of priests actively ministering is 62 years – and rising.”
In the Diocese of Brisbane there are 142 active priests of whom 13 from Africa or India have arrived in the past five years. They joined dozens of other foreign priests: 14 from Poland and Vietnam and an unspecified number from Italy, the Philippines, Korea, Lebanon, Ukraine, Croatia, Mexico, China and Samoa. In some city parishes they reflect the composition of the congregations.
In the whole of Australia, at least 160 religious Sisters, priests, seminarians, and lay workers arrive annually from Vietnam, India, South America, Nigeria, Uganda and other African countries. Immigration controls mean they are restricted to three-year labour agreements and visas for ministry, training or study. But patching up the lack of priests with non-English-speaking clerics has received much criticism. Compromises, though, are needed. In the Outback some congregations only have a Mass once a month. Australia had 2,833,438 Catholics and 3,800 priests in 1970. Now the number of Catholics has nearly doubled to 5.6 million, but priests are down to 3,070, including 99 Eastern Rite, eight military chaplains and 16 Opus Dei members.
Some of Australia’s shortfall will be filled by 20 Anglican priests, mostly married, who are converting. The proposed ordinariate in Australia, as in England, is flourishing.
A few mitres may fall off when the bishops read this. The limitations in the Roman Rescript, the process and instrument by which priests are laicised, have been reduced. Old and weary though many of the estimated 100,000 or so priests who have left the priesthood since the 1970s may be, a new clause allows them to be active in churches as laymen.
A Vatican letter says that instead of banishing ex-priests to the sidelines, bishops may invite them to participate in parish duties. Sent by Cardinal Ivan Dias, recently retired prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, to the World Grouping of Catholic Missionary Institutes, it invites “the diocesan bishop to encourage the dispensed cleric to actively participate in the life of the local Church, making all his God-given gifts and talents available for the benefit of the Church”.
Wilkinson, who explains that he has resigned from the ministry, not the priesthood, was among the Australians quietly campaigning for this change. He says that previously the Rescript was “specific and prohibitive: no preaching a homily, no distributing of Holy Communion, no directive role in pastoral work, no functions in seminaries or equivalent institutes, no teaching in tertiary teaching institutions dependent on ecclesiastical authority, no directive or teaching role in formal theological education, and once laicised must keep away from places where formerly known as a priest”.
Will the scarcity of local priests for sacramental and pastoral duties now lead to further concessions? | <urn:uuid:455ac8b3-de3c-405f-a221-5b71421324d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/10/03/it%E2%80%99s-becoming-hard-to-find-an-aussie-priest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95823 | 759 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Non-Marine Technical Service
Over the last decade, Martin & Ottaway has become increasingly active in non-marine technical consulting as clients have become aware that many systems used in the maritime field also are in use in non-marine applications.
The technical backgrounds of the firm's consultants, which include marine engineering, naval architecture, aerospace and ocean engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, as well as electrical and electronics, allows for the cross utilization of engineering disciplines for non-marine applications.
Areas where the firm has consulted on non-marine technical applications include:
- Shore-based diesel engines and generators
- Patent Issues
- Refrigeration and hydraulic equipment
- Inter-modal operations, such as trailers and chassis
- Shore-based cranes and lifting gear
- Composites design, evaluation, manufacturing and maintenance
- Manufacturing and storage plants
- Heating and ventilation systems
- Human factors design and engineering
- Product quality monitoring
- Instrumentation and strain gauging
- Asbestos and related investigations | <urn:uuid:921cddbf-0283-44c5-b03c-b08ac3e57f2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.martinottaway.com/services/non-marine-technical-service | 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 | 0.938762 | 210 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Benjamin L. Cardin, Chairman
Alcee L. Hastings, Co-Chairman
December 20, 2010
PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN KYRGYZSTAN SET THE STAGE FOR A NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM
Ethnic Tensions Remain a Key Obstacle to Stability
By Janice Helwig and Shelly Han
The OSCE concluded that although the October 10, 2010 elections in Kyrgyzstan were conducted peacefully – no small feat following the April 2010 revolution – and demonstrated a significant increase in pluralism as compared to previous elections, there remains an “urgent need for profound electoral legal reform.” Two Helsinki Commission staff members traveled to Kyrgyzstan to observe the election as part of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation and were deployed in the Osh and Kara-suu region. Although the staff experience was not inconsistent with the overall OSCE conclusion, Osh and the surrounding region appear to have had more problems during the election than other areas of the country.
In June, the constitution had been changed through a referendum to give the parliament a stronger role than the President. The improvement in the conduct of the election may have been partly a result of that change in that, because of the new parliamentary system and the relatively large number of parties competing, no one party or group could manipulate the election nationwide (which appeared to have been the case in the 2009 presidential elections). In fact, the close result which divided parliamentary seats among several main parties was a good indicator of an open competition. Nevertheless, there were some problems at the local level, where there may have been attempts to influence the outcome. In the Osh and Kara-suu region, there appeared to be problems particularly with the voters list, the inking process, and the counting process.
For example, in almost all the polling visited by Commission staff, about a third of those who had voted had added themselves to the additional list with just their ID. Other international observers reported similar findings. This would indicate that either the main voters list was extremely inaccurate, or something more problematic may have been going on. In one polling station, a man tried to add himself to the additional list but was turned down while the staff was present; he clearly was not satisfied and went back in to try again as they left. Another international observer in the neighboring Uzgen area reported the same pattern, but, suspiciously, only in polling stations easily accessible from the main road. According to the election law, the registration of any voter on the additional list should have been counterchecked and signed by an adviser or observer in the polling station, but that did not happen during the day. At the closing in one polling station, the Chairwoman had a colleague counter sign all 225 additions to the list.
The inking procedure also appeared to be a problem. In theory, anyone adding themselves to the additional list should not have been able to vote anywhere else because of the use of invisible ink sprayed on each voter’s thumb. However, spraying and checking for ink in the polling stations appeared to be haphazardly conducted. Domestic observers had to stay in their chairs across the room and could not see whether the ink checker was effective. Moreover, when Commission staff asked people who had been inked earlier it the day to put their thumb under the light, little or no ink was visible. The ink seemed not to work all of the time, or perhaps to have washed off easily.
There also were significant problems in processing protocols during the counting process in the Kara-suu district. At the district counting station, the halls and stairways were lined with polling station chairpersons busily erasing and refilling in their protocols. Protocols and stamps were strewn around everywhere. It may have been that the chairpersons were simply trying to get their numbers to add up properly so they would be accepted by Shailoo, the computerized vote-counting system. On the other hand, the numbers also could have been in the process of being changed to influence the outcome. Regardless of intent, last minute changes to protocols made unilaterally by chairpersons should not have been allowed as no observers were present and there were no controls in place to prevent fraud.
Official turnout figures said that Osh had the highest voter turnout in the country, at about sixty-six percent. However, Commission staff did not see polling stations with a turnout higher than forty-five percent, nor did other international observers in the area. Interestingly, the turnout in ethnic Uzbek areas appeared to be about the same as in ethnic Kyrgyz areas. Many ethnic Uzbeks said they were “voting for peace,” although it was not clear whether that meant that moving forward with any new parliament would be positive, or if it meant that voting for a certain party would benefit ethnic Uzbeks. Some ethnic Uzbek community leaders had said prior to election day that most political parties had offered their communities money and/or infrastructure improvements in exchange for their votes.
Ethnic tensions remain a concern
Prior to election day, Commission staff were able to visit several of the Osh neighborhoods destroyed in the June violence, as well as one tent camp. The scale and scope of the destruction in ethnic Uzbek areas was enormous. And in mixed neighborhoods – for example near Shark – the house-by-house, business-by-business singling out of Uzbek-owned structures for destruction was clear. All of the victims staff spoke with appeared to be still afraid and did not see any future in Kyrgyzstan. All wanted to leave but did not have the means to do so. None wanted to go to Uzbekistan; rather they wanted to go to Russia or anywhere else where they might find economic opportunities. While rebuilding of homes was clearly progressing, the question of earning a living in the long term was an overwhelming concern.
The divide between ethnic Uzbeks and ethnic Kyrgyz is wide and seems to be growing. Many ethnic Kyrgyz seem to genuinely believe that ethnic Uzbeks were responsible for the violence, and even burned down their own houses in an effort to get international attention. Kyrgyz media and the government seem to be reinforcing this message. If the region is to move forward and avoid future violence, there needs to be some mechanism for accountability and reconciliation. However, so far only ethnic Uzbeks have been arrested and put on trial, and the trials appear to have been unfairly conducted. Ethnic Uzbek defendants have been routinely attacked by ethnic Kyrgyz mobs during the trials, as have media representatives trying to report on the proceedings. In general, journalists and human rights defenders fear retaliation if they report on abuses against ethnic Uzbeks; as a result, there have been few voices speaking out.
This ethnic divide is likely to fester unless something is done to build confidence between the main ethnic groups and provide economic opportunities for all. Moreover, disenfranchised youth could be vulnerable to recruitment by extremist organizations. The new government will face many challenges, not least addressing continuing ethnic tension in the south. | <urn:uuid:7a1352db-160f-49c9-b584-c7e3c38ec58d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail&ContentRecord_id=481&Region_id=0&Issue_id=0&ContentType=G&ContentRecordType=G&CFID=17349375&CFTOKEN=95715965 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983223 | 1,430 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Barry M. Horstman reports:
The U.S. Supreme Court today cleared the way for Ohioans to cast early in-person absentee ballots on the final three days before the Nov. 6 election.
In a major legal victory for President Barack Obama’s campaign, Justice Elena Kagan denied Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s request to overturn or put on hold lower federal court rulings that authorized early voting on the final Saturday through Monday before Election Day.
Shortly after the court ruled, Husted set uniform early voting hours for those days in all 88 counties: 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday and 8 a.m-2 p.m. Monday.
The U.S. Supreme Court today sealed a legal victory for President Barack Obama’s campaign in the pivotal state of Ohio, leaving intact a ruling that restored early voting rights for the weekend before the Nov. 6 election.
Ohio Republicans had sought to cancel early voting that weekend for everyone except members of the military. A U.S. appeals court in Cincinnati blocked the plan last week, saying it probably violated the constitutional rights of non-military voters. In a one-sentence order, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to that ruling, filed by Ohio’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general.
Democrats and Republicans have jockeyed in Ohio for months over early voting, an option used heavily by blacks, women, the elderly and low-income people, according to the appeals court. A trial judge cited an estimate that 100,000 Ohioans would vote in the three days leading up to Election Day.
No Republican has ever won the White House without capturing Ohio, which controls 18 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. (more…) | <urn:uuid:477172b4-d454-4c60-8942-9d3d4d94e844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westchesterbuzz.com/tag/absentee/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943413 | 377 | 1.71875 | 2 |
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Re: Bisectual Qumram
At 08:56 AM 10/8/96 -0400, you wrote:
>At 12:56 AM 10/8/96 -0400, you wrote:
>>Where the townies the ones who brought their scrolls (those who did not live
>>in Jerusalem must have read the Torah on the Sabbath somewhere else) to
>>Qumram's cave when the revolt with Rome turned bad?
>This is a very provocative idea, and certainly deserves real consideration.
>It does indeed make sense that the "townies", as you put it, went to the
>community headquarters when the Romans approached.
>The only problem is one of chronology. Qumran, if destroyed in 68 (as seems
>to be the consensus!!!! ha!), would have disappeared before Jerusalem.
>Thus, the Essenes (ha, again!) who lived in other villages may well have
>taken their documents "home". But what of the Jerusalemites? Where would
>they have taken theirs?
>Anyway, this seems to be a possible solution for the "many hands" found to
>have written the Qumran documents. So give us more info if you would.
Colleagues, wouldn't a simple explanation of the many hands simply be that
over the course of ca. 200 years of existence of the Qumran community
(waxing and waning through those years), a considerable number of
individuals would have contributed to the community's scribal activities? | <urn:uuid:560042fc-c604-4839-b783-1186d287be8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/archives/1996b/msg00462.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933166 | 342 | 1.679688 | 2 |
'Genetic Damage' In Fallujah: The BBC Reports
By Winter Patriot
23 July , 2010
The BBC has posted a video report from veteran war reporter John Simpson, concerning children growing up in Fallujah and the genetic damage inflicted on them by the depleted uranium ammunition so generously expended in defense of their freedom and democracy (and to make them an ally!) by the most righteous of all possible superpowers.
True to form, the BBC runs the phrase 'genetic damage' in quotes, as if it weren't real but only alleged -- and without doubt the allegations would have been made by conspiracy theorists whose twisted minds have been warped against BBC and its excellent, impartial coverage, ever since 9/11.
People who cannot handle reality were stunned when the BBC scooped the world's media in reporting the destruction of World Trade Center's Building 7, (WTC-7), a 47-story skyscraper many people still haven't heard of, which suddenly turned to dust and broken twisted steel on the afternoon on September 11, 2001.
American media -- and the 9/11 commission -- have been criticized for not reporting the amazing disintegration of this building at all. But the BBC reported the "collapse" before it happened. Some people have gone to excessive lengths to try to make something incriminating out of this excellent reportage.
For its part, the BBC says it wasn't part of any conspiracy, just a fluke. So it's probably also a fluke that the video either sits and spins, or says
"This content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later".
Well, of course.
The BBC web page says:
Cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all increasing in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which saw fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, a new survey says.
Still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, doctors have been reporting a large number of birth defects since the 2004 offensive.
John Simpson reports.
But that cold snippet of text was all I have been able to get [until later: see the update below].
The page was listed as "2nd most watched" when I first loaded it, but that's changed too, and rightly so, since a
20ft oak sculpture in the heart of Dartmoor national park is due to be pulled down despite a Facebook campaign to save the giant sculpture of a chair.
Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.
Or, as Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal:
Iraq is a democracy and an ally instead of an enemy of America.
It's remarkable the extent to which our bountiful leaders will go to make friends and instill democracy, is it not?
According to the Rational Optimist:
America believes ... that it would be a desirable thing if the world did become more democratic, and backward nations did become more like us. We regard that as our own national interest, and in the interests of those other nations as well. As John F. Kennedy said, "We seek not the worldwide victory of one nation or system, but a worldwide victory of men." [And women.] And, with admittedly many zigs and zags, that is the essence of American foreign policy.
I can't tell you how relieved I am to have somebody so rational and so optimistic telling us what America believes, and what is the essence of American foreign policy.
When American cities look like this, we will know we have arrived -- the backward nations of the world will finally be just like us, and all mankind will enjoy the blessings of a democratic Paradise on Earth.
But in the meantime, the video is now available, and some of the details and images are indeed chilling.
It was only possible [for BBC reporters] to stay [in Fallujah] a few hours, but in that time we found large numbers of children with serious birth defects.
Some had six or more fingers on each hand. Many had tumors which affected their spines. There was plenty of evidence of brain damage. Some of the cases were too dreadful for us to show.
BBC decides what's fit to show, and what's too dreadful. Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.
Nonetheless, BBC reports, the spectrum of genetic damage in Fallujah is similar to what was found in Hiroshima, but much, much worse.
This could be something serious. But then again, as the BBC report notes:
American legislation makes it extremely difficult for foreigners to sue the US government over acts of war.
So ... perhaps I'm too realistic ... but it's not possible for me to imagine all the uproar over this most recent revelation of state-sponsored made-in-America horror lasting more than about 15 or 20 minutes.
Currently top of the BBC most watched list: Archeologists unearth Neolithic henge at Stonehenge!
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The Palace of Versailles outside Paris is to transform one of its satellite buildings into a luxury hotel.
L’hôtel du Grand Contrôle, the traditional home of the chateau’s treasurers, is to be converted into a luxury hotel with 23 bedrooms. Some will look out over The Orangerie, the palace’s elaborate greenhouse, and others will have a view of the Swiss ornamental lake. The hotel could be ready as early as the end of next year.
A concession has been granted to the Belgian company Ivy International SA to renovate and develop the building, which dates back to the 17th century but is currently in a dilapidated state. The work is expected to cost 5.5 million euros (£4.6 million/$7.3 million).
Versailles, a UNESCO World Heritage site deemed one of the crowning achievements of 18th-century French art, is one of Europe’s most popular tourist attractions.
The development paves the way for a series of French projects aimed at exploiting the economic potential of listed buildings while securing their renovation.
Another royal palace, the Chateau of Fontainbleau, south of Paris, is preparing to appeal for bids to develop its listed Heronniere barracks next year. “We have to find a purpose for these buildings to avoid them falling into ruin,” said Jean-Francois Hebert, President of Fontainbleau. “One of the ways will be to set up an upmarket hotel complex.”
by Andy Moreton/AFP
Luxique offers you a choice of accommodation at some 70 luxury hotels in Paris,including the Trianon Palace in Versailles.
I’ve just spent a long weekend in the northern French city of Lille, where there’s some fine architecture and some appetising specialities: moules et frites (mussels and French fries), gaufres (waffles) and crêpes (pancakes).
The city, which is close to the border with Belgium, used not to be a hotspot for tourism, but that all changed in 1994 with the arrival of the Channel Tunnel, linking the United Kingdom with the European mainland.
Lille suddenly found itself at the centre of a triangle connecting London, Paris and Brussels. Ever since then, tourists have been able to take the option of stopping off from the high-speed Eurostar trains and spending a pleasant break in Lille, where French life’s at a slower pace than in Paris.
The Eurostar link has, of course, transformed the place, with the huge Euralille shopping mall evidence of an economic boom. In 2004, the city was European Capital of Culture.
But not everyone, it seems, has benefited from the largesse brought in by tourist Euros. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many beggars in such a relatively small city. Men and women with pathetic paper cups were squatting on street corners, beside automatic cash machines and on church steps. Sometimes they approached while you were out walking.
A few were alcohol-fuelled, but in the main these were simply the dispossessed and desperate – a sad sideshow in a modern, thriving city.
by Andy Moreton
There’s been a big fall in the number of British people going abroad for their holidays.
Last year, there were ten million fewer trips – a drop of 15 per cent, the biggest annual reduction since the boom of cheap package holidays in the 1970s.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the deciding factor for many was the fall in the value of the pound against the euro and the dollar. Many opted to stay in Britain for what’s become known as a ‘staycation’.
Visitors to the most popular foreign destination, Spain, fell by 2.2 million to about 11.5 million last year. France was down 1.1 million visitors to 9.8 million, Italy down 760,000 to 2.6 million, and Portugal down 720,000 to 1.8 million.
Trips to the U.S. slumped by 20 per cent – 820,000 – to 3.2 million last year, while the most dramatic turnaround was the 41 per cent fall in visitors to Mexico after it was identified as the source of the global swine flu epidemic.
Trips to Spain have been falling steadily since 2006, and separate research predicts that Mediterranean resorts will no longer top the destination league table for Britons by the end of 2011. It’s thought they will be overtaken by those in the ‘Mett’ – Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey.
by Andy Moreton
When these stats appeared in the national press, many people posted messages to say that there were bargains out there ready to be snapped up. Start with an affordable luxury hotel from Luxique!
The popular Pompidou arts centre in Paris now has a smaller cousin 170 miles to the east.
The Metz Pompidou will have no permanent collection of its own but will show, in six-month or yearly rotations, parts of the vast collection of 65,000 contemporary works held by the Pompidou in Paris, most of which are never displayed.
There are also spaces in the spectacular new building for other contemporary art forms, including cinema, modern music and dance.
Metz, the capital of the Lorraine region, is hoping to recreate the success of the European arm of New York’s Guggenheim museum, which has transformed the fortunes of Bilbao in northern Spain since 1997.
The director of the Metz Pompidou, Laurent Le Bon, said: “For us it’s a little French Revolution – yet it’s such a simple thing. We are just saying that the big collections are for everyone, not just for Paris.”
This is the first stage in a drive to decentralise the French state’s enormous art collection. A branch of the Louvre will follow in 2012 in Lens, a former coal town only an hour from the Channel Tunnel.
by Andy Moreton
Luxique has an extensive selection of luxury hotels in France – including some of the best that Paris has to offer.
The French have traditionally been fiercely protective of their language and are forever trying to halt the incursion of Anglo/American phrases.
Another campaign has just begun, with the word ‘buzz’ top of the hit-list. Linguistic experts see this as particularly crude, and intend to replace it with the word ramdam (doesn’t seem much more refined or French to me, but hey…)
Apart from ‘buzz’, there are a number of other words that young French people have picked up from their constant diet of English and American TV programmes, films, music and social networking. These include ‘chat’, ‘talk’ and ‘newsletter’. Their alternatives – to be placed in French language dictionaries – are éblabla, debat and infolettre.
Some of these alternatives emerged from a competition among schoolchildren and college students to identify French-sounding words for 21st century mid-Atlantic- speak.
The campaign has the full support of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who’s frequently pointed to the proliferation of English words as nothing less than the spread of a bland, corporate, American-style culture. “Defending our language, defending the values that it bears, fundamentally means fighting for cultural diversity in our world,” he said.
However, some Anglicisms stubbornly remain. Most common is le weekend, but there are also post-its in the office, and les air bags in cars.
by Andy Moreton
Discover France and the French language, and book a luxury hotel in Paris and many other cities through Luxique.
For the fifth year in a row, France has topped a list of the best places in the world to live.
International Living magazine’s 30th Quality of Life Index surveyed almost 200 countries across nine categories, including cost of living, culture/leisure, environment, and safety/risk.
“In France, life is savoured,” said International Living publisher, Jackie Flynn. “I don’t think anyone would disagree that France is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, where there is so much pride in all the small details. The French love little window boxes filled with flowers, tidy gardens, pretty sidewalk cafes and clean streets.”
International Living paid particular attention to provincial France, praising the affordability and services outside Paris, especially for retired people and their families.
Australia jumped up the rankings from fifth to second place on the strength of its economic recovery, while the US dropped from third to seventh. International Living claimed that sustaining the ‘American Dream’ had escalated out of the reach of many.
5. New Zealand
7. United States
The UK’s position? A lowly 25th behind the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
by Andy Moreton
Luxique can help you book some of the finest luxury hotels in Paris and in many other areas of beautiful France.
The Alpine ski season has begun earlier than usual thanks to unseasonably heavy snowfalls.
Last weekend, skiers and snowboarders enjoyed outstanding conditions for this time of the year. There were significant snowfalls across Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland – some up to 20 inches deep. The Austrian resort of Kitzbühel had earlier set an 80-year record by opening on October 24th.
Ski tour operators welcomed the early snow, saying it had helped stimulate sharp increases in bookings, which would go some way to countering the effects of the economic downturn.
Betony Garner, of Ski Club of Great Britain, said:
“The crucial thing is that the temperature has been staying low so the snow is settling – some resorts are blanketed like it’s the middle of winter.”
Many Alpine resorts had been becoming increasingly nervous about the unseasonably warm weather of late, which saw temperatures as high as 18C (65F), fearing a repeat of the dire season of 2006/7.
by Andy Moreton
Heading for the piste? Check out Luxique’s selection of luxury Alpine hotels in France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria.
I’ve written before about messages-in-bottles, but one found on a beach in Cornwall in south-west England is the ultimate in romance and heartache.
Coastguard Martin Leslie was clearing debris from the shore at Praa Sands when he found the bottle, sealed with candle wax.
It contained a lock of hair and a three-page letter in French, dated September 25th. In it, an unnamed woman pours out her feelings for her lover, who, it’s clear, has returned to his wife.
She understands the inevitability of the situation, and recalls happy times:
“These magic moments are pure secret. The secret of life and pleasure without limits. In twenty years, it will still be here, the previous moments of happiness. When life gets dreary, we will be able to tap into these memories to remember what it is to live again.”
She finishes by saying she hoped to find another man like him with whom to live ‘a beautiful life’.
There was no address or any other clue to her identity, but it’s reported that the French media are on the case.
by Andy Moreton
Learning a foreign language can be an extremely tricky business, particularly when it seems to defy logic.
Take French, for instance. Who would imagine that hotel de ville meant a town hall?
One British tourist in the town of Dannemarie in the Alsace region certainly didn’t. The weary woman, spotting the impressive looking building and the magic word ‘hotel’, popped in to use the toilet before trying to find the check-in desk.
But as she was in the loo, officials finished a meeting, left the town hall and locked the front door. The result was that the woman spent the night on chairs in the lobby, despite shouting for help and turning the lights on and off to try to attract attention.
Her plight went unnoticed until the following morning when a passer-by spotted a notice in fractured French that she’d posted on one of the glass doors.
The woman was said to be in her thirties and a university graduate (she clearly didn’t major in French). If she’d been just over the border in Germany, she probably would have decided to avoid the town hall there – it’s called the Rathaus.
by Andy Moreton
For real luxury hotels in France, check in to Luxique’s carefully-selected list.
Politicians in France are once again debating one of the more contentious issues in France – whether shops should be allowed to open on Sundays.
French laws are much more restrictive than those in the US and UK, for example. Sundays have been protected since 1906, although bakers, butchers and other small shops are allowed to open until noon.
Carole Landry, a journalist based in Paris, says keeping retail businesses closed has helped cement the tradition of the Sunday family meal that many in France still hold dear.
But there has been a clamour for change over the past twenty years, with recent polls suggesting that a majority of the French believe shops should have the freedom to open on Sundays. Paris’s temple of shopping, Galeries Lafayette, has said this would create between 300 and 400 jobs and boost sales by 10 per cent.
If passed, this amendment to the law would allow shops in designated tourist areas and special commercial zones to open on Sundays.
President Sarkozy has long been a strong supporter of change. After a recent visit by Michelle Obama, President Sarkozy asked: “Is it normal that on a Sunday, when Madame Obama wants to go shopping in Paris with her girls, I have to make phone calls to get them to open?”
by Andy Moreton
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All Articles Tagged "apps"
Nowadays, kids are no playing Chutes and Ladders or Candyland, but Playstation and Farmville. Getting their interest can be a challenge. An Atlanta based company has decided to create some fun educational apps with this in mind.
Lucy Holified, the chief executive of Identity Kids LLC, is making a move is this space understanding that apps targeted at African American kids are untapped in the $38 billion apps market. “I believe the timing is right to leverage our unique content to serve a market that has been largely overlooked,” she says.
Holified and her team plan to launch as many as 10 mobile apps this fall that combine education, black facts, and fun that are targeted at black kids.
Some apps I like that can help teach youngsters about black history are the Then and Now Series: Black History by CM Innovations that allow you to view bios and videos of black activists, or Black History in An Hour, which gives you a crash course in black history right from your phone, and especially for smaller kids the Myles & Ayesha- Black Inventors Match Game by Uplift Inc., that plays the match game to link black inventors with the inventions they created.
We have to adjust with the times to keeps kids engaged. Using black history apps seems like a great way for kids to learn about their roots, while having fun.
Follow CAP on Twitter: @in_allcaps
A number of reputable media sources are saying that Apple is working on a lower-priced iPhone that could be available as soon as this year. Ideally, this device would be geared towards emerging markets like China where the $600-plus price for the iPhone5 is too far out of reach. However, we wouldn’t be surprised if this option becomes available here as well.
The Wall Street Journal says the iPhone5 typically costs $199 with a two-year contract, $99 for older models. The price is brought down by subsidies from the service provider. In other countries, that subsidy is more scarce, so the Android, for instance, is more affordable and, therefore, the more popular choice.
Last quarter, that WSJ story reports, Apple’s share of the smartphone market fell, while Samsung said it had its best year ever. In a change of course, Apple is looking for ways to maintain its dominance. This isn’t the first time that Apple has floated the idea of a lower-cost phone. The Journal has reported on this rumor for a couple of years. In this latest version, the casing would be made out of plastic instead of aluminum and might incorporate parts from previously-owned phones.
CNET reported just yesterday that iPhones are available at Walmart, contract-free, for $45 per month. The unlocked option is being offered more and more. With more competition, there’s a need to try different strategies. Could low-cost phones be far behind?
There’s also a need for new products. The Chicago Tribune reports that Apple is working with Intel on a watch that will work with the iPhone using Bluetooth and a TV is on the way. One area where Apple and iOS developers are excelling is the app area. According to GigaOm, 40 billion apps have been downloaded since the App Store opened in 2008, two billion in December alone. There are 775,000 apps to choose from. Let us know some of your favorites.
The 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is underway in Las Vegas and already new products and launches have made waves. Companies including Samsung, Lenovo, Intel, Ford, Toyota, and more are at the event, touting new innovations and technologies.
Rumors were rampant about what to expect at CES this year: smart appliances, including TVs and refrigerators; new technologies for mobile phones; and in-car apps and technology. And this year’s press day on Monday, prior to CES’s launch on Tuesday, didn’t disappoint.
Intel hosted a press conference on Monday, showing its roadmap for PCs through 2014. The company highlighted how its “Haswell” chips will make devices thinner and smarter going forward, demonstrated a tabletop touch-screen device, and announced a microprocessor for tablets.
Lenovo also debuted its 27-inch, IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC (at right), with full internet capability and, at the size of a coffee table, space for four people to get their hands on the touch screen. The Los Angeles Times said of the device, “it’s easy to imagine this in your living room.”
Other innovations in the living room included smart TVs. Samsung, Panasonic, and Sony debuted their collections of smart TVs, which bring together live TV, social networks, and personal content such as photos. Additionally, Samsung debuted a refrigerator with a LCD screen and Sony, meanwhile, introduced its water-proof mobile phone, the Xperia Z.
LG is also focusing on appliances at CES 2013, with the debut of a washing machine and refrigerator with touch screens and wireless technology. Chief technology officer Skott Ahn spoke to Forbes about getting consumers to embrace these types of technologies.
“We really try hard,” he said. “Consumers don’t need to understand what they have to do, or what kind of functions really spread over all the devices and what kind of technologies are involved to implement that. We’d like to make our consumers do something they just want to do. Then all the other background steps should be done by all the connectivity we have provided.”
On the automotive side, car companies such as Ford, Toyota, General Motors, Kia, Audi, and more have been coming to CES for several years, touting the in-car technologies they have introduced. This year, Ford and GM are both reaching out to developers and software designers to create apps that will translate to use on the road, the Wall Street Journal reported.
CES will be going strong all week, so look for continuing coverage on tech blogs and outlets. While Apple and Microsoft will not be at the event, there will still be plenty of news out of Las Vegas this week.
Are you a gadget-freak who is paying close attention to CES?
With competition tight as businesses vie for fewer consumer dollars, any extra help black businesses could get in attracting customers was welcomed. Black businesses have been reaching out to clients via text alerts. A new website called Ujamaa Deals focuses on increasing black product sales online and then there was the debut of a special smartphone app that locates black businesses at your location. And as we reported, The Around The Way app allows users to locate the black-owned businesses in their vicinity, so they can do a little shopping in the community.
“The response to the app has been great. The majority of the comments are from people who want the Android version, which we plan to launch this month,” Janine Hausif, CEO of Around The Way App, tells us. It’s currently only available for the iPhone. “The rest of the comments we’ve gotten have been praise and suggestions. Overall it’s been great. It’s very much like people are helping to shape and mold this app and that’s exactly what we want — for people to make it their own.”
According to Hausif, since the app’s launch in November 2012, they have had over 5,500 downloads. The data bank includes more 17,000 black-owned businesses. It is free for businesses to join.
One of those businesses is Therapy Wine Bar in Brooklyn, NY. For Angela Terry, owner of Therapy, adding her store to the app directory was a no-brainer. “I wanted to get more exposure for my business,” says Terry, who was introduced to the app by Hausif and was one of the first business owners to add her business to the app. “It’s a good idea because as a small business owner we need so many free and affordable outlets to advertise on,” she told us via email.
And, said Terry, she did see a boost in business after joining the app. After shopping, more people stopped into the eatery. “We did see an increase in foot traffic as well as customers talking about the app,” she says.
It’s no secret that technology will play an increasingly large role in our lives in 2013, both in terms of the devices we use and the ways we spend our time. What are the goals and challenges that you want to accomplish and/or overcome this year? Most likely, technology can help you achieve them. Here are nine ways how.
Use technology to save time, not waste it.
Yes, playing Angry Birds can waste your time. But there are also tools and apps out there to help you stay organized and increase productivity. Evernote can help you remember everything. Pocket saves articles and links for you to read later. Todoist is a simple to-do list app that offers deadlines, color-coding, and the ability to break down tasks into sub-projects and sub-tasks. Figure out which tool would be most useful to you!
Imagine having access to the more than 1.9 million black-owned businesses in the United States at your fingertips? A company called Around The Way, which is based in New York, teamed up with Washington, D.C.-based mobile-app development firm Clearly Innovative to create a mobile app that will locate black-owned businesses in your area.
The companies say they hope the Around The Way app will support and empower black-owned businesses, especially around this all-important Christmas shopping season. The app, which is available only for the Apple iPhone right now,can be downloaded from the Apple app store.
While the app doesn’t have all of the black-owned businesses in the U.S. yet, it does contain a substantial number and there’s a spot on the app’s website where you can add your business. “The app can locate 17,000 black-owned businesses in all 50 states. Many of the businesses are located in New York City, and other major metropolitan areas,” Eric Hamilton, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Around The Way wrote in an e-mail to The NorthStar News & Analysis.
To increase the number of black-owned businesses in the database, Around The Way is partnering with the New York African American Chamber of Commerce and other black chambers to encourage owners to download the app. By doing this, owners can encourage users to patronize their businesses.
“Around The Way’s sole purpose is to empower black-owned businesses by altering the point of purchase of potential customers… This newly available mobile application allows users to find the closest black-owned business in their vicinity with colorful maps and pinned locations,” Around The Way officials told The NorthStar News & Analysis. “Users can choose from nine-different categories of businesses to locate.” They are: ATM/Bank, Auto, Bakery/Café, Beauty Parlor/Barber Shop, Club/ Lounge, Laundry/Dry Cleaners, Lodging, Restaurants and Shopping.
Apple has 1 million apps in its store and Google Play boasts 700,000 Android apps. But in between Angry Birds and Instagram, what apps and tools can you use to improve your business and boost your career? Here are our top choices.
Evernote is a free app for both mobile devices and desktops that helps you remember everything. Sketch out a prototype on a napkin? Snap a photo with your phone and save it in Evernote. Need to connect your To Do List with your Google Calendar? Cross that off your list. Its cute mascot, an elephant, never lets you forget.
With millions of Americans still unemployed, Facebook has come up with good idea. The social networking site is launching a new app to help its users in the United States hunt for jobs. And Facebook isn´t doing it on its own.
One year ago Facebook partnered with the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the Direct Employers Association and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies to form the Social Jobs Partnership. Facebook and companies that list jobs on Facebook such as Branchout, JobVite and Work4 Labs have compiled more than 1.7 million job postings in the US. This new app, which launched last week, allows Facebook users to search job listings by keyword, type of work, industry and location.
Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis seems impressed with the app. She said in a statement that the app will help “get America back to work.”
Many experts think this could be a move by Facebook to segue into another arena and compete with professional networking site LinkedIn and job hunting sites like Monster.com. But LinkedIn isn’t worried. A company spokesperson told The Times, “We don’t see this as Facebook getting into the professional networking space. Facebook is aggregating jobs from various Facebook apps and putting them in one place.”
Regardless of Facebook’s reasons, if the new app will help people land new jobs then it’s a positive. As we recently reported, African Americans remain the hardest hit in the employment crisis, with 13.4 percent of black workers, or 2.44 million people, still out of work. The Facebook app will probably attract many black job seekers, not only because of the high unemployment stats in the African-American community but also because blacks tend to use the Internet heavily for employment research. Let us know if you plan to or have used this new app. Is it helpful?
There are other job search apps you might want to check out as well, reports Black Careers magazine.
- The Good Job app, allows you to track and save tasks, events, follow ups, interviews, jobs and contacts related to your job search. Cost: $4.99. Available for iPhone.
- The Jobs by CareerBuilder app lets users search its database of nearly two million jobs by keyword, location, company and employment type, among others. You can use your phone’s GPS to identify jobs near you, apply for jobs and receive personalized job recommendations. Cost: Free. Available for iPhone, Android.
- A Labor Stats app from the Bureau of Labor Statistics sends stats on unemployment rate, consumer price index, average hourly earnings and others to your phone. Cost: Free. Available for iPhone, Android.
- The LunchMeet app, used in conjunction with your LinkedIn accont, lets you announce when and where you’re available to meet someone for networking. It’ll also match you up with other networkers in your area. Cost: Free. Available for: iPhone.
- The Resume App lets you build, design and generate a customizable PDF resumé that you can distribute it directly from your phone. Cost: $2.99. Available for iPhone.
- SnapDat Digital Business Cards are great if you need a business card right away and you don’t have any handy, allowing you to create them digitally. Cost: Free. Available for: iPhone.
Do you find yourself checking out online reviews via your smartphone when you are in a store? Well, nearly 70 percent of blacks used a mobile connection for shopping research. According to the “African-American Consumers: Still Vital, Still Growing 2012 Report“ from Nielsen, 64 percent checked out a retailer’s app or mobile site; 61 percent read the product reviews; and 57 percent looked up prices to compare. And 50 percent liked to consult shopping sites or app.
So a set of shopping apps will come in handy this Black Friday.
The BuyOrNot iPhone App is now available at iTunes for free for a limited time. The app allows shoppers to quickly see how an item is rated by other shoppers while they’re in-store and without opening a Web browser. Scan the barcode of a product you’re considering, and BuyOrNot automatically searches for rating scores (e.g. 4 stars out of 5) and the number of ratings at each store that carries the item. The search is conducted across more than 100 online merchants.
Dealnews goes beyond the doorbusters by letting you browse leaked ads and track bargains that might be better-than-Black-Friday discounts. If you’re on a tight budget, Mint might be the app for you. It tracks purchases and helps users see what they’ve spent in the past. Users can check bank account balances and credit cards, and set up alerts when funds run low.
Just like frequent flier miles, ShopKick gives you points for spending that you can put toward new purchases, anything from a Starbucks latte to designer jeans. Okay, so now you have bags full of goodies and a ton of receipts. Paperphobic app lets you snap an photo of your receipts and email, archive and organize them by expense type.
That is everything soup to nuts. Get ready, set, shop!
With more smartphones, tablets and other digital tools available, shoppers have many ways to research and buy gifts online for the holiday season.
A 2012 holiday survey from research firm Ipsos MediaCT and Google found that 51 percent of consumers plan to research products online and then make the purchase in-store. Additionally, 44 percent said they plan to both research and buy online; 17 percent will visit a store first and then purchase online; and 32 percent said they will research online, check out the physical item in stores, and then go back online to buy. Complicated!
Consumers will also use a variety of devices to do this researching and buying, with 65 percent saying they plan to make purchases on their computer, 10 percent on their tablet, and 16 percent via their smartphone. AdWeek posted an infographic with more data.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) also expects more than half of consumers to shop online for holiday gifts, according to its annual holiday consumer spending report. That survey says 51.8 percent of consumers plan to shop online this year, and the NRF expects that the average consumer will spend $749.51 on gifts, décor, cards, and more for the holidays.
And while shoppers are turning to digital for their needs, retailers are responding. A fall 2012 survey conducted by BIGinsight for Shop.org, a division of the NRF, 61.6 percent of online retailers will introduce their holiday marketing promotions by Halloween, up from 52.9 percent who said the same thing in 2011. Of holiday promotions, free shipping is by far the most popular.
Which of these categories do you fall in? Will you shop online or use your smartphone this holiday season? | <urn:uuid:15918384-b922-43e6-8634-bd66357ec6c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://madamenoire.com/tag/apps/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948656 | 3,907 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Martin and Mike here with a quick update on the muni bond market …
The big picture in a nutshell?
Just as we warned, their prices are collapsing, driving interest rates sharply higher.
U.S. Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, and mortgage-backed bonds are following a similar pattern.
And as a result, most portfolios loaded with fixed instruments — held by individuals, banks, insurance companies, or others — are now suffering.
The implications? Far reaching!
First and foremost, this decline reflects an accelerating exodus out of bonds of all stripes and colors.
And second, it also seems to be correlated with a comparable RISE in the Dow, as investors switch into stocks.
Can this pattern continue for a while? Of course!
But don’t expect it to last forever; higher rates are ultimately a competitive threat to investments that do not offer good yields.
Plus, let’s not ignore some of the reasons WHY bond prices are falling, including …
- Falling confidence in governments and their ability to manage their finances.
- Growing fears of inflation as the trillions of dollars printed by the Fed begin to find their way into the economy.
- Plus, widespread impatience — and even disgust — among millions of fixed-income investors who feel they deserve a lot more than the miserable yields they’ve been getting on their money.
Bottom line for you: Get out of bonds — while you still can at relatively good prices.
Then seriously consider the many other good investment ideas and strategies we’ve covered here in Money and Markets this week …
by Mike Larson
Since I started closely following the financial markets more than 16 years ago, I have seen several major interest rate cycles.
by Nilus Mattive
Last week I said there were a lot of simple ways to live a richer lifestyle, including plenty that don’t require investing money.
by Larry Edelson
It was just about this time last year, in my columns in Uncommon Wisdom, that I started warning …
That we’d see a short-term rally in the dollar, mainly against the euro.
That Europe would kick the sovereign debt can down the road.
by Mike Burnick
Last month in a Money and Markets column, I pointed out that the euro/U.S. dollar exchange rate would be the next battleground in the global currency war.
by Tom Essaye
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez died last week after a lengthy fight with cancer. Reactions to his passing have run from despair in the poor sections of Caracas to jubilation in the ex-pat Venezuelan communities in Miami.
by Weiss Ratings
On Friday, regulators closed Frontier Bank, LaGrange, Georgia. This marks the fourth bank failure for 2013 following a total of 51 failures for all of 2012, a sharp decline from 92 and 157 in 2011 and 2010, respectively. | <urn:uuid:9a1acf69-f074-4f65-9b96-6ac5bf2f8451> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/muni-bonds-collapsing-what-it-means-51585 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939149 | 595 | 1.640625 | 2 |
In the U.S., every state in the U.S. permits gay adoption in one form or another. Yet, there's still a stigma attached to the process. The rhetoric is road-weary, so I won't even bother repeating it. Last year, Zach Wahls went in front of the Iowa lawmakers in defense gay adoption. Zach was raised by two lesbians: his mothers. Powerfully delivered, the youtube video of it has gone viral, TWICE. His message resonates. Throw away the garbage and hate-filled hyperbole you hear from the anti-gay advocates in regards to gay adoptions. "They" don't matter. "They" are speaking purely from their own fears and ignorance. Watch the video over and again. Check around and listen to other young people who have been or are being raised by LGBT parents. They'll give you the real deal about what it's like to have a real, loving family. Ask Zac about how he feels about his two dads:
I read about Zac earlier this week. His "letter" is heartwarming and heartwrenching all at once. This letter, again found on Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook, is much too powerful for me to try and paraphrase. I'd rather you read it for yourself.
A Letter from a 15 Year-Old Boy to His Gay, Adoptive DadsToday, I've got a wonderful family. However, not one person in my family shares my bloodline. They're loving and supportive. They're accepting, and they take me just as I am, flaws and all. We, Zac, Zach, and I, understand the true meaning of family. And, I'm 100% certain that there are other in this world who also "get it". As for "those guys", the ones who keep trying to disqualify us, let them keep watching their reruns of Ozzie and Harriet. They don't understand the real world, anyway.
Patrick Wallace posted this over at HuffPost, and it needs to be shared far and wide. A little backstory: this is a kid who was taken from his frankly unfit, drug-abusing mother at age eight, thrown around the foster system, and then adopted several years later by a gay couple. As with many kids adopted that age, Zac had a lot of problems. Very often, it’s gay couples who are willing to take the kids that nobody else wants. Here is the letter that Zac, now 15, read to his family this past Christmas:
To my Family,
This is the first Christmas letter that I have ever written. I feel like since I am getting older, I should start writing a letter to the family or just talk about how I thought the family’s year has gone until Christmas.
Ever since I ended up in this family people have told me that I was lucky. I have always known that I am lucky, especially when I have two dads that love me so much as Dad and Dadio. My family is very special to me. Even when we fight and even when we argue, I know they will always love me. Yes I am a lucky boy to have ended up here after spending so many years in foster care and not knowing if I would ever have a family.
I didn’t grow with a dad. My birthmom had many boyfriends and she did a lot of drugs and partying. My sisters and me were taken from her on my eighth birthday. It was not fun to have police in my room on that day. It made me sad and this sadness I carried for many years and it got me in a lot of trouble. Then I landed in a great foster home after having lived in 12 different homes in three years. It was when I lived there that both my foster mom and social worker told me there was a family that wanted me. There was a catch: it was two dads!
Honestly, it didn’t matter to me. I told them, “well, I never had a dad, now I get to have two!”
The start was tough and rough, and I put them through hell and back. I did awful and nasty things to them both. I stole their credit card and spent thousands of dollars online. When we went on my first vacation out of the country, I stole stuff from a souvenir stand – they found out and made me go back to the shop to return the souvenirs and made me pay the lady who owned the shop for the stolen property which then I had to give to a local kid. I didn’t get it and thought they were being mean.
When I stole their American Express and maxed it buying stuff online I was only 12 years old. They were very upset, but Dad made sure I got the message of how serious this was. He took me to our local police station and reported me to the police captain for having stolen again. I was taken to an interrogation room and talked to by three police officers. All the time there I only wanted my Dad to come in and bring me home. I wanted to turn time back to before my stealing so I would not be there and I would not have hurt my parents so much. I learned my lesson and NEVER stole again!
But Dad and Dadio brought not just me into this family. They also added my brother Derrick. What I can say about Derrick is that he is really cool, he is funny, he is an awesome gay guy, he is a one of a kind guy, he is my bro. Next they added Nick. Nick can get on my nerves sometimes, but in the end he is pretty cool. He is a fast leaner when it comes to math and multiplying numbers. And with that said, I will go to the roots of the family.
Dad and Dadio. They are my parents and they are always here when I need them.
When it is dark they are the light,
When I feel frightened and chill’s,
They are the warmth I feel.
When I am hungry they cook my meals.
I did not put a lot of time into the poem, but in the poem you see my parents. The people that show me the light. The people that warm my heart when it gets dark. The people that cook my meals. If I could only ask for anything for Christmas I would only ask for my family. | <urn:uuid:aca906ce-f52f-4d79-a655-e61d2f6574eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ronkemp.blogspot.com/2012_01_21_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989054 | 1,315 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Recording Venue: OOPSLA 2007
Guest(s): Dave Thomas
This episode is an interview with Dave Thomas (OTI Dave or Smalltalk Dave, not PragDave). We started our discussion with a look at the (non-)success of objects and components. We then discussed some history behine Eclipse and Dave’s role in OTI. We then compared Smalltalk and Ruby and looked at the promises of small and powerful languages such as Lisp. We also discussed the role of (static) type systems and the role of tool support for languages.
We then switched gears and looked at what is necessary to scale agile development to the level of large organizations
and how techniques from lean production and manufacturing as well as product management can play an important role.
In the last part of the interview we looked at the state of research today, and especially the relationship between industry and academia in this area.
We concluded the interview with Dave’s opinion on what it takes to be a good developer.
- Another company Dave is involved in: Object Mentor
- Dave’s company, Bedarra Research Labs
- Dave Thomas’ website
- Object Technology International (OTI)
- Lean Software Development (Poppendieck) | <urn:uuid:45aaadcd-e1e2-43ff-aa30-544058f50889> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.se-radio.net/2008/02/episode-86-interview-dave-thomas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933156 | 261 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The distinguished English bass-baritone, John (Stanton) Shirley-Quirk, sang at the school choir of Holt High School, Queen's Drive, Childwall Five Ways, Liverpool. His music teacher there was Dr Marshall. He first studied the violin and was awarded a scholarship for that instrument. Later at Liverpool University, where he read chemistry and physics, he studied singing with Austen Carnegie. Service in the Royal Air Force interrupted these studies until, in 1957, he came to London to work under Roy Henderson. His hyphenated name is composed of the place-name Shirley, in Derbyshire, where his ancestors lived, and the Celtic appellation in the Manx language, used in the channel Isle of Man.
John Shirley-Quirk made his operatic debut in 1961 as the Doctor in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Glyndebourne Festival. From 1964 to 1976 he was a leading member of the English Opera Group, where he became well known for his outstanding performances of many of Benjamin Brittenís works, including The Prodigal Son which was presented at the Aldeburgh, Versailles, City of London, Flanders and Edinburgh Festivals. He premiered roles in all of B. Britten's last five operas. In June 1973 he created all the baritone roles in B. Brittenís Death in Venice. In 1973 he sang at Londonís Covent Garden. In October 1974 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in New York, as the Traveller in Death in Venice. In July 1977 he created the role of Lev in Tippettís The Ice Break at Covent Garden.
John Shirley-Quirk is renowned for his masterful performances in orchestral and recital repertoire ranging from the baroque to 20th-century works. He performs regularly with major orchestras world-wide, especially in England, Europe and the USA. He appeared with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra several times (1965, 1970). Opera performances include major roles at Londonís Covent Garden, Milanís La Scala, New Yorkís Metropolitan Opera. He also toured widely as a concert artist.
John Shirley-Quirk has also taken part in productions of opera for television, with notable performances in Billy Budd and Eugene Onegin. He has made over one hundred recordings on major international labels, including works by Monteverdi, J.S. Bach, George Frideric Handel, Haydn, Felix Mendelssohn and Berlioz. Many of which have received awards.
In 1975 John Shirley-Quirk was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. | <urn:uuid:d44771c8-ee6c-4bb5-8775-31e762032b5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Shirley-Quirk-John.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965144 | 538 | 1.648438 | 2 |
February 22, 2013
Is it socially acceptable to hire an opponent of SSM to write a comic book?I've been intrigued by the protests targeting DC Comics for the company's decision to permit an anti-SSM advocate to write part of the Superman series. This represents part of a troubling trend not just to challenge anti-SSM advocates on the merits of the issue in the public square, but to push them to the margins of society. But here are my questions: is the problem with these protests that they're seeking to deny a publicly prominent employment opportunity to an individual based on his political views, or that they're seeking to deny a publicly prominent employment opportunity to an individual based on his opposition to SSM? In other words, would the protestors be on firmer ground if they were seeking to organize a boycott of DC Comics for hiring an outspoken opponent of interracial marriage to write for the Superman series? As SSM becomes more widely accepted, do we need to be prepared to defend the social inclusion of a wider variety of unpopular views?
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I think if Orson Scott Card were an outspoken opponent of interracial marriage, he wouldn't have been offered the job in the first place, or if he had, few would be disturbed by a protest. R. R. Reno over on First Things writes about "the Selma analogy," and he is very much opposed to making an analogy between the rights of black people and the rights of gay people.
As I understand Reno (and I urge people to read the essay for themselves rather than accept my interpretation), the civil rights movement of the 1960s was such a terrible intrusion by the government into personal freedom that we can sympathize with conservatives like Goldwater and Buckley who opposed it. They did, though, came to see that they were wrong. Civil rights legislation, horrific as it was, was necessary. "Fighting the evil of racial discrimination really did require something like a government takeover of our racist culture," says Reno. But such a thing can never be allowed to happen again—certainly not over the "rights" of gay people. And of course Reno's position is the position of the Catholic Church. There must be no "rights" granted to gay people—no legislation that recognizes them as a protected category.
Of course it is *possible* that at some point in the future, many who oppose same-sex marriage and prohibitions based on sexual orientation will—like Buckley and Goldwater—realize that the unthinkable is thinkable. George Wallace famously said in 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," but ten or fifteen years later he reversed his position. I think Reno and many other opponents of same-sex marriage are looking down the road ten or twenty years and are convinced they will never accept it. Maybe they are right and maybe they are wrong, but unless the tide turns (which is, of course, possible) they will be a minority and may very well be looked upon with some of the same disdain people now have for racists.
Posted by: David Nickol | Feb 25, 2013 11:07:24 AM
I think there is a better way to frame the issues. Preliminarily, I am not sure there is a "problem" with these protests and I view with some amusement the suggestion that a refusal to buy a certain comic results in the author's marginalization.
But I think the larger problem is finding the right box. The "anti-SSM advocate" is Orson Scott Card, a fantastically successful science-fiction author (Ender's Game, etc.--might as well just be Ender's Game owing to its critical success and consistent strong sales). Card is not some starving artist whom DC Comics "hired." Given Card's prominence as a science-fiction author, it seems to me rather that DC asked him to write (or at least sign his name to) a new Superman webcomic series as an effort to expand the market for Superman. Card is lending his reputation to Superman, not vice-versa.
But what is that reputation? Card has always been "out" about being LDS, and there are perceptible LDS themes in his mainstream science fiction, leaving aside his works created specifically for an LDS audience. But over the last, say, ten years, Card has managed to make himself about as well-known for his conservative political views as for his artistic talent.
So if DC wishes to associate its Superman brand with Card, how can it force customers to distinguish between Card the brilliant scifi author and Card the outspoken conservative? DC seems to have wanted the reaction to be, "Cool, Card wrote Ender's Game! I bet his Superman comic series is awesome!" But one reaction seems to have been "Isn't Card that guy who thinks liberals are destroying America? Why do I want to read anything he wrote?" (To me this is about the same as Catholic Charities "hiring" (associating itself with), say, Angelina Jolie on the basis of her charitable work, then facing a backlash over Jolie's perceived moral defects.)
Depending on the product, this may make Card a net liability.
Posted by: Sykes Five | Feb 25, 2013 11:22:43 AM
Also, I am missing the distinction between:
1. "seeking to deny a publicly prominent employment opportunity to an individual based on his political views;" and
2. "seeking to deny a publicly prominent employment opportunity to an individual based on his opposition to SSM."
Posted by: Sykes Five | Feb 25, 2013 11:35:34 AM
Society and the law must make distinctions based on what is true, and cannot be entirely relativistic. Were it not so, it would be wrong to ostracize racists. The difference between support of racism and opposition to asexual marriage is that support of racism is objectively wrong and opposition to asexual marriage is objectively right. To ostracize a group for having a belief that is right is what is known as a persecution.
Posted by: Dan | Feb 26, 2013 9:46:20 AM
What is your source of objective knowledge? And how do we, as citizens in a democratic society, tap into it? Don't we all believe our convictions are "objectively right"? Are you claiming that proponents of same-sex marriage deep down know they are objectively wrong?
Posted by: David Nickol | Feb 26, 2013 11:23:05 AM
Can I answer David's questions? Here's my answers:
2. by using reason and having reasonable discussion with one another in the open and free public square
3. Yes, generally, we all believe our convictions are objectively right. And since different people have different opinions, that means that people's convictions must be more confused or less confused, the more or less perfectly their convictions correspond to truth, support goodness and true human flourishing, etc.
4. I don't want to speak for Dan, but I see no claim (and no reason for claiming) that proponents of SSM deep down know they are objectively wrong. To the contrary, I'm certain that SSM proponents think that they are objectively right. I'm certain that some SSM proponents think that SSM is a good that is supportive of human dignity, is a benefit to society, etc. Now I happen to disagree, and think that SSM is not conducive to human flourishing and is not supportive of the common good. But that's fine if people disagree with me. SSM is a topic on which reasonable and well-meaning people can disagree.... or, maybe I should say, SSM **should** be a topic on which reasonable and well-meaning people can disagree. I'm tolerant of SSM proponents, and consider them to be well-meaning and reasonable (albeit misguided). But I'm worried that we're turning into a society where SSM supporters *aren't* tolerant of me and *don't* consider me to be well-meaning and reasonable (albeit misguided).
Posted by: Thales | Feb 27, 2013 9:45:14 PM | <urn:uuid:587e3c29-384e-4d58-a3fe-f2af336b76d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2013/02/is-it-socially-acceptable-to-hire-an-opponent-of-ssm-to-write-a-comic-book.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975287 | 1,688 | 1.523438 | 2 |
So, I started my new job last week.
I spent much of the first week trying to stop the "message waiting" light from flashing. I knew what I had to do - call the voice-mail system, listen to all the old messages and dump them.
So, I press the button for voice-mail and get an alternating tone. What does that mean? Does it mean I'm in the voice mail system? Does it mean "enter your password"? I have no idea, so I enter my password, and it makes a different beep, so maybe that means "no, wrong password".
I go to the "self-help" page, and the "phone training" pages. They disagree as to which is the default password. Great.
Now I have to do the thing I hate - I have to call the help-desk. So I call, and I let them know what the problem is. I give them my email account and all the other information that they need.
Finally, I come into work after the weekend, and I think I've figured it out. I leave the voice-mail button alone, and dial the voice-mail extension by hand. This time, it says something like "welcome to the voice-mail system, please enter your password".
Seventeen messages later, fifteen of which are from before I started at the company, I reach the cracker. A message from the help-desk, telling me that maybe my voice-mail button isn't programmed yet, and detailing the default password. They end by telling me "if you are still unable to access your voice-mail, please call the help-desk".
I call the help-desk in return, and suggest that when people are having trouble with the phone system, that the phone system is not necessarily the best method of contacting them. | <urn:uuid:d615bdc0-e3fe-4058-aca2-575b6a680227> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://msmvps.com/blogs/alunj/archive/2005/12/13/79070.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96299 | 386 | 1.539063 | 2 |
10 YEAR INDEX QUARTERLY BULLETIN ARTICLES
Marjorie W. Baird
Don't think that indexing the A.R.S. Bulletins is a boring job! One's interest is constantly stimulated by the wonderful variety of information they contain. It seems that there is everything there that a Rhododendrophile would want or need to know. A unanimous vote of appreciation should go to all our authors and editors for their dedication and effort.
To enable our members to read the 60-page 10-year Index more easily, we have used bold type for the larger subject headings; the lists of rhododendron and azalea names are at the end, as well as the lists of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medal winners.
The author index, as before, is at the beginning. We may have more authors in the new Index (411, as compared with 362 in the 25-year Index) but the latter were certainly prolific! Dr. J. Harold Clarke led the list with 45 articles, followed by David Leach who gives many of his articles such titillating titles as "Those Limehouse Blues" and "Sex and the Single Rhododendron". Ruth Hansen brought us many interesting reports on the Portland Test Garden, among other things. Then there were Rudolph Henny, Guy Nearing, John Bacher, Jock Brydon, Cecil Smith, Carl Phetteplace, and Bob Ticknor, all with more than 16 articles to their credit. The new Index (with 641 articles in all) shows only 2 authors with over 16 articles each: Arthur Headlam, with 26 interesting Australian accounts and the hard-working, faithful Jock Brydon. Dr. Phetteplace, David Leach, and Bob Ticknor have continued to keep us enlightened and amused and Dr. Frank Mossman has joined the "prolific" group. One of our Japanese members, Hideo Suzuki, has provided some fascinating information on rhododendrons in Japan.
In the Bulletins of the last 10 years you will find more about evergreen azaleas and vireyas than before and many more of the beautiful color photographs. The committee has worked long, hard, and uncomplainingly and our typists have been admirably patient and painstaking. Many thanks to them all: (the typists) Pam Kalian, Judy Young, Kay Ogle, Renee Hill, and Betty Cottrell; (the committee) Renee Hill, Helen Moodie, Jane Waldron, and Elizabeth Lansdowne.
Again, my thanks to Brian Mulligan for checking the species list; to our understanding and cooperative printer; and especially to Ed Egan for his help and encouragement! | <urn:uuid:df9a429b-095e-4ecd-86a1-8e295ce5d159> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JARS/v35n3/v35n3-baird.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951658 | 568 | 1.507813 | 2 |
12-23-05 Loring Palmer writes from Rishikesh
Loring Palmer link page
Holy City by the Holy Ganga:
Rishikesh is the Indian town in the mountains made famous by the Beatles when they had their fling with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ["The Fool On the Hill," Come Together"]. George described it as heaven on earth. The holy Ganges river is the main event. It's sparkling sapphire presence winds its way from the Himalayas through this little town on its way to the ocean.
Temples and ashrams ["place of religious retreat for Hindus"] line both sides of the river banks. Bell ringing and puja chanting begin before the first light of dawn. A fresh cold breeze can be felt coming down from the mountains with a hint of smoke from cooking fires. No cars are permitted in this area. In the morning as one walks down the narrow street, traffic consists of a few cows [watch where you step], a goat, a group of orange robed sadhus [monks/holy beggars], a couple of western yoga students, some locals off to work, a pair of young girls in their neat school uniforms, a scooter honking its way through the pedestrians, and many Indian pilgrims who are here to spend time in the ashrams and to bathe in the the fridged waters of the holy Ganga. In this area only vegetarian food may be served.
The cow is Lord Shiva's animal and the Golden Arches [McD's] would be an abomination here. [I did find a cafe that serves eggs on the sly.] The river brings a feeling of stillness as it flows past the ashrams. A bit further down it roars as it passes the rocks/rapids near the bend. During the monsoons Mother Ganga doubles in size and becomes a torrent. As the sun sets many of the ashrams illuminate the banks in front with lights and torches. Swamis and sadhus are chanting, bells are ringing, drums are providing a thumping bottom to the celebrations. In an hour it's over. The lights are dimmed, shops are closed, and the area falls into a deep silence with the muted sound of the rushing river in the background. This evening there's a slim crescent moon, one of Shiva's symbols. And this is Shiva's ancient city entering the 21st century. The ancient traditions here are alive and sustaining as India lurches into the spiral of evolution toward the great unknown.
Yoga Capital of the World:
"Yo, have you checked out Maharisi's compound?" My fellow retreatant had begun the spiritual path with Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation years ago. The beginnings of TM had been right here down the river a ways. The old ashram was near my favorite meditation spot on the Ganga where the rapids are. I took a closer look. Up a dry creek bed from the river is a wooded area with tall shade trees where birds are singing and monkeys play.
A high stone wall separates the several acres of real-estate, mostly a hill. The entrance is a domed gatehouse. A path leads up-hill to a series of seven guest houses connected like motel units. Elegant, moorish/rococoesque porches front the dwellings. Constructed of cement [?], they're individualized by colors of green, blue, and gold, now faded. Water streaked and run down, they appear forlorn and gloomy. As I approached, an old caretaker was just entering through the gate. I asked if I could enter. He answered in Hindi, snapping the lock closed on the chained gate. No way. He trudged up the path to the first guest house, took his place on his chair on the porch and watched as I explored from the outside. Further up the hill I could see a dome that must be a shrine. Peering through the trees I saw the house on the top of the hill where Maharishi held forth.
This would offer a spectacular view of the Ganga as it flowed through the wooded valley below.
Nostalgia flowed over me. What a scene it must have been when this was all new, the buildings freshly painted in gold, blue, gold, and salmon-pink, and green...John, Paul, George, and Ringo dressed in white kurtas, the girls dressed in red and gold saris, having tea with Maharishi...salad days.
Famous songs were written here.
Maharishi gave the Fab Four mantras and meditation. They bestowed upon him the status of Superstar. And for the rest of the world it became cool to "be spiritual," practice meditation, and have a guru. Rishikesh became "the Yoga Capital of the World." TM was launched.
Within a few years the honeymoon was over and the relationship went downhill, mainly because the foxy fool-on-the-hill was using the fame, money, and power of the Beatles to fund and promote his worldwide TM project. Although it could be said that this was to benefit all sentient beings, this was too much for the Beatles and they renounced their allegiance to the yogi. The song they wrote titled "Maharishi" was renamed "Sexy Sadie."
Out of Rishikesh flowed a wave of spiritual consciousness that added a vertical dimension to the spiritual revolution. TM continues to thrive.
Maharishi lives elsewhere and is still alive. The Beatles are legend.
Seekers come here from all over to attend yoga workshops, practice with the various swamis, or just hang out. Meditate anywhere, no problem. Pilgrims continue to flock to the ashrams.
"Day after day, alone on the hill, the man with a foolish grin is keeping perfectly still..." Imagine..."One thing I can tell you is you got to be free."
Loring "Lor" Palmer, Dec. '05
Beatles photos, see Paul Salzman's, www.thebeatlesinrishikesh.com
|Readers' Comments Sangha News Go to What's New| | <urn:uuid:5f1eea7b-a7bf-43ac-93cb-29c92651f9fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cuke.com/comments/rishikesh%20-%20palmer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969199 | 1,277 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The two-year anniversary of OSHA’s proposed silica rule being stuck at the White House Office of Management & Budget (which Celeste wrote about here) attracted some media attention. NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce did an in-depth story on the hazards of airborne silica exposure, which increases the risk of lung cancer and the lung disease silicosis, and the lengthy White House inaction on OSHA’s proposal. Her piece includes a story from one worker who saw the damage of silica exposure firsthand:
Tom Ward, a 44-year-old mason who lives and works in Michigan, knows just how bad silicosis is. When he was a kid, his dad developed silicosis, after working as a sandblaster. Ward remembers his father coming home one day and collapsing.
“The last day he worked he came in and fell down and pretty much, you know, fell apart basically, and said, ‘I can’t do it no more,’ ” says Ward.
His father got the official diagnosis of silicosis at age 34 and died at age 39. “So we watched him slowly suffocate for five years,” says Ward.
Ben Goad reports in The Hill that OMB’s apparent willingness to move forward on the rule seemed to stall after trade groups lobbied on the issue:
By placing the item on its regulatory agenda in 2011, the administration signaled a willingness to move ahead with the rule. That year, at least 50 people from at least 35 organizations met with OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in nine disclosed meetings about the substance, disclosure records show.
More than a dozen trade groups and K Street shops reported lobbying on the issue in 2011.
The flurry of activity was followed by months of apparent inaction at OMB. It has since become a cause célèbre of pro-regulation groups and safety advocates, who have criticized the administration for slow-walking controversial regulations during Obama’s first term.
Some of the frustration was directed at former OIRA administrator Cass Sunstein, a devotee of cost-benefit analysis who served as regulatory gatekeeper until his departure from the administration in August.
Critics also questioned whether the delays were politically motivated.
Worker-health advocates weighed in with opinion pieces, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka with a Huffington Post piece “White House Inacation on Silica is Deadly for Workers” and National Council for Occupational Safety and Health executive director Tom O’Connor with the Charleston Gazette op-ed “Two years old, Silica Rule remains mired at OIRA.”
And at the Coshnet Blog, Dorry Samuels reports on recent research by the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) that found “wet cutting” methods to reduce airborne crystalline silica concentrations by 85%.
In other news:
Charleston Gazette: After a series of recent mineworker deaths, West Virginia Governor Early Ray Tomblin ordered a “safety stand-down,” during which state mining operations would pause for a review of safety laws and best practices. The US Mine Safety and Health Administration announced a coordinated effort, but neither state nor federal officials proposed new inspections or enforcement efforts.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: Following the death of 21-year-old Lawrence Daquan “Day” Davis, a temporary worker who was crushed to death by a palletizer machine on his first day on the job in Jacksonville, OSHA has cited Bacardi Bottling Corp. for 12 alleged safety violations, two of them “willful.”
National Partnership for Women & Families (Paid Sick Days blog): In Washington state, the House Labor and Workforce Development has approved two bills on paid sick days and family and medical leave insurance; Vermont’s legislature has introduced a paid sick days bill; and Philadelphia City Council members have introduced an earned sick days ordinance.
New York Times: Although drone pilots do their work miles away from battlefields, they experience PTSD and other mental-health problems at the same rate as pilots deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Defense Department study finds.
Reuters: NOAA researchers warn that as the planet’s climate gets hotter and wetter, people will have to limit outdoor work far more than they currently do in order to avoid heat stress. | <urn:uuid:82e339e8-e75e-4b79-96b7-46192328418c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/02/25/occupational-health-news-roundup-142/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955791 | 923 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Posts Tagged ‘Cormac McCarthy’
February 14, 2013 | by Timothy Leo Taranto
October 8, 2012 | by Sadie Stein
September 14, 2012 | by The Paris Review
Even if you’ve never read a book about the Civil War, the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant will grip your imagination. Dictated by Grant on his deathbed, championed and published by Mark Twain, celebrated by Matthew Arnold and Edmund Wilson (who compared it to Walden and Leaves of Grass), the Memoirs were cited by Gertrude Stein as a main influence on her own prose. However you may write, you'll find their power is contagious. Every page is a lesson in force, clarity, and grace under pressure. To read Grant’s description of a military problem, then to read the orders he gave, is, among other things, to see a great modern writer at work. —Lorin Stein
Have you ever imagined a music video as you listen to a song? Sigur Ros asked a dozen filmmakers to do just that with songs from their new album. The results are pretty great, but my favorite—and I’m hardly impartial—is Dash Shaw’s animated (I mean that literally) take on “Valtari.” Penned with Shortbus and Hedwig writer John Cameron Mitchell, the video features backgrounds by Frank Santoro, whose colors are, as ever, divine. —Nicole Rudick
If you’re in agreement with a friend of mine who considers most recent American covers of Cormac McCarthy’s novels “oversaturated Windows wallpapers” (why yes, Cormac, that horse is very pretty), then perhaps you will be both pleased and envious to know that the British ones now look like this, and apparently have for some time. Thanks to the now-defunct Aesthetic Book Blog for this gritty eye candy. And check out The Millions’ annualish comparison of American and British book covers for further contemplation. —Samuel Fox
June 18, 2012 | by Cody Wiewandt
Team |1|2|3|4|5|6|7 Total TPR |0|0|3|0|0|1|0 4 NAT |5|0|0|0|4|0|X 9
Within the first minute the slaughter had become general. —Blood Meridian
Themes found in Cormac McCarthy’s grotesque 1985 masterpiece, Blood Meridian, hereby presented in descending order relative to how closely they can be applied to a postgame dissection of last week’s softball game against The Nation:
1. Destruction, Chaos
Blood Meridian is essentially a chronicle of destruction, a hurricane of terrible things like knives and guns and dead babies. This game, while not a massacre of flesh, was nonetheless a massacre (maybe of the human spirit?). From the onset, our side played a sloppy game; a slew of early errors gave The Nation a first-inning lead they would not relinquish. Like in the novel, the slaughter was complete; unlike in the novel, it was mostly self-inflicted.
May 18, 2012 | by Sam Stephenson
In November of 2001, I picked up Joe Henry’s album Scar and was stunned by the opening track, a slow blues number called “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation.” Henry, a white man, sang from the point of view of the black icon, expressing the comedian’s love-hate relationship with himself and his audience. Henry had the audacity and sensitivity to pull it off, with help from a spiraling, dipping, dripping saxophone solo by Ornette Coleman.
Scar was released in May of that year. Henry couldn’t have known how tearful the nation would be that fall. He closed the album with these lines from the title track, sung in a careful, mournful tempo:
The blade of our outrageous fortune,
Like a parade, it cuts a path.
Light shows on our foolish way
And darkness on
If I love you, to save myself
And you love me because we are
So fool to think that our parade
Could leave a path
And not a scar.
And I love you with all I am
And you love me with what you are,
As pretty as a twisting vine
A mark so fine
But still a scar.
The album resonated with me throughout that first post–September 11 holiday season, more than Dylan’s “Love and Theft”, which was released on that particular Tuesday, a coincidence that generated new claims of clairvoyance from Dylanologists. Henry’s album cuts deeper. Read More »
February 22, 2012 | by Sadie Stein
A cultural news roundup. | <urn:uuid:344007c0-f4cc-4642-b0cb-e9fc46cb08de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag/cormac-mccarthy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95669 | 1,003 | 1.65625 | 2 |
RetirementJobs.com Staff Writers
An 8 Part Series For Finding a Job at 50+
If you're 50 or older, wish to work in retirement, and haven't had the experience of searching for a job in recent years, you're in for a real surprise.
You don't need a pencil, pen, typewriter, fax machine, envelopes or stamps much anymore. That's the good news. The bad news is that you will need to know how to prepare an online resume, research job openings, research employers, submit applications and keep track of your application. It's becoming more common that companies will only accept applications over the internet.
The new world of job searching can be impersonal, frustrating, even infuriating. Sorry. Unless you find a plant, store or office where you can walk in and fill out an application (and there are a few great companies where you can), you are now in the internet age of looking for a job.
Our 8 Part Job Search Series If you are searching for a job, you need to understand how job searching is done today. This introduction is the first in a series of eight articles. This material is taken from RetirementJobs.com's "Over 50 and Looking for a Job? A Workshop for Job Seekers." We'll describe the subject of each article and provide a few useful guidelines to get you started.
Do You Really Want Paid Work?
This may sound pretty basic, but first you have to decide if and why you need or want to work. You may be age 50 to 60+, recently laid off, and eager to resume your primary occupation. We refer to your situation as "involuntarily retired." You may be 50 or older and seeking to try a new occupation because you've been laid off, retired or just decided you need a change. We call this situation being "rewired" or a career changer.
We are living longer, are generally in better health, and many people still have major debts and mortgages as they approach age 60 to 63 - the "traditional" retirement age. If you need to work, there's no sense in analyzing things any further. Prepare to continue your current occupation or start thinking about what kind of other work you would prefer and are qualified to perform.
Now here's a real puzzler: many older workers continue to work even if they don't need to. This is actually a very smart decision, and so we encourage you to keep working, even it is not 50 to 60 hours per week. Working is (generally) good for your health. It keeps you socially active. Your savings continue to grow a little longer. Social security retirement payments will increase if you delay onset of payments beyond age 62. Many believe it's a chance to "give back" by transferring their knowledge and life's lessons. It may be volunteer work for the sheer joy of contributing. Finally, many older workers just don't want to stop working! | <urn:uuid:e0e92971-ee32-46cc-b329-51b13bbd4263> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.retirementjobs.com/career-advice/find-a-job-at-age-50/the-new-world-of-job-searching/ | 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 | 0.96261 | 603 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Let me first give you the context of this post: my team is standing in a straight, horizontal line. Coach Ross stands in front of us. "Pushup position," he orders and we obey. "Down," he says and we all do a push-up."Down...down...down." the speed increases, "Down, down, down, down." The push-ups continue until we reach about 40 of them. "Stand up," says Ross. "Arms straight out."
So my right arm is held straight out to my right and my left is held straight out to my left. After a minute, Ross says, "20 forward". We move our arms in little circles 20 times. After another set of circles, Ross tells us the purpose of this drill- as we're still holding our arms up.
"One of the purposes of this, is to teach you how to shut your mind off. Everyone feels pain, but you can either ignore it or give into it. You have to get into that mindset that will let you shut off the pain. I would expect and athlete like James Anderson to be good at this. In cycling, after the first mile you're already hurting..." he continued on with his speech, while I was lost in my own thought. How do I suffer? I don't shut the pain off. What do I do? I came to the conclusion that when I'm really suffering, I tell myself that pain is temporary and it will go away eventually. When the suffering does end, I'll be so happy, but if I give up, I'll be kicking myself for a long time.
It's a lot like Lance Armstrong's quote:
"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."
So we suffered on into the evening. We kept on with that pushup/arms out torture for about twenty more minutes. After a short water break, we did several sprints to midfield and back. When I say "several", I probably should say "7 or 8". It was pretty tough, but for the most part, I was almost always the third or fourth best finisher. Right now I am really happy that I actually trained for the soccer season, because the people who didn't train are struggling right now.
It was an intense practice, but it will make me stronger. | <urn:uuid:73773f85-2d5f-47eb-8a9d-224795a224b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boyonbike.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-suffer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981498 | 514 | 1.789063 | 2 |
DENVER (AP) - The first debate between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney is under way at the University of Denver.
Obama and Romney are taking the stage in the first of three 90-minute presidential debates scheduled this month.
The debate is expected to focus on domestic policy. The moderator is PBS newsman Jim Lehrer. He will open each 15-minute segment with a question, and then Obama and Romney will have two minutes apiece to answer.
After that, it's up to Lehrer to keep the conversation going and to intervene if one candidate speaks too long.
National polls show the two candidates in a tight race among likely voters. But Obama has the advantage in many of the battlegrounds, including Colorado.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) | <urn:uuid:9dddde13-1c9d-4034-a95a-442e6a269e9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtsp.com/news/topstories/article/276816/250/First-presidential-debate-under-way | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944692 | 176 | 1.75 | 2 |
Briefing note on the Department for Transport announcement of the Urban Challenge Fund and the scrapping of Congestion TIF
On Tuesday 2 March 2010, Sadiq Khan, the Minister of State for Transport announced the setting up of an Urban Challenge Fund, which would replace the Congestion Transport Innovation Fund. This fund would require…
“…Local Authorities to be bolder and more innovative in developing transport strategies.”
Money from the fund will be available to support packages which deliver a wide range of transport improvements:
Improve journey time
Lower carbon emissions
Promote healthier lifestyles through better air quality and more walking and cycling
Urban transport planning must be embedded in broader economic and spatial planning.”
It is notable that Cambridgeshire’s Congestion TIF proposals would deliver against all of these criteria, and they are certainly bold and innovative. There appears to be no firm requirement for Congestion Charging or alternative fiscal demand management in the new fund as discussed; however, there is a strong emphasis on innovation, challenge, demand management and value for money.
Government has published a discussion document and is seeking views on how the Urban Challenge fund might work by 4 June 2010. The discussion document states:
“The Transport Innovation Fund was established to support local authorities that wanted to tackle the problems of congestion in their areas through a combination of public transport improvements and congestion charging. Work by a number of authorities showed that a combination of measures was necessary to tackle the problem of congestion and could deliver wider benefits to local communities, the urban economy and environment. TIF also encouraged new thinking in a number of areas, for example on a phased and incremental approach to demand management. Its weaknesses lay in its too narrow a focus on the issue of congestion, the failure to win public acceptance for the more challenging proposals and inability to transform governance at the same time as delivering radical change. The key lessons from TIF are that building acceptance for the more challenging proposals involves recognising the importance of wider economic, social and environmental objectives, having a clear vision and planned step-by-step approach to delivering change and strengthening partnership working between the Department and cities.”
The Minister stated that Cambridgeshire and Reading had received letters on their TIF proposals. Our letter was actually received by email at 7pm on the evening of 3 March, said very little, but pointed to the announcement and the value of the work undertaken for TIF.
This was reflected in the DfT line to the press that there…
“…is clearly an opportunity for Cambridgeshire to use the TIF experience to their advantage in putting forward proposals to the new fund.”
They have also stated that they expect authorities to draw on TIF models, DaSTS work and other recent transport studies when drawing up proposals under the new fund.
Cambridgeshire appears to be well placed through its work on TIF and the Greater Cambridge DaSTS study, and through its wider work on the growth agenda, should it choose to submit proposals under the new fund.
This is the emphasis of the press release we have issued. Clearly there is disappointment at the failure to secure the TIF investment. However, we must now concentrate our energies on securing funding for Chesterton Station, and for the moment, we will anticipate doing this through the new fund.
The proposal of the Minister is that funding for the new fund would be top sliced from the Department for Transport’s budget following the next Comprehensive Spending Review. It is unclear how much funding would be available, but the indications are that for any individual authority, funding would be less than for TIF.
There is of course uncertainty as to whether a change in government would lead to a review of the proposals for the Urban Challenge Fund in period beyond May / June 2010.
Department for Transport web links
Urban Challenge Fund | <urn:uuid:d4754b0a-afbc-4561-8d3b-ca8ff891f8e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nickclarkeconservative.wordpress.com/2010/03/ | 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 | 0.945274 | 793 | 1.578125 | 2 |
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