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Ramesh Ponnuru has responded to me at the Corner.
There's been some confusion here, and it's my fault. I've been using "human" when I should be saying "person". So while I don't think that the fetus is some different species than human, I also don't believe that it's a person. (Additionally, I think a case can certainly be made that a developing organism that has not been born, or perhaps is not viable, is not in fact a member of that species in a meaning relevant to our discussion.)
Here's the bigger problem: "The virtue of using conception as the dividing line, in my view, is not so much that it is non-arbitrary as that it is, well, true."
That's certainly been in keeping with the tenor of the comments, where (in a gratifyingly civil conversation) many people have been making conflicting statements about what's just true, or about what's self-evident, etc. That seems to be a recurring theme in our abortion discussion. To some people, abortion just is murder. To others, a fetus just isn't a human person. To some, the fetus just has rights. And on and on. All of these things are not only true, to the people who believe them, but are self-evident. So what Ponnuru finds obviously true I find obviously untrue. The debate over abortion is also marked by people claiming to have found the magic bullet, some definition or evidence-- usually scientific-- that, to them, solves the debate, once and for all. The problem is that these notions always end up begging the question somewhere or other. When someone says "See, we detected these kinds of brain patterns at this fetal age, therefore this baby has a consciousness, therefore you can't abort it after this point," they think all of that flows logically. But someone else says "Brain patterns don't really differentiate consciousness, and anyhow consciousness doesn't mean you have adult rights." And so on. Scientific answers are constantly being proposed to ethical or philosophical question. Sadly, we can't use science to get us out of this mess.
I think the postmodern concept is useful here. First, I think that here we may have arrived at true incommensurability. This divide might not be solved. Second, I think we would do well to jettison notions of truth and instead operate according to principles of pragmatics and use. Without a transcendent authority to tell use where personhood begins, or whether personhood entails an absolute right to not be aborted, we aren't going to get at the truth about whether or not abortion is moral. There is no truth about abortion, only what various people think about the issue, and so we should attempt to craft a pragmatic vision of abortion that is necessarily dependent on appeals to popularity. This is bound to be unsatisfying. No one is particularly moved by appeals to popular consensus-- "slavery was popular, too!"-- but in the end, that's what will rule the day. Not to say you don't argue with the consensus. I'm more sympathetic to late-term abortion than the average person. But I think we should give up on magic bullet answers to the question of abortion. Too many committed and honest people have too many inherently contradictory notions about what is "simply true" for me to have faith in any objective truth about the morality of abortion. | <urn:uuid:2455a614-7308-4a92-bcbb-eb76998bc5aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lhote.blogspot.com/2008/11/you-know-what-we-dont-talk-about-enough.html?showComment=1226954100000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976209 | 706 | 1.539063 | 2 |
IN WHAT APPEARS to be a misguided attempt to wipe out whatís left of the Combat Zone, Boston mayor Tom Menino is actively supporting a plan to tear down one of the cityís most significant historic theaters. By allowing developers to reduce the 96-year-old Gaiety Theatre to rubble and replace it with a luxury apartment tower, Menino would destroy a precious part of our cultural heritage and violate the cityís own zoning codes. Moreover, the mayor would be thumbing his nose at a broad-based coalition of activists that has developed its own plan to rehabilitate the theater and build a more modest housing development.
As Phoenix staff writer Kristen Lombardi reports (see "Curtain Call," News and Features), plans for the Gaiety ó located in the dodgy lower Washington Street area, at the edge of the Midtown Cultural District ó are shrouded largely in secrecy. Despite the Phoenixís numerous inquiries, Menino, along with everyone else favoring the plan, declines to discuss the Gaiety, citing pending litigation. But essentially, the mayor and other top city officials have signed on to a plan by businessman and philanthropist Alan Lewis, who owns a number of properties in the Combat Zone area. Lewis, whoís also not talking, seeks to tear down the Gaiety and build in its stead a $120 million, 346-unit glass-and-steel tower whose 290-foot height would be nearly double the areaís 155-foot limit. In a concession bordering on mockery, the tower ó to be called Residences at Kensington Place ó would incorporate an "interpretive exhibit" on the Gaiety in its lobby.
The long-shuttered Gaiety may not be much to look at right now. But in its day the theater, designed by the distinguished architect Clarence Blackall, was a pioneering home to vaudeville, and was the only venue in New England where African-American vaudevillians could perform. And though some understandably wonder whether its 1500 seats could be filled, given that itís surrounded by such theaters as the Colonial, the Wang, the Wilbur, and the Shubert, advocates say the Gaiety, in addition to its manageable size, has an unusual advantage: near-perfect acoustics, rivaling those of Symphony and Jordan Halls, which are so heavily in demand that they regularly turn away bookings. Properly rehabbed, the Gaiety would be an ideal place for chamber music, opera, and jazz. Community activists say the Gaiety could also function as an Asian performing-arts center, in keeping with its location near Chinatown.
To demonstrate that the idea of saving the Gaiety is not just wishful thinking, the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) has put together a plan pairing a fixed-up theater with a smaller apartment tower. The ACDC plan would also set aside a higher proportion of units for affordable housing than the Kensington plan does, and would do so at prices far more affordable for working people.
Yet Menino has rejected this common-sense approach, and appears to be hell-bent on giving Alan Lewis what he wants, over the objection not only of activists but of Boston city councilors Chuck Turner, Felix Arroyo, and Maura Hennigan. "No one who looks at that theater can say with a straight face that it is not important to the city," says Hennigan, who is often mentioned as a possible rival to Menino in the 2005 mayoral election. Sadly, Councilor Jim Kelly, whose district includes Chinatown, and Denny Ching, Meninoís liaison to Chinatown, have both voiced their support for the Kensington project. It is unfortunate that Kelly would place his need to curry favor with the mayor over the wishes of his constituents. Ching, of course, is the mayorís man. Chinatown residents would be wise not to confuse their interests with his, or City Hallís.
Given that none of the principals, including Menino and Lewis, is willing to talk, one can only guess why the mayor would rather violate the zoning laws than preserve a cultural landmark. The most likely explanation is that Menino sees the Kensington proposal as a chance to drive the last nail into the coffin of the Combat Zone, the tiny remnant of what was once a large adult-entertainment district. The Glass Slipper, a strip club, would be torn down as part of the Kensington development. (Indeed, the owner of the Glass Slipper is one of those who has filed suit.) In addition, the presence of a large luxury-apartment building could tip the balance of the neighborhood to the point where it no longer makes sense for adult businesses to stick around. After all, that is what happened in Times Square, in New York.
But the Combat Zone is already so small that it poses no threat to anyone ó if adult entertainment can even be considered a threat. It is perverse to tear down a once-and-potentially-still-great theater in order to drive out of business a dirty bookstore or two (at least one of which rents space from Lewis). Itís also a direct contradiction of Meninoís numerous pledges over the years ó largely unfilled ó to meet the needs of Bostonís arts-and-culture community.
Rather than fighting the community, Menino should join with it ó and save the Gaiety Theatre.
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR Patrick Fitzgerald is out of control. Appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to find out which "senior administration officials" revealed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July 2003, Fitzgerald has instead embarked on a witch-hunt against the media ó and, by extension, against the First Amendment (see "Donít Quote Me," News and Features, August 20).
For months now, Fitzgerald has been issuing subpoenas to journalists, threatening them with jail if they refuse to tell him the source of the Plame leak. Among them: the Washington Postís Walter Pincus, Time magazineís Matthew Cooper, and NBC Newsís Tim Russert. Last week, this witch-hunt reached a new level, with New York Times reporter Judith Miller being held in contempt of court, and threatened with an 18-month jail stay, if she continues to insist on protecting her confidential sources. In singling out Miller, Fitzgerald has plumbed the depths of outrageousness: Miller has not written one word about the Plame case, and she has also been slapped with another subpoena by Fitzgerald ó acting in his capacity as US attorney for Chicago ó in a totally unrelated terrorism case.
Journalists do not have an absolute right to keep their sources confidential. Over the years the courts have made it clear that reporters have the same civic responsibility as any member of the public to provide relevant information in an ongoing criminal investigation. But in its landmark Branzburg v. Hayes decision, the US Supreme Court in 1972 suggested that certain standards must be met before prosecutors can start dragging journalists to the witness stand. As interpreted by the courts, the Branzburg ruling has come to mean that journalists may not be forced to reveal their sources unless the information they have is crucial to an ongoing criminal investigation, and unless there are no alternative means of obtaining that information from non-journalists. Above all, Branzburg makes it clear that prosecutors may not use their power to harass reporters. Yet that is precisely what Ashcroft, through Fitzgerald, is up to in the case of Judith Miller.
Oddly enough, there have been no reports of Novak himself having been subpoenaed or called on to reveal his sources, even though he presumably knows as well as anyone the identities of those "senior administration officials" who whispered Plameís name into his ear. Novak has consistently declined to comment, so itís impossible to know whether heís been called or not.
But itís important to keep in mind the political roots of this dispute. Plame is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has criticized the White House for ignoring his report contradicting the official line that Saddam Hussein had attempted to obtain uranium for Iraqís nuclear-weapons program from the African country of Niger. Plameís name may have been leaked to Novak and other journalists, ruining her career and possibly endangering lives, in retaliation for Wilsonís outspokenness.
If he wished, George W. Bush could find out tomorrow which of his underlings outed Valerie Plame. Instead, his administration, in the person of Fitzgerald, is harassing and intimidating the journalists who were the recipients of White House leaks. Itís a characteristic tactic for these thugs ó and it sends a chilling message to any reporter who promises confidentiality to a source while attempting to ferret out the truth. This is just one more reason that Bush and his administration need to be turned out of office.
What do you think? Send an e-mail to email@example.com
Issue Date: October 15 - 21, 2004
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|Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group| | <urn:uuid:d1da0fb6-dba1-4455-86e5-3ce0af6f2174> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/editorial/documents/04193337.asp | 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 | 0.95922 | 1,892 | 1.664063 | 2 |
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"Kids" delivers benefits and results that are immediate and dramatic as well as sustainable and long-term--a child feels immediately better after eating a serving--even four hours later--their mind functions clearly and their energy is balanced and stabilized. Research from Harvard Medical School has demonstrated how biochemical balance produces an optimum state of function in our body after even one serving. Such benefits can be measured not only by performance observation, but also by blood tests. Conversely, if the child goes off the nutritional regimen after several weeks on the program, the inappropriate behaviors and neurological imbalance (judged by objective observations and blood tests) return rather dramatically. "Kids" has demonstrated, in numerous clinical and controlled studies, that diet is vital to the health of our nation. KIds are worth the effort to feed them well. | <urn:uuid:2088d937-7287-43ce-9fd6-dcca2fa1d740> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidsneedusnow.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951161 | 634 | 1.757813 | 2 |
There are a lot of visitors to my garden, birds, cats, bees, caterpillars, butterflies, even the odd frog. They’re all welcome, of course, the buzzing of bees busy among the flowers or the queue of birds on the fence waiting their turn at the feeder; the fluttering of butterflies over the shrubs or the staccato flight of hover-flies looking for pollen to eat. They make the garden feel alive and there’s a great sense of satisfaction and well-being in knowing that you’ve created a rich and thriving pocket that’s visited daily by countless things.
There are also slugs and snails.
These are less welcome, they raze new green shoots to the ground, decimate seedlings, shred foliage, leave horrible slime and ooze on great winding tracks across soil, plants and grass. They are not welcome.
In the spring I mulched with slug pellets, I turned the borders blue with many cans of the stuff and it did work, it got rid of virtually all the slugs and snails overnight and I’ve not spotted since and so not had to put any more slug killer down…until now.
I’m learning when their season for appearing is and Autumn – along with Spring – seems to be one of them. I’ve noticed collections of slugs in certain areas in the borders and also tiny little snails dotted around, crawling over plants, leaving holes in the leaves.
It’s time to reach for the blue pellets once more. | <urn:uuid:f2cab252-3bf9-453e-ab18-52d3f313dc65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunilpatel.co.uk/2011/10/unwelcome-visitors/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963398 | 324 | 1.703125 | 2 |
There is a lot of work and planning taking place at the Gateway Arch grounds. The National Park Service is holding a design competition to revitalize the area by 2015 (the 50th anniversary of the competition of the Arch): www.kmov.com/news/local/69088362.html
Nine design teams remain in the competition: www.cityarchrivercompetition.org/
At the same time, a group of locals is asking designers to consider shutting down I-70 as a way to reconnect downtown, the Arch, and the riverfront.
City to River officially formed last March and presented a plan to remove I-70 lanes through downtown St. Louis and replace them with a city boulevard at a meeting with the National Park Service.
Since then, the group has launched a website: citytoriver.org/
Read their presentation here: citytoriver.org/docs/City_to_River_presentation.pdf
On the last page, the group offers a very rough estimate of what the plan would cost. They say it would be much cheaper than a previously much discussed idea of building a tunnel along the edge of the arch grounds to carry traffic along I-70.
I checked with the Missouri Department of Transportation. The state says it's open to redesigning Memorial Drive, but not shutting down I-70. It says an average 73,000 vehicles travel through the downtown lanes of the interstate daily. Despite the upcoming construction of a new Mississippi River bridge, all lanes of I-70 would still be needed.
Read about the new bridge here: www.newriverbridge.org/
City to River is made up of architects, artists, and others interested in downtown plans.
I spoke with Rick Bonasch with the non-profit group, Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance. He is on the City to River steering committee and writes a blog about St. Louis revitalization: stlrising.blogspot.com/
Rick says the idea of removing an interstate from a section of downtown is not a new idea and points to other cities that have worked on similar projects including:
San Francisco: www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysEmbarcadero.html | <urn:uuid:2352a80a-1074-4b03-9fde-7bc4dd76dca4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kmov.com/community/blogs/reporters-blog/Group-Proposes-Removing-I-70-Lanes-Downtown-85895567.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942714 | 458 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Please Note: This post may contain material which could be considered offensive. If you are squemish? Please do not read further.
This topic was suggested by one of my readers and given that it's not only frequently a source of parental concern but can also cause major social issues, I thought it was well worth covering.
Like all aspie traits, the ones described here don't necessarily apply to everyone. People with aspergers are individuals too and there's no reason to expect that any generalisations hold true.
One thing that I've noticed with many aspies that I've come into contact with is that they tend to cling to the extremes of permissiveness more than their neurotypical counterparts.
For example; most NTs learn that nudity isn't socially acceptable from an early age and will generally avoid it. By their mid to late teens however, many NTs push at the boundaries of social acceptance without crossing them in any major way.
In this situation, there are two extremes and you often find aspies clustered at both. On the one hand, there are the shy, prudish aspies who consider it a big deal to unbutton the top button on their shirt, or to wear shorts. At the other end of the scale, there are aspies who think nothing of nudity and aren't concerned who sees them. Surprisingly, there are also a number of confusing individuals who constantly flip between the two extremes.
Causes of Concern
Both types of aspies create social issues with the "prudish" type often being subjected to bullying over their appearance. They also often have problems attending gym/P.E. classes. These aspies often face longer-term life and relationship issues because social rejection in the teenage years can often have lasting consequences. All too often, these people have major issues with dating and with meeting people. In this regard, some of worst problems stem from their conservative dress sense and the fact that they would never set foot in many of the places where social/dating activities are conducted (pubs, clubs, dances etc).
Unsuprisingly though, it's the more "relaxed" types of aspies who tend to get themselves into the worst trouble. There's no mistaking the problems that females who are just a little too forthcoming when talking about adult issues or who flirt inappropriately attract amongst the less controlled members of our society. Male issues tend to be more likely to involve the police, or violence.
Growing Up Permissive
Your aspie's tendencies will generally start to become obvious from an early age, typically around 5 or 6 years. My children for example are sent outside fully clothed to play but frequently when I look out of the window, I see the discarded piles of their clothes on the ground and find them happily jumping around stark-naked on the trampoline where all our neighbours can see them. No amount of correction seems to get the message through.
Even worse, they seem to have an unhealthy fascination with their organs and with "potty talk" when their peers have mostly outgrown this. The big problem with this delay is that it brings us uncomfortably close to puberty. When such frolicking and talk ceases to be innocent and becomes altogether more dangerous.
Like all children, aspies are curious about their bodies and those of others around them. It's fairly normal for children to show themselves to others ("You show me yours and I'll show you mine"). Unfortunately, this is where the sexual and social delays and fascination with the wrong subjects can cause big problems. It is not uncommon for an aspie child to remain focussed on the "show and tell" stage for much longer than their peers.
I remember this stage myself and I remember how my friends had outgrown such things and I eventually asked a child who was several years younger to show and tell with me. It was all innocent but you can imagine the social implications had that other child's parents caught me. I hadn't grown out of that stage by the time I stopped but I had started to fear the punishments that awaited me if I got caught. I'm not keen on negativity as a deterrent but in this case, it was pseudo-fear that did the trick. Certainly I'll be impressing on my children that such behaviour past a certain age will involve the police.
The other issue affecting teenagers with Aspergers is obsession. Aspies are well known for forming fixations on objects, concepts and even people. These obsessions need to be monitored carefully lest they get out of control.
Again, it's not at all uncommon for aspies to develop sex obsessions, even without a partner. Most of these obsessions are perfectly safe behind closed doors but if they are even discussed openly, there could be social problems. Aspies have a tendency to say just a bit too much.
I think that it's much more critical that the "birds and the bees" be discussed with aspies than with NTs as aspies have more naievity and greater scope for trouble. Of course, I'm still not sure what the right age for this discussion should be. | <urn:uuid:ffb29e70-d837-43ad-9ced-94c637c0cea2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com/2009/03/teenage-sexuality-and-aspergers.html?showComment=1256358174323 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977632 | 1,060 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Call it Shardism, or less delicately, a Shard-on. Either way, this proposed City skyscraper seems to borrow design cues from the Southwark behemoth.
Designed by Kohn Pederson Fox (the firm behind the Heron tower and currently-stalled Pinnacle), the building, described by the Financial Times as resembling an “upright scalpel”, is the new London HQ for US-based insurance firm WR Berkely. The 35-storey, 190m tower would be located at the junction of Lime Street and Leadenhall Street, amidst a cluster of distinctive buildings including the Gherkin, Lloyd’s of London and the under-construction Cheesegrater. At ground level a new public plaza, including a cafe “inspired by the original Lloyds Coffee House that birthed the insurance industry”, will be built (for more on the origins of London’s financial markets, see our beginner’s guide).
Visually, the angled cerulean glass panes are evocative of the Shard, while the word ‘scalpel’ invokes the acute angles of London’s tallest building. And why not? Despite concerns from some, the Shard is among the most popular new buildings in London. Expect a few more clumsy homages before the decade is out.
What’s perhaps more concerning is the WR Berkely CEO’s assertion that his firm had looked at existing space but found that it “[wasn't] up to the technological standards needed”. This at a time when the Shard is yet to shift a square foot of office space, and the aforementioned Pinnacle struggles to attract tenants.
Should it be granted planning permission, construction will begin in 2013 for completion in 2017. | <urn:uuid:ad362fa9-62ff-44e3-9bb2-30a1337e0c21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://londonist.com/2012/09/scalpel-shaped-skyscraper-for-city.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945879 | 376 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Oil prices soared and global stocks plunged Monday on signs that Libya, a major exporter, will cut oil production amid spreading violence and unrest.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, warned that Libya's oil wealth "will be burned" if the unrest leads to civil war, while an influential Libyan tribal leader offered a counterthreat to cut off oil shipments to the West within 24 hours if the regime's violence against protesters does not end.
The turmoil in Libya sent the price of premium crude oil in London soaring above $105 a barrel, the highest level in 2½ years, while stocks throughout Europe fell from 1 percent to 2 percent.
Most U.S. markets were closed for the Presidents Day holiday, but the price of U.S. premium crude surged 5 percent to $90.13 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Officials sought to calm markets by pointing to the world's strategic reserves of oil.
International Energy Agency official David Fyfe said the prospect of an interruption in oil production in the Middle East is "a real concern" because the region lays claim to 60 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and 40 percent of global gas resources.
He emphasized that major consuming nations such as the U.S., Japan and Germany have stockpiled 1.6 billion barrels of oil — enough to provide 4 million barrels a day for a year — in preparation for any disruption.
Libya exports about 1 million barrels a day, primarily to European customers. The U.S. strategic reserves have been tapped twice in emergencies — once during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and again after Hurricane Katrina interrupted U.S. production in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.
"It's very much a last resort," Mr. Fyfe told reporters in London, "but it's worth pointing out that it exists and has been used before when supplies have been disrupted. It's a sort of insurance policy for the market."
The violence in recent days in Libya has prompted BP PLC to suspend operations and evacuate 40 workers and their families. Other oil companies operating in Libya, including Norway's Statoil and Austria's OMV, also evacuated workers, though they continued to pump oil where possible.
"Events in the Middle East are of intense concern," Ian Smale, a BP executive, told an International Petroleum Week conference in London. "With specific regard to Libya, our first concern is our people and the security and integrity of our operations."
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain, a smaller producer, also faces persistent street demonstrations calling for a new government. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain's neighbor, has offered to provide military support to the tiny island nation's ruling family if it can't handle the protests itself.
Saudi Arabia is the largest producer by far in the region, a major supplier to the U.S. and the one with the most spare capacity to ramp up production should supplies become tight. The kingdom has experienced protests, though they have been low-key and small-scale compared with the ones in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya.
"The market will be most concerned over protests spilling into Saudi Arabia," said Rebecca Seabury, an energy consultant at the British firm Inenco.
"As Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter, if the situation escalates, this could take oil prices higher than the $147 a barrel we saw in 2008," she said.
Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said Group of 20 finance ministers voiced concerns at a meeting in Paris during the weekend that "the geopolitical risks to energy prices could set back the recovery" in the world economy.
"2011 is likely to be a year of ongoing turmoil in the broader Middle East," he said.
Saudi Arabia, which is a member of the G-20, "emphasized that they have excess capacity," Mr. Zoellick said, "and that is a good thing."
Much higher fuel prices would threaten the fragile recoveries in the U.S., Europe and Japan, economists say. The oil price spike also is causing considerable hardships in developing countries and feeding into inflation and higher food prices, since energy is a major component of food costs.
In an ironic spiral, the higher food costs have contributed significantly to the unrest in the Middle East, and that in turn threatens to further increase fuel prices.
The rise in fuel prices in the U.S. has been muted, although gas prices were at historic highs for this time of the year before the Middle East unrest broke out. Last week, the average price of regular gas inched up 3 cents to $3.16 a gallon.
John B. Townsend II of AAA noted that the unrest in the Middle East has primarily driven up the price of Brent North Sea oil, London's benchmark premium crude.
But analysts are cautioning that the lagging effect on U.S. oil and gas prices may be only "temporary," he said, as the unrest persists and is spreading.
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
A collection of reader guest articles, thoughts and opinions by Communities writers and breaking news and information.
A mother of three and a passionate conservative, Shirley Husar changes the game.
This column will cover anything that has anything remotely to do with the game of baseball, from the game itself to mid-summer trades to offseason moves.
Eye on Europe, the Middle East and Africa
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal
Vietnam Memorial adds four names
Cinco de Mayo on the Mall
NRA kicks off annual convention | <urn:uuid:2c599afe-8e38-4f8f-aa21-bef36af6aca1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/21/oil-prices-surge-on-fear-of-libyan-unrest/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954624 | 1,194 | 1.648438 | 2 |
I was late for my meeting with the CEO of a technology company and I was emailing him from my iPhone as I walked onto the elevator in his company’s office building. I stayed focused on the screen as I rode to the sixth floor. I was still typing with my thumbs when the elevator doors opened and I walked out without looking up. Then I heard a voice behind me, “Wrong floor.” I looked back at the man who was holding the door open for me to get back in; it was the CEO, a big smile on his face. He had been in the elevator with me the whole time. “Busted,” he said.
The world is moving fast and it’s only getting faster. So much technology. So much information. So much to understand, to think about, to react to. A friend of mine recently took a new job as the head of learning and development at a mid-sized investment bank. When she came to work her first day on the job she turned on her computer, logged in with the password they had given her, and found 385 messages already waiting for her.
So we try to speed up to match the pace of the action around us. We stay up until 3 am trying to answer all our emails. We twitter, we facebook, and we link-in. We scan news websites wanting to make sure we stay up to date on the latest updates. And we salivate each time we hear the beep or vibration of a new text message.
But that’s a mistake. The speed with which information hurtles towards us is unavoidable (and it’s getting worse). But trying to catch it all is counterproductive. The faster the waves come, the more deliberately we need to navigate. Otherwise we’ll get tossed around like so many particles of sand, scattered to oblivion. Never before has it been so important to be grounded and intentional and to know what’s important.
Never before has it been so important to say “No.” No, I’m not going to read that article. No, I’m not going to read that email. No, I’m not going to take that phone call. No, I’m not going to sit through that meeting.
It’s hard to do because maybe, just maybe, that next piece of information will be the key to our success. But our success actually hinges on the opposite: on our willingness to risk missing some information. Because trying to focus on it all is a risk in itself. We’ll exhaust ourselves. We’ll get confused, nervous, and irritable. And we’ll miss the CEO standing next to us in the elevator.
A study of car accidents by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute put cameras in cars to see what happens right before an accident. They found that in 80% of crashes the driver was distracted during the three seconds preceding the incident. In other words, they lost focus — dialed their cell phones, changed the station on the radio, took a bite of a sandwich, maybe checked a text — and didn’t notice that something changed in the world around them. Then they crashed.
The world is changing fast and if we don’t stay focused on the road ahead, resisting the distractions that, while tempting, are, well, distracting, then we increase the chances of a crash.
Now is a good time to pause, prioritize, and focus. Make two lists:
List 1: Your Focus List (the road ahead)
What are you trying to achieve? What makes you happy? What’s important to you? Design your time around those things. Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can’t work 25/8.
List 2: Your Ignore List (the distractions)
To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complementary questions: what are you willing not to achieve? What doesn’t make you happy? What’s not important to you? What gets in the way?
Some people already have the first list. Very few have the second. But given how easily we get distracted and how many distractions we have these days, the second is more important than ever. The leaders who will continue to thrive in the future know the answers to these questions and each time there’s a demand on their attention they ask whether it will further their focus or dilute it.
Which means you shouldn’t create these lists once and then put them in a drawer. These two lists are your map for each day. Review them each morning, along with your calendar, and ask: what’s the plan for today? Where will I spend my time? How will it further my focus? How might I get distracted? Then find the courage to follow through, make choices, and maybe disappoint a few people.
After the CEO busted me in the elevator, he told me about the meeting he had just come from. It was a gathering of all the finalists, of which he was one, for the title of Entrepreneur of the Year. This was an important meeting for him — as it was for everyone who aspired to the title (the judges were all in attendance) — and before he entered he had made two explicit decisions: 1. To focus on the meeting itself and 2. Not to check his BlackBerry.
What amazed him was that he was the only one not glued to a mobile device. Were all the other CEOs not interested in the title? Were their businesses so dependent on them that they couldn’t be away for one hour? Is either of those a smart thing to communicate to the judges?
There was only one thing that was most important in that hour and there was only one CEO whose behavior reflected that importance, who knew where to focus and what to ignore. Whether or not he eventually wins the title, he’s already winning the game. | <urn:uuid:836e4d7f-3300-4aca-a786-63940316e890> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m100group.com/2012/03/30/two-lists-you-should-look-at-every-morning-by-peter-bergman/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97829 | 1,247 | 1.609375 | 2 |
NYT: Afghan surge failed to achieve objective of forcing Taliban into a deal
posted at 2:01 pm on October 2, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
We’re not hearing much about Afghanistan in this election, which seems odd after having two straight presidential elections focus mostly on war and strategies for the projection of American power. In part, this silence comes from a loose consensus that Barack Obama took the right path in late 2009 in putting more resources into the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, and in part because there doesn’t seem to be many other options, at least not politically, other than to cross our fingers and hope it works out.
That strategy, along with the surge, has petered out, according to the New York Times:
With the surge of American troops over and the Taliban still a potent threat, American generals and civilian officials acknowledge that they have all but written off what was once one of the cornerstones of their strategy to end the war here: battering the Taliban into a peace deal.
The once ambitious American plans for ending the war are now being replaced by the far more modest goal of setting the stage for the Afghans to work out a deal among themselves in the years after most Western forces depart, and to ensure Pakistan is on board with any eventual settlement. Military and diplomatic officials here and in Washington said that despite attempts to engage directly with Taliban leaders this year, they now expect that any significant progress will come only after 2014, once the bulk of NATO troops have left.
“I don’t see it happening in the next couple years,” said a senior coalition officer. He and a number of other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the effort to open talks.
The surge strategy worked in Iraq, although Obama opposed it vociferously as a Senator and presidential candidate. The conditions on the ground were different, and it was a much different war, too. The Afghanistan war between the Taliban and the NATO-backed democratic government is much more of a tribal conflict between the Pashtuns and everyone else in the country, and since the Pashtuns make up nearly 40% of the Afghan population, any such tribal conflict won’t end in a total-victory scenario.
The other major difference was that George Bush didn’t put a timetable for withdrawal on the table until after the surge had succeeded. Obama decided at the same time as his surge that we would exit Afghanistan by 2014, based on a timetable for training native security forces. That created two complications, the first of which was that the training left American forces highly vulnerable to infiltrators; we have lost dozens in such attacks. The second, which was entirely predictable and well-predicted at the time, was that the timetable would convince the Taliban to conserve their forces and wait out the US.
And that’s exactly what has happened:
With the end of this year’s fighting season, the Taliban have weathered the biggest push the American-led coalition is going to make against them. A third of all American forces left by this month, and more of the 68,000 remaining may leave next year, with the goal that only a residual force of trainers and special operations troops will remain by the end of 2014.
Nor does this exactly build confidence, either:
U.S. and coalition commanders are no closer to knowing how deep the Taliban has penetrated Afghanistan’s security forces despite increased efforts to flush out infiltrators who are carrying out attacks against Americans.
“As for what percentage of the insider threat is related to infiltration or radicalization, I mean, it’s really difficult to determine,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said Thursday.
“I’m sure a certain percentage of it is. And we’re treating it … as a threat,” he told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.
Taliban double agents, posing as members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), are responsible for executing some of the deadly “insider” attacks that have killed 51 coalition troops, mostly from the United States.
In the most recent incident, Afghan forces on Saturday killed an international service member, later identified as an American, in an apparent insider attack in eastern Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. A NATO contractor and two Afghan soldiers also died.
Why hasn’t this become a bigger issue in the election? After 11 years in Afghanistan, there is no political support for another surge. Neither is there any appetite for a faster withdrawal — at least not yet. In this case, there’s simply nothing left to say, except that we’re going to have to prepare ourselves for a huge civil war in Afghanistan in 2014 between the Pashtuns and the rest of Afghanistan, and just hope that they lose.
Breaking on Hot Air | <urn:uuid:582a27a9-5486-4c5f-a135-9cb51a532750> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/02/nyt-afghan-surge-failed-to-achieve-objective-of-forcing-taliban-into-a-deal/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968847 | 1,007 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Ramblings Of A Feverish Mind
I’ve had the flu for going on a week now. My head hurts and my tongue feels like a terrycloth towel. My voice sounds like a cross between Satan and a barking seal. Any lucid thoughts I may have had have long been beaten into submission by repeated doses of NyQuil. And now I have a column to write.
What strikes me the most about my current state of mind is how little tolerance I have for the stuff that normally makes up my life. The saying “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” must have an illness-triggered corollary: “Fever-induced sweat seems to wash away all the little crap.” Before I got sick, I had a mountain of stuff that was all vitally important. Then I lost two-and-a-half days because I simply couldn’t raise my head from my pillow. Something had to give. Actually, several things had to give. And you know what? The world didn’t end. Life went on.
It’s a revelation of much less significance than Steve Job’s more eloquent version in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” But you get the gist. We fill up our lives with little crap, and it drowns out the significant stuff we should be focused on. Steven Covey calls them our “rocks.” But why do we need something like a death sentence or being waylaid by a particularly virulent flu virus to remember it? Why can’t we keep focused on the big stuff every day of our lives?
The ironic thing is that most of the stuff we do in a day, we do for others, not ourselves. We don’t want to drop the ball, leave someone hanging or let something fall between the cracks. Delivering on these multiple imperatives is the price we pay for being social animals. We want to keep the acceptance of the herd, so we’re hardwired to make other’s priorities our priorities. And, in the process, we keep shuffling the stuff that’s truly important to us to the back shelf. The only way to avoid molding your life around someone else’s priorities is to be a narcissistic jerk -- like Mr. Jobs, or yours truly when spiking a fever.
This got me to wondering. Don’t these selfsame jerks have a natural advantage over the rest of us “nice guys”? The fact that they don’t care about other’s priorities and naturally advance their own agendas, expecting others to adopt them as their own, seems to indicate that they’ll actually get the stuff done they care about.
After three decades in the business world, I’ve come to the sad and wearied conclusion that to be wildly successful in business, you have to be an asshole. Nice guys may not always finish last, but they seldom take home the gold. The most successful CEOs typically have a Machiavellian side, ideally buffered by some social skills.
By next week the flu will be gone, I hope. But part of me is also hoping that the forced perspective it gave me lingers a bit longer. Maybe a little flu-induced “dickishness” wouldn’t be a bad thing the carry through 2012 and beyond. | <urn:uuid:b0d92215-566d-4749-af42-61c820fec7b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/167997/ramblings-of-a-feverish-mind.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956503 | 742 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Alastair Townsend, now Director of the Japan-based studio Bakoko, designed and oversaw construction of the Cutty Sark Pavilion whilst working at Youmeheshe Architects in London.
Cutting Sark is one of the world’s most famous sailing vessels. After being decommissioned, the historic clipper ship has rested in a dry dock in the centre of historic maritime Greenwich where it served public museum. Grimshaw Architects in association with Youmeheshe Architects and Designers were commissioned to design a cutting-edge visitor centre within and beneath the ship as part of a conservation proramme that required closing the attraction for a complete restoration overhaul.
The centre was built within a restricted budget and met a tight construction programme of only six months from design to completion.
Get further details of the planning and construction in Alastair Townsend’s speech: | <urn:uuid:488bd042-f448-4579-9b4d-1f99a54d8576> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailytonic.com/tag/bakoko/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933548 | 176 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Posted by Seth
on February 27, 2000 at 13:28:37:
Please copy and email to firstname.lastname@example.org
I am investigating the possibility that Repetitive Strain Injury can be caused by radiation. If you could take a few minutes to fill out the survey below, it would be a great contribution to my research. Thank you very much.
Putting in your name and phone number is optional, but in case I would like to follow up on any of your answers that particularly pertain to my research, having your name and phone number would enable me to call you.
Telephone Number:(_____ )_____________________________
What is your occupation?
Do you work with any form of radiation?
What is your Age?
Have you ever experienced tenderness and pain in your forearms, elbows, wrists, or fingers while working?
Have your hands or forearms ever swollen up during work?
Have you ever had the feeling that you needed to massage your hands, wrists or arms?
Have you ever had muscle spasms or weakness in your hands while working?
Have you had any previous medical conditions (broken arm, wrist, fingers, etc.)
Do you own and operate a computer?
If so, how many hours per day do you spend on it, on average?
Do you play any sports? Musical Instruments? | <urn:uuid:c74a7c41-384b-487f-8871-61dfa0c78810> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthboards.com/arthritis/1859.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943966 | 280 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Manual of Mental Disorders
The long-awaited, controversial new edition of the bible of psychiatry can be characterized by many numbers: its 947 pages, its $199 price tag, its more than 300 maladies (from "dependent personality disorder" and "voyeuristic disorder" to "delayed ejaculation," "kleptomania" and "intermittent explosive disorder"), each limning the potential woes of being human. Full Article
- Winning ticket for $590.5 million Powerball lottery sold in Florida
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Dutch cull 42,700 turkeys after bird flu found
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch authorities said 42,700 turkeys have been culled at a farm in the south of the country after a mild variant of the H7 bird flu strain was reported over the weekend.
"Today we got the test results and I can confirm that it was a low pathogenic strain," a spokesman for the Dutch ministry of economic affairs, agriculture and innovation said on Monday.
The virus was reported in the town of Kelpen-Oler in Limburg province, which borders Belgium and Germany.
Authorities immediately imposed a ban on transporting poultry, eggs, pigs and manure within 3 km of the farm but the spokesman said the halt would soon be lifted soon.
The H7 bird flu in its highly pathogenic form can kill large numbers of birds and can occasionally infect people, although it is rarely fatal in humans.
As a low-pathogenic variant can mutate into the high-pathogenic form, European regulations state that birds at a farm where either strain is detected must be culled.
Last year several cases of the low pathogenic bird flu strain were reported in the Netherlands.
The most devastating outbreak of H7N7 avian flu in the country was in 2003 and led to the culling of 30 million birds, about a third of the nation's poultry flock.
(Reporting By Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Anthony Barker)
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- Digg this | <urn:uuid:7ceb171a-4f53-48d0-b1a7-1da9f8b719c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/03/19/us-dutch-birdflu-culling-idINBRE82I0RP20120319?feedType=RSS&feedName=health&WT_tsrc=Social+Media&WT_z_smid=twtr-RtrsIN_Health&WT_z_smid_dest=Twitter&dlvrit=70632 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95 | 472 | 1.84375 | 2 |
TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo.
Tracy Fritz recalled the shock of learning her 3-year-old daughter, Louisa, had autism. Even worse, when the family found a therapy that had potential, insurance wouldn't cover it.
For some Missourians, that is about to change. Gov. Jay Nixon on Thursday signed a bill making Missouri the 21st state to require insurance coverage for some children with autism-related disorders. The ceremony was at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in suburban St. Louis, one of several hospitals that pushed for the measure.
The law, effective Jan. 1, seeks to help families that have maxed-out credit cards, refinanced homes and exhausted their savings to pay for intensive therapy for autistic children. Under the measure, group insurance policies regulated by the state must cover up to $40,000 a year for diagnosis and behavioral therapy for autistic children through age 18.
The bill specifically requires coverage of a therapy called Applied Behavioral Analysis, or ABA. Nixon said experts believe ABA is a vital tool in helping children with autism and related disorders.
Fritz and her husband, Barney, are both physicians, so they could afford the ABA therapy doctors at St. John's recommended for Louisa. A year after the diagnosis, Fritz said the change in the little girl, now 4, has been remarkable.
"When we began she couldn't say mommy or daddy," Fritz said. "She was unable to communicate even her most basic needs."
Now, Louisa speaks and interacts with her preschool playmates and siblings -- she happily chased her big sister around the hospital atrium after the ceremony.
"Now, the words mommy and daddy are music to our ears," Fritz said. "Now, instead of Barney and I being fearful of her future, we're hopeful."
Autism is a broad term used to describe a spectrum of neurological disorders in which children often struggle with communication, behavior and social skills. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says autism affects about 1 out of every 110 children in the U.S.
Nixon said the bill makes Missouri a national leader in the diagnosis and treatment of autism. For example, unlike other states, Missouri's bill has a cost-of-living escalator. The $40,000 cap could rise every three years, based on inflation.
"With the bill I'm signing today, parents of children with autism -- who have faithfully paid their insurance premiums -- will finally get the coverage they are entitled to," Nixon said.
The mandate would cover about one-fourth of Missouri's population -- mainly those receiving health insurance from small- to medium-sized employers. Large employers who insure themselves are federally regulated. And people with individual insurance policies would have an option -- not a requirement -- to buy autism coverage.
Businesses with 50 or fewer employees could get an exemption from the autism insurance mandate if they can show it caused their premiums to rise by at least 2.5 percent over the previous year.
An actuarial analysis last year by the consulting firm Oliver Wyman -- conducted for the advocacy group Autism Speaks -- estimated that an autism insurance requirement would result in a less than 1 percent increase in the cost of premiums in Missouri. But some in the insurance industry said the increase could be closer to 3 percent.
"No one knows, but it will have a cost to the employers buying coverage for their employees," said Brent Butler, government affairs director for the Missouri Insurance Coalition.
Butler said the measure that passed the Legislature was a compromise.
"It does have some protections that the costs will be kept in check, and it does require that the folks providing the services to these children are credentialed," Butler said. "We wanted to make sure the people were qualified and appropriate."
The bill's sponsors include two lawmakers with autistic relatives. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, has an autistic son, Stephen. The 6-year-old autistic grandson of Rep. Dwight Scharnhorst, R-Manchester, died of epilepsy in 2007.
"Stephen and the thousands of children like Stephen have led us to this place," Schmitt said at the bill-signing. | <urn:uuid:61e5e5c0-032f-4766-9f72-1ef60f97bb93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9G8J1J80.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972704 | 860 | 1.8125 | 2 |
What Kayani Can Learn From PutinApril 27, 2010
By allowing foreign militaries a free reign in our tribal belt to kill hundreds of innocent Pakistanis, Pakistan is committing the same mistake as Putin’s, who initially did well a decade ago by crushing the rebellion in Chechnya but now is creating more rebels because of highhandedness. Also, Pakistan has no business eliminating the Afghan Taliban, who survived the 2001 war thanks to US mismanagement. The problem should be solved inside Afghanistan, not Waziristan.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—It was brave on the part of Pakistan army chief to publicly apologize for mistakenly bombing and killing tens of innocent Pakistanis in a Khyber Agency village. In a similar incident in 2006 during the reign of his predecessor, where a US missile killed up to 80 children in a school, the action was not only defended but the Pakistani military was forced to own it, giving the first signal to everyone that innocent Pakistanis can be killed with impunity as part of the war on terror. Since then, more than a thousand innocent Pakistanis have lost their lives as collateral damage in these ‘successful’ drone attacks. This would remain one of the darkest spots in our history where our rulers shirked their responsibility for the protection of every Pakistani citizen on our soil.
But the army chief’s apology is also an opportunity to review whether it is acceptable to have allowed ourselves and our American allies to import their methods of dealing with occupied populations in Iraq and Afghanistan to be used with our own people inside our own homeland.
This review is important because these imported methods of dealing with occupied populations are not only unsuitable here but are radicalizing our own citizens instead of pacifying them, producing more disgruntled citizens for our enemies to recruit, brainwash and use to kill more Pakistanis and spread mayhem.
In using these imported methods we are committing the same mistake that President Putin, now a prime minister, has been committing in Chechnya for the past decade. He successfully curbed the insurgency and ended the ability of the US and other countries to use Chechnya to bleed Russia by covertly supplying weapons and intelligence to the insurgents. But instead of building on that success, Mr. Putin continues to use aggressive tactics in Chechnya, breeding more insurgents and more opportunities for outsiders to meddle. [The latest suicide attacks in Moscow involved a young woman who blew herself up because Russian military killed her husband].
The same is happening in our tribal belt. Just when we have stamped out insurgents and criminals in some pockets [thanks to Gen. Kayani and his team], here comes the collateral damage – both from CIA drones and our own occasional mishaps – to create additional pools of disgruntled citizens ready to be picked up by anyone who has resources to use them against the Pakistani state.
It’s a vicious cycle that destroys the massive nation-building work that our military is conducting in places such as Swat, with the military’s own money and often without any support from incompetent civilian governments in Islamabad and Peshawar. For example, few people know that our soldiers donated two days’ pay to collect US$1.2 million to renovate more than half of the 400 schools in Swat destroyed by terrorist groups. The army is building roads and restoring water supply lines in Swat, even organizing cultural and musical events to provide much need entertainment to a disturbed population and restore normalcy. Not to mention achieving the impossible by restoring two million refugees back to their homes in less than a year.
But all of this good work is eaten away by the kind of massive bloodshed that occurred on April 10 at remote Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency. Despite the brave apology, the accident will create new rebels and revenge seekers. It also brings into focus an old complaint about the veracity of intelligence that the Americans have and share with our military. Once again, the insurgency within our tribal belt is directly linked with the American mismanagement in Afghanistan. Allowing the Americans or anyone else to set up spy networks inside our territory and unleash private defense contractors in beards and local dresses is like allowing our own people and territory to be treated in the same manner as Iraq and Afghanistan, which are foreign occupied zones. This foreign element, including collateral damage and the faulty intelligence that causes it, is also sending a wrong message to ambitious criminal and tribal leaders and politicians, and that message is: the Pakistani state and its military are too weak to check foreign meddling and thus taking matters into their own hands is a legitimate option.
Another mistake that is bound to breed more enemies for the state is our faulty policy of not clearly asserting that the Afghan Taliban along with any other Afghan parties are legitimate Afghan political players. Fighting them is not and should never be Pakistan’s responsibility. The presence of some Afghan Taliban on Pakistani soil is expected to due to close ties between Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns, but the solution is not for Pakistan to help US eliminate them but to resolve the deadlock inside Afghanistan that has resulted in the Afghan Taliban escaping their country to take refuge here.
Make no mistake about it: rebels who terrorize and kill Pakistanis must be eliminated by force and without mercy. But allowing outsiders to kill our people directly or through faulty intelligence means we will see suicide attackers for a long time to come. | <urn:uuid:8d58a559-9b07-4d35-ab02-973abe5c05a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pakistankakhudahafiz.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/what-kayani-can-learn-from-putin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956204 | 1,086 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Players' chief Gordon Taylor has announced a six-point action plan to deal with racism in football after criticism from some members.
The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) chief executive says the union wants tougher penalties for racist abuse including making it potentially a sackable offence, culprits ordered to attend awareness programmes and a form of the 'Rooney rule' to boost the number of black coaches and managers.
Taylor's response comes after Reading striker Jason Roberts, a member of the PFA's management committee, expressed frustration that his recommendations had not been acted on.
Taylor outlined the PFA's action plan in a statement to the Press Association. The plan calls for:
1 Speeding up the process of dealing with reported racist abuse with close monitoring of any incidents.
2 Consideration of stiffer penalties for racist abuse and to include an equality awareness programme for culprits and clubs involved.
3 An English form of the 'Rooney rule' - introduced by the NFL in America in 2003 - to make sure qualified black coaches are on interview lists for job vacancies.
4 The proportion of black coaches and managers to be monitored and any inequality or progress highlighted.
5 Racial abuse to be considered gross misconduct in player and coach contracts (and therefore potentially a sackable offence).
6 To not to lose sight of other equality issues such as gender, sexual orientation, disability, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Asians in football. | <urn:uuid:8ddbda76-3c89-49a9-b748-ff53890d1dfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wirralnews.co.uk/wirral-news/uk-world-news/national-sport/2012/10/24/pfa-announces-plan-to-tackle-racism-80491-32094951/ | 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 | 0.954254 | 291 | 1.625 | 2 |
Mbounds wrote: "Actually, epoxy sticks quite well to polyester (and almost everything else). It's the other way around - polyester doesn't adhere well to epoxy, especially if the amine blush hasn't been removed."
Not sure I understand this. Whether epoxy sticks to poly or poly doesn't stick to epoxy. I didn't think it would matter which was on top. Just that the two were not compatible. Or is it that poly doesn't stick to anything very well? Thanks
You have to remember that they start out as liquids and end up as solids, so the order does matter. There are also two types of adhesion - mechanical and chemical.
Polyester sticks best chemically to other polyester, otherwise, the surface needs to be roughened up to provide good mechanical attachment. By rough, I mean sanded with 80 grit. The nice thing about polyester is that you can put a new layer on top of another layer that's still "green" - not fully cured - for an even better chemical bond.
Epoxy develops strong chemical bonds with almost everything. But when it cures (especially in the presence of humidity/moisture), it will develop an amine blush
- a thin waxy film that must be removed before any further coating is done. Removal is performed with soap and water, then light sanding to provide mechanical attachment.
If epoxy is properly prepared (amine blush removed, surface roughened), then poly will mechanically stick to it, just not as well as it would sticking to itself (chemical + mechanical). | <urn:uuid:9b47eb99-b326-4e28-b2c4-7869174330d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hobiecat.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=41855 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97417 | 330 | 1.570313 | 2 |
DEAR JOAN: I take our dog Toto for a walk early every evening when I get home from work. I jog, he walks (fast) and we have a great time. It's been pretty hot and I wonder if I need to do anything special when I take him for walks on hot days? I don't want to burn his feet on the sidewalk.
Dear H.G.: It's probably a good idea to curtail the walks/runs when the weather is so hot. Not only can Toto get dehydrated, he may burn his paws on the hot pavement. Try changing the jaunts to early morning or late evening, when it's cooler; keep it short and pay close attention to how Toto is doing.
Dear Joan: Earlier this week I found a couple of paper wasp nests in my bird bath. And yesterday there were two more. Are the yellow jackets trying to build their nests in the water because it's been hot?
Dear Joe: As clever as wasps may be, they haven't yet perfected hydro engineering. Most likely an even brighter creature -- a scrub jay or crow -- is dropping the nests into the bird bath to soften them up and make it easier to get to the wasp larvae inside. Crows use the same tactic to soften up dog food.
Dear Joan: We have roof rats in our backyard garden eating some of our tomatoes. What can I do? I don't want to kill those big beautiful
Dear Tina: You can find rat-sized humane traps at hardware and garden stores (Havahart brand), but you won't solve your problem that way. There are far too many rats -- rats breed all year long and the gestation period is a startling 16 days -- and when you do trap one, what do you do with it? State law frowns upon relocating wildlife, so you'd just have to release it back in your yard.
If you can't control the rats, you have to manipulate the environment to make your yard less desirable.
First, remove any habitat rats find attractive. Rats nest within 300 feet of a food source, so clear out ivy and underbrush in your yard, block entrances beneath decks and patch holes leading into your house, garage and attic.
Don't leave out pet food and water, and you may want to stop feeding the birds for a while. You also could cage your tomato plants with a heavy wire.
With nothing in your yard to attract them, they should move on to greener pastures -- just not my yard, please.
Dear Joan: We were thrilled to discover we had barn owls nesting under our upper floor deck a couple of months ago. We enjoyed hearing them scratching and thrashing around, and screeching outside our house. Now they have gone. Is it likely they will return next year? Is there anything we can do to attract them back? Should we clean out the space where they nested or just leave it alone?
Dear Shirley: Chances are good that the owls, or their cohorts, will return, so welcome them back with a clean nest. They or their offspring will find their way back.
Dear Readers: Monday's fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond released unknown toxins into the air. Femke Oldham, Watershed Coordinator for San Pablo Watershed Neighbors Education and Restoration Society, says people living in Richmond, North Richmond and San Pablo area should clean the water in outdoor bird baths and other animal water bowls.
Contact Joan Morris at email@example.com; or P.O. Box 8099, Walnut Creek, CA 94596. | <urn:uuid:bdbe2015-02c8-4490-91fd-9c19b8f2713f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mercurynews.com/animal-life/ci_21231957/morris-dont-overtax-animals-hot-days | 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 | 0.952104 | 747 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Three NREL Biofuels Experts Make "Top 100 People in Bioenergy" List
October 14, 2010
Three scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have been named among Biofuels Digest’s “Top 100 People in Bioenergy” for 2010. Tom Foust, Al Darzins, and Phil Pienkos were selected as bioenergy leaders through a two-week Biofuels Digest reader poll that garnered more than 15,000 votes.
Foust came in at #59 and was noted for his leadership of the National Advanced Biofuels Consortium and his engaging presentations on advanced biofuels. His voting profile states, “Tom Foust gives one of the most clear, concise, and yet comprehensive 30-minute overviews of the state of play in advanced biofuels development we’ve ever experienced.”
Darzins and Pienkos share the #60 spot for their strong contributions to the algae biofuels research community. The Digest online profile says, “Two of the real movers and shakers on algae at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are Phil Pienkos and Al Darzins – regulars at industry conclaves like the Algae Biomass Summit, where they play spotlighted roles, and organizing the effort at NREL on algal-based biofuels, which has gone from a near standing (re)start to a fast-moving, evolving machine in recent years.” | <urn:uuid:364d555b-f3a1-465b-a1e1-351c3ac9d061> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nrel.gov/buildings/news/2010/896.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946014 | 311 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Here’s a question: why are interest-only mortgages so bad for someone living in a house when you could compare it to a buy-to-let loan with a long term tenant?
Answer? It occurs to me that the whole interest-only debate is rather more political than it seems.
The Mortgage Market Review has clamped down on interest-only mortgages for consumers and whether or not the Financial Services Authority intended it, lenders have pre-emptively tightened the screws on the product.
Criteria are now so restricted that it’s virtually not available.
While in theory assessing any interest-only application on a capital repayment basis makes good sense it precludes the opportunity to use your primary residence as an investment.
It “protects” some consumers from over-stretching themselves yet it also prevents some more financially savvy consumers from choosing to take a risk for a reward.
In the past week I’ve heard several people refer to the authorities’ desire to return to a housing market that is about “nesting not investing”.
Homeownership instead of access to the housing market.
In other words consumers can no longer choose to take a punt on house prices with their own home.
While this shift might have the effect of curbing house price booms the real driving factor behind the housing market overheating is a lack of supply.
To use that as an excuse to prevent many people’s dreams of improving their financial circumstances is convenient.
It is also the philosophical argument of survival of the majority at the expense of the few.
It is inherently a left wing philosophy. It affords people the freedom to do a lot of things but takes away the freedom from inhibitors that prevent them doing as they personally see fit.
In a “free” society that encourages entrepreneurialism it is an unusual stance to take.
It also seems ridiculous to suggest that interest-only loans are not good business for the mortgage lender.
My logic may be flawed but it seems to me that an interest-only buy-to-let loan is given at a slightly higher rate than a residential loan and assessed on a rental income ratio.
If a consumer chooses to be his own tenant surely the risk of void periods and damage to the property is less than with some random tenant with a tenure of six months?
If his income is assessed and it covers the payments why can’t he be his own tenant and treat his home as an investment?
Risk is clearly a commercial factor and lenders should be able to protect themselves by charging a more commercial rate to consumers who choose to take this risk.
I heard one interesting suggestion from the head of lending of one large mortgage lender earlier this week.
Why not have two tiers of regulatory consumer protection? If you are worried you’ll be taken advantage of then sign up to full protection.
If you want to use your savings to access the housing market and invest while you nest then sign up to less comprehensive protection.
As it stands interest-only mortgages look likely to be a legacy product only.
For a society that prides itself on aspiration, that would be a shame. | <urn:uuid:70d0511b-8c79-4005-8da9-7987da5e5ba1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mortgageintroducer.com/blogengine/post/Interest-only-is-a-personal-investment.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957206 | 655 | 1.710938 | 2 |
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Member since 18 Mar 2007
Member from Papakura
""DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT SNOPES, OR FACT OR FICTION, OR WHOEVER, TO CHECK ON THIS!
In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called Amazon Dot Com.
And she said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why dost thou travel so far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?"
And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, dear?"
And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you who hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever having to move from his tent.
To prevent neighboring countries from overhearing what the drums were saying, Dot devised a system that only she and the drummers knew. It was known as Must Send Drum Over Sound (MSDOS), and she also developed a language to transmit ideas and pictures - Hebrew To The People (HTTP).
And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Sybarites, or NERDS.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to that enterprising drum dealer, Brother William of Gates, who bought off every drum maker in the land. And indeed did insist on drums to be made that would work only with Brother Gates ' drumheads and drumsticks.
And Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham , what we have started is being taken over by others."
And Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel , or eBay as it came to be known. He said, "We need a name that reflects what we are."
And Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators." "YAHOO," said Abraham. And because it was Dot's idea, they named it YAHOO Dot Com.
Abraham's cousin, Joshua , being the young Gregarious Energetic Educated Kid (GEEK) that he was, soon started using Dot's drums to locate things around the countryside. It soon became known as God's Own Official Guide to Locating Everything (GOOGLE).
That is how it all began. And that's the truth.""
Member since 18 Jul 2008
Member from Porirua
Did Apple came from the garden of Eden?
Member since 23 Nov 2009
Member from Stratford
That's as good as any and better than most.
Member since 13 Aug 2007
Member from Kapiti
Member since 09 Dec 2006
Member from Te Awamutu
Are'nt God's people marvelous. It took real divine inspiration to develop that. LOL and TIC
""It took real divine inspiration to develop that. LOL and TIC""
From bloody-ole Squirter....I'm simply divine, the divinity is just ozing outta me and flowing onto my path before me....plenty for all ifinya want some ozing as I'm uppon cloud 9 right now for any of ya's wave ya wand scotty an beam'em up.
Guiding light o'clock.
To post a comment on this discussion please log in or register | <urn:uuid:6e1efdab-f2fd-4026-a2e5-7323d49c02e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grownups.co.nz/discuss/show/id/5408 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97641 | 910 | 1.625 | 2 |
When John Cage inserted various nuts, bolts, screws, erasers, and other objects between the strings of an unsuspecting piano, perversity was not his motive. He was simply trying to approximate – frugally – the sound of an Asian percussion ensemble. He wrote, "Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical."
One of the first complete performances of all sixteen Sonatas and four Interludes was given in 1949 by Swiss-born pianist Maro Ajemian. One year later, she recorded them for Dial Records. (The label is long defunct, but the recording has been reissued by CRI.) Cage advised other pianists to hear Ajemian's version before attempting their own. Since then, about a dozen pianists have recorded this music. I haven't heard all of the recordings, but there's not a dog in the lot, as far as I know. Cage accepted and even embraced the fact that no two sets of preparations and no two pianos would sound the same. As a result, performances and recordings differ not just in terms of tempo and interpretation, but also in terms of timbre. For collectors who are concerned with authenticity, it should be noted that Philip Vandré (Mode) uses the Steinway "O" piano, the same model Cage used while composing this work, while Aleck Karis (Bridge) uses "period" hardware between his piano's strings! Henck's preparations and performance are completely satisfactory. His tempos are sometimes slower, sometimes faster than Ajemian's, but the engineering is much more modern, of course, and he has an excellent feeling for Cage's gently driving rhythms and his sensuous sonorities.
The second CD is a fascinating portrait of the pianist as a composer/improviser. The Festeburg Fantasies (named for the church in which they were recorded) are unusual in that more than half of them are double-layered improvisations. Henck would improvise one layer, and then through multi-track recording, he would lay a second layer of improvisation over the first. Both prepared and "unprepared" pianos were made available to Henck. The prepared piano used in the Cage sessions was left unmodified for Henck's improvisations, giving him an opportunity for recreation, if you will, after hours spent attending to the rigors of Cage.
Henck creates fantastic timbres and sonorities, and the improvisations run the emotional gamut from bejeweled tenderness to strident brutality. Often I found myself thinking of what Ravel's piano pieces might have sounded like, had Ravel written them under the influence of crystal meth and LSD. The multi-tracking creates thick textures, and so affinities with Conlon Nancarrow's works for player piano can be noted as well. Henck's technique for producing ultra-athletic glissandos ("by hand" as it were – that is to say, without the benefit of any machinery) intensifies the similarities with Nancarrow's music.
The two discs complement each other nicely, just as pieces within both Cage's and Henck's cycles complement each other internally. One of Cage's inspirations was Richard Lippold's sculpture Gemini, a structure comprised of two similar but not identical halves arranged as if they were near-mirror images of each other. (One is reminded, also, of Morton Feldman's fondness for the "crippled symmetries" that he found in the patterns of Asian rugs.)
Many collectors will acquire this set (which, rather mysteriously, has been given the name Locations) for the Cage, and they will not be disappointed. These same collectors, however, should stick around for the Henck. The Festeburg Fantasies will stretch their ears and broaden their horizons. Speaking of locations, the engineering creates a lovely sense of space.
Copyright © 2003, Raymond Tuttle | <urn:uuid:bb1cfbc9-7dd1-4e83-8eaa-5453846ec0c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/e/ecm01842a.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969515 | 819 | 1.671875 | 2 |
In the chaos of upended lives after 9/11, a cricket connection is made.
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Despite roots in the United States that go back further than either professional baseball or football, Americans tend to be baffled by this most English of sports, leaving it to be practiced by immigrants from other former British colonies (and the occasional Anglophile), as Joseph O’Neill details in his strikingly written new novel, Netherland.
"Every summer the parks of this city are taken over by hundreds of cricketers but somehow nobody notices,” says Chuck Ramkissoon, a volunteer umpire and the unlikely friend of Hans van den Broek, the league’s lone white player. Hans first meets Chuck in 2002, after another player questions one of Chuck’s calls by pulling a gun on him. Hans plays in Walter Park as part of the Staten Island Cricket Club, which, he tells readers, was founded in 1872.
“The playing area was, and I am still sure is, half the size of a regulation cricket field. The outfield is uneven and always overgrown, even when cut ... and whereas proper cricket, as some might call it, is played on a grass wicket, the pitch at Walker Park is made of clay, not turf, and must be covered with coconut matting,” Hans explains. “This degenerate version of the sport – bush cricket, as Chuck more than once dismissed it – inflicts an injury that is aesthetic as much as anything.”
Aesthetics aside, the sport is the lone connection tethering Hans to the outside world in the months after his wife leaves him in the fall of 2001, taking their baby son back to England. The van den Broeks had to evacuate their Tribeca home after the attacks on the World Trade Center, but Rachel makes it clear that it’s not fear making her leave, it’s Hans.
Reeling, Hans hunkers down in a $6,000-a-month apartment at the Hotel Chelsea, among a population of transients, drug dealers, and the occasional film star. “Over half the rooms were occupied by longterm residents who by their furtiveness and ornamental diversity reminded me of the population of the aquarium I’d kept as a child.”
His only visitor is a cross-dressing Turkish angel who lives on a floor above. A Dutch immigrant who came to New York via London, Hans is so lonely that he welcomes the attentions of passing Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Despite his millionaire status as an oil industry analyst, Hans gets adopted by the Indian, Caribbean, and Pakistani members of the Cricket League, who specialize in quietly protecting fellow sportsmen who have fallen on hard times. Chuck, an entrepreneur who is so obviously on the make that Hans is charmed by his transparency, may have other reasons for his interest in the lonely Dutchman.
Ramkissoon has a quixotic dream to build a world-class cricket stadium (he prefers the term “arena”) in New York. “My motto is, Think fantastic,” he intones with pride. (Chuck, formerly from Trinidad, has acquired the unfortunate American habit of talking like a motivational speaker.) Some of Chuck’s other business dealings, Hans discovers over the course of their friendship, are less whimsical.
I’ve had a soft spot for cricket ever since watching “Lagaan,” a Bollywood musical capable of explaining the rules of the game to even the least sports-minded American. This helped balance the instinctive reluctance I feel whenever faced by a Sept. 11 novel.
Happily, “Netherland” doesn’t suffer from the well-meaning grandiosity or ideological self-importance that has sunk so many plots. Instead, it’s a precisely rendered examination of the existential malaise experienced by certain city dwellers after the attacks.
“Tiredness: if there was a constant symptom of the disease in our lives at this time, it was tiredness,” Hans recounts of the days following Sept. 11, 2001. “Mornings we awake into a malign weariness that seemed only to have refreshed itself overnight.”
In addition, it’s a loving depiction of New York as seen through the eyes of a perpetual outsider. (“Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.”) Through Chuck, Hans sees a side of New York rarely visible to millionaires; and his own periodic trips to the DMV in a seemingly doomed effort to acquire a driver’s license are comedic brilliance.
Overall, it’s a sad but generous look at the effects of aftermath on a human life, whether one is grappling with a personal tragedy or horror on a grand scale. As Hans blunders through 2002, it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for a man who says, “there’s no such thing as cheap longing, I’m tempted to conclude these days, not even if you’re sobbing over a cracked fingernail.”
Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor. | <urn:uuid:d03eaa66-baa2-49bc-a2fb-987c1a4bdcf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2008/0711/netherland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961221 | 1,103 | 1.5 | 2 |
UW joins Stanford, others; will offer free online classes
The Seattle Times
The University of Washington is joining a massive, free experiment in online education that adherents believe has the potential to revolutionize the way college classes are taught, open up access to some of the university's most sought-after courses, and drive down the cost of a degree. The university has signed a contract to provide an online startup called Coursera with courses in math, computer science, computational finance and information security. Coursera already provides free courses to anyone wanting to participate, although students do not earn credit, at least for now. | <urn:uuid:58cbd42e-596c-4954-808e-08ba2b49ff14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onlinefast.org/wwutoday/inthemedia/uw-joins-stanford-others-will-offer-free-online-classes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940528 | 125 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Placed in a moist, warm location, shower doors are prone to mildew and mold growth. Add to that the soap scum that quickly builds up over time, and you’ve got quite the cleaning task in front of you. Here’s how to take the pain out of this cleaning chore and have your doors sparkling!
You Will Need:
- White vinegar
- Sponges or soft cloths
- Lemon oil
Steps to Clean Shower Doors:
- Start by mixing one part water with one part vinegar in a bucket. If there is a lot of build up on the doors, use more vinegar. Straight vinegar can be used as well for really dirty doors.
- Moisten the sponge or soft cloth in the mixture.
- Rub it over the surfaces of the door to remove any soap scum and hard water stains that have built up. Apply more of the vinegar/water mixture as you are scrubbing to keep the surface wet.
- Once clean, rinse with clean water.
- Dry with a soft cloth to remove any excess water and make the doors shine.
- If there are still water spots present, there are two options:
- If there is still hard water deposits or soap scum present, wipe the surface with white vinegar on a soft cloth or sponge.
- If the door is clean, and all surface residue has been removed, you can apply lemon oil to the surface using a soft cloth or sponge. This will make the glass shine. It also works well on the metal frames.
Additional Tips and Advice
- Dry the doors off after each use to keep soap scum and hard water stains from returning.
- Treat any signs of mold or mildew immediately with a mild bleach or vinegar solution.
- Use caution when selecting commercial cleaning products. Some cleaners that are designed to clean tile and tubs are not safe to use on glass. Rather than cleaning them, they can etch the surface and leave a dull, filmy appearance.
- Dryer sheets moistened with water can be used to wipe shower doors and remove spots and buildup. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers have also been found useful by many for this tough cleaning task.
- Want to treat the source of soap scum? Switch to liquid soap. The bar soap is what causes soap scum in the first place.
Cut down a bit of stomach fat every day by never eating these 5 foods | <urn:uuid:78a7c91c-a839-41b1-b26b-d8ca390f0a8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.howtocleanstuff.net/how-to-clean-shower-doors/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933393 | 502 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Fargo lawmaker heads medical marijuana initiativeBISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A Fargo Democratic lawmaker is chairman of a new initiative campaign to make marijuana use legal in North Dakota for medical reasons.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A Fargo Democratic lawmaker is chairman of a new initiative campaign to make marijuana use legal in North Dakota for medical reasons.
The proposed law was turned in to Secretary of State Al Jaeger's office on Tuesday. Jaeger's approval is needed before the initiative petition can be circulated.
Fargo Democratic state Rep. Steve Zaiser (ZY-zur) is heading the campaign. The proposed law says someone with a "debilitating medical condition" may grow and use marijuana, and possess up to 2 ½ ounces of the drug.
It says people with cancer, the HIV virus, post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions may use marijuana legally.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says Montana and 16 other states allow use of marijuana for therapeutic reasons. South Dakota voters have rejected medical marijuana initiatives twice.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. | <urn:uuid:6e58bf5e-177f-4c6e-9d99-25a3ff8f61f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/63984/publisher_ID/29/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933902 | 228 | 1.539063 | 2 |
A sampling of speed: some fast machining centers. .Although people often talk about the flexibility of machining centers, one aspect that shouldn't be overlooked is that some of them offer the ability to go fast. Here are some of them. None are particularly exotic, but they surely can be productive.
There isn't a single company--OEM or supplier--that probably isn't interested in doing things faster. The fact that product life cycles are decreasing regardless of what the product is drives this need for speed. To help accommodate this acceleration, equipment manufacturers have been working to provide machinery that is fast. Exceedingly ex·ceed·ing·ly
To an advanced or unusual degree; extremely.
Adv. 1. fast with regard to such things as spindle spindle: see spinning.
A rotating shaft in a disk drive. In a fixed disk, the platters are attached to the spindle. In a removable disk, the spindle remains in the drive. Laptops use spindle designations to indicate the number of built-in drives. speeds and axis movement.
That said, however, many of these equipment manufacturers, even those that offer fast machines, provide a caution. They correctly argue that what needs to be taken into account when making a decision about machinery and associated equipment is throughput, not sheer velocity in one aspect or another. At the end of the day (or shift or cycle or whatever it is that you use as a metric) what really matters is how many machined parts you've produced, not how quickly the machine was able to perform one aspect or another of its operations.
Still, just as we like to consider the performance of cars that go fast, so to there is a fascination with machinery that operates at blistering blis·ter·ing
See vesiculation. rates. Which brings to mind a story that was once told to me by the editor of one of the automotive buff books. He was talking about the Acura NSX NSX New Sportscar eXperimental (concept name for Acura vehicle; originally NS-X)
NSX Namespace Extension (Windows Shell Programming)
NSX N Syndrome
NSX Network and Security Experts
NSX New Sports Experimental , the aluminum-bodied sports car that's now equipped with 290-hp engine and is capable of getting up in the 175 mph vicinity. And he said that of all of the sports cars in the world, the only one that he'd willingly drive through a desolate landscape would be the NSX because he was confident of its fundamental reliability as a machine. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke"
put differently , here was something that while unlike, say, an Accord in most characteristics other than both being Hondas, was something that would get the job done. So is the case with the machining centers we've collected here *. Fast, yes. But useful, too.
Heller Machine Tools (Tray, MI) has a lineup A criminal investigation technique in which the police arrange a number of individuals in a row before a witness to a crime and ask the witness to identify which, if any, of the individuals committed the crime. of horizontal machining centers that includes the MC 16 (630 x 630 x 630-mm cube) and the MC 25 (800 x 800 x 800-mm cube). These machines can provide a spindle speed up to 24,000 rpm. The spindle acceleration of 1 G brings the tool up to 8,000 rpm in 0.5 seconds. Chip to chip time is 1.8 seconds for tools 6-in. in diameter or less. Changing a loaded pallet can be accomplished in 9 seconds. All of which means that it is about keeping the tool in the cut longer rather than waiting for things to happen.
The NV5000 vertical machining center from Mori Seiki [Mori Seiki - The Machine Tool Company -] is a Japan-based company primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of machine tools. It was established in 1948 and is headquartered in Nagoya City, Japan. (Irving, TX) offers a spindle with a maximum speed of 12,000 rpm. What's important to note about it is that, because it uses what's called DDS--Direct Drive Spindle--a gearless mechanism, the machine is able to provide its full power--22 kW over 15 minutes; 18.5 kW, 30 minutes/continuous--at all speeds, which helps boost productivity.
The spindle can go from 0 to 12,000 rpm in 0.97 seconds. It decelerates from 12,000 rpm to 0 in 0.91 seconds. Chip-to-chip toolchange can be accomplished in 3.1 seconds. The rapid traverse traverse - traversal rate for all three axes axes
[L., Gr.] plural of axis. The straight lines which intersect at right angles and on which graphs are drawn. Usually the horizontal axis is the x-axis and the vertical one the y-axis. Called also axes of reference. is 42 m/in; the X-axis gets up to rate at 0.43 G; Y-axis acceleration is 0.39 G; and Z-axis acceleration is 0.74G. One of the things that Mon Seiki engineers did was to benchmark their previous-generation vertical and then set about to trump it.
The DMP DMP Dossier Médical Personnel (France)
DMP Debt Management Plan
DMP Debt Management Program
DMP Digital Media Project
DMP Dot Matrix Printer
DMP Designated Mailer Protocol
DMP Dynamic Multi-Pathing 60 V linear vertical machining centers from Deckel Maho Seebach [Germany] GmbH (DMG (Disk iMaGe) The file format used in the Macintosh for distributing Mac software. Mac install packages appear as a virtual disk drive on the Mac as if you had inserted a CD or floppy disk. America) makes use of a linear drive on its X-axis so that it has a rapid traverse rate of 80 m/min. The rapids in the y- and Z-axes are both 65 m/min. Axes acceleration is performed at 10. The 25-kW integrated motor spindle provides 18,000 rpm and a torque of 94.9 lb.-ft. So not only is there speed, but also high material-removal capability. There is a clever toolchanger, that has a modified double-gripper design, that synchronizes the turning and lifting motions when in action so that there is a chip-to-chip time of lust Lust
See also Profligacy, Promiscuity.
fiend of evil passion. [Iranian Myth.: Leach, 17]
Aholah and Aholibah
lusty whores; bedded from Egypt to Babylon. [O.T.: Ezekiel 23:1–21]
lustful fairy. [Ital. 1.8 seconds. Look for more linear motors on various machines from DMG. The company is committed to using them where they make sense-like on this machine.
Designed to make quick work of things like aluminum cylinder heads, the BZ 500L from Grab Systems (Bluifton, OH) a horizontal-spindle machining center equipped with linear motors, provides an X, Y, Z-axis speed of 120 in/mm. The 500-mm pallet machine accelerates to get there rather quickly, as well: 10 m/[sec.sup.2] for the X- and Y-axes and 34 m/[sec.sup.2] for the Z-axis. The top end for spindle speed is 18,000 rpm. And the chip-to-chip toolchange is 3.1 seconds. Although the machining center can be equipped with ballscrews, for those who are really seeking speed, this is the way to go.
Designed particularly for suppliers, the a51 horizontal machining center from Makino (Mason, OH) is a 400-mm pallet machine with a spindle that provides up 12,000 rpm. The a51 has a rapid traverse rate of 50 m/min and a cutting feedrate of 40 m/mm. The axes travels are 560 mm for X and Y and 500 mm for Z. The tool-to-tool change time is a mere 0.9 seconds and the chip-to-chip time is 2.3 seconds. The index table rotates at 47 rpm. Makino has engineered this machine and others in its line to be not only affordable, but seriously capable.
Although the HMC HMC Harvey Mudd College (Claremont, CA)
HMC Harborview Medical Center (Seattle, Washington)
HMC Hosted Messaging and Collaboration
HMC Hoffman Modulation Contrast 95(500 x 400-mm pallets) and HMC 135 (630 x 500-mm pallets) horizontal machining centers from Giddings & Lewis (Fond du Lac Fond du Lac (fŏn` də lăk', –jə–), city (1990 pop. 37,757), seat of Fond du Lac co., E central Wis., in a resort region at the south end of Lake Winnebago; inc. 1852. , WI) are specifically designed for high-production environments (e.g., they're built with a solid cast-iron design), there is a recognition of the importance of doing things rather rapidly in those places, so they've developed what they're simply calling the "Speed Package" for these two machines. What this includes is a 16,000-rpm spindle that's driven by a 35-kW motor. The drives have been pumped up such that the rapid traverse rate is 70 m/mm. for the X- and Z-axes, and 60 m/min. in for Z. The acceleration: 1 0. The package provides a chip-to-chip toolchange time of 2.7 seconds. for those looking for Looking for
In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. extra performance, the Speed Package is a must.
"Whenever available, we've provided the upper ends which may be optional configurations for the equipment. | <urn:uuid:9aab87c9-cef2-4321-97cd-3e6b9cac4c2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+sampling+of+speed%3A+some+fast+machining+centers.+.-a0103990210 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930974 | 2,159 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Our next door neighbors are out of town. Their delicious
Figs are a great crop. They will grow wild along watercourses and are easy to grow just about anywhere. The fruit is extremely sweet and can be used when you have a sweet tooth. They are also high in calories, which is always important when looking at ways to sustain yourself.
I didn't really want to make fig newtons today. I knew I was going to heat up the kitchen in the afternoon making noodles for dinner but to keep the oven going for a long time just wasn't in the cards. Instead I decided we were going to dry the figs. Not wanting to use electricity to dry them, I figured I'd just dry them outside. I used to have a nice drying rack with many shelves on it. The entire contraption was covered with a window screen mesh to let air flow through but keep the bugs out. I don't know what happened to my drying rack. Either I lent it and can't remember who I lent it to or it got borrowed by someone who forgot to tell me they borrowed it. Either way the drying rack is nowhere to be found.
I'm not really happy with the rack I rigged together today but it works. I took a tray out of my dehydrator and placed the figs on it. I then wrapped the tray in cheese cloth and used big binder clips to hold it all together. I then used paracord and tied the cord to one clip, threw the cord over the clothesline, then tied the end to the other clip. I got it balanced well so the tray of figs isn't tipping over. I made up five trays like this. There are enough figs to fill 20 or 30 racks so while this is working it's not enough if I needed the figs to help sustain us. The figs are out in the hot breeze - high of 90 with 10 mile per hour wind gusts. It's perfect weather for drying fruits and vegetables.
If I'm using any vegetable and I only use a part of the vegetable I automatically cut up the rest and dry it. Having these outdoor, electricity free drying racks makes that easy and is another step toward self sufficiency. | <urn:uuid:2856dd40-bfe3-48b6-9816-b850f516a9f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whatifitistoday.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.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 | 0.979761 | 453 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Today, many people are making greener, more environmentally conscious choices because they are concerned about the environmental and health-related issues, as well as saving money. How you choose to remodel your home or business today can have an impact on tomorrow. Eco-friendly remodeling involves the simple principles of reduce, reuse and recycle. There are more green choices than ever before to make your remodeling project simple and sustainable.
Please check your email for an activation link from Dex Customer Service. If you do not receive the email within an hour, check your spam folder.
Please enter your email address so that we can send you an email with a link to change your password.. | <urn:uuid:361ae74d-ab23-4442-b6c8-989ad1c022ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dexknows.com/local/construction/contractors/remodeling_contractors/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945072 | 136 | 1.617188 | 2 |
London Olympic stadium F1 race news 'strange' UPDATE #2 A bid to host a Formula 1 race at the Olympic Stadium is one of four options being considered by officials in charge of deciding the venues post-games legacy.
The joint bid by Intelligent Transport Services and F1 faces competition from West Ham United, Leyton Orient and UCFB, which offers degrees in football.
A potential Formula 1 race would run alongside the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, meaning the UK would host two rounds of the World Championship for the first time since 1993 - when the European Grand Prix was held at Donington Park. In a statement. the London Legacy Development Corporation said: "Following an extension to the bidding period, the Legacy Corporation can today reveal that it has received four bids for the venue.
"Bids from West Ham United, Intelligent Transport Services in association with Formula One, UCFB College of Football Business and Leyton Orient will now be assessed to ensure they are compliant, before being evaluated ahead of negotiations."
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has already given his support to a potential race in London, insisting last week that a separate proposal to host a street-race around some of the capital's most famous landmarks was "no joke." Sky Sports06/25/12
The revelation that the possibility of running F1 in and around the Olympic Park is even being considered "demonstrates the challenge facing the stadium planners," according to Paul Kelso of the London TELEGRAPH.
|Olympic Park one year ago under construction|
The idea is "so unlikely as to be comic, but they are way past laughing" at the London Legacy Development Corp. As "we will discover this summer," track and field "works brilliantly" in the Stratford Stadium.
But, Olympics and World Championships aside, the "purest of sporting disciplines does not fill stadiums." Not even brand new ones subsidized by £9M ($14M) of taxpayer investment and "served by excellent transport links." Yet retaining the track is "non-negotiable," so the LLDC has had to "cast its net wide."
West Ham United FC remain "by far the most likely" means by which the LLDC can get enough money from its primary asset to "underwrite the maintenance of all the other venues on the Park." The other bidders show "just how lean the field is."
The University of East London can offer educational uses, exploiting the offices and large amount of indoor space in the stadium. The UEL has secured the backing of Essex County Cricket Club, initially to run an academy on the stadium site that the county hopes "will tap talent in east London, but there are suggestions of Twenty20 matches."
West Ham offers the most straightforward solution. They are the only football club "willing to tolerate a track," but only if they are "permitted to build over it with new seating that they are keen not to pay for" TELEGRAPH
06/22/12 (GMM) Britain could be set to secure a second grand prix, after the Daily Telegraph reported on Friday that plans are afoot to host a race in and around London's Olympic stadium.
|Olympic Park map|
The report said the plan is among three other bids that have been accepted by the London Legacy Development Corporation.
But the plan was met with immediate skepticism, one authoritative source confirming that records show the company responsible for the bid was actually dissolved as long ago as 2010.
The source described Friday's news as "very strange".
Bernie Ecclestone, however, confirmed he has been approached.
"They came up with a scheme whereby formula one would race around the stadium, inside it, outside it. They wanted to make sure I would be interested," said the F1 chief executive.
Asked if he is interested, Ecclestone answered: "Yeah."
It appears the plans are not linked with an event being held next week in London by McLaren sponsor Santander, in which the team's F1 drivers will imagine a 'virtual' race on the capital's streets.
Ecclestone confirmed the Olympic stadium idea has "nothing to do" with the McLaren event. | <urn:uuid:eb154ea7-695c-4387-8fd1-1157120f2b6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autoracing1.com/rumors.asp?tid=11028 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965963 | 862 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Interview with Dick Schnedl, architect
Interviewer: Yona R. Owens
Location: Charlotte, N.C.
Interview Date: Monday, August 15, 2011
Dick Schnedl was a member of the first graduating class at the North Carolina State University School (now College) of Design. Over the course of his distinguished 42-year career as an architect, he worked at various times for the Boneys in Wilmington, with his brother Ed in Reidsville, with Hayes Howell in Southern Pines, and on his own at Bald Head Island. His early designs and later designs reflect his passion for modernist principles as influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Interview Audio (ogg)
Interview Audio (mp3)
Field Notes (pdf)
Abstract/Tape Log (pdf) | <urn:uuid:24c5414d-71a2-41ed-9c6e-f6b11ca3cbe6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scrc/lewisclarke/schnedl | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964617 | 163 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Neste Oil joins aireg to promote the deployment of biofuels in aviation
4 April 2012
Neste Oil has joined the Aviation Initiative for Renewable Energy in Germany (aireg), which advances the development and deployment of renewable liquid fuels in aviation. aireg is a network of enterprises and R&D organizations founded in September 2011.
Among the current 29 members of aireg are oil companies, airlines, airplane and engine manufacturers, research institutions, and universities such as Total, Lufthansa, Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Technical University Munich (TUM), and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
Joining forces and working in tight collaboration with other companies, research institutions, and decision makers is the most natural way for us in Neste Oil to support and promote the adoption of biofuels in aviation. We are expecting aireg to offer a platform for various players to come together to share ideas and develop plans for the industry to take the necessary steps towards significantly reducing the industry’s carbon footprint.—Neste Oil Vice President Kaisa Hietala, responsible for market development
In summer 2011, Neste Oil produced its first batches of premium quality jet fuel from renewable raw materials. The company recently ended a 6-month test period with Lufthansa during which Neste Oil’s NExBTL renewable aviation fuel was tested on more than 1,100 flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg, and on one intercontinental flight between Frankfurt and Washington DC. Testing during the trial found that the fuel performed excellently and resulted in 1% lower fuel consumption compared to regular fossil jet fuel.
TrackBack URL for this entry:
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Neste Oil joins aireg to promote the deployment of biofuels in aviation: | <urn:uuid:d8b86cd6-76b0-4be1-b618-8962222b287d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/04/neste-20120404.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94356 | 375 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Did you think of someone drooling in a dimly lit institution? Or someone so sedated on their seizure medicines that they aren't capable of working?
Yes, there are some patients who still fit that description. But they're rare. You want to know what most epilepsy patients look like? They look like YOU!
Yes, folks contrary to popular belief, epilepsy patients are out there living normal lives. And there's a lot of them. It's a disorder that affects 1% of humans. So imagine the Rose Bowl stadium in California. When sold out it holds roughly 90,000 football fans. And statistically speaking 900 of them have epilepsy. Some may even be playing on the field.
Current epilepsy patients in my practice include 7 teachers, 3 doctors, 5 nurses, 1 judge, 2 veterinarians, and a lot of other responsible professionals.
Very few diseases have been as maligned over time as this one has. The majority of early cultures attributed seizures to demonic possession. I'm sure many innocent epileptics were killed in horrible fashion because of this. Others saw it as an intentional punishment from the gods. The great Dr. Charcot, founder of modern neurology, reported that in 19th century France epilepsy patients were locked up in the same dark building used to house the criminally insane and mentally handicapped.
|Detail from "Transfiguration" by Raphael (1516) showing a child possessed by demons. The boy's posture and eye deviation are typical of partial-complex epilepsy.|
You don't have to look too far back in American history to find laws on the books that banned epilepsy patients from marrying or having children. In the mid-90's I even trained under a doctor who still believed that horseshit, and told young adults, just starting out in life, that they should never, ever marry or raise a family. That's a pretty damn devastating thing to do to someone.
Vilifying any person because of an illness is wrong, whether it's diabetes, hypertension, or cancer. But epilepsy is one in my specialty, and I'll make a stand for my patients.
I probably fight harder for the rights of my epilepsy patients than any other group. Several times a year I have to write a letter to a divorce attorney saying that a well-controlled seizure patient is perfectly capable of being a parent, because the ex is saying that it makes them a danger to kids. Or I have to reassure a family that a patient can drive, or work, or travel on a plane. Obviously, there are laws restricting some things, like driving, but the majority of patients follow them and are perfectly good drivers. Hell, they're likely a lot safer than many non-epileptic people behind the wheel.
So what brought on this rant?
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare). Now this post is NOT about the PPACA. I know a lot of people feel strongly about it in both directions, and if you want to fight about it, go to a website where you can. Because it's not what I'm talking about, or giving an opinion on.
What pissed me off was the reaction of a radio talk show host (who's not a medical doctor).
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts has epilepsy and (under treatment guidelines) is likely on medication for this (I'm not his doctor). Big deal. So are a lot of other people.
But, as usual, there are some who'd rather smear than respect an opinion. Conservative commentator Michael Savage went on record last week as blaming Roberts' vote on - surprise - his epilepsy treatment (!) saying his writings showed "cognitive dissociation." He noted that drugs used for epilepsy "can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness, and other cognitive problems."
Yes, Mr. Savage, they can cause these problems. You can also find similar side effects listed for most blood pressure medications, statins, and many other drugs (which, given your age of 70, I suspect you take at least one of) yet I'm not going to say your comments are due to medications. The side effect list of any drug is HUGE. But that doesn't mean everyone who takes it gets them. Quite the opposite.
My point is this: You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But just because you disagree with a man, don't go blaming it on his medications or health. It's a step backwards for all the epilepsy patients out there trying to lead responsible lives in the face of biases like yours. And, I suspect, if he'd ruled the other way you'd never have made such comments.
Since you apparently don't feel people being treated for seizures are capable of making rational decisions or serving in a responsible capacity, I'm leaving you with a list of people who have (or are highly suspected to have had) epilepsy. Perhaps you've heard of some.
Vincent van Gogh
Joan of Arc
Florence Griffith Joyner
Last, I should also mention former congressman Tony Coelho, who has the disorder. He was the primary sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990). As a young man he wanted to be a priest, but was banned from such by his epilepsy. He also lost his driver's license and health insurance because of the diagnosis.
During his first run for congress (1978, which he won) his opponent tried to paint him with the same insulting brush, asking voters how they'd feel if their representative was at a White House meeting and had a seizure. Mr. Coelho responded, "I knew a lot of people who went to the White House and had fits. At least I’d have an excuse." | <urn:uuid:c3c4cb80-bec2-4f12-b4f6-622103a8ae76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/2012/07/things-that-make-me-grumpy.html?showComment=1341229754190 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972963 | 1,176 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Julie Delazyn is a social media expert and journalist, she has
turned the Questionmark blog (http://blog.questionmark.com)
into one of the most widely read blogs in assessment. Here are her
views on how SharePoint is helping change the way we blog:
Social media and social networks have become interlaced with the
way we share information as companies, as marketers and even as
people. While we come from a culture of sharing news through
more formal networks such as the media, we have slowly gone into
blogging as a way to share information anywhere and at any time
sans the traditional gatekeeper or editor. It has given
people a chance to become experts in their field by sharing
information online and growing a readership that, if enthused, will
retweet and Facebook your thoughts and articles.
This, when you stop to think about it, is revolutionary.
Anyone anywhere can write their opinion on any subject under the
straightforward notion of blogging. This isn't a journalist
hiding behind a byline to push an opinion. This is a person:
a CEO, a fitness coach or even a fashion editor, all with their own
expertise and their own opinions.
SharePoint is taking this revolution to the next level. By
offering an interactive platform for easy blogging within
SharePoint, one is now reverted back to a place where one's blog no
longer feels like a lonely island floating in the World Wide Web,
but a fixture in a place shared by many with a common ground.
Much like a sports magazine may publish the opinion of a famous
football coach, a blog in SharePoint appropriately houses a
contextual opinion that belongs there, making it easier to be seen,
read and shared.
Like blogging with WordPress or Blogger, a blog within
SharePoint is easy enough to set up. You can pick a theme and
a look and customize your blog with lists and categories. If you
are a coding junkie, you can do a lot more. But with already
established collaboration functions, blogging within SharePoint
means working in a web-based collaborative environment, and if your
organization uses SharePoint, then this becomes the natural place
to blog. Whereas WordPress, Blogger or any other blog site is set
up so that you are swiftly blogging on the internet, SharePoint
creates a natural environment for blogging within an organization.
This is the key difference. Whether you begin blogging
straight from Word, or stumble upon an article you'd like to embed
in an entry, this collaborative environment makes it easy to
integrate and jump from one application to another by using the
already interactive tools at your disposal. This is how we
are now interacting and learning from each other, as is explained
70+20+10 model, and the ease in which we can incorporate these
functions is important to the way we learn from one another.
While I look forward to seeing which kind of innovation this may
open up in terms of blogging within a "dyi" open source context, I
am more intrigued about the changes that will occur in the way we
share our opinions and invite people to belong to our individual
and growing clouds. This is another way to share,
another way to weave a web of opinion, followership and most
John was a
speaker at the European SharePoint Conference 2011.
Stay tuned for more information on the next European SharePoint
Conference event and keep a look out for more content by joining our community or by
following us on twitter or facebook. | <urn:uuid:b82df5c4-c211-48c2-9627-c3eecf76f159> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sharepointeurope.com/blog/2011/12/8/how-sharepoint-is-helping-change-the-way-we-blog-by-john-kleeman- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930216 | 757 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Like so much else at Sun. Solaris now belongs to Oracle, and this is the first major release of its operating system since the acquisition, and since the official closure of OpenSolaris. Rolling with the times, and its own interests. Oracle is trying to position this release of Solaris as a cloud operating system, both as a hosting solution and as something you might want to deploy, an instance, in the hope that enterprises will opt for its robustness in the face of some ropey performance reports on Linux running under stress. But it’s still an operating system full of free software, including the Gnome desktop and a native implementation of the ZFS file system, which puts it into the same category as BSD for Linux users – an interesting side project that could give Linux some great ideas.
Thanks to the cloud focus, you can grab the OS as a traditional text-based installer, a live CD for testing the desktop environment, but also as a virtual machine image for use with VirtualBox (a project also owned by Oracle). We tried both the installer and the virtual image, and while it’s not as easy as Ubuntu to get running, it’s nowhere near as difficult as Arch either. A few quick questions, some setup preferences in the virtual machine and you’ll find yourself at the desktop. This version also makes it much easier to deploy, thanks to a new automated installer for rapid installation within an office, or across the cloud, and this replaces the older Jumpstart utility. A migration assistant is also included, as is a Distribution Constructor that will help create customized and bootable images.
But back on the ground, the desktop is unashamedly Gnome 2.30.2, complete with old-school bottom and top panels and the Clear Desktop icon. It’s hard to imagine how Solaris might adapt itself to Gnome 3.x in the future, and we’d guess it just won’t. But there are some changes, most notably in the default theme, which features subtle pastel green and orange shades, hinting at Sun’s old livery, as well as the shiny chrome look that many Java applications used to default to. Despite the size of a default installation (3.3GB on our system), the desktop includes very few applications. This is a good thing if you’re going to use Solaris in your company, as you don’t want to remove unnecessary packages from a default installation. But the package manager could make things easier. With the default source, for example, you won’t find any office applications, and when you change the source to include all publishers (repositories, in Solaris-speak). things don’t improve. There’s neither OpenOffice.org nor LibreOffice. for instance, and while the reasoning might be political because Oracle dropped OpenOffice.org after the LibreOffice fork, the result isn’t going to help its customers.
Oracle Solaris 11
|Ease of use||7/10|
|A new era for Solaris, but one where it can perhaps find its niche.| | <urn:uuid:ee439970-3e46-445f-a881-1b63f4eb0759> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://linuxconfig.net/reviews/oracle-solaris-11-review.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932486 | 654 | 1.664063 | 2 |
About 70 percent of people have combination skin, which means that they have an oily T-zone and are normal to dry around their temples and on their cheeks. If you're one of those people, use a water-based moisturizer (water will be one of the first ingredients listed), and use it only where you need it. Just don't forget to apply a sunscreen all over your face!
Noncomedogenic moisturizers, which are water-based, are much less likely to clog pores than oil-based products. Other ingredients can cause irritation, like lanolin, propylene glycol and the lightener hydroquinone. If you tend to break out, look for a product that's hypoallergenic and dermatologist tested—the fewer ingredients, the less potential for problems. Many moisturizers are now formulated specifically for acne-prone complexions. | <urn:uuid:99df342e-3e1d-43ee-a0d9-4bca86045a04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oprah.com/style/Cosmetic-Basics/print/1/?slide=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949635 | 177 | 1.71875 | 2 |
February 24, 2010
Here is yet another unique view of dissociative identity disorder.
“How I View My Head”
Isn’t this an interesting picture!
It almost looks three-dimensional. Very cool!
Once again, please remember, I’ll be writing out some of my thoughts without having conversations with the artist. I am presenting these thoughts for educational purposes only, and my guesses or impressions could be wrong. If I were speaking to the artist for real, I would certainly be asking questions instead of first voicing my comments. However, for the purposes of discussing elements of dissociation, I will be speaking openly even without knowing if my comments are accurate or not.
So if a trauma survivor with a dissociative disorder presented this artwork to me in a therapy session, my thoughts would include:
The first impression I see is the complicated twisting, turning, and complexity of issues. I can see that the journey has not been easy, and there have been many difficult points along the way. I see some smooth pathways, but the overlapping, tangled blocks and obstacles are prominent.
There’s a lot of movement and activity in this picture. What’s happening? Where’s everyone going? How chaotic does it feel inside your head? Everything except the one-inch strip on the right edge feels busy and intense. How did the area on the right become calmer? What can you say about these differences?
I am assuming that the bottom left, with the swirls of green and yellow is the front of the head, with the doors being like the beginning of the hairline. From this perspective, the doors and pathways back have the appearance of being like hair blowing in the wind. This is a cool layering of the picture as it gives of feel of the outer head as well as the inner head.
My first impression of the doors is that they represent different insiders with the big doors being adults and the little doors being younger child parts. The doors could also represent different struggles in life, or different events that created a set of parts in the overall system, with each group having their own life pathways and life experiences separate from the others. Maybe there are upstairs / downstairs layers to this system. The upper / lower doors could represent all kinds of things if that was the case. What do you think the sets of double doors represent?
When you open the doors, what do you see behind each of the doors? When can the doors be opened, and who can open them? Are the doors locked? Can anyone open them?
Is there significance to the number of doors? If so, how?
Do the pathways represent memories or the life events of particular system parts? When the pathways are separate and on their own, are those times when the life-events were not shared with others in the system? Does the information on these pathways get shared with others or not? Each pathway has splotches of darker color, or alternating light / dark colorings. What do these splotches of color represent? Does the light / dark coloring represent the conflict and struggles of your system? For example, do you have some system parts that are “light side” parts, vs. others that are “dark side” parts? How do these pathways demonstrate those internal conflicts?
Notice the various crossing points of the pathways. What is the significance of these points? These places where the pathways cross and overlap might represent times when life experiences, memories, and events were shared between the different parts of the system. The overlap could represent times of co-consciousness and shared communication or conflicts between internal parts. At each point of overlap, the colors turn black. What does this mean?
Of course, I am going to ask about the meaning of the colors. Colors are typically important, and different survivors will connect different feelings / beliefs with various colors. With this picture, I would ask about the colors of each door and pathway, but I would also ask about the combination of colors. For example, why does the mustard / yellow doors have a pink pathway? Why does the pink / salmon doors have a green pathway? These color combinations could be relevant in some way. What do they mean to you?
The blue pathway coming out of the purple doors is different from the other paths. It is thinner and straighter, and has few splotches. Is there any meaning to this? Who takes this path?
Do the doors represent more about the outer world, while the pathways represent more about the inner worlds? The doors are brighter than most of the rest of the picture. If the doors represent what is seen to the public world, are the brightly colored, cheerful doors trying to hide the amount of darkness and depression hidden behind the doors?
Do system parts come out from behind the doors? If so, who comes out of each of the different doorways? If I were to see you when a “yellow door person” was presenting, how would that be different from when a “green door person” was presenting, vs. when a “purple door person” was presenting, etc.?
What are the black splotches all over the inner areas? Are they unknown areas? Are they scary memories? Are they insiders that cause problems or self-sabotage? Notice the black inner lining around the area where the black splotches are located. What does this black line represent? Is it a barrier of some sort? Does it block out awareness? If the black splotches are something of a negative or stressful nature, it is good to see that they are contained within a particular area of the inner world. The ability to contain the scary things into one area could be considered a personal strength.
What is the significance of the light faint black background? Does this represent feelings of depression, or low self-esteem, or unworthiness, or shame? Do you feel surrounded by the dark? Does it feel like darkness permeates your life? If so, what does this mean?
What does the light green door at the top represent? All the pathways lead to this place. It is representative of internal connection, blending, cooperation, or integration? It is the place of healing, hope, and health? Is the light green door the goal or a destination?
The light green door is surrounded (protected?) by a similar layering of green and yellow squiggles as at the opposite corner of the picture. What do these repeated colors represent? How do these squiggles protect the green door?
This top corner looks safer, happier, and more peaceful than the rest of the picture. Does the light green door represent the way so many survivors describe a floating away, up to a corner of the room during times of abuse? Does it represent a state of dissociation? Does the light green door represent the part of your internal system who has been kept separate from the trauma? Often times, there are certain parts that are blocked off and separated from the trauma, amnesiac and unaware of the abuse. Who resides behind that door?
The light green door has a window. It is the only door with a window. What does the window represent? Does someone from the other side of the door look out the window? Is the window for people on this side to see past the door?
There are so many interesting complexities to this picture.
What else do you see?
How do you view YOUR head?
Kathy Broady LCSW
Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation
February 21, 2010
This series showing different ways that dissociative trauma survivors picture themselves is proving to be very interesting. This current picture is no exception.
Besides being a wonderful picture showing incredible artistic talent, “From_Ashes” says a lot about being dissociative and having a dissociative disorder.
Please know that I do not personally know this artist nor am I familiar with her system or how things work for her. In this blog, I will ask questions and interpret some DID system issues by the way things were drawn, but not because I am familiar with this person in real life. My guesses might be wrong! I am simply looking at this picture and presenting some of my thought about how DID can be seen and more deeply understood by paying attention to this drawing.
In a therapeutic setting, I would of course, ask the survivor to explain her drawing before I began presenting some of my own interpretations. However, for the purposes of this blog, I will present some of my thoughts without having had the opportunity to speak with the artist directly. Some of my thoughts, when looking at this picture, include:
WOW! This girl can draw! (ok, just had to say that again, lol)
Notice the three different ages of the three different people. The physical resemblance between them speak of how the three different people are one and the same outside person, and yet the ages, emotions, experiences and roles are clearly unique and different from each other. Notice the distinctly different child part, teenager part, and adult front part.
While the adult part is the closest to the front of the picture, she is not who you notice first. The child part stands out the strongest, followed by the teenager. I would wander if this survivor’s child parts are the most visible or prominent in real life.
The adult part is present, yet the lightness of her features is significant. Sometimes adult hosts parts feel like shells or fronts or outer facades. I would explore with this survivor to see if the adults of her system feel faint, as in not strong enough to have a dominant presence. Does the adult need help to become more in charge of her system? Does the adult feel insignificant, or unimportant, or too unsure to be in charge?
On a different level, I would spend a lot of time checking to see if the opaque, clear coloring of the adult front (which may very well represent the body’s actual age) is a clear “mask” by which the others inside hide behind. For some survivors, the external face / host face provides a thin covering that stays in front of the actual insider that is present. The outer “shell” face is what the outside world is supposed to see while who is actually there from the inner world is constantly changing and evolving.
Exploring the meaning of the various colors is important.
The child part has a lot of red near her. Red can often symbolize pain or hurt. It might represent a lot of injury, as in having blood-related injuries. However, this child part doesn’t look particularly sad. She may be a little more connected to some of the happier moments in time, keeping the pain / red at a little further distance from herself. This child part has more true-to-life colors in her skin tones, etc. She might very well feel more alive and well than many of the others inside.
If the red color does represent pain or injury, the red lips can indicate a number of oral injuries. Red on the head might indicate a lot of headaches or head injuries.
Around the child part, there are a variety of puzzle pieces. There is a mix of assembled, connected puzzle pieces and empty holes without a puzzle piece. My first thought is that each of the different puzzle pieces could represent a memory or pieces of life-story information. It appears that the child part has put together quite a few of her experiences. Maybe she already knows a lot of trauma memories and has been working on her healing. The gaps in time (as shown by the missing puzzle pieces) could represent memories and emotions not yet addressed.
The puzzle pieces could also represent other internal system parts. Maybe the number of puzzle pieces by the child part means there are a lot of other kid parts. The puzzle piece by the teenager could represent others near her age-group as well.
The teenager clearly feels a lot of emotional pain. The heaviness in her eyes is obvious, and this part knows about a lot of hurts. This part struggles with self-esteem issues, as noted by the way she is pulling back and hiding more. However, she has started in her healing journey to and some of the connected, organized puzzle pieces are touching her as well. She has lots of stories yet to tell, however, as so much open space surrounds her. There is still a lot of unknown about this part. She keeps a lot of secrets tucked away in her silence.
Why is the teenager in black and white? Her skin tones are not yet “real”, so maybe she feels more disconnected and distanced from certain areas of life. Does she not feel real? Does her body not feel real? Does this part know about self-injury issues?
The wings around the front adult part might indicate dissociation. This front adult part doesn’t give the impression of being strongly grounded. She might be one of the parts that floats, or that leaves frequently. Maybe her ability to stay connected to the current day, or intense emotion gets compromised by being too easily able to dissociate.
As with every system picture, I would ask about the communication that happens between these different parts. Each of them are walled off from each other in the picture, so they may not be able to speak with each other as easily as they will be able to once they complete more of their healing. The adult front part probably hears more from the others behind her, but may very well have difficulty feeling heard by them.
The adult front part probably has a trouble staying connected to the painful memories as the red and orange part of the wings (flames?) are further from her. Also, she needs to keep up a public appearance of being ok, including dressing nicely, and looking good. To stay cool, she cannot get too close to the hot topics / intense emotions.
I would explore the title of this picture. What does the title of this picture mean? Are each of these parts named “Ashes”? Did someone named “Ashes” create it? Was this picture a gift from someone? Do these parts feel like they have risen above the ashes and overcome their tragedy?
Are these thoughts accurate?
As I mentioned above, if I were speaking to the creator of this drawing, I would be asking questions instead of assuming answers. However, many of my questions would be about the topics that I have mentioned above.
If you would like to see more incredible artwork by this artist, please look here.
Kathy Broady LCSW
Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation
February 20, 2010
This picture is an example of an internal landscape for a trauma survivor with dissociative identity disorder. Internal worlds are very real, and they sometimes feel more real than the external world for certain parts. Internal worlds are more than having an imagination. They are interactive, busy, alive places.
Some survivors with DID have trouble looking inside. Many people say they can hear things, but it looks black inside. Even if you cannot see inside, there will be others in your system who can see your internal worlds. Try communicating with them, and as you build positive rapport with these other parts of your system, they may be willing to let you see what they see.
Becoming more familiar with your internal worlds is an important part of internal communication and getting to know the other parts inside. Internal worlds are like internal homes. They provide a type of internal community for your system insiders.
Think about how much harder it would be to get to know various people in a work office setting if you couldn’t see the different areas, the different cubicles, the different desk locations. If there were a dozen people in that area but the lights were off, or in curtains were drawn, it would be much more difficult to connect with the people that were there. Seeing each other helps. Seeing where each other is also helps.
Getting to know the internal locations of your insiders is equally important. When you see where someone lives, you learn a lot about them.
Please note: It is extremely important to keep the details of your internal world private to only the most trusted people in your life. This kind of information is personal, and if you give away too much info about your internal worlds to someone who has less than noble intentions, you could be putting your system at risk.
With cautions in mind, here is a picture that represents a portion of an internal landscape.
When I look at this picture, if I was speaking to the dissociative person, I would ask:
- Can you tell me about this place? And this place? And this place? I would ask the person to describe the different structures to help me understand the importance of each location. Since the inside worlds can be whatever you want it to be, it can be important to hear why you have those specific things.
- What is this yellow triangle thing? Where did you get the idea to build this kind of place in your internal world? What does it represent? What are those circle things and why are they connected together?
- Who lives here? And who lives here? And who lives here? Each separate location / building / structure can be the ‘home’ of someone in the system.
- Do the neighbors all get to speak and interact with each other? Why or why not? Can the people in these areas always hear what is going on in these other areas? Why or why not?
- I see the little worlds. Each of these circles looks like it could be its own little world of people. What groups of your insiders are connected to these areas? Can you tell me more about these?
- Do these colors have any specific meaning to you?
- Part of your internal world looks bright and cheery. Part of it looks dark and heavy. How does that match with your experience of what your internal worlds are like?
- Who in your system is allowed to go through these doors? What are the rules for who can go through them vs. who cannot? What does it look like on the other side of these doors?
- What is the purpose of having a lake in your internal world? How does it help you to feel better? What have lakes meant to you in your outside life?
- I see the clear blue sky in a distance. Why is the blue sky so far away? What is over there at the horizon point? What is making the rainbow so much heavier and prominent than the sky? What does that mean to you?
- The trees on the island appear to be separated from the other structures. Do the insiders that live on the island have to stay separate from the others? Are the people able to cross to the other section? Do these people know those people?
- What are the brown leaf-type shapes on the left edge? What do they represent?
- If this is a picture of your internal world, where are the people? What are they doing? Do you see other insiders when you look at these places?
- How has your internal world changed over time? What has remained constant? What has changed? Do you know what was going on in your life when the changes occurred? Are there any changes that you would like to make to your internal worlds at this point in time of your life?
- When your internal worlds look like this, how do you feel?
- How much time do you spend looking inside at these worlds? How easy is it for you to see this? Does anything ever block your view of these areas?
- How real do these internal worlds feel to you?
Kathy Broady LCSW
February 19, 2010
In a previous blog post, I made a request for artwork about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD). Sometimes it is easier to describe experiences through images than through words.
I send a special thank you to the different dissociative trauma survivors who have been willing to contribute to this project. I will add various pictures and related comments as I receive them.
For “Self Portrait”, notice the number of different parts. Clearly, this person is polyfragmented (they have lots of insiders!) and each part is completely unique and different from the others in the system. If I were speaking to this person about their picture, I would ask the following questions:
- I see over a dozen different colors. What do each of these colors represent to you? Which colors are you most comfortable with? Which colors are the most anxiety-provoking for you? Please explain why.
- What does the one white piece near the center mean to you? Why is it placed there?
- What does the grouping of red pieces in the center mean to you? Why are they placed there?
- Why are the three red parts able to sit closely together when most of the other colors do not sit next to each other? How does this relate to your inner system?
- What does the outer pinkish border represent? Does this color represent your external host? What keeps this part of you from mingling more with the others inside?
- I see black outlines separating most of the different pieces from each other. What kind of barriers do these represent in your system? Which barriers represent complete separation / time loss from the other parts?
- Can the parts next to each other communicate together? Who can talk to who?
- Can the parts on opposite sides of this portrait communicate together? Do they know each other exists when they are so far apart?
- When you look at this picture, who do you know? How many of the other insiders are you familiar with?
- Do the various parts of the same coloring, even if scattered throughout your system portrait, have the ability to communicate with each other?
- Some parts are larger in size than others. What does that represent to you? Does the size of the part represent age? Power? Presence?
- What do you feel when you look at this picture? What do you hear from inside when you are looking at this picture?
- What can you say about the bigger black spots? Do they represent a “black group”? Does the black represent a not-knowing who or what is there?
- Are these parts fluid? Do they move from place to place? Do they stay exactly where they are? Please explain more about that.
- Is that brown heart an on-purpose heart shape? What does that particular piece mean to you? Are there reasons for any of the other specific shapes of the different pieces?
- What kind of system cooperation / internal communication did you experience while you were making this picture?
- What are you hearing from inside as I ask you all these questions? (lol, one can safely assume that the inside will have plenty to say by this point!)
So much system work can be accomplished through just this one picture.
Kathy Broady LCSW
February 18, 2010
What is it like to live with dissociative identity disorder?
How does it feel to have dissociative identity disorder?
What do you wish others could understand about DID?
Have you found it hard to put the experience of dissociative identity disorder into words?
Sometimes pictures say a thousand words.
Dissociative Identity Disorder can be hard to explain in words, but a visual image can show what is hard to explain otherwise. Have you drawn or created some pictures that show how DID / MPD feels?
If you have a picture — a drawing, a painting, a collage — that represents DID as you relate to it, and if you are willing to share your picture, I would like to show some of those images here in this blog as a way to help describe DID.
What to do:
If you have some appropriate images that you would like to share, please send them to my email address: Info @ AbuseConsultants.com (remove the spaces). If there are words or a story that goes along with your image about dissociation, please include that as well. You can request that your submission be posted with or without an identifying name / title, etc.
Please do not submit any copyrighted material from other sources or any other material that is not your own.
Please do not send the only copy or the original copy of your pictures or artwork to my mailing address. Send scans or photos of the pictures only. Please note: anything that is submitted for consideration in this project will not be returned.
Personal details regarding internal system information or system maps will not be posted, in order to protect individuals and their system from the potential risk of making that information public.
When you are considering which pictures to submit, please remember that you are responsible for determining what you are comfortable sharing and what is too personal for you to share. Please listen to and respect your own feelings in this regard.
Keep in mind that the Discussing Dissociation blog is an online environment, and you are submitting your pictures or images for consideration as part of a public post. Please understand that once a picture is posted on a blog, it is publically visible to anyone in the world with internet and could potentially be copied by anyone that views it. If you choose to submit a picture, you are accepting all responsibility for what happens with your picture as a public item. Kathy Broady / AbuseConsultants.com are not responsible.
The Purpose of this Project
Please know that I will not personally know these artists nor will I be familiar with their systems or how things work for them. In the blog articles, I will ask questions and interpret some DID system issues by the way things were drawn, but not because I am familiar with the people in real life. My guesses might be wrong! I am simply looking at these pictures and presenting some of my thought about how DID can be seen and more deeply understood by paying attention to artwork and drawings.
In a therapeutic setting, I would of course, ask the survivors to explain their art before I began presenting some of my own interpretations. However, for the purposes of this blog, I will present some of my thoughts without having had the opportunity to speak with the artist directly.
The intention is to provide education information for those working with dissociative disorders – to point out possibilities of dissociative issues within artwork – to explore options about system interpretation, etc.
My interpretations may or may not be correct — only the artist will know that. The artists are not required to nor expected to provide the “correct” interpretation of their work to me or to the readers of this blog as their privacy is important.
However, for the purposes of discussing elements of dissociation, I will be speaking openly even without knowing if my comments are accurate or not.
Thank you for your willingness to participate in this project!
I look forward to seeing what DID looks like to you!
Kathy Broady LCSW
February 15, 2010
The healing process for survivors of abuse and neglect is very difficult. While it is a rewarding journey, it is a painfully difficult process.
Trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder typically have lots of child parts in their systems. Sometimes these child parts may seem to outnumber the adults!
Working with the kids is an important part of the healing process. Inside kids often know a lot about your internal system, family dynamics, and trauma memories.
But these inside kids, while very much connected to the rest of your adult self, also have real kid needs. They need to be cared for, kept safe (inside and out), allowed to have healthy daily provisions, given support, comfort, and compassion. These are the parts of you that were frozen in time when your needs were not properly meet during your actual childhood. They are the parts of you that just could not go on any further in life, and had to stay stuck where they were, back in that time. They are often the parts that lived through the horrors that you are remembering.
If you ask me, child parts are little heroes. If you think that working on your trauma issues is hard as an adult — with a therapist and all the current-day resources available to you — imagine how hard it was to be a little child living that trauma, completely on your own, with no help at all. Your little kids have had a rough go of it. It really is important for you to do what you can to soothe their wounds and heal their hurts.
One thing that helps child parts to move forward and to not stay stuck is to meet some of their unmet needs. Between years of abuse and neglect, and many incidents of trauma, your child parts will have oodles of experiences of not having their needs met appropriately. The sooner you and your system can treat your child parts in healthy ways, the sooner they will heal. Having corrective emotional experiences will allow your child parts to experience the positive things that were missing in their development.
If your child parts are not in a place where they can emotionally flourish, it will be important for you to help them reach a place where they can experience creative happy living.
Reading good children’s stories with your child parts are as helpful for your inner kids as they are for outside children.
The book, “I Knew You Could” by Craig Dorfman is a wonderful children’s story about encouragement, support, positive self-belief, and healthy determination. The story is about a little train that goes through different areas of life, questioning his train-abilities and wondering if he can make it through the various stops in life.
I am not a professional storyteller by any means, but through the years of working with DID / MPD clients, I have been asked by many a child part to read a story. It seemed to me that maybe other child parts out there in the world would also enjoy having a positive, encouraging story read to them.
Please use this story as a way to encourage yourself and comfort your inner kids. Your healing journey is difficult — filled with lots of stops and bumps along the way — but you have already survived the worst of it. You can heal from here, and create a much better life for yourself and your insiders.
When you hear “I Knew You Could”, what are your favorite lines in the story?
Which phrases fit your life right now?
What does this story mean to you?
And whatever difficult things are happening in your life… keep working at it!
You can do it.
I know you can!
Kathy Broady LCSW
February 10, 2010
Lots of trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder are just starting their healing process. Other dissociative survivors are not new to their healing process, but they might realize that they haven’t yet covered all the basics.
DID therapy can feel huge, daunting, difficult, and overwhelming. There is so much to do and so many areas of work. For a broader overview of the many areas of DID healing, please refer to the article, “50 Treatment Issues for Dissociative Identity Disorder”.
For individuals building the foundation for their work with your dissociative system, here are some of the first things to do.
DID 101 involves:
1. Get to know your system. Build the courage to find and meet your insiders. Remember, they were formed and created to help you – even if it doesn’t feel like it, you are (or can be) on the same team. Who are your inside parts? What jobs do they have? What kinds of things are they able to do? It’s really ok for you to build positive relationships and actual friendships with your insiders. If this feels scary for you, explore those feelings. What makes it hard for you to get to know your insiders? What fears or resentments do you have? Understanding your resistance to these ideas is important.
2. Become more comfortable with your diagnosis. If you don’t understand what dissociative identity disorder (DID /MPD) is, be sure to speak more with your therapist or psychiatrist about what it means to be dissociative. There are lots of books, websites, blogs, articles, conferences, etc that can help to educate you about the basics about DID. Understanding DID will help take out some of the mystery and confusion for you.
3. Build a support system and capable treatment team. It is very helpful if you can surround yourself with a few other people that understand trauma dynamics, preferably at least one or two other people, besides your therapist and doctor that understand that you are working on healing from trauma. These support people don’t have to be experts in DID – if they are just willing to spend some time with you when you need a safe distraction from your healing work, that will be helpful. Please don’t lean on lay-support people for the heavy issues. Leave the complicated treatment issues for your therapist to work with – your support friends are not therapists, so be very careful about not pushing them too far or demanding too much of them.
4. Once you have recognized at least one or two other parts, work on building communication with these parts. Internal communication is one of the very most important factors in DID therapy, and the sooner you can interact cooperatively with your other parts, the better your healing progress will happen. Approximately twenty of the articles in the Discussing Dissociation blog reference tips for building internal communication. This link groups these articles together. Learning how to talk to your other parts is the most important factor in your healing.
5. Connecting with your internal landscape. What can you see inside? Can you see the other insiders? Do you have an internal safe place? Internal visualization work is an important skill as it builds a way to connect with your insiders. Even if you can’t see the others inside, there will likely be someone else who can. Maybe ask if that insider will draw a map of your system for you? The sooner you can see inside, the better. And of course, if you see insiders that are not in positive, healthy, clean living conditions, you and other helpers in your system will need to do something to help them.
6. Working on limiting or preventing self-destructive impulses and self-injurious behaviors. Learning how to address self-harm urges is particularly important for your stabilization and progression in therapy. You have already been hurt enough – adding more hurt may feel like it helps you to cope in the short-term, but using behaviors such as cutting or burning is not any more helpful than using a shot of whiskey or a hit of cocaine. Explore better ways to cope with your intense feelings, develop more grounding skills, build positive containment strategies, and methods to reconnect with the here-and-now. A grouping of articles about preventing self-injury can be found here.
7. Live in a safe place both inside and out. If you live in a violent environment, address this issue as quickly as you are able. If you are continuing to be abused or sexually assaulted in any way, your dissociative walls will stay strong, and your system will have greater trouble trusting you and your treatment team. Of course, when anyone is fearful of abusive repercussions, it is much harder to disclose the real issues. Dangerous environments can include everything from domestic violence, abusive parents, organized perpetrators, to internal system perpetrators and angry introjects. Building more and more current-day safety is vitally important for your overall healing process. If you aren’t safe, make this a priority in your therapy process. Building an internal safe place is also critically important. However, please remember that in order to build an internal safe place, you have to have a genuine belief that safety can happen, at least part of the time. Making an internal safe place for your insiders is much more difficult when you are still concerned about external safety.
8. Start building options for positive self-comfort, self-soothing activities. The therapy process can be so very painful and emotionally difficult. Having a variety of options to do that are comfortable, safe, gentle, soothing, and stabilizing is important. What can you do when you want to have a break from the hard work of therapy? What can you do when you need some quiet space to think – or to not think? When you are hurting, what can you do that will help you to feel better? Soothing your pain in ways that help your healing (vs. using self-destructive options) is an important skill to develop.
9. Create healthy options for expression of feeling and emotion – use art, music, journaling, collage, blogging, forum posting, sculpting, painting, poetry, play therapy, sand tray therapy, scrapbooking, etc. DID therapy involves processing a lot of flashbacks, violent images, intense feelings, overwhelming thoughts, body memories, body pain, etc. Building a repertoire of artistic avenues to describe your feelings and experiences will be very helpful. You might not always have words that you can use so it is important to find non-verbal ways to safely express what you feel.
10. Create your own personal space. In this space, let it be ok for your insiders to come out, to be themselves, to be out in the body, and to exist. Out in the world, and when you are around other people, most of your daily life will be about keeping your insiders tucked in and acting socially inappropriate. But somewhere in your private time, your insiders will need time to surface, to know that it is ok for them to come out. Having the freedom to switch without reprimand is important as each of your insiders will need to do some personalized healing work of their own.
Not 11. Please note: I am specifically not including memory work or skills to do memory work in my top then list of DID 101 skills. The reason for this is that if you are just beginning DID therapy, it can be very destabilizing to focus on heavy-duty memory work. Yes, of course, doing trauma work is an important part of your overall healing process, but in the beginning of this journey, you need to build these basic skills before you begin to put a lot of energy into memory work. It is much safer and more stabilizing to have these foundational therapy skills in place before focusing on the trauma content of DID therapy.
DID therapy is intense, long-term, exhausting, and difficult. But your healing is worth it. As you truly address the painful conflicts, unmet needs, and internal confusion caused by your years of trauma, abuse, and neglect, you will feel better within your own self.
I wish you the very best in your healing journey –
Kathy Broady LCSW
February 2, 2010
So “One Life to Live” is doing it again – they are bringing the concepts of DID / MPD, dissociation, dissociative splitting, programming, and mind control into the story line.
I haven’t quite decided what I think about this yet – I’m waiting to see where they go with it – but I did want to start an area open for discussion in case any of the readers of this blog have anything to say about it.
So far the show is showing a few elements that could be quite triggering to people that have been abused in this fashion. There are several scenes involving Jessica (remember the Jess-Tess-Bess trio from last year?) and her alleged “cult leader” father. So far, the cult-type dynamics have not yet been impressive in the way they have been portrayed, but once the show started showing mind control scenes, I’ve been more concerned.
If you have dissociative identity disorder and if you are sensitive to those kinds of issues, please know to be cautioned about watching these episodes or reading further down this blog.
On one hand, it’s good to raise the awareness in the general public that mind control happens. Yes, mind control abuse / programming trauma often involves a few of the elements portrayed – physical force, drugs, electrical shock, restraints, memory loss, emotional conflicts, creating of a new dissociated self – but, of course, being that this is daytime TV, the producers are making the scenarios much more watered-down than what is realistic.
However, they are still showing enough detail to get the point across.
Raising awareness and exposing that such atrocities happen in the first place is an important step in helping more and more trauma survivors have the courage to speak up about what has happened to them. Increased awareness of these kinds of abuses can help more survivors be willing to get help. More mental health professionals can become aware of the issues, and more treatment options can be created.
To the survivors of mind control abuse – please know you’re not crazy. You are not making it up. Mind control really does happen. It can wreak a lot of havoc in your life, but it does not have to have a permanent place in your life.
Mind control can be a very serious concern. It can have long-term effects on survivors, and it can completely affect your life. Mind control doesn’t have to be stronger than you as a person. Don’t be fooled into thinking it is bigger than you are. It is not.
Mind control can be beaten. Completely beaten.
It can be removed from your thinking. It can be busted into pieces. It can be eliminated from your life.
But that’s up to you. You might need some outside therapeutic assistance, but you absolutely can break any mind controls that exists within you.
Who you are as a person – your own human spirit, your own real self, your freedom of thought, your ability to think for yourself, your ability to evaluate and assess, your ability to learn new things, your ability to enjoy life, your ability to feel emotions, your ability to improvise, your creativity, your ability to reach out and connect to helpers, your spiritual strengths, your ability to love – all these things, and more, can beat all the best of mind control techniques.
Don’t ever believe that you have to stay stuck in programming.
You can be free from that.
You are a human person, not a robot or a machine, and your genuine human-ness can override any of your perpetrator’s efforts to dehumanize you.
Your real self can be so much stronger than your programmed self.
Have the courage to be who you really are. Have the courage to get away from any abusers that support or use mind control techniques. Have the courage to build a life of your own away from those who want to own you.
It’s your life – you can be in charge of that.
Kathy Broady LCSW | <urn:uuid:25d2cb72-d04f-4c80-b818-38f831a38ca9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://discussingdissociation.wordpress.com/2010/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96472 | 8,860 | 1.679688 | 2 |
In the wake of the mass murders that took place in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, information on the shooter, and his family, is slowly being discovered by law enforcement other sources. One interesting connection to the tragedy that took place at the Sandy Hook school is that the father of Adam Lanza has a connection to the theater shootings that took place in Aurora earlier this year by James Holmes.
Both fathers of the shooters were allegedly expected to testify in the Libor scandal that rocked the banking world in June.
The father of Newtown Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza is Peter Lanza who is a VP and Tax Director at GE Financial. The father of Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes is Robert Holmes, the lead scientist for the credit score company FICO. Both men were to testify before the US Sentate in the ongoing LIBOR scandal. The London Interbank Offered Rate, known as Libor, is the average interest rate at which banks can borrow from each other. 16 international banks have been implicated in this ongoing scandal, accused of rigging contracts worth trillions of dollars. HSBC has already been fined $1.9 billion and three of their low level traders arrested. | <urn:uuid:debccd54-9d39-487c-a30b-e3de320a166c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://counterpsyops.com/tag/libor-scandal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976256 | 237 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The New York Times reports today on the trend to drug test welfare recipients, and notes that since July, 7,030 passed, 32 failed and 1,597 did not provide results, according to the state records. The tests have had a net cost to the state but the state has also seen a decline in the number of applicants appears.
Derek Newton of the ACLU calls it a ".4% fail rate." From his statement: "Based on the NYT estimate "that the average temporary assistance applicant receives $253 monthly for less than five months, the state has saved $40,480 in denied benefits due to drug testing. With an average test cost of about $35, the state reimbursed $246,050 for the tests of those who passed. The net loss to the state of $200,000 since July does not include substantial administrative or legal costs.
Since the state requires applicants to pay for tests in advance and testing facilities are not available in every community, it’s impossible to know how many of the 1,597 applicants who did not take the test would have passed or failed or would have lost eligibility otherwise. There are at least 13 reasons other than fear of failure why someone who is eligible for temporary assistance may not complete a drug test." | <urn:uuid:2e6e2e5c-4dd2-4380-8fa7-eeb376ef2a6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2011/10/drug-testing-of-welfare-applicants-is-costing-state-money-but-applications-drop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975478 | 256 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Video: Down to the wire on health care
An Oklahoma local farm home to hundreds of animals is still reeling from the storm, and staffers are trying to figure out how many animals were lost.
- Oklahoma staggered by storm of storms
- Tales from the tornado: First-person accounts from survivors
- Orr Family Farm
Third-grader JaNae Hornsby is among the first of the Oklahoma victims to be identified. Hornsby was one of the students who perished when the tornado hit Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. on Monday afternoon.
Asking the jury that convicted her of murder to now let her live, Jodi Arias said in a Phoenix courtroom Tuesday that she never meant to cause her victim’s family so much pain — and that if she was given a life sentence she would contribute to society. | <urn:uuid:3c588715-3a89-429a-9c88-bf06d9274c29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.today.com/id/35968539/ns/politics-washington_post/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964575 | 174 | 1.523438 | 2 |
will offer Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary works from the collection of Pierre Leroy, Co-Managing Partner of Groupe Lagardère. Pierre Leroys collection of books and manuscripts is already world renowned; now his modern art collection will be unveiled for the first time, in Paris on December 8/9.
Andy Warhol is the foremost figure in Pierre Leroy's collection of contemporary art, which boasts two works by the Pope of Pop Art both portraits, but of very different artists: Roy Lichtenstein, the other big name of Pop Art, painted on a tiny canvas in 1967; and Jamie Wyeth, captured ten years later in the manner of Warhol's spectacular Society Portraits recently displayed at the Grand Palais in Paris.
In early 1967, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Leo Castelli Gallery, Andy Warhol made twelve portraits of the artists represented by the gallery: Lee Bontecou, John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, Roy Lichtenstein and Warhol himself. Only a handful of copies of each portrait were produced, and few are known to have survived. Their modest dimensions give them an engaging, family character, in keeping with their subject-matter: "family portraits" of Leo Castelli's gallery artists. Warhol's vibrant homage to Roy Lichtenstein (est. 30,00040,000) evokes his early Red Elvis of 1962, also in red and black.
The strikingly handsome Jamie Wyeth was a young painter who embodied the "spirit of America," much like his father and grandfather before him. It was an inspired move by Warhol to portray the youthful Wyeth in the style of a period celebrity, like his portraits of Mick Jagger and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, done the same year. The model's elegant pose, with his chin resting on his hand like Rodin's Thinker, and the gentle, slightly absent look in his eyes, make Portrait of Jamie Wyeth (est. 100,000120,000) a magnificent Warholian hymn to Melancholy. The two artists, in fact, painted one another; their Portraits of Each Other were shown at New York's Coe Kerr Gallery in 1976.
The sale includes a superb collage by Nicolas de Staël (est. 35,00045,000), recalling his famous Portrait of Anne in Comar's Musée Unterlinden; one of Niki de Saint-Phalle's first Tir (shooting) paintings, formerly owned by artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud (est. 35,00045,000); and a monumental work by Jacques Monory (est. 25,00035,000).
Pierre Leroy acquired Dora Maar's Portrait of Picasso during the famous Dora Maar sale in Paris in 1998, when it was reproduced on the cover of one of the catalogues. This powerful work (est. 120,000180,000), evoking one of the most super-charged artistic relationships of the 20th century, dates from 1936 the year of the decisive encounter between Picasso and the future muse of his 'Weeping Woman' series. This is unquestionably Dora Maar's finest-ever painting, portraying Picasso as a Mayan-like divinity with a smile on his lips that is both tranquil and voracious. His placid yet relentless gaze fixed on both the artist and the viewer is typical of the "look" we find in photographic portraits of the time, a field in which Dora Maar had already made her name.
Dora Maar would never recover from her relationship with Picasso, reliving the tragic destiny of another famous artist consumed by the love of a genius: Camille Claudel. The Pierre Leroy Collection contains a superb casting of one of Claudel's most moving sculptures Le Dieu Envolé (est. 80,000120,000).
Friday 4 December, 12 noon6pm
Saturday 5 December, 10am6pm
Monday 7 December, 10am6pm
Tuesday 8 December, 10am2pm | <urn:uuid:1ba49c0a-77f3-4cfa-8552-7ced95bae9ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=34561&int_modo=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953866 | 865 | 1.632813 | 2 |
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HomeHealth & Safety
Occupational health and safety is a major consideration for successful businesses – the welfare and safety of your staff must be of paramount importance because, as the adage states, people are your most important asset. Plus, apart from looking after your own personnel directly, a good set of QHSE policies will also have a secondary effect: you may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other members of the public who are impacted by your workplace environment.
You will undoubtedly already have health and safety policies and procedures in place. But can you be sure that you are adhering to best practice? Are you complying with local, national and even international regulations? And if you think you are, can you prove it?
At SGS, we have solutions and answers. We can advise and train on a comprehensive range of quality, health, safety and environment issues. As the world’s leading inspection, certification, testing and verification company, we are fully familiar with local legislation – and international standards. Standards such as ISO 31000 and REACH. We can help you with occupational or industrial hygiene, your working environment with regard to air quality, dust, noise and vibration, technical due diligence and hazardous substances. And we are experts at environmental audits and economic and social sustainability.
Together, we can make a world of difference to your working world. Contact us now to find out what we could do for you. | <urn:uuid:c489efa4-a5e8-4e22-9008-78ccd11d6f90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sgs.co.za/en/Health-Safety.aspx | 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 | 0.946506 | 345 | 1.515625 | 2 |
2013 Run Series and Fit.Teen Registration Open
Healthy Kids Club is a community health program, sponsored by University of Colorado Health, to promote health and wellness in local elementary schools.
Since its founding in 1998, Kids Club has served thousands of elementary-age children with programs that emphasize health, exercise, safety and fun. Healthy Kids Club partners with schools and agencies that serve youth in Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor, and surrounding communities, to provide year-round health and fitness activities and programs.
Healthy Kids Club Goals
1. To work in partnership with schools to increase opportunities for physical activity, health education, and good nutrition.
2. To provide health education based on national and state health standards.
3. To increase the percentage of youth who engage in regular physical activity.
4. To provide world class programs and activities that encourage physical activity and healthy habits for a lifetime.
Contact Laurie Zenner email@example.com | <urn:uuid:caeb5437-d3e9-45bb-8a10-99e65fd3c1d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.medctrrockies.org/body.cfm?id=728&fr=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934954 | 196 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Patrick Wayne Germond: Informative, hilarious
To the editor:
Letters from Allen Hischke and Michelle Conroy were printed in the Daily Press on Oct. 1. Michelle's was informative, and Allen's was hilarious.
Amendment 47 grants freedom of choice to join a union or not. Allen implied union leaders still have to defend or support non-union workers (LOL). Unions don't incur costs from representing nonmembers. Ask any local teacher. The vice president of the local teachers association, Michelle Conroy, set me straight on that. There is no federal law that mandates it. I spent most of Thursday talking to union leaders and checking facts. (Note to Allen, do that before a public rant.)
Each union can represent whom they wish; it depends on their contract. The teachers' union here proves that. This is a confusing issue; a lot of the union leaders themselves were of conflicting views. The local teachers union is by far the best one I've seen. They are an all-volunteer organization.
Furthermore, some union entities do make purely political donations. Amendment 54 would shut that down. So do we want freedom to make political donations, but not freedom of membership?
One thing I have found is that federal law prohibits mandatory union membership (Taft-Hartley). However, the bill does not prohibit union leaders from mandating money from you. Non-union-members may get some benefits by osmosis, but no more than other workers in Colorado.
Amendment 47 will make the union leaders more concerned and attentive to workers' needs. Our local teachers' union does fantastic with this policy. When they lobby, they do so for the needs of our children. It's a thing of beauty. A system all the members support. Teachers are scared of 49.
If amendement 49 passes, public unions can't have their representation fees (dues) directly withdrawn from payroll checks anymore. Anyone who relies on direct withdrawl to make sure a payment routinely get made knows 49 will cause havoc for them and union treasuries. The opposition to 49 implies this step costs us all money. It does not. If the teachers' union falters, your child's state representation falters.
Amendments 49 and 54 are union killers. However, if unions are going to move into the future, Amendments like 47 have to pass. Passing 49 and 54 mean workers lose freedoms forever. These amendments are set up as a perfect trap.
Vote for union freedoms, vote yes on 47, no on 49 and 54. Unions need the rest of us to pull their butts out of the fire. More union members and leaders need to step up and publicly participate in the discussion of these amendments.
These amendments come with a lot of myths. It's not about who's right or wrong on this issue, it's about getting the facts right. What will these amendments do to your union specifically? What's the difference in the your contract currently and what is mandated by federal law? Tell us.
Patrick Wayne Germond | <urn:uuid:aba1305f-40b1-4eaa-b14e-5eb59cb4ed85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.craigdailypress.com/news/2008/oct/04/patrick_wayne_germond_informative_hilarious/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962422 | 628 | 1.539063 | 2 |
It's Week 31 of our Sharing Memories - A Genealogy Journey Please join us each Sunday as we share our memories of childhood. Your descendants will be thankful that you did! Write here as a comment, or on your own blog, or in a private journal, but please write!
It's almost time for my two oldest grandchildren to come for their annual summer week-long visit. Every year the dates have to change due to conflicting scheduling and their 7 day visit usually ends up being 3 or 4. That's because they are booked every summer in Dance Camp, Drama Camp, Archaeology Camp, Science Camp, Computer Camp, and on and on it goes. They are never bored, always busy and they love it. But that got me thinking about my own summers away from school.
We didn't have camps or activities of any kind. No one babysat us. I had a key on a piece of string which I wore around my neck from the time I was 10. I knew that I better not ever take that string off my neck! My mom and dad both worked and I never had a babysitter in my life. Was there such a thing?
Summer came, school was closed from mid June until early September. And we did our own thing. I read books, I sunned in the yard (no sunscreen and no knowledge of the damage sun could do), I played with my friends, I went to the creek to catch minnows, I sat in my bedroom with one or two of my girlfriends for hours, talking about us, our parents, our siblings and boys.
We explored. We used to pack a picnic lunch, I'd grab my dad's old army canteen and fill it with water and off we'd go, hiking in the countryside that surrounded our town. Sometimes we'd try to get to the Provincial Park which was over 10 miles away. We never made it though. Frequently we'd head for the abandoned house on the outskirts of town - the one our parents warned us to never go near as the hobos and tramps used it as a resting point on their journeys. And the house was dangerous as many of the floorboards had rotted away. But that just made it even more of an adventure so off we'd go.
One of our favourite but forbidden excursions was to hike out to the old abandoned house and beyond, along the railroad tracks and across the railroad trestle to the woods. We were so stupid. I don't think we had any understanding of the danger in crossing that railroad trestle. We stopped when we got a good scare one day. We were amost at the half way point of the trestle when we felt it shaking. We knew what that meant - a train was coming! We had nowhere to go except turn around and race back as fast as we could. The trestle was too high to jump from. Boy were we scared. I remember lying on the grass panting for breath as the train whooshed by. We never crossed the trestle again.
We didn't have cell phones or video games and we didn't watch television during those summer days. No one called to check up on us. Now I shake my head at what we got up to and the freedom we had. But it sure was fun. | <urn:uuid:87ee2434-533d-4795-9c33-9204e0cee217> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/07/sharing-memories-week-31-oh-those-good.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988261 | 678 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Intel, Asus Announce $199 Eee PC
Intel and Asus announce a partnership to develop a low-cost PC that will be marketed as a way to effectively mainstream computing to new customers, such as children, senior citizens and emerging nations. (PCMag.com)TAIPEIAsus and Intel have teamed up to develop a $199 notebook PC, the companies announced here on June 5. In a keynote address given by Sean Maloney, an executive vice president at Intel and chief marketing and sales officer, Jonney Shih, chairman and chief executive of Asus, was invited on stage to unveil the "Eee PC," an inexpensive laptop designed to help spread computing to poorer regions.
Two models were demonstrated: a $199 and $299 model. They represent part of what Intel is now calling its "World Ahead," market initiative, giving virtually anyone around the world a chance to own a PC. | <urn:uuid:ee305dd5-7a84-4a43-b5c5-a91ee0d52f39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Intel-Asus-Announce-36199-Eee-PC/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976071 | 184 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Who is responsible for the BP Oil Spill?
We are. Every person who was willing to spend 4.00 a gallon for gas was responsible. Every one of us has to wake up and realize that giant corporations are just acting out our unconscious drives to expand, eat, work as little as possible. They are vast, dispersed, protozoic quasi-organisms suffering the macro-version of America’s obesity epidemic. They are no better, and no worse, than the human beings that compose them. And the only answer to their growing power is that we, as the component cells of these “organisms” had better wake up and make conscious choices.
What stops us from awareness, awakeness, from taking adult responsibility for our lives and the world is fear. Face our fears of scarcity, of “the other”, of death, of loneliness, and virtually all the selling propositions of Madison Avenue, Washington, and Hollywood evaporate like vapor.
We can point the finger, or we can re-examine our priorities, and heal our hearts. Hypediaphobia (hy·peg·i·a·pho·bi·a) is the fear of responsibility. And responsibility is the door to adulthood. Trying to seek enlightenment? Fuggetaboudit unless you have first taken responsibility for your existence here and now.
And as long as you blame “them” for larger versions of what we, as individuals, do every day…this nightmare will continue, unabated, growing larger and stronger as we squabble. Wake up, people.
Our grandchildren are watching. | <urn:uuid:4ffd0f7b-4cd7-4e29-99d9-3bb7897aac12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://darkush.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956785 | 332 | 1.648438 | 2 |
International logistics and shipping company. Offering a wide range of service for their customers like shipping, logistics, freight forwarding, warehousing and supply chain management. Their main business is to delivery parcels, just like DHL. They even have their own airline. UPS have since expanded to numerous countries around the world and is currently expanding to other segments of the supply & logistics market. Their couriers are famous for their brown uniforms.
Sometimes we hate them. Sometimes we love them. I don't know what to make of them either. It seems that their service standard is well....not standard at all. Anyway, this is the United States Postal Service or USPS for short. Most of our mails goes through them and lets be honest, they do quite a good job when it comes to delivering the regular mail. And when I was young, seeing the mailman come is an event in itself. Thus I have to admit, I wanted to be a postman. But then I realize that being a postman probably suck and can be dangerous, especially when visiting houses with dogs and all. They also provide courier and parcel delivery services like Fedex and DHL. If I am not wrong, they are indeed major competitors in this field. Oh you should read up on the history of the USPS, pretty interesting stuff.
Major logistics company offering international mailing and parcel service. They have offices throughout the world and have major logistic hubs supporting their operations. DHL began as a small courier service plying the between San Fransico & Honolulu, then expanded to other US states and finally became International. They are now one of the largest express delivery service in the world. They are owned by Deutsche Post.
TNT Express is a International courier service. They offer same day, next day, specific day and International deliveries. They are headquartered in the Netherlands and courier documents and parcels in more than 200 countries throughout the world with their own fleet of aircarft and logistics hubs. Their slogan is "Yes we can".
Portable storage, storage pods & mobile storage; we’ll deliver a portable storage unit to your driveway, you fill it, we’ll store it the 1st month in our secure portable storage building for a dollar. - Ps Pickup
One of the world's largest provider of conditioned storage facilities for oil, petrochemicals, biofuels or even Liquifided Petroleum Gas. Basically what they provide is strong reinforced containers for potential hazardous materials, mainly liquids or gas. Vopka offers businesses more storage capacity than any other independent tank terminal operator in the world. Makes things much easier when doing transportation overseas. They do have a good track record when it comes to safety and environmental care.
Once I started work, I realized that delivery, shipping and logistics are actually pretty important. Even for non-product companies, there is a need for courier services - like the delivery of samples and documents. I didn't realize that courier service would be such an important part of the business world. Everyone needs some form of logistics, ranging from small document delivery to big international shipments of cargo. Anyway, World Courier is one of the largest logistics company in the world. They have offices all over the world. Whether you are in Argentina or in Croatia or in Thailand, they will be able to serve you. They have over 150 offices all over the global. They are also able to provide temperature controlled logistics and pharmaceutical storage and distribution in various countries. If you are looking for a reliable partner to help solve your logistics problems, you might want to consider what they have to offer.
Offers a UK nationwide courier service, parcel delivery and international shipping. Mail forwarding and a postcode finder service also available. * UK Delivery
* Europe Delivery
* USA & Canada Delivery
* Asia Delivery
* Worldwide Delivery - Parcel2Go
Bennys moving and storage provides local and long distance moving services in Boston, MA and California. Get free moving quotes along with plenty of information and resources on how to move easilyt without too many hassles. - Benny's Moving and Storage
Self Storage Blog is your number one source for self storage insights, secrets and self storage management. Sharing our knowledge and experiences freely. Find plenty of useful articles and resourceful information on the subject. - Self Storage Blog
NorthStar Moving Corporation is your best choice for all your moving needs in California. Founded in 1994, Los Angeles-based NorthStar Moving Corporation has redefined the moving and storage industry. - NorthStar Moving Corporation
If you're moving To Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Cyprus, South Africa, or America, the Doree Bonner International Group are the leading removal company that specialise in international removals. Find out more about worldwide removals here. - Doree Bonner International
Looking for a corporate moving company that is both cost-effective and reliable? Look no further than Suddath. Specializing in office relocation, we will make sure your corporate moving experience as smooth as possible. - Suddath
Canada.Movers.com always strives to deliver quality services which are evident from its service records. We constantly try to upgrade our services and quality according to the changing demands of the clients and customers. Whether you need to move interstate or internationally, we can help you enormously.Canada.Movers.com provides you with a wide range of moving companies listed with us. The companies that are there in our database are all licensed and reliable. - Canada.Movers.com
StorageConcierge - can help you find the most suitable, and the closest self storage. StorageConcierge is your premier Self Storage Search Engine.StorageConcierge - can help you find the most suitable, and the closest self storage. StorageConcierge is your premier Self Storage Search Engine. - Storage Concierge
Interstate backloading removalist. Furniture removals throughout Australia, with backloads available 6 days a week to and from all capital cities. Online quotes, helpful tips and information. Interstate car transport also offerered at discount rates. - Moving Again | <urn:uuid:e690ce55-a864-441f-99aa-13f5db8e6536> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blong.info/Commercial/Shipping_Logistics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9448 | 1,249 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Israel moved forward on Wednesday with plans to build some 3,000 settler homes in one of the most sensitive areas of the occupied West Bank, in defiance of international protests.
A Defence Ministry official said architects and contractors appeared before a subcommittee of the military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank and registered their plans for construction in the E1 corridor near Jerusalem, a preliminary step before any building permits are issued.
Angered by the U.N. General Assembly's de facto recognition of Palestinian statehood on Thursday, Israel announced the next day it would build the new dwellings for settlers, on land near Jerusalem that Palestinians seek for a future state.
The decision by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pro-settler government to build houses in E1 for the first time raised the alarm among Palestinians and in world capitals.
Israeli housing on the corridor's barren hills could bisect the West Bank, cut off Palestinians from Jerusalem and further dim their hopes for a contiguous state.
The subcommittee of the Civil Administration's Higher Planning Council convened hours before Netanyahu was due to visit Germany, where he faces a dressing down from Chancellor Angela Merkel over the settlement project.
"This is a procedural preliminary phase, to deposit plans," the defence official said. "Every future step will still require more permits."
Israel's housing minister has said construction work in E1 will not begin for at least a year.
In Brussels on Tuesday, European Union ambassadors responsible for security issues discussed the possibility that all EU states would write to Israel to express their displeasure over the settlement expansion plans or summon Israeli envoys for consultations, as five EU countries have already done.
No formal decisions were taken during the EU meeting and the issue will be discussed further on Friday, EU diplomats told Reuters.
The United States, Israel's main ally, has also urged it to reconsider the settlement plan, saying the move hinders peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Israel has said it will not bend, citing a need to stand by its "vital interests" even in the face of international criticism.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed in 2010 in a dispute over settlement building.
Such projects in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in a 1967 war, are considered illegal by most countries. Israel cites historical and Biblical links to the two areas, where approximately 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians now live. | <urn:uuid:b15076ba-8f06-41a8-b370-46719bebd5a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.terra.com/israel-moves-ahead-with-e1-settlement-plans,1f7056121f56b310VgnCLD2000000dc6eb0aRCRD.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950231 | 482 | 1.765625 | 2 |
OK,I make it easier...Where is Hallelujah Mountain featured in Hollywood blockbuster“Avatar”?
Where is Hallelujah Mountain featured in Hollywood blockbuster“Avatar”?It is in Zhangjiajie,Hunan province.
The “Southern Sky Column”in Zhangjiajie in the northwest of Hunan povince is becoming more famous along with the release of film“Avatar”,it had its name changed to “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” in a ceremony by the local people on 25th January. The peak is 1,074 meters above the sea level and one of more than 3,000 mountains in the Yuanjiajie Scenic spot,the core area of the World Natural Heritage Wulingyuan Scenic Zone in Zhangjiajie City,Huanan province.
The movie Avatar was inspired by the “Southern Sky Column”,as a hollywood photographer spent 4 days trip in Zhangjiajie on December 2008,many pictures he shot became prototypes for vavious elements in the “Avatar” movie.
The Folk said:“we renamed the peak to Avatar Hallelujah Muntain to show People that Zhangjiajie is walking into the world now.”The government said:“Zhangjiajie is China's pride!”
Pandora is far,but Zhangjiajie is near. It is understood with that the release of “Avatar”, Zhangjiajie’s tourism will receive a boom during the spring festivel. Many senic spots are get ready to welcome tourists from all around the world. | <urn:uuid:48e3a01b-fdc8-40a7-a1f2-2454293e2639> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.realityfanforum.com/index.php/topic,24777.msg614868.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93467 | 365 | 1.609375 | 2 |
- Development & Aid
- Economy & Trade
- Human Rights
- Global Governance
- Civil Society
Thursday, June 20, 2013
- Organisations of small farmers and human rights groups are disappointed with the measures announced by the Brazilian government to address the problem of violence in the Amazon jungle region, after four environmental activists were murdered in less than a week.
The administration of Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers Party called on rural leaders and local authorities Tuesday to take part in discussions on the creation of a special “crisis cabinet” and to help analyse the protection measures ordered for 125 activists facing death threats.
The government also promised to step up efforts against deforestation in the rainforest and to earmark special funds for the task.
The latest string of murders began on Tuesday May 24, when a husband and wife team of activists, José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and María do Espírito Santo, who spent years fighting illegal deforestation in the jungle, were killed in the Praialta-Piranheira nature reserve in the northern Amazon state of Pará.
Three days later, on Friday May 27, environmentalist Adelino Ramos was killed in the northwestern Amazon state of Rondonia. And on Saturday May 28, Erenildo Silveira dos Santos, who the police believe was a witness to the murders of the couple in Pará, was also killed.
Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the leaders of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) – the largest rural movement in Brazil – said the measures announced by the government were merely aimed at “showing society that it is doing something.” But he said the creation of an inter-ministerial crisis cabinet “won’t solve anything.”
Only 91 trials have been held for a total of 1,580 cases of rural activists killed in the last 25 years, and just 21 of the masterminds behind the murders and 73 of the gunmen were convicted, according to the Catholic Land Pastoral (CPT), which tracks rural killings in Brazil.
Isolete Wichieniski, a CPT leader, told IPS that the only person who has actually served a sentence for ordering a killing was Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, for the 2005 murder of U.S.-born nun and rainforest activist Dorothy Stang.
The problem of rural violence has been aggravated in recent years by the growth of agribusiness and logging and mining activities, said Wichieniski.
In Pará, for example, “logging companies that pressure communities trying to preserve their nature reserves have made a lot of headway,” he said.
The production of soy for export and crops for making biodiesel has also grown.
But he said the main cause of the violence is the impunity enjoyed by those who order and carry out the killings.
Although he said the government’s decision to set up a crisis cabinet is “well-intentioned,” he called for “structural, not mitigation measures.”
After similar emergency measures were adopted in 2005, rural conflicts momentarily went down, but later they flared back up, in the face of an inoperative justice system, he said.
In Pará, still one of the most violent states, 212 people have been killed in conflicts over land ownership and use since April 1996, when police opened fire on a crowd of landless farmers holding a peaceful protest march on a rural highway in Eldorado de Carajás, killing 19 and injuring hundreds.
The CPT reported that since that year, another 809 people in Pará have received death threats, like the husband and wife team of forest conservationists before they were killed.
The family of Ribeiro da Silva and Espírito Santo pointed out that the threats from logging companies had been fully reported to the police.
Stedile linked the murders to the recent vote in the lower house of Congress, which approved a reform of the 1965 forest code that would make it easier to clear land in the Amazon jungle for agriculture.
Among other things, the bill introduced by Communist legislator Aldo Rebelo would grant an amnesty on fines to landowners who illegally chopped down forest on their property, as long as the deforestation took place before July 2008 and the farm is 400 hectares or less in size.
The forest code sets out how much of their land farmers can clear. Currently, 80 percent of the forest must be left intact on property in the Amazon jungle, 35 percent in tropical savannah zones within what is known as the “legal Amazon” – which encompasses the nine Brazilian states partially or totally covered by rainforest – and 20 percent in the rest of the country.
But the new law on land use would reduce the amount of forest that farmers must preserve, allowing them to cut trees along rivers and on hilltops and hillsides, which are currently protected.
“I think some logging and charcoal companies in the region interpreted the circumstances as favourable to them, so they felt free to commit these barbaric acts,” Stedile said.
The reform of the forest code, which is still pending Senate approval, also faces opposition from the Rousseff administration.
A total of 700,000 hectares were deforested in Brazil’s Amazon jungle in 2009 and 2010, the lowest level of destruction since records on deforestation began to be kept in 1988.
But a government report whose preliminary results were released on May 19 stated that from August 2010 to April 2011, deforestation rose 27 percent with respect to the same period the year before, with the destruction especially concentrated in the soy-growing western state of Mato Grosso – a phenomenon that the government blames on expectations that an amnesty will be approved.
Stedile blames the violence on the lack of a land reform policy “that would effectively break up and distribute the large landed estates, breaking their economic and political power.
“Because the large landowners see that even though the agrarian reform process is stalled, occupations of land and conflicts continue because of the high level of poverty and lack of land, they resort to using force,” he said.
The MST leader said large landowners, often in alliance with regional lawmakers and state governors, are responsible for the killings. | <urn:uuid:fe419308-4cea-4c87-800f-5cc0b704c17f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/06/brazil-activists-call-for-stronger-action-against-violence-in-amazon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967561 | 1,302 | 1.625 | 2 |
On Monday, I dealt with words a lot; I was in the Language and Dining Center three separate times, and not once was I there for dining. But between trying to get my pronunciation correct for the poem I’m working on for my French class and leaving the world of sound behind for American Sign Language, I started to wonder about the role words play in my college experience. This has only been compounded by a discussion in my Philosophy of Religion class today about whether we can use analogy to talk about God, and my metaphysics reading for tomorrow, which is about whether universals correspond to meaningful predicates.
In high school, my days were a lot more varied in terms of thought material. I worked with my hands a lot more, dealt with more equations, did more silent sports, and got a lot more sleep. I had more time to listen to Spanish radio, and spent a great deal of time with a dog who didn’t have that throat machine they have in Up. No one was awake in my house at one in the morning, much less singing in the shower or talking. I certainly remember amazing conversations from high school (some of which I think propelled me towards Carleton), but the sheer magnitude of language in my life now is kind of ridiculous.
I read something last year from an essayist who said what she remembered most about college was just constantly talking. It seems clear at this point that conversation has been a defining part of my college experience, and I would say that’s probably been for the better. A lot of that has been very much of my own choosing: I major in the humanities, run two discussion groups, debate, and have a job that pays me to read articles on how college students can read better (among other things, of course). Of my own accord, I often staying up way later than I expect with a myriad of people sprinkled around the Carleton campus because we are just talking. But while I really want to remember the conversations I have in college, I know there’s more too, like dancing, cereal, the snow, watching birds. My memory, though formed mainly of words, is filled with images and sound and maybe some small glimpses of said possible universals.
Being in college is a unique experience, to be sure, not least because it is a complete luxury to have the time and space and community to just figure it all out. For now, all I know is that we seem to have a lot of ideas; about ourselves, about the world, about things beyond the things we see, about how we can change things, about the future, and we express a lot of those through words. It’s really great to be somewhere with a lot of interesting people who are thinking, and comfortable talking about thinking too.
This term, through the ACE (Academic Civic Engagement), my friend Simone and I are TA-ing a class of Northfield High School students who are taking an ethics class online. It’s been incredibly fun; the kids are great, and it’s really cool to watch (and hopefully help) them grapple with philosophical problems for the first time. Last week, the students read a chapter on Plato, and while I was thinking about trying to explain the world of Forms, I started thinking about the scene from Harry Potter where the adults all cast protective spells over Hogwarts. Remember? OK, now sorry but this example really doesn’t work in the context of the movie, so put aside your thoughts of Molly Weasley kicking butt.
The idea I’m going for is this: I think we spend most of our time in sort of this bubble (cave?) and once in a while get to crack through the surface and realize it’s pretty amazing. It seems like maybe words are what we need to function inside the bubble, to communicate with each other and express some small part of what’s out there. Don’t get me wrong; language is definitely important, but I think words are sometimes just the currency for ideas. They’re definitely the preferred medium in academia, and the most convenient for communication with other people, usually. But there are other options out there; for my roommate, dance seems to break through some of the barriers that separate us, for my friend Tabatha, art seems to have a lot of answers. I know math majors who find truth and beauty in proofs they can’t express in words, musicians who find something else in song. So college is fun because there’s all this talking all the time, but I really want to remember something else about some of the discussions I have here. I’ve started ice-skating again, and I kind of suck, but sometimes I start going fast, faster than I ever thought I could go across frozen water. Once in a while I reach the other side and I have no idea where I’ve been; the words in my thoughts just haven’t existed in whatever just passed. And oddly, the best conversations I’ve had are kind of like that too. | <urn:uuid:783a61b4-a17e-49c5-baf0-60f2caa68881> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://apps.carleton.edu/admissions/blogs/rachellevit/?story_id=811128 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975056 | 1,048 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Sam Harris has recently written on his blog about consciousness.
The first stab he gave was troubling for me. For one, he seems to be embracing some of the sillier notions about qualia (for a good satire of qualia and zombies, read this movie script:http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/) as Sam says in his first essay:
“To say that a creature is conscious, therefore, is not to say anything about its behavior; no screams need be heard, or wincing seen, for a person to be in pain. Behavior and verbal report are fully separable from the fact of consciousness: We can find examples of both without consciousness (a primitive robot) and consciousness without either (a person suffering “locked-in syndrome”).?”
Now this as on its own isn’t necessarily silly, though I think behaviour plays a huge role on our conscious experience (Smiling can make you happy). But then in his third footnote, he says this:
“And, again, I should say that philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland just don’t buy this. But I do not understand why. My not seeing how consciousness can possibly be an illusion entails my not understanding how they (or anyone else) can think that it might be one.”
I might be confused myself as well, but Dennett in Consciousness Explained did not say that consciousness would be an illusion, but a bag of tricks—that is, not so superduper-mind-blowing as we feel and think it to be. And then the whole business of “what it is like to be something” seems like a red herring, an intuitive feeling that has nothing to do with the scientific inquiry we would like to start.
Defeatism is on many of Sam’s lines, saying all the time that this or that is impossible, pointing out his own failure to imagine something as evidence of there being something to it. Where have I heard this argument before? Creationists come to mind:
“—an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness. However, this is not to say that some other thesis about consciousness must be true. Consciousness may very well be the lawful product of unconscious information processing. But I don’t know what that sentence means—and I don’t think anyone else does either.”
“This situation has been characterized as an “explanatory gap”? and the “hard problem of consciousness,”? and it is surely both. I am sympathetic with those who, like the philosopher Colin McGinn and the psychologist Steven Pinker, have judged the impasse to be total: Perhaps the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible in human terms.? Every chain of explanation must end somewhere—generally with a brute fact that neglects to explain itself. Consciousness might represent a terminus of this sort. Defying analysis, the mystery of inner life may one day cease to trouble us.”
“—it is difficult to imagine what experimental findings could render the emergence of consciousness comprehensible.”
“How is it that unconscious events can give rise to consciousness? Not only do we have no idea, but it seems impossible to imagine what sort of idea could fit in the space provided.”
And then the point about no gradual smooth change? Sam sounds again like a creationist:
“The problem, however, is that the distance between unconsciousness and consciousness must be traversed in a single stride, if traversed at all. Just as the appearance of something out of nothing cannot be explained by our saying that the first something was “very small,” the birth of consciousness is rendered no less mysterious by saying that the simplest minds have only a glimmer of it. “
When Sam got to vitalism I thought he was onto something: The analogy is great! Now, in terms of software, programs, the organization of the brain, are we on our way to get rid of the life juice of mental life. But then Sam went on oblivious to this possibility:
“The analogy is a bad one: Life is defined according to external criteria; Consciousness is not (and, I think, cannot be).”
Then came the mystic out and showed his holistic robes to daylight:
“We have reasons to believe that reductions of this sort are neither possible nor conceptually coherent.”
“And yet, whatever insights arise from correlating mental and physical events, it seems unlikely that one side of the world will be fully reduced to the other. “
So after all the success of reductionism, now, it’s bound to fail? Want to bet?
Then the cheap tactic of making this into an either-or issue: either by introspection or not at all… And introspection has provided to be a great tool for discoveries, just ask your own intuition about your awareness (an invisible gorilla should come into mind about now).
“Many truths about ourselves will be discovered in consciousness directly, or not discovered at all. “
So in short, Sam is saying (unless if I’m being deluded into reading into his words something else than he meant) that consciousness is mysterious, science is flawed, and it just seems impossible to ever make progress on this issue. So don’t even try.
When Sam wrote about the mysteriousness of consciousness in his previous books, I was okay with that, because they were not about consciousness, so he could play that card and context. But being one of the leading proponents of proper scientific thinking in all areas of our life, he’s not really leading a great example with this newest piece. By only proclaiming the mystic and awe, and not really chopping into it, he’s sounding like the people who out of laziness just say “Whau! Mindboggling! I can’t imagine how this magic could be a bag of tricks, therefore it can’t! Because my imagination is the gold standard for all reality.” Ergo Defeatism. | <urn:uuid:8f3f3eb0-9174-4503-91d6-fae682285d25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.samharris.org/forum/viewthread8646/viewthread/16353/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962492 | 1,284 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Photos on canvas, the perfect birthday gift, can be easily created thanks to canvas printing technology. A canvas print is a facet of canvas art which displays images across a stretched canvas which then wraps around a frame. Canvas art is easily displayed in an interior region with the use of customised photographs or paintings.
Canvas prints have become increasingly popular through the integration of stock images or reproductions of artwork on canvas. While the print material remains cotton, many of the large canvas reprints measure 1.5 metres. With improved printing methods, many canvas prints can be printed directly onto any material, thus allowing artists to augment their photos or reproduced artwork and print it directly onto the media without diminishing any of the existing quality.
While inexpensive cotton is often used to create the canvas, the use of pure white cotton allows for the colour representation to print with precision. After printing the image, the canvas can be stretched and stapled to the wooden panel through the use of stretcher bars wherein it is glued down and displayed. The use of solid pine for the wooden panel provides additional strength. If the printed image is meant to convey a traditional three dimensions often associated with the use of mounted canvas artwork, then the printed image is often wrapped around the edges in the full-bleed effect.
Canvas prints have become a widely popular birthday gift idea for your home or for others. Thanks to the internet online photo to canvas creations can be ordered in minutes so there is no need to panic if you forgot about a certain birthday, or have just lacked the time to purchase a gift until the last minute. If you do not have a personal photo you want to print for the birthday photos on canvas you can select from a wide range of banksy street art converted to banksy canvas prints, or you can select from a wide range of vintage poster prints. You can also customise bus destination scrolls or tram scrolls from replica 1950s and 1960s signs, fitted with your personal wording.
Nothing is more unique for a birthday present than personalised canvas photos, especially when you help your loved one remember their birthday with a personal photo. Canvas photos can also be divided into a photo collage so that multiple events can be combined to send a single message: happy birthday.
Buying someone a photo on canvas is an absolutely perfect present, if you weigh up what people most want when considering the perfect birthday or Christmas present, the criteria would usually be something like this:
- The present will be something they can use
- The present will be different to any other presents they might recieve
- The present will be memorable
- The present is something they will look at everyday and enjoy
- The present is personal to their lives
- The present is thoughtful
- The present is affordable
A photo on canvas is all of these, we are a little biased but we feel that it is THE PERFECT PRESENT for any occasion. Be it fathers or mothers day, a birthday, a wedding, Christmas or even just a present to tell someone how much you care, you should alwasy consder buying them a unique, photo canvas gift.
Here at Blue Horizon Printing we have just made it even easier for our customers to gift a canvas print to soemone special, we now offer gift vouchers in any denomination. These gift vouchers are easy to order on the site http://bluehorizonprints.com.au/ or by contacting us directly on email@example.com
A canvas print poses a unique appeal to the onlookers. Everyone loves a canvas print as it introduces an element of magnificent grace to the room where it is put up. A photo to canvas print combines elements of classic and contemporary together to inspire a different kind of appeal. The advantages of a photo to canvas print are listed below.
However, before deciding on photo canvas printing, make it sure that you are clear about certain points regarding it. Ensure that you are getting yourself a 100 percent cotton canvas mounted on a premium wooden frame. Also, make sure that the ink used in the canvas printing is of archival quality. The archival quality ink will ensure that the canvas print stays alive for decades at a stretch. Finally, check whether the canvas print is being sprayed with a UV resistant spray in the end. The combination of the UV resistant spray and the archival ink ensures the longevity of the digital photo canvas.
A canvas print looks great
Canvases have been traditionally associated with oil paintings. For this reason, when you print photos on canvas you actually attribute a classical charm to the photograph. You transform a simple photograph to a grand painting and the canvas becomes the focal point of attention at your home or office. The canvas print magnifies the effect of the photograph manifold and shows your taste for art. You can have prints of famous art works printed on canvas for this purpose. You can also convert a painting made by your own to a canvas print. The canvas art print can be customized to any shape depending on the space availability at your house.
A canvas print is different
A canvas print is different from a traditional photo paper print. Unlike a traditional photo paper print, a digital photo canvas is more expressive and vivid. The fine details of a real life photograph are transformed effectively to a stunning canvas print after adding the required effects from a photo editing software tool like adobe Photoshop. You can print any photos on canvas, and that includes photos of your own and your family members. You can even turn your portrait into an amazing pop art print. Besides photos of people, you can also print a natural landscape onto a canvas. It is an amazing experience to see a beautiful landscape photograph transformed to a magnificent canvas print.
They are unique gift idea
The trend of presenting a digital photo canvas as a special gift is fast catching up. They are indeed very special as they can be personalized to any extent. You can give the canvas art as a gift on a birthday, on a wedding anniversary or on a house warming occasion. You can present the canvas art gift to anyone, your spouse, your fiance, your children or your parents to show how much you really love them.
It is affordable
A photo to canvas print is not expensive at all. Printing your favourite photo onto canvas is now a very affordable or extremely personalised way of displaying those favourite holday photos or cherished family photos. Instead of paying $100 for a wooden frame a canvas print is already ready to hang straight on the wall, a good canvas printing company will have the prin t delivered with picture wire fitted and even protective pads on the base of the print to stop it rubbing against the wall.
Here at Blue Horizon Printing we are experts at providing premium quality, very affordable canvas art. We deliver from Darwin to Tasmania to Perth in record time. Canvas prints to Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney can be delivered in as little as 2 days! Thats fast photo on canvas printing! Dont forget to we also offer free delivery, as standard! | <urn:uuid:a14bb8ea-bce3-4dd4-b2b4-53422a5cc10c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bluehorizonprints.com.au/blog/category/photo-to-canvas-prints/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937593 | 1,421 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Sitting there looking vainly at the growth, or lack of it to be more precise, of the British economy quarter by quarter following the introduction of austerity measures is a dubious use of time. So rather than sit there each quarter and discuss a dismal economy, I think the first step is to understand that we are in a world-wide economic crisis of the capitalist system. We also need to understand that the policies being introduced are actually not only extending the current crisis, but given that they are leading to increased income and wealth inequality, they will have a devastating impact upon the working classes in the countries introducing these measures. Moreover, the impact of austerity is not accident, it is being introduced specifically to create the economic contraction and the increased wealth and income inequality in the hope that private sector will take over the state sector services being undermined.
We need to understand that the introduction of austerity in an economic crisis does not lead to economic growth contrary to the absurd pronouncements of Prime Minister, David Cameron. Essentially, following a slight blip caused by the Olympics, I suspect we will be witnessing rather bad news. The combination of “beggar thy neighbour” low corporate taxation (to supposedly encourage investment in Britain) and cuts to public spending, services and benefits is not leading to a reinvigoration of the economy; rather the opposite is occurring.
Quite simply, the fall in service sector activity (which accounts for 75% of British economic activity) for the first time in two years (note that it was not in great shape beforehand) means that the economy is contracting.
“The closely watched CIPS/Markit purchasing managers index (PMI) for services dropped from 50.2 to 48.9 in December, below the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction. It is the lowest reading since April 2009 and substantially undershot analyst forecasts of a rise to 50.5 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/04/uk-service-sector-contracts-pmi).”
There are additional things that indicate future problems. The manufacturing sector is geared towards export; decreases in demand due to the introduction of austerity in the periphery in the EU are starting to be felt in Great Britain (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/11/honda-cuts-800-jobs-swindon), whether this will be balanced by increased demand for luxury cars in China (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21003670) is another important question depending on the amount of trade to each area.
The collapse into administration of three high street companies [Jessops (2000 jobs at risk), HMV (4500 jobs at risk) and Blockbuster (4190 jobs at risk) will clearly add to unemployment. The fact that the internet buying is replacing these businesses means that workers who have lost jobs will not be rehired by these companies and some of these companies pay minimal taxes in Britain (e.g., Amazon).
In Britain we are seeing declining productivity because businesses use cheap labour rather than making capital investments (it makes no sense to introduce capital and increase productivity both due to labour costs being so low and no demand for increased goods and services); it also indicates that they are keeping people on irrespective of declining demand for goods:
“Figures for the economy as a whole were not much better, with a 2.4% decline in productivity over the year. The figures take the sheen off supposedly buoyant employment statistics that showed companies continuing to create jobs throughout last year.
Some companies have retained staff by forcing employees to accept pay freezes, or in some cases a cut in wages. But, as productivity declined, labour costs per unit of output rose by more than 3% over the year to October (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/03/business-productivity-declines-demand-falls).”
If businesses are keeping workers on irrespective of demand for their goods and services and waiting for the economy to pick up, what will happen if the economy does not pick up? Clearly, they will sack workers if the economy contracts. Moreover, if the economy picks up, most probably, they will force an increase in productivity by using speed-up or forcing workers to work harder to raise productivity. In either case, it is not a good sign for employment possibilities for workers in the near future. Additionally, there may be some problems with the government’s argument that jobs are being created in the private sector as they seemed to have misused the employment statistics of Office of National Statistics by including as employed those in government programmes who are not being paid by employers but rather through benefits (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/15/uk-jobs-soar-real?INTCMP=SRCH) which are far lower than even the woefully inadequate minimum wage that is not a living wage.
Government concentration on the supply side of the labour market, as though people are lazy and do not want to work is the reason for unemployment is more than an obvious denial of reality. It is part of a divide and rule campaign demonising the poor and disabled as scroungers rather than addressing the fact that there are no jobs. This amounts to punishing the victims of the economic system (the poor and unemployed) and those that quite simply are unable to work due to illness and chronic health conditions. Cutting benefit will not force people into work, there need to be available jobs for that to occur; it will simply increase impoverishment and misery. An estimated 200,000 children are being pushed into poverty by the government’s policy of a 1% benefit cap over the next three years, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/17/benefits-squeeze-200000-children-poverty), a statistic not being disputed by the government.
Quite simply, the attack is hitting the most vulnerable: the disabled, single mothers, the elderly and the long-term unemployed who are already barely surviving on benefits that are meagre to say the least. The government’s argument when introducing the 1% cap on benefits that benefits should not increase faster than wages (when stagnating and decreasing wages is part of government policy and benefits are so very low) is playing off the working class and the poor against each other. In a period of deliberately created increases income and wealth inequality fuelled by the incorrect view that profits and the income of the wealthy are the basis for economic growth, it is the majority in British society that are paying for the class warfare being waged in the advanced capitalist world.
Austerity and its impact:
While leading members of the IMF claim that they underestimated the impact of the introduction of austerity and pretend to be shocked at the situation in Greece, the British government pretends that it does not understand that austerity is introduced to contract an economic system in the short run; both claims are extremely dubious to any person that has studied mainstream macroeconomic theory.
So, why is austerity being introduced and how has the government (and the Troika for that matter) got the strange idea that austerity will lead to economic growth? This relates to the impact of these measures in the long-run which attempt to remove “imbalances” between the public and private sector in favour of the later; in fact, David Cameron alludes to this when he makes the absurd argument “that the public sector cannot create growth.” However, for those that have any memory of the post-war period, we are well-aware that the public sector can create growth; it does so in three ways:
1) Hiring people in the public sector (direct government job creation) creates jobs and income for those that did not have it who then use that money to buy goods and services from the private sector;
2) The social welfare state provides additional income for those that do not have it and also provides services so that income is not spent on things provided by the government (e.g., health care), this means that there is more income to buy goods and services from the private sector;
3) The government demands goods and services from the private sector; this removes uncertainty for the private sector in terms of investment, output production, and job creation.
All of these things benefit the private sector and are part of what enable economic growth especially following a bust in the economy; both government investment and higher incomes can create economic growth. Austerity measures will not do this in the short run and it is debatable whether this will be a successful strategy for economic growth in the long-term; the increasing instability introduced by increased wealth and income inequality and lack of regulation will certainly lead to deeper and stronger fluctuations.
However, the government and large numbers of people in extra-governmental agencies (e.g., the IMF and the World Bank) believe that it is the private sector that are so-called “wealth creators” and they believe that privatisation (which enables the private sector to make profits providing these services instead of the government) and squeezing wages will enable profitability leading to economic growth. What we are seeing is that while this ideological argument may sound wonderful, reality is quite another story.
It is necessary to understand the interrelationships between production, consumption and distribution in the context of a capitalist economic system to understand what is happening today. The capitalist system hit a point of over-accumulation in the collapse of the financial sector in 2008 and we are still in an economic crisis. While the financial sector recovered from the crisis due to bank bailouts and centralisation of surviving capital, the rest of the economy is not faring as well as an understatement.
We are seeing the result of the long-term attack on the standards of living of working people in the advanced capitalist world from the late 1970s forwards, falling rates of profits in the industrial/manufacturing sectors in the advanced capitalist world due to high wages and decent working conditions leading to MNCs shifting production to the capitalist periphery to cut both labour costs and costs of raw materials has led to the creation of persistent unemployment in the advanced capitalist world and the shift of the economies in the advanced capitalist world to dependence upon the service sector.
Instead of shoring up the social welfare state and the state sector to keep employment and income up following the crash to enable a recovery, austerity measures have been either forced upon so-called debtor countries or introduced by right-wing governments throughout the majority of the advanced capitalist world. Bailout of the financial sectors led to both rising government deficits and rising public debt/GDP, the introduction of “austerity measures” essentially forced the majority to pay for the crisis due to deficit and debt reduction policies that they had no responsibility in creating. Shrinking the public sector, privatisation of public sector services (e.g., public health services) and selling off of nationalised companies (e.g., Greece, Spain and Italy), lowering pensions directly (e.g., Greece) and through changes in inflation indices (e.g., Great Britain), decreasing benefits, and wage and pension freezes for state workers is a direct assault on incomes. The attack on the public sector has also led to increased unemployment and the ability to introduce a wage squeeze for those still employed. While theoretically this will cut costs and raise profits, the problem arises that decreased incomes means that demand has decreased and there will be no increased investment, employment and output in the absence of demand for these goods and services.
While this has limited effect on the export-oriented manufacturing sector, that sector will certainly be affected by the introduction of austerity in the periphery of Europe.
Who are the wealth creators?
When Cameron (and other leaders in the advanced capitalist world) describe businessmen as “wealth creators” they seem to have forgotten the contribution of labour; land lying fallow creates nothing except spontaneously, capital does nothing in and of itself … it is the direct application of human labour (in combination with land and capital) that enables the creation of wealth. In the absence of sale at a price ensuring that profits are returned, profits remain unrealised. It is the incomes of working people that enable the sale of goods and undercutting their incomes means that goods and services will remain unsold. This deliberate inversion of the reality of the capitalist system serves them ideologically, but demonstrates a lack of understanding of the interrelationship between production, consumption and distribution.
So while privatisation potentially creates an area of profitable exploitation for the private sector, the decreased incomes of the majority means that they are unable to purchase services that were formerly socialised. For those on lower incomes and those on benefits, purchase of services is far too expensive and it is women that are filling in the gap in services (e.g., child-care, caring for the sick and elderly) in their homes. Contrary to neoliberal expectations, the private sector has not jumped into fill the gap, that is, because demand is not being matched by the income to pay for these things and the private sector will not create growth in the absence of perceived increases in demand and hence profitability. That means, that all these policies will do is eliminate access to services on the part of the majority as they cannot pay for them and further increase impoverishment. The so-called wealth creators cannot create wealth without labour both in production and in consumption.
Perhaps, they are taking their inversion of reality too seriously … without demand there is no growth, without income there is no demand, without labour there is neither production nor consumption! | <urn:uuid:6d9e143d-fed4-4bf4-a762-b650a5cf35e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://my.firedoglake.com/anticapitalist/tag/triple-dip-recession/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959724 | 2,796 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The Founder’s Story
In 1991, Elspeth Pope, recently retired as a professor in library and information science, met Dr. Melissa Hardie, director of the Hypatia Trust in Cornwall, England. Melissa and her husband, Dr. Philip Budden, had created the Hypatia Trust, a library of published and personal documentation of the achievements of hundreds of creative women. Their collection of more than 15,000 items was housed in a fine building, in the garden next to their home. Their work – and Hypatia’s story planted the seed that grew into the dream that became the reality of Hypatia-in-the-Woods.
When Melissa and Phil visited Elspeth and her husband, Jim Holly, at their Hammersley Inlet home, they mutually agreed that the beautiful property and an existing small building would make a fine U.S. extension of Hypatia Trust, Cornwall.
In 1998, after Jim’s passing, Elspeth established a trust to hold her property as the home for Hypatia-in-the-Woods. She formed a board of directors to oversee its operation and guided the development of articles of incorporation and by-laws to govern the new organization. | <urn:uuid:e6a2e0f1-6b65-4d1b-bf8f-53cef84cc31b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hypatiainthewoods.org/who-we-are-2/the-founders-story/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958714 | 257 | 1.742188 | 2 |
by Bethany M. Dunbar
copyright the Chronicle 8-8-2012
CANAAN — A landmark working dairy farm here has been sold to a young farm family while a new wildlife area was created, protecting six miles of frontage on the Connecticut River and ensuring public access for fishermen, campers, and bird watchers.
It was a complicated deal and one lots of people wanted to celebrate at the Bill and Ursula Johnson farm on Friday, August 3. About 70 people attended, including the heads of several state agencies, plus local legislators — Senator Bob Starr and Representative Bob Lewis.
Secretary Deb Markowitz of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources said the Johnsons’ sense of civic duty in wanting to make the whole thing happen was laudable.
“This is just one more example of what it means to be a Vermonter,” she said.
Secretary Chuck Ross of the Agency of Agriculture said when he was approached about this idea that it was so clearly a wonderful project that it was a “no-brainer.”
Vermont Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Pat Berry said the project is unusual because it brings together three of Vermont’s top values: working lands, conservation, and public access.
“Look around you. This is a big deal,” he said.
Bob Klein of the Nature Conservancy agreed. “What makes Vermont so special is the integration of those things,” he said. “Every project is a manifestation of a collection of values. Conservation isn’t something somebody else does.”
The deal took more than two years to put together. The Johnsons sold 849 acres, of which 583 is being kept in farming, with conservation easements. The remaining 266 is being made into a state-owned Wildlife Management Area (WMA). The property and easements cost $1.45-million, according to Tracy Zschau, regional director of the Vermont Land Trust.
She said the first step was to buy the conservation easement, which was about $450,000 of the total cost.
The first main funding source was the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Upper Connecticut River Mitigation and Enhancement Fund. Representatives of the fund put up the money for the easement plus the additional $1-million to buy the property, with the understanding that VLT would find others to help share the cost.
In the long run, Ms. Zschau said, other funding sources agreed to help, and the New Hampshire group ended up paying under $500,000.
Funds came in from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.
Cy and Andrea Nelson bought the 583-acre working farm, with easements in place, for $965,000. The Nelsons will also have a free lease on 50 acres of land within the state-owned WMA in exchange for allowing public access to the river.
Mr. Nelson said he was glad to have the opportunity. It was not a simple decision though.
“It was a big commitment financially and for our family in general,” he said. Cy is the son of Doug Nelson, who was also on hand for the celebration.
“I’ve worked for him on the family farm since I was a kid,” he said. Now he and his wife, Andrea, have a two-year-old daughter of their own, named Sloan. They are expecting again soon.
Mr. Nelson said the Johnsons helped make the transition very smooth. The Nelsons are employing the same five workers the Johnsons did, which they said has made a big difference. Some of the employees live in housing on the farm.
Cy and Andrea Nelsons have 215 milking cows in Canaan and 250 in Coventry. He said the river-bottom rock-free land on the Johnson farm is ideal for farming, and the corn is doing extremely well this year.
“I think we’re as good as anything,” he said.
“The dairy industry is a pretty unique industry. Our profits are always fluctuating.”
Bill and Ursula Johnson have retired as farmers, but Mr. Johnson still serves the area in the state House of Representatives. Mr. Johnson represents the towns of Brighton, Canaan, East Haven, Lemington, Newark, Norton, and Westmore. Ursula Johnson worked in the field of conservation.
Over and over again in the course of the day, officials remarked on what a wonderful job the couple had done keeping the land in great shape. Where many farmers would have drained a lot of the wetlands in order to make more pasture or hay land, the Johnsons kept a lot of it intact, and as a result there is a tremendous abundance and variety of birds and wildlife. On Friday, people saw half a dozen great blue herons, a northern harrier (marsh hawk), and several other species of birds.
After the speeches, people were invited to take tours of the farm or two parts of the WMA. One was north of the main barn, and the other was south into part of Lemington.
“There’s not a written plan for this area yet,” said Fritz Gerhardt of Beck Pond LLC, a conservation scientist who led the Lemington tour and pointed out some highlights in the farm land and wetlands. The WMA plans for the whole state will be discussed at a public hearing in Montpelier on August 21. People who have ideas for what should be done with the property will have a chance to give their opinions.
Joan Allen of The Nature Conservancy, Ms. Zschau and Jane Lazorchak of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department were credited as being the three masterminds behind the complicated project.
“This is exemplary by national standards,” said David Govatski, president of Friends of Pondicherry, based in New Hampshire. Mr. Govatski did a bird survey for the land trust that showed 89 species, some of them rare. He said the wetlands are home to hundreds of wood ducks, American bitterns, and purple sandpipers to name a few. Of the species found in the survey, 30 species of special concern to conservationists were noted.
contact Bethany M. Dunbar at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:c4da3b0a-6d4a-4143-91f2-d69175e630c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bartonchronicle.com/tag/vermont-fish-and-wildlife/?ajaxCalendar=1&mo=12&yr=2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967023 | 1,341 | 1.648438 | 2 |
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|The cost of an estate?
Written by Benedicte
(4/13/2010 1:26 p.m.)
in consequence of the missive, The liberty of a manor, and other ramblings, penned by Elizabeth K
How much would the rental of Netherfield have cost?
What kind of an estate could Mr Bingley afford with his 100000 fortune? I assume one did not borrow before buying, so the purchase of an estate resulted in the loss of ready money, but on the other hand the estate yielded a yearly income...Was it supposed to yield 4% as money seemed to do in JA's novels?
Groupread is maintained by Myretta with WebBBS 3.21. | <urn:uuid:43e79862-f6d7-4a6b-859a-801c9b82d18e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pemberley.com/bin/library/pandp2010.cgi?read=43024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956292 | 159 | 1.609375 | 2 |
By Monica Alonzo
By Ray Stern
By New Times Staff
By Stephen Lemons
By Chris Parker
By Monica Alonzo
By Stephen Lemons
By Robrt L. Pela
All attempts to refer the stadium tax to voters were rebuffed by the courts and bureaucracy.
What happens when people are denied access to the ballot? It's harder to deny them access to the bullet. It's not possible to deny people a voice. When politicians attempt to do so, there will be different types of resistance by different types of people. Some will write letters to newspapers. Others will take to the streets in protest. And a few marginal, alienated individuals will express their discontent through the barrel of a gun.
It's easy to dismiss such a person as a madman. But madness doesn't exist in a vacuum. We label people like Larry Naman as crazy--but their craziness is only in the extreme nature of their actions. Our wackos, our madmen, reflect the feeling of the society they live in. A person like Larry Naman doesn't just happen. Like fungus, he's produced by a certain climate. Not many of us would take a gun to a political meeting and use it to shoot another person. But how many of us haven't felt like it? How many of us can read the papers and watch the news without having at least the occasional violent fantasy involving certain public officials? How many of us don't ever think that we're getting screwed and that there's nothing we can do about it? Nothing legal, anyway . . .
The most shocking thing about Naman is the intelligence and understanding of the issues he showed in his statement to the press after being arrested.
Another voice from the margins sounds an equally ominous note. The Libertarian party is often regarded as a social club for cranks, but, at a time like this, it's hard to refute its logic. "When you eliminate all peaceful alternatives . . . ballot box, jury box--or cartridge box," says Ernie Hancock, a party activist. "Libertarian philosophy is about exhausting every single peaceful means to regain our freedoms. But you cannot stop the people from rendering their own version of justice. Those that are frail of mind or spirit will be the first ones to go over the edge. We will not be those people, but we guarantee that they exist. When this guy shoots Mary Rose in the butt, we do not advocate it--but, at the same time, it does not surprise us. In fact, we predicted it. It is inevitable that there will be violence. It won't be us--there will be plenty of other people who're much less imaginative and much less devoted to peace. The violence will start small, and it will grow. And it's all due to the fact that you are violating the rights of individual people and eliminating peaceful alternatives."
Wilcox, and others in power, seriously underestimated the level of public outrage surrounding the ballpark. They believed their positions of privilege would forever insulate them. Larry Naman committed an outrageous crime, and pierced the insulation.
I wish Mary Rose Wilcox well, as we all should. I'm sorry for the pain she has suffered, and the pain she still faces. I did not enjoy the image of her in a hospital bed--but I could not help but take some satisfaction from it. It was her own arrogance that put her there, and what happened to her should serve as a lesson to her and everyone else. Our elected representatives should stop talking about increasing security and start thinking about eliminating the need for such security.
Contact Barry Graham at his online address: firstname.lastname@example.org
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Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:52869e74-1970-4770-b995-d7f424eb8086> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1997-08-21/news/assailing/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965252 | 802 | 1.546875 | 2 |
|Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York|
Press Conference on New Partnership for Africa’s Development
In the past decade, Africa had posted impressive gains in peace and security, agricultural development and technological advancement, but heavy debt loads, labour market woes and gender inequality still plagued much of the continent, the top United Nations policy official on Africa said today during a Headquarters news conference.
“We are still discussing and struggling to implement the priority areas of NEPAD,” said Maged Abdelaziz, Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa, referring to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the African- designed and led development strategy aimed at expediting regional and continental integration towards, among other goals, forming an African economic community by 2028.
He was joined at the press conference by Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, Chief Executive Officer of NEPAD’s Planning and Coordinating Agency. Both were participating in “Africa Week”, which runs at Headquarters through Friday and features a series of book launches and debates intended to raise awareness about NEPAD on the margins of the General Assembly’s 17 October meeting on Africa. The officials briefed Member States yesterday on their report to the Assembly’s upcoming session and progress in implementing NEPAD’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa.
Mr. Abdelaziz said that as of December 2011, 30 countries had signed on to NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme. Fifteen of the 31 that had joined the African Peer Review Mechanism had already been reviewed. The information and communications technology revolution was sweeping the continent, particularly in mobile phone service. And democratic elections were held or scheduled between August 2011 and March 2013 in 23 countries.
Still, serious challenges existed in several regions including the strife-torn Sahel. Further, famine in the Horn of Africa was impacting some 13 million people, and, more broadly, women faced restricted access to the labour market and socio-cultural barriers to their full participation in society, he said.
Moreover, despite the boost in official development assistance (ODA) from $47.96 billion in 2010 to $50 billion in 2011, foreign direct investment in Africa had fallen from $43.1 billion to $41.7 billion over the same period, and debt remained a serious challenge in several countries emerging from conflict such as Sierra Leone, Burundi and Central African Republic.
Mr. Abdelaziz drew attention to three reports released today that focused on those and other Africa issues: “Assessing Progress in Africa toward the MDGs”, published jointly by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), African Union Commission, African Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); “Africa’s Decade of Change”, published by the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, NEPAD and ECA; and “The Mutual Review of Development Effectiveness in Africa: Promise and Performance”, a joint publication of ECA and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Mr. Mayaki said NEPAD had set in motion specific frameworks to expand infrastructure and agriculture – the continent’s two main priority areas. Infrastructure development would be crucial to regional integration, as would job creation for the continent’s youth in the next two decades if Africa was to avoid the kind of social unrest sweeping the Arab world that had been sparked by high youth unemployment. “This is an issue we have to be very careful about and address in a very systematic way,” he said.
Job creation must be integral to the Sustainable Development Goals and other post-2015 development schemes, he continued. Africa would need strong partnerships with the United Nations system to help create coherent strategies and programmes towards that end.
Asked if Africa had received and spent its share of the $1 trillion pledged by the world’s largest economies at the G20 Summit in London in 2009 to aid troubled economies during the global financial crisis, Mr. Mayaki said the level of commitment was “way under what was expected in terms of implementation”.
But the suggestion by the G20’s working group on development and its high-level panel on infrastructure that multilateral development banks use their own resources to leverage funds from private actors for infrastructure projects in Africa was working very well, he said. Today, African countries were spending $45 billion annually on infrastructure, but $30 billion more was needed. The G20 Working Group had set up a formula for public-private partnership mechanisms to fill in the gap. The African Development Bank would play a critical role in its implementation. The Bank was also setting up an infrastructure bond initiative open to African and G20 countries.
Mr. Abdelaziz said thus far only 22 African countries had qualified for funding from the $20 billion pledged at the 2009 G8 Summit in L’Aquila under a World Bank-sponsored agricultural and food security project. Another 32 African countries had yet to benefit. The United Nations had begun negotiations with the World Bank to ease restrictions on African nations seeking access to the funds.
Asked if NEPAD or the Office of the Special Adviser were involved in economic issues between Sudan and South Sudan, Mr. Abdelaziz said a high-level meeting had recently taken place in New York to push for implementation of the six economic agreements made between the two nations’ Governments and to advocate for agreements on outstanding issues, including on the status of Abyei, Kordofan and Blue Nile. Mr. Mayaki added that at the South Sudanese Government’s request, NEPAD was spearheading the design of that country’s national development plan, with a focus on transport, energy and agriculture.
Responding to a query about whether African nations had fulfilled the NEPAD goals, Mr. Mayaki said that over the past decade economic growth in many African nations had risen to between 5 and 7 per cent annually thanks to improvements in governance, while poverty had fallen from 50 per cent to between 46 and 47 per cent. Yet, that growth had not been sufficiently inclusive. Moving forward, it was necessary to foster job creation in all sectors, bolster Africa’s private sector and create regional solutions to pressing economic ills such as youth unemployment.
Mr. Abdelaziz said the problem was global commitments on Africa had not been fully implemented. To help rectify that, the United Nations had set up mechanisms to track progress and supplement the OECD’s Mutual Review of Development Effectiveness and other monitoring mechanisms. The United Nations bodies reported their findings biennially to the Assembly.
He dismissed a reporter’s claim that there had been a drop in the number of Africans appointed to senior United Nations posts. On the contrary, their numbers were increasing, he said, noting that Africans currently headed the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and served as the Organization’s special advisers on sexual violence, and on armed conflict, among other areas.
* *** *For information media • not an official record | <urn:uuid:72ac4075-87b5-4d17-b572-48fd1cf7769e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2012/121016_NEPAD.doc.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963775 | 1,465 | 1.726563 | 2 |
"Healthy" Kids' Foods That Aren't
Find out which popular "healthy" kids' foods are actually unhealthy.
My sons are grown now, but I remember well the challenges of stocking my pantry with foods they liked that were good for them too. Because I’m a nutrition professor, my neighbors, friends and family often ask me whether or not a particular food is a nutritious choice for their kids. Here are a few foods that at first glance seem healthy, but deserve a closer look.
—Rachel Johnson, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D.
Next: 1. Granola Bars » | <urn:uuid:ea4f02bf-7a17-40dd-ad5c-8f20424993f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/healthy_kids_foods_that_arent?quicktabs_1=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968269 | 132 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Encyclopedia > H > 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179
Harvey Nichols Harvey Nichols ("Harvey Nicks"), founded in 1813, is an upmarket department store chain. Its original store is in London, England but it expanded to Leeds, England, and later to more cities in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
Harvey Oren Banks Harvey Oren Banks (March 29, 1910–September 22, 1996) was an American civil engineer who was appointed State Engineer of California in 1955 and the first Director of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) in 1956. Under his direction, DWR completed its first California Water Plan and initiated the first stage of planning of the California State Water Project (SWP).
Harvey Patterson Harvey Norman Murray Patterson (born September 12, 1924 in Roland, Manitoba) is a retired politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served as a New Democratic member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1973 to 1975.
Harvey Pekar Harvey Pekar (born October 8, 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American underground comic book writer. His friendship with Robert Crumb led to the creation of the autobiographical comic book series American Splendor, later adapted as a movie of the same name.
Harvey Phillips Harvey Phillips is a distinguished professor emeritus of the Department of Music, Indiana University, at Bloomington (appointed professor 1971 - retired May 1994). He has performed as tuba soloist throughout the world.
Harvey Point The Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity facility , located near Hertford, North Carolina, was established in World War II as an operating base for blimps conducting anti-submarine surveillance of the Atlantic coast. It is currently used by CIA's Directorate of Operations for personnel training in explosives, paramilitary combat, and other clandestine warfare techniques.
Harvey Postlethwaite Dr Harvey Postlethwaite (March 4, 1944 - April 15, 1999) was an engineer and Technical Director of several Formula One teams during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of a heart attack in Spain while supervising the testing of the abortive Honda F1 project.
Harvey Putnam Harvey Putnam (January 5, 1793 - September 20, 1855) was a United States House of Representative from New York. Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, he attended the common schools, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1816 and commenced practice in Attica, New York in 1817.
Harvey River The Harvey River is a river in Western Australia and is the southernmost of the three major waterways which drain into the Peel-Harvey Estuary, with its delta in the southern extreme of the Harvey Estuary. It is about 90 km in length, rising near Mount Keats.
Harvey Sacks Harvey Sacks (1935-November 1975) was an American sociologist influenced by the ethnomethodology tradition. He pioneered extremely detailed studies of the way real people actually used language in the real world.
Harvey Sachs Harvey Sachs, (born 1946), the US-Canadian writer, has written a number of books on musical subjects, most notably the standard biography of and a book of essays on the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, plus an edited collection of Toscanini's letters. These books include:
Harvey Scales Harvey Scales is known nationally for his writing contributions to the music industry. In fact, this R&B singer, songwriter, and producer has written most of the songs on his albums--from the 1978 release of Confidential Affairs recorded on Casablanca Records to the 1997 “Somebody Else’s Somebody,” released on Four Sight Records.
Harvey Seeley Mudd Harvey Seeley Mudd (born Leadville, Colorado 1888, died Los Angeles 1955) was a mining engineer and founder, investor, and president of Cyprus Mines Corporation, a Los Angeles-based international enterprise that operated copper mines on the island of Cyprus. The science and engineering college Harvey Mudd College was named in memory of him.
Harvey Shank Harvey Tillman Shank (born July 29, 1946 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. The right-hander was drafted by the California Angels in the 10th round of the 1968 amateur draft, and he appeared in one game for the Angels in 1970.
Harvey Schiller Harvey Schiller, formerly President of TBS Sports, Southeastern Conference commissioner, and CEO of YankeeNets is currently a member of the All American Football League and both the CEO and Chairman of GlobalOptions Group, an integrated risk mitigation firm. He is a 1960 graduate of The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina.
Harvey Schmidt Harvey Schmidt (born September 12, 1929 in Dallas, Texas, USA) is an American writer of musical theatre, best known for the longest running musical in history, The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 - 2002 for a total of 17,162 performances, all at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. A revival is currently planned for fall 2006.
Harvey Smith (politician) Harvey Smith (born November 6, 1936) is a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He was born in British Columbia and first became involved in politics at age twelve, joining that province's Social Credit Party when it was still a fringe organization.
Harvey Stephens Harvey Spencer Stephens (born 12 November 1970 in Putney, London, England) played the role of Damien Thorn in The Omen. He was four years old when picked for the part, which required him to have his blonde hair dyed jet black.
Harvey Sutton Harvey Vincent Sutton (18 February, 1882 – 21 June, 1963) was an Australian athlete. He competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics in London on the Australasia team, a combined squad of competitors from Australia and New Zealand.
Harvey W. Wiley Harvey Washington Wiley (October 30, 1844 - June 30, 1930) was a noted chemist best known for his leadership in the passage of the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and his subsequent work at the Good Housekeeping Institute laboratories.
Harvey Ward Harvey Grenville Ward (1927—1995) was born in Southern Rhodesia to an English father and a German mother. His parents went as European settlers in Africa and were engaged in enterprises such as the financing of railroad construction and the building of numerous hotels.
Harvey Wasserman Harvey Wasserman is the author and co-author of a dozen books, and a safe energy activist and journalist/historian, fighting for a renewable green future and the restoration of democracy to the United States of America. He has been a featured speaker on Today, Nightline, National Public Radio, CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight and other major media.
Harvey Weiss An archaeologist who discovered Tell Leilan, currently teaches at Yale University as well as attending his dig at Tell Leilan during the summers. His major contribution to the Archaeological Anthropological field has been his theories that certain major climate changes have done much to bring about the genesis and collapse of civilizations, such as the drought 4,200 years before present that he believes brought about the fall of the Akkadian Empire.
Harvey Wheeler John Harvey Wheeler (October 17, 1918 - September 6, 2004) was an American author, political scientist, and scholar. He was best known as co-author with Eugene Burdick of Fail-Safe, 1962, an early cold war novel that depicted what could easily go wrong in an age on the verge of nuclear war.
Harvey Williams (musician) Harvey Williams is a singer, songwriter and guitarist based in London (though originally from Newlyn, Cornwall), who was active in several Sarah Records bands in the 1990s. He recorded as Another Sunny Day, and also played instruments in The Field Mice and Blueboy.
Harvey's (restaurant chain) Harvey's is a fast food restaurant chain that operates in Canada, with locations concentrated in southern and eastern Ontario, southern Quebec, and urban Alberta. It serves hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, onion rings, and other traditional fast food fare.
Harvey's Resort Hotel bombing On August 26, 1980 three men planted a bomb containing almost 1,000 pounds of dynamite at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada. The mastermind behind the bomb, John Birges, was attempting to extort $3 million from the casino.
Harvey, Michigan Harvey is an unincorporated community known in the early years as "Harvey Location" in Marquette County, Michigan, United States. It is a Census-designated place (CDP) used for statistical purposes.
Harveys Supermarket Harveys is a supermarket chain located in the Southeast United States with 68 stores in Georgia, North Florida, and South Carolina . The majority of the Harveys stores are between 18,000 and 35,000 square feet.
Harvie Krumpet Harvie Krumpet is an Australian claymation, made in St Kilda, Melbourne by Adam Elliot (Melodrama Pictures). This short (23 min) film won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 2003, in addition to numerous festival awards and the 2004 Australian Film Institute Best Short Animation award.
Harvie Pocza Harvie Dwight Pocza (born September 22, 1959 in Lethbridge, Alberta) is a retired Canadian ice hockey player who briefly played in the National Hockey League with the Washington Capitals. Pocza was drafted by the Capitals in the 1979 NHL Entry Draft.
Harvie-Watt Baronets The Harvie-Watt Baronetcy, of Bathgate, Linlithgow in West Lothian, Scotland, was created in the Baronetcy of the United Kingdom in 1945. It was created for George Harvie-Watt, who was Winston Churchill's Parliamentary Private Secretary during World War II, 1941-45.
Harwell Hamilton Harris Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903, Redlands, California - 1990, Raleigh, North Carolina) was an American architect. Harris created a very personal Southern California architectural style that carefully modulated interior and exterior space.
Harwell, Oxfordshire Harwell is a large village and civil parish in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly in Berkshire). It lies near The Ridgeway long-distance footpath, halfway between Abingdon, Oxfordshire and Newbury, Berkshire and two miles from Didcot.
Harwich and North Essex (UK Parliament constituency) Harwich and North Essex will be a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It will elect one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Harwich ferry disaster The 1807 Harwich ferry diasaster is an incident that occurred inside the English port of Harwich on the Essex coast in the North Sea on Saturday 18 April 1807, in which sixty to ninety people drowned during the capsizing of a small ferry boat.
Harwood Harrison Sir (James) Harwood Harrison 1st Baronet (6 June 1907 - 11 September 1980) was a British politician and Conservative Party member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. He represented the seat of Eye from 1951 to 1979, having first contested it in 1950.
Haryana Nayay Party Haryana Nayay Party is a political party in the Indian state of Haryana. It was formed on July 14 2002 under the presidency of Ramanand Yadav, formerly the state general secretary of the Samajwadi Party in Haryana.
Haryana Politics The key political players in Haryana state in northern India are the ruling Indian National Lok Dal, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party. There are 10 constituencies of the Lok Sabha (lower house in the Parliament of India)
Haryana Republican Party Haryana Republican Party, political party in the Indian state of Haryana. The party was founded on December 30 2003 when the sole Republican Party of India member of the Haryana assembly, Karan Singh Dalal, broke away.
Haryana State Akali Dal Haryana State Akali Dal (or HSAD) is a Sikh political party in India, a splinter group of the Badal-led Shiromani Akali Dal that sided with Gurcharan Singh Tohra on the Ranjit Singh issue. HSAD was formed on May 23 1999 on similar lines as Shiromani Akali Dal Delhi.
Haryana Tourism Haryana Tourism Corporation Limited is the government-owned official tourism agency of Haryana in India. It began operation with one resort in 1966, and now owns and operates 44 tourist complexes all over the state.
Haryanka dynasty According to tradition, the Haryanka dynasty founded the Magadha Empire in 684 BCE, whose capital was Rajagriha, later Pataliputra, near the present day Patna in India. This dynasty was succeeded by the Shishunaga dynasty.
Harz National Park The Harz National Park is a nature reserve in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It comprises large portions of the western Harz mountains, extending from Herzberg at the southern edge of the mountain range to Bad Harzburg on the northern slopes.
Harzani language Harzani (correct form: Harzandi) is a modern Northwestern Iranian language spoken in the north of the Iranian province of East Azarbaijan, around the village of Harzand. It is considered a dialect of the Tati language and is closely related to the Talishi (Taleshi) and Karingani dialects.
Harzburg Front The Harzburg Front (also known as the Harzburger Front) was a short-lived right-wing political organization in Germany, formed in 1931 as an attempt to present a unified opposition to the government of Heinrich BrĂĽning, Chancellor of the Weimar Republic. It was a coalition of the leadership of the Stahlhelm (a hawkish, paramilitary veterans' association, also known as Steel Helmets), of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP - the Nazi Party), and the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National Peoples' Party - DNVP) under millionaire press-baron Alfred Hugenberg.
Harzburgite The ultramafic rock, harzburgite, is a variety of peridotite consisting of the minerals, olivine and low-Ca pyroxene (enstatite), and named for occurrences in the Harz Mountains of Germany. It commonly contains a few percent chromium-rich spinel as an accessory mineral.
Harzer Schmalspurbahnen The Harzer Schmalspurbahn comprises some 132 kilometres of gauge railway criss-crossing the Harz mountains in central Germany, linking Wernigerode, the system's headquarters in the north, with Nordhausen in the south, and Quedlinburg in the east. The jewel in the system's crown is the Brockenbahn, which follows a spiral course up the Brocken to the old East German listening post on the top, and is almost exclusively steam hauled.
Harzquerbahn The Harzquerbahn was formerly the mainline of the Harzer Schmalspurbahnen and runs from Wernigerode to Nordhausen. The tourist potential of the Brocken is so great that the Brockenbahn is effectively the mainline.
Has to Be "Has to Be" is a pop song released by American singer Madonna. It is the B-side to her hit song "Ray of Light" and is also a bonus track on the Japanese release of her 1998 album Ray of Light.
Has-a In database design and object oriented program architecture, Has-a is a relationship where one object (often called the composited object) "belongs" to (is a part or member of) another object (called the composite type or composite type), and behaves according to the rules of ownership. Multiple Has-a relationships will combine to form a possessive hierarchy.
Hasa (Korean military) Hasa is a Korean military rank which is used in both the armed forces of North and South Korea. In both countries, the rank is considered the first non-commissioned officer grade and is generally considered the equivalent of a Sergeant in western militaries.
Hasan Abad, Kurdistan Hasan Abad (Kurdish:Řه سه ن ئاŮا) (Persian: Řسن آباد) is a village about 3 miles southwest of Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province, Iran. It's famous for its old castle of Media named "Qualai-Hasan Awa" (in Kurdish meaning the Castle of Hasan Abad).
Hasan Ali Hasan 'Ali ibn Jahan Shah was the last ruler of the Kara Koyunlu Turkmen tribal federation, ruling for just one year from 1467-68, before the Kara Koyunlu were overrun by their enemies the Ak Koyunlu. Hasan Ali was unable to win the loyalty of his troops, which quickly led to the defeat and downfall of the dynasty.
Hasan Üçüncü Hasan Üçüncü (born November 16, 1980 in Sürmene, Turkey) is a Turkish footballer currently playing for Trabzonspor. Standing at 177 cm and weighing 74 kg, he wears the # 6 jersey and plays in the midfield position.
Hasan Âli Yücel Hasan Âli Yücel (born 17 December in Istanbul (originally from Görele) 1897-died 26 February 1961) former minister of education of Turkey, who served from December 1938 to August 1946. He is well known for his reforms in the education system and foundation of Village Institutes.
Hasan Čengić Hasan Čengić (born August 30, 1957 in Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is the former deputy prime minister and defense minister of the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was convicted together with the president Alija Izetbegovic by the communist regime of Yugoslavia in 1983 and served 5 years of a 10 year sentence.
Hasan di Tiro Hasan di Tiro (Born 4 September 1930) is the founder of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), an organisation which has been seeking the independence of Aceh from Indonesia since the 1970's. After the Tsunami of 2004 the GAM and the Indonesian governemnt agreed a peace treaty in which more autonomy for Aceh was accepted by di Tiro and his followers.
Hasan Durham Hasan Durham (born August 14, 1971 in Bermuda) is a Bermudian cricketer, who played with the Bermudian cricket team in their first ever One-Day International when they played Canada on May 17, 2006. Durham took two wickets as Bermuda won the game by three wickets under the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Hasan Khurshid Rumi Hasan Khurshid Rumi is a Bangladeshi writer, translator and editor who also designed many covers and associated with audio-visual media as well as the co-editor of the first Bangladeshi Science Fiction magazine, `Moulik' and `Unmad', whose specialized sector is SF.
Hasan Ĺžerefli Hasan Serefli, who's from Turkey, won a national Emmy with eight other researchers who won for "outstanding individual achievement in a craft: research" for their work on the "Kids Behind Bars" documentary.
Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury (Bangla:হাসান মশহŕ§ŕ¦¦ চৌধূরী) is a Bangladeshi army personnel and former Lieutenant General of the Bangladesh Army. He became the Chief of Army staff of the Bangladesh Army in 2002 and became an adviser of the former interim Caretaker Government in October 2006.
Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigadud Colonel Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigadud (Shatigadud means "red shirt") is a notable Somali warlord, and chairman of the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA), which sought to establish the autonomous state of Southwestern Somalia. Recently he is said to have played a role in the capture of Mogadishu by Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government forces in December 2006.
Hasan Salama Hasan Salama or Hassan Salameh (, ) (???? - 1948) was a commander of the Palestinian Holy War Army (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, Arabic: جيش الجهاد المقدس) in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War along with Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni.
Hasan Uğurlu Dam The Hasan Uğurlu Dam is 23 km south of Çarşamba town 25 km east of province of Samsun in northern Turkey and located on the Yeşilırmak River which runs into the Black Sea Completed in 1979, it generates 4x125=500MW of power.Its first name was Ayvacık Dam
Hasankeyf Hasankeyf (Greek: Kiphas; Latin: Cepha; Arabic: Hisn Kayfa; Syriac: Hesno d-Kifo; Kurdish: Hesenkeyf) is a city located along the Tigris River in Batman Province in south-eastern Anatolia, Turkey, densely inhabited by Kurds. It is an ancient city, with roots going back 10,000 years.
Hasapiko Hasapiko (Greek χαĎάπικο, also transliterated hassapiko, hasapika and hasapico) is a Greek traditional dance. It is also called χαĎάπικος χόĎος or simply χαĎάπικος (hasapikos horos, chasápikos, khasápikos, hasápikos).
Hasba bill The Hasba bill (Urdu: ŘŘłŘ¨Ű Ů‚Ř§Ů†Ůن; accountability bill) was a bill proposed by members of the provincial assembly of the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan. The political party in power in the province is the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which is an alliance of six religious parties endorsing a system of Islamic justice (sharia).
Hasbro Darth Vader Voice Changer The Darth Vader Voice Changer is a toy released by Hasbro in 2004 as part of the tail end of its Original Trilogy Collection line of toys focusing on characters from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The voice changer allows the wearer to talk in a voice somewhat like James Earl Jones as Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, and also included numerous built-in phrases and sounds from the movies.
Hasbrouck Heights High School Hasbrouck Heights High School is a comprehensive four-year public high school located in Hasbrouck Heights, in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States, as part of the Hasbrouck Heights School District. It consists of Grades 9-12.
Hasbrouck Heights School District The Hasbrouck Heights School District is a comprehensive community public school district that serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade from Hasbrouck Heights, in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States.
Hascombe The picturesque village of Hascombe contains a cluster of cottages and imposing country estates, St Peter's church, the village green and The White Horse pub, all nestling between wooded hillsides in Surrey, United Kingdom. The village is situated roughly midway between Godalming and Cranleigh () and had 274 inhabitants at the 2001 census.
Hasdai ibn Shaprut Hasdai (Abu Yusuf ben Yitzhak ben Ezra) ibn Shaprut (Hebrew: חסד××™ ×בן שפרו×) born about 915 at JaĂ©n; died 970 or 990 at CĂłrdoba in Spain, was a Jewish physician, diplomat, and patron of science.
Hase (crater) Hase is a lunar crater that is located in the rugged southeast part of the Moon, to the south-southwest of the prominent Petavius walled-plain. The Palitzsch crater and Vallis Palitzsch is attached to the northeast rim of Hase.
Hasegawa (model company) Hasegawa is a company that manufactures plastic model kits of a variety of vehicles, including model aircraft, model cars, model ships, model armor and model space craft and Science Fiction kits. Based in Shizuoka, Japan, Hasegawa competes against its neighbor, Tamiya Corporation, though it does not have as large a line of products.
Hasegawa Yoshimichi (1 October 1850 – 27 January 1924) was a field marshal in the Imperial Japanese Army and Japanese Governor General of Korea from 1916-1919. His Japanese decorations included Order of the Golden Kite (1st class) and Order of the Chrysanthemum.
Hasegawa-Mima equation The Hasegawa-Mima equation, named after Akira Hasegawa and Kunioki Mima, is an equation that describes a certain regime of plasma, where the time scales are very fast, and the distance scale in the direction of the magnetic field is long. In particular the equation is useful for describing turbulence in some tokamaks.
Hasekura Tsunenaga Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga (1571 – 1622) (, also spelled Faxecura Rocuyemon in period European sources, reflecting the contemporary pronunciation of JapaneseIn the Japanese of the era, the sound now transcribed as h was pronounced as an f before all vowels, not just u. Likewise s was sometimes pronounced sh before /e/, not only before /i/.
Haselbachtal Haselbachtal is a municipality in the district of Kamenz in the Free State of Saxony, Germany with a population of 4,648. It consists of the villages Bischheim, Häslich, Gersdorf, Möhrsdorf, Reichenau, and Reichenbach.
Hasely Crawford Stadium The Hasely Crawford Stadium, located in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, is named for Hasely Crawford, the first person from Trinidad and Tobago to win an Olympic gold medal. Originally built as the National Stadium in 1980, the stadium was re-named to honour Crawford in 2001.
Hash (film) Hash McBrown is the central character in the 2005 comedy Hash, a film directed by Scott Innes and written by Innes & Daniel Smith, who also stars along with Lisa Walker, Richard Wright and Adam Young. The film is narrated by Stephen Fry.
Hash (food) Hash is a mixture of beef (often leftovers of corned beef or roast beef), onions, potatoes, and spices that are mashed together into a coarse, chunky paste and then cooked either alone, or with other ingredients.
Hash brown Hash browns or hashed browns are a simple potato preparation in which potato pieces are pan-fried after being diced, riced, shredded, or julienned. Although in some cultural contexts, hash browns or hashed browns may refer to any of these cuts of potato, people in some cultural contexts may reserve the term to describe a more specific preparation.
Hash Bash Hash Bash is an annual event held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the first Saturday of April. The event is a collection of speeches, live music, street vending and the occasional civil disobedience centered around the goal of reforming federal, state and local marijuana laws.
Hash cookie Hash cookies, Space Cookie, hash cakes or space cakes are relatively common in regions with liberal drugs policies, including much of Europe (particularly the Netherlands). They are bakery products made using one of the forms of cannabis, including hashish.
Hash filter A hash filter creates a hash sum from data, typically e-mail, and compares the sum against other previously defined sums. Depending on the purpose of the filter, the data can then be included or excluded in a function based on whether it matches an existing sum.
Hash function A hash function (or hash algorithm) is a reproducible method of turning data (usually a message or a file) into a number suitable to be handled by a computer. These functions provide a way of creating a small digital "fingerprint" from any kind of data.
Hash list In computer science, a hash list is typically a list of hashes of the data blocks in a file or set of files. Lists of hashes are used for many different purpose, such as fast table lookup (hash tables) and distributed databases (distributed hash tables).
Hash tree In cryptography, hash trees (also known as Merkle trees) are an extension of the simpler concept hash list, which in turn is an extension of the old concept of hashing. Hash trees where the underlying hash function is Tiger are often called Tiger trees or Tiger tree hashes.
Hash'ak'gik Hash'ak'gik is a video game character in the Legacy of Kain series of video games. Throughout the series, he has been voiced by many actors, including Rene Auberjonois, Tony Jay, Earl Boen, and Alastair Duncan.
Hashøj municipality Hashøj municipality is a municipality (Danish, kommune) in West Zealand County near the west coast of the island of Zealand (Sjælland) in Denmark. The municipality covers an area of 131 km², and has a total population of 6,632 (2005).
HashClash HashClash is a distributed computing project to find collisions in the MD5 hash algorithm. It is based at Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology, and Marc Stevens initiated the project as part of his Master Degree thesis.
Hasheem Thabeet Hashim Thabit Manka (born February 16, 1987 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania), is a college basketball player for the University of Connecticut Huskies. He is known as Hasheem Thabeet, as his name was Americanized from Swahili.
Hasheket Shenish'ar "Hasheket Shenish'ar" (Hebrew script: ×”×©×§× ×©× ×©×ר, English translation: "The Silence That Remains") was the Israeli entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2005, performed in Hebrew and English by Shiri Maimon. The song was written by Eyal Shachar and Pini Aaronbayev.
Hashem Aghajari Hashem Aghajari (Persian: هاشم آغاجری) is an Iranian historian, university professor and a critic of the Islamic Republic's government. He was convicted of apostasy and sentenced to death because of a speech in Hamadan that criticized some of the present Islamic practices in Iran as being in contradiction with the original practices and ideology of Islam.
Hashem el-Tarif Hashem el-Tarif is a mountain located in north-east Sinai in Egypt, close to the border of modern Israel. According to Google Earth, wherein the name of the mountain is rendered as "Gebel Khashm el Tarif," the coordinates are near 29°40'9.
Hashemi Hashemi (Arabic: هاشمي) is a clan of the Meccan tribe , the Quraish (Arabic: قریش ) to which the Islamic prophet Muhammad belonged to, before he received the revelations of Islam. Abdullah II of Jordan, current king of the country is a Hashemi.
Hashemite Hashemite is the Anglicised version of the Arabic: هاشمي (transliteration: Hashemi) and traditionally refers to those belonging to the Banu Hashim, or "clan of Hashem", a clan within the larger Quraish tribe. It also refers to an Arab dynasty whose original strength stemmed from the network of tribal alliances and blood loyalties in the Hejaz region of Arabia, along the Red Sea.
Hashim Abderrahman al-Shibli Hashim Abderrahman al-Shibli ( ) is the Iraqi Justice Minister in the government of Nouri al-Maliki. A Sunni Arab, he was elected to the National Assembly of Iraq in December 2005 on the secular Iraqi National List coalition. | <urn:uuid:ca7c239e-67ef-4abf-87c3-8db9ae4d1ec9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.az-encyclopedia.info/h/3801/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95598 | 7,582 | 1.617188 | 2 |
I recently purchased a blue lineman’s handset for $12. It is quite an interesting piece of hardware. At first glance, it looks like a standard handset, but upon further review there are characteristics that set it apart. On the back of the handset is a rotary dial used for dialing numbers, a hook to connect it to the belt, and two test leads with alligator clips. The alligator clips have a piercing spike in them to connect to insulated wires. No stripping is necessary. On the side of the phone, there is a switch that can go between TALK and MON. MON in this case stands for monitor. There is also a nice “Bell System Property – Not for sale” engraving.
I brought the handset home and plugged it in. I had the switch on TALK and instantly heard a dial tone. I decided to call my cellphone, and entered the number (which can take a bit of time using a rotary dial). I got connected and heard my voice mail message. I decided to try to use my old Radioshack tone dialer next. I punched in the number on my tone dialer, and held it up to the handset. I hit the dial button on the dialer, and heard the tones through the earpiece of the handset, but the tones did not register on the handset itself, and the number wasn’t called.
Next, I flipped the switch on the handset to MON mode. At first, I didn’t hear anything on the line. I hooked up a standard phone nearby, and picked up the handset of that phone. My lineman’s handset instantly had a dial tone, and was monitoring the line. The MON setting also turns off the microphone in the handset, so there are no slip-ups when monitoring.
Other than the cool factor, there are a few things I can do with it. I could use it as a house phone, though it does not have its own ringer. I could also do some wire tapping, but that is illegal. It is not a very practical piece of hardware, but it certainly does hold my attention. Maybe the web will end up lending me some ideas of what I could do with it. | <urn:uuid:65be9625-87ec-4eb5-b68a-d9df31ec5e68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://famicoman.com/2010/03/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964199 | 459 | 1.695313 | 2 |
In these days of high technology with touch screen mobiles, it’s strange that people still use dials to control their heat and conditioning environments. The new Nest Thermostat device aims to change this. The device was out in the market in mid november and was sold out within few days of its release. It is invented by Tony Fadell, who was the manufacturer of iPod, later he joined Nest Labs of Silicon Valley. He made extremely amazing programmable thermostat which combines the technology with the sexy looks. Here you are going to learn more about this new era of thermostats.
How Nest Thermostat Works?
This device basically works on the principles of cloud computing combined with the proximity sensors and various other sensors which make it possible to control temperature of various house appliances along with lights to open and close on time as per need. The biggest advantage of using home appliances as per need will be energy saving.
Saving your air conditioner cooling by switching it off when your room is enough cool and opening your air conditioner in a hot day of summer when you want to get in a cold room to rest and feel comfortable without waiting it to make your room enough cool. These are some possibilities that are possible for you with the new Nest Thermostat. Some of you might ask, how it can be energy saving just by switching on and off your electric appliances. Well, if Nest Thermostat reduces an extra degree in AC, it may save up to 5% of your electricity bill.
The device is easy to use, you have to use the touch dial to rotate it either way for varying temperature and you can adjust your choice temperature and Nest Thermostat is smart enough to understand from time to vary temperature by saving your routine schedules. The single unit of Nest Thermostat can be connected to half of your home appliances if installed wisely.
Device is quiet impressive by looks which can be attached to wall like wall clock and it have a silver panel on the edges and the center is a black screen which shows orange color temperature when set to hot and when set to cold it is in blue mode. The green color leaf appears when the device is running in the ideal temperature as desired. You can touch to vary the functions and it has various menu options and parameters to configure. The device is not launch yet but the Nest Company is guarantying that it will be best in quality and the spokesman of Nest Labs said that all programmed thermostats available in markets of different companies are not good enough and only one out of ten appears to be reliable but the Nest Thermostat have each unit of quality performance.
It is an easy to install device as reported which is available with the guidebook for convenience. Wiring is required for adding up electronic appliances to device and Wi-Fi router connection is also required with this device. Nest group also provide wiring with their additional fees. Well, price for a single piece of Nest Thermostat is 249 dollars and and few other online stores? | <urn:uuid:4caadc2a-4291-48f8-84cd-6f116103a8fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nestthermostat.net/introducing-a-new-era-environment-control-device-nest-thermostat/ | 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 | 0.959774 | 612 | 1.664063 | 2 |
By Alan Zibel
Superstorm Sandy may give fresh ammunition to critics of the federal government's flood-insurance program who have long wanted the program to operate more like private-sector insurance.
One reason big property insurance companies are confident they can handle the costs of the cleanup from the superstorm is that many homeowners' policies don't cover damage from floods. That risk is parked with the federal government's flood insurance program. The catch: Currently the debt-strapped National Flood Insurance Program has a $20.8 billion cap in the amount of money it can borrow from the U.S. Treasury to pay flood loss claims. But the program has already borrowed around $18 billion, mainly to pay for Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Losses from Sandy, as the WSJ reports today today, could easily push the program over its current borrowing limit.
If that happens, the Department of Homeland Security would have to ask Congress for the ability to borrow more money. That could trigger a debate in Congress, where Republicans in the House and Senate might pursue changes to the program.
The program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A spokesman for FEMA said the agency has about $4 billion in cash and borrowing authority left, and that no decision has been made on whether to ask Congress for more money.
One critic has been Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) who successfully earlier this year won a gradual elimination of premium subsidies for vacation homes.
Ray Lehmann, senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank focused on insurance issues, said Congress should require FEMA to use reinsurance or sell catastrophe bonds to offload some risk to the private sector. A bill passed over the summer allows the agency to do so but doesn’t require it.
Mr. Lehmann added the government in the long run should phase in market rates for all consumers who buy flood policies, eliminating subsidies for properties before the mid-1970s. Doing so would gradually allow the private sector to provide flood insurance, he said.
“That creates the conditions that, over the longer term, can make a full privatization of the (flood insurance program) a real possibility,” he said. | <urn:uuid:370b0b54-cb3d-4003-bb69-bd8c6a191c7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/tag/flood-insurance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956385 | 454 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Looks like the FBI is starting to get pretty serious about fighting malware. Traditionally they have attacked the servers that activate and control botnets made up of infected computers. This time they’re going much further by taking control of and issuing commands to the botnets. In this instance it’s a nasty little bug called Coreflood, and they’ve been given permission to take the yet-unheard-of step by a federal judge.
An outside company called Internet Systems Consortium has been tapped to do the actual work. It will call upon the malware on infected computers and issue a command to shut it down. That falls short of fixing the problem as Coreflood will try to phone home again upon reboot. This gets back to the initial problem; we won’t ever be able to stop malware attacks as long as there are users who do not have the knowhow (or simply don’t care) to protect and disinfect their own computer systems.
How long do you think it will be before some black hat comes up with a countermeasure against this type of enforcement? | <urn:uuid:5aad87c3-4957-4c73-96e6-2283e21777c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2011/04/21/doj-and-fbi-now-issuing-command-to-botnet-malware/comment-page-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950205 | 225 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Starbucks Offers Cash for Your Eco-Friendly Cup Solutions
Betacup has just launched an online contest to engage creative thinkers in solving the disposable cup waste problem through open collaboration. Starbucks Coffee Company is sponsoring the contest as part of its aim to serve 100% of its hand-crafted beverages in reusable or recyclable cups by 2015.
Anyone can submit an idea on how to reduce paper cup consumption and promote adoption of environmentally-friendly alternatives. Ideas will be open to the public for discussion, and community members and jurors will be able to provide feedback, allowing collaborators to refine and update their submissions through June 15, when the contest comes to a close.
Starbucks has provided $20,000 in cash prizes to be awarded for the most innovative ideas. The participant who submits the best idea, determined by an expert panel, will receive a $10,000 cash prize. In addition, participants whose ideas are among the top five selected by the community of collaborators will each be awarded a $2,000 cash prize.
"Finding effective solutions to the disposable cup waste problem will be a challenge – a good solution will need to include product design, communications and incentives to change consumer behavior, and work within service and recycling infrastructures," said Shaun Abrahamson from Colaboratorie Mutopo, a group of mass collaboration specialists who co-founded the betacup. "We think this is an ideal task to present to a large global community of coffee drinkers, many of whom have likely thought about this issue and possible solutions."
Visit http://www.thebetacup.com to learn more and be part of the solution. | <urn:uuid:e6f1d9c0-defc-4dec-a4c5-aea731180dad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://liveearth.org/it/liveearthblog/starbucks-offers-cash-for-your-eco-friendly-cup-solutions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949167 | 336 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Once on a backpacking, cross-country tour of Europe the self-proclaimed "renaissance man" and wealthy world-traveler Google came upon the small town of Bassersdorf in Switzerland. As he strolled the quaint streets he came upon an old woman who looked lost. She proclaimed "Ich suche nach Wasser" ("I need to find water"), wherein Google replied, "Meinten Sie Spirituosengeschäft?" ("Did you mean liquor store?"). The woman scratched her head and walked away.
As a child Google was a know it all, who thrived on being right. Even in the remote chance of him being wrong, and someone having the fortune to have caught his foible, Google managed to make anyone appear dumb. Yet through it all he remained charming, and endearing to most students - somehow managing to become class president (through process of accumulation, which infuriated his school-time rival Microsoft who did the exact same things but somehow always ended up in the school newspaper or principals office). Google can often be seen looking for his name in the library index cards.
Despite Google's purposeful lack of design and supreme faith in functionality the "main" website remains crowded amongst of vast open space — like 3 people ass-to-elbows in a freight elevator. Why not align text and information page-center and flush left? As monitor resolutions grow (with 86% of screen at 1024x768 or higher) the triangulation of the "header" area, contrasted with the search area becomes tenuous (as the eye finds it harder to "connect" the space the wider it becomes). I've tried to admire the "simplicity" of the site, but find it superfluous.
Don't get me started on the logo (obviously designed by an IT guy who "had to throw something up" as they presented to investors) — I have never ever liked the Google logo ever; but that's not the point of w.w.w.. The overall sense one gets from any Google page; not merely the main landing pages, is that functionality and bare-bones simplicity — reinforced with a sophisticated use of emerging technology in AJAX, etc — trump any infusion of design to enhance the user experience. I do admire their strict adherence to keeping the interface and overall look as simple as possible, and not succumbing to fads and trends, the lack of distractions makes the overall user experience (nearly) fool-proof. | <urn:uuid:23b1d1f8-6720-46dd-aaf1-27ce625c9673> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webwithoutwords.com/blog/less_is_sometimes_more/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954221 | 510 | 1.539063 | 2 |
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Michael Boldin’s “Tenther Rant” at the end of Episode 22 of TRX: Tenther Radio, which airs live online every Wednesday at 5pm Pacific Time here.
Find the show on iTunes at this link.
The White House is excited to hear that Obamacare – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – is going to be heard by the Supreme Court. In a statement, a spokesman said – “We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.” The sad fact of the matter is this – any president could sign virtually any law and make pretty much the same statement because the Supreme Court almost never strikes down anything as unconstitutional. And, I might be making an understatement, because from 1937 to 1995, the Supremes didn’t strike down a single federal law as unconstitutional. Not one in nearly sixty years.
There have been a few since then, but they’re very few and quite far between.
Bottom line? When it comes to limiting federal power, the Supreme Court is NOT to be trusted. Not only have they utterly failed to uphold the constitution, it’s not really in their interest either.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both warned us that if the federal government – which includes the federal courts – ever became the sole and exclusive arbiter of the extent of their own powers, those powers would always grow, regardless of protests, elections, and even lawsuits.
So while I’m happy to hear that the Supreme Court is now going to hear the health care case – primarily because we’ll finally see this courtroom drama over with – I have absolutely no expectations that the unelected, unaccountable, politically-connected lawyers that make up the court will side with the Constitution over federal power.
I don’t buy lottery tickets either – because I know I’m not going to win and buying them just supports a monopoly on power that shouldn’t exist. But, that’ another discussion altogether!
Last week, we celebrated the anniversary of the adoption of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. In these resolutions, Thomas Jefferson laid the groundwork for the principle nullification, which we define as any act or set of acts which ends up rendering a particular federal law null and void, or unenforceable within that state.
The short of the Jeffersonian view is this – the federal government cannot be trusted to limit its own power, so the people and the states, having created that federal government in the first place, not only have an interest and a role in limiting federal power, but it’s their duty.
James Madison and even Daniel Webster were on board with the idea of nullification too – or as they called it, interposition. Madison told us in the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 that in the case of a dangerous exercise of unconstitutional powers, “the states are duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”
And Webster, often cast as a great opponent to nullification, said this in his famous speech opposing military conscription:
“The operation of measures thus unconstitutional and illegal ought to be prevented by a resort to other measures which are both constitutional and legal. It will be the solemn duty of the State governments to protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power. These are among the objects for which the State governments exist”
Jefferson, Madison, Webster – and many others. I’m sold on the idea. Hope you are too. And better yet, these actions work. Twenty-five states refused to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, and while it sits on the books as “law” in Congress and has never been challenged in court, it remains null and void in most of the country. Fifteen states have rejected the notion that the federal government can ban a plant grown and sold within their own state – and while the feds still try to assert their supremacy from time to time, the long-term result is that they’re losing big time.
THE NEXT STEP
Last year, in preparation for the Supreme Court eventually holding up Obamacare as “constitutional,” the Tenth Amendment Center drafted state-level legislation to reject the notion of not just health insurance mandates from the federal government, but the very core idea that the federal government is authorized to be in the health care industry at all.
The TAC’s Federal Health Care Nullification Act declares that, “the federal law known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, is not authorized by the Constitution of the United States and violates its true meaning and intent as given by the Founders and Ratifiers, and is hereby declared to be invalid, shall not be recognized, is specifically rejected, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect.”
As both Madison and Webster told us, when the feds exercise unconstitutional and dangerous powers, it’s the state’s duty to step in and stop it. And, our Nullification Act has language to do just that:
“Any official, agent, or employee of the United States government or any employee of a corporation providing services to the United States government that enforces or attempts to enforce an act, order, law, statute, rule or regulation of the government of the United States in violation of this act shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction must be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars ($5,000.00), or a term of imprisonment not exceeding five (5) years, or both.”
South Dakota already passed a version of this bill in the 2011 legislative session, but as can be evidenced by what happened down in Arizona recently, when a state stands alone, the federal government can throw its weight around and make states back off. On the other hand, when Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and other states started passing resolutions and laws to ban participation in the Real ID act, it was the strength of multiple states acting in unison that resulted in the federal government backing off – like the house of cards that it is.
Getting new ideas, new bills and new action items to move forward takes time, effort and due diligence. State-level responses to Real ID didn’t even start until two years after the law was passed. But, in response to the passing of Obamacare, eleven states already stepped up to consider a nullification of the act within the first year. Your action is needed right now to make it all effective.
Sitting around and waiting, hoping, or begging the federal courts to limit federal power – is not the game plan of a patriot. Taking action to stand up and say no right now certainly is. So today, I strongly urge you to personally email AND call your state senators and representatives and demand that they introduce the federal health care nullification act in your state. Even if you think it can never happen or succeed in your area, we know from history and modern times that small steps towards liberty can lead to great things.
The time to act is now. Not after the elections and not after the Supreme Court rules. Not next year and not after the holiday. Not next month or next week. Today, not tomorrow. Now.
For when enough good people rise up and say no to tyranny – and enough states introduce and pass laws backing them up – there’s not much that the feds can do to force their unconstitutional acts, regulations…and mandates down our throats.
And one day, when we start taking this same set of actions for not just Obamacare, but every single unconstitutional act from Washington DC, one day – instead of saying NO to tyranny, we can start saying YES to liberty.
UPDATE 11-17-11: It was North Dakota, not South Dakota, that passed a version of the Health Care Nullification Act earlier this year. Track the legislation online at this link | <urn:uuid:645b3fc9-6268-482e-9710-7933dd2d1850> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/11/16/on-obamacare-dont-trust-the-courts-to-uphold-the-constitution/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958775 | 1,672 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Starting in December 2009, I launched a new division of Archie Comics called Comic Book Fairs. I was an elementary school teacher for years, and I found that comic books were a great way for kids to bridge the gap between picture books and chapter books. Also, comics make reading fun again, and encourage reading for pleasure. My idea behind Comic Book Fairs is to get kids back into reading for fun and to help them learn about exciting career opportunities in comic books. Since we've launched the division, Comic Book Fairs have been happening all over the country, and we are continually trying to get more and more schools and states involved.
This past June, we have appointed Rodger High as Comic Book Fair ambassador to Arkansas. Rodger has accepted to work on bringing Comic Book Fairs to the state, and thereby continues to promote reading all around the country. Comic Book Fairs are the next best thing, be sure to keep checking back to stay updated, and check out our website for more information on hosting your own Comic Book Fair! | <urn:uuid:47c5dd0c-70a7-43a6-8447-1e091e01efeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nancysilberkleit.blogspot.com/2010/08/comic-book-fairs-for-fundraising.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973599 | 210 | 1.5 | 2 |
On December 6, 1998, at 1601 eastern standard time, a Michael L. Thibault, RV-4, N62632, an experimental airplane, registered to the pilot, collided with a mailbox during an emergency landing near the Okeechobe Airport in Okeechobee, Florida. The personal flight was operated by the pilot under the provisions of Title 14 CFR Part 91 with no flight plan filed. A review of weather data recovered from the nearest reporting facility disclosed that visual weather conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The airplane sustained substantial airframe damage, and the commercial pilot was not injured. The flight initially departed Okeechobee, Florida, at 1430. Use your browsers 'back' function to return to synopsisReturn to Query Page
According to the pilot, on the morning of the accident he completed a preflight inspection of the airplane. After takeoff, the pilot flew 30 minutes in the local flying area before returning to the airport for closed traffic. The pilot reported that he had made several touch and go landings at Okeechobee Airport. While on final approach to runway 13, the pilot experienced a complete loss of engine power. The pilot elected to attempt an emergency landing on a public street. During the emergency landing, the right wing collided with a mailbox and a parked van.
The post-accident examination of the accident site disclosed that the airplane rested in a ditch adjacent to the public street. The examination of the airplane revealed that fuel was present in the fuel system. Examination of the ignition system disclosed that the spark plugs displayed a clean ignition pattern. No obvious mechanical problems with the airplane were observed during the field examination.
A review of existing weather data disclosed that weather conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor ice. The pilot did not report applying carburetor heat during any phase of the flight. | <urn:uuid:54133e52-c247-41f7-8b18-ec226dc03472> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001211X11513&ntsbno=ATL99LA030&akey=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950573 | 377 | 1.84375 | 2 |
What is poetry? Roger Lewis's list is a great starting point for an argument
Roger Lewis – biographer, comic writer, occasional book reviewer for the Telegraph – has written a wonderful catalogue for the paper today of items as various as Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Hurrahing in Harvest", the Sea Symphony of Vaughan Williams and Elizabeth Taylor's eyes which, in his opinion, constitute the essence of poetry.
The reason is that he's standing for the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford and friends have been asking him for his definition of what poetry might be. Roger is, he will concede, a long shot for the job but he hopes his combination of 'knowledge, idiosyncrasy and emotion' will win him support (voting continues for another week).
His favourites list is engrossing because he's happy to roll high and low culture together and celebrate Buster Keaton and Monsieur Hulot alongside Verdi and Milton. But of course it also prompts one to start drawing up one's own list.
I'm assuming jazz doesn't ring Roger's bell, or he'd surely have space for Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk or Billie Holiday. And if Rules restaurant and the bend of Chaplin's cane are allowed, then there's a place for sport – starting with Michael Holding's bowling action (and voice) and David Campese's handling and running.
But everyone will have their own thoughts – post them under his piece or send them to the letters editor: email@example.com
A glance at the finances of the IRC suggests one good reason for David Miliband to leave for New York
March 27th, 2013 12:49
Idiotic academics (pt 2): facts yes, but we don't want Dickens's Dr Blimber and Mr Feeder teaching our children
March 20th, 2013 12:27
Talk of 'professional' paid school governors insults those who give their expertise for nothing
February 27th, 2013 13:01
Yo Gramsci! Michael Gove takes the fight deep into Labour territory
February 6th, 2013 13:39
The battle for Oxbridge places is getting bloodier by the week
January 28th, 2013 13:49 | <urn:uuid:eab93552-38af-4ffa-8d13-5a3a11383121> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/richardpreston/100042789/what-is-poetry-roger-lewiss-list-is-a-great-starting-point-for-an-argument/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947778 | 455 | 1.5625 | 2 |
“Lincoln” is mildly mistitled… It is not a Lincoln biopic.
Instead, the film specifically examines the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which permanently abolished slavery. Certainly Lincoln is the primary character, but the movie features an enormous cast and focuses not on the life of the man but on the action in Congress surrounding the passage of the surprisingly controversial amendment.
Regardless, Daniel Day-Lewis gives a biopic performance for the ages, completely bringing our common image of Lincoln to life. And for a movie revolving around legislative action, “Lincoln” manages to be intense, moving, spirited and surprisingly humorous. | <urn:uuid:e1ef9232-1b52-40ac-aeb3-0593c5943d94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fogsmoviereviews.com/tag/jackie-earle-haley/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93047 | 133 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Charles Philips (1708-1747)
Artist associated with 18 portraits
Charles Philips was a successful portrait painter who was popular with the nobility and counted among his patrons Frederick, Prince of Wales, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset.
by John Faber Jr, after Charles Philips
mezzotint, engraved 1758
All paintings by this artist on the BBC Your Paintings website | <urn:uuid:4f912b53-c13d-4298-9728-3e9f68e26cb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp07422&role=art | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958346 | 93 | 1.710938 | 2 |
1913 - 1914
This was a light car sold by the Carette Company of Great Portland Street, London, the place of manufacture being uncertain. It had a 10hp 2-cylinder Dorman engine. A 4 cylinder model was announced in the summer of 1914, but the outbreak of war prevented many from being made.
Source: Nick Georgano / The Beaulieu Encyclopaedia of the Automobile | <urn:uuid:bf88a1f3-9bd3-4a9e-b619-56d152ab7194> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motorbase.com/manufacturer/by-id/2016205872 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953891 | 87 | 1.71875 | 2 |
What will you witness?
Propeller returns after its much talked-about 2011 performances of Richard III and The Comedy of Errors with new productions of Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew, two comedies full of mistaken identities, transformations, and deceptions that ultimately reveal truth.
In The Taming of the Shrew, a man playing a boy dresses up as a girl, which confuses Christopher Sly. In Twelfth Night, a man plays a girl disguised as a boy, which confuses everybody.
Both plays explore beautifully how being in love with the wrong person can reveal true feeling.
Propeller uses an all-male cast as was done in Shakespeare’s day. Mixing a rigorous approach to the text with a modern physical aesthetic, the company updates the productions in surprising ways, with actors also performing live music.
“As directed by Edward Hall, Propeller specializes in knuckle-duster Shakespeare that digs for the harshness beneath the lyricism. Funny, antic, bawdy: the productions are all these expected things. But they also make sure that the chuckles stick in your throat. The poetry may still be pretty; the comedy definitely is not.” (The New York Times)
Where does inspiration come from? What makes an artist tick? Join us for a post-performance Q&A and get a glimpse into the lives and minds of the artists that bring creativity to the stage. Must have a ticket to this evening’s performance to attend.
Program Book [PDF]
2 hours 45 minutes, with one intermission.
Propeller uses an all-male cast – even for the female roles – as was done in Shakespeare’s day, updating the productions in surprising ways. They seek to find a more engaging way of expressing Shakespeare and to more completely explore the relationship between text and performance. They include live music performed by the actors (who did a bang-up performance in the lobby during intermission of Comedy of Errors last year). Presenting productions since 1997, Propeller has toured around the globe, visiting Australia, China, Spain, Mexico, The Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Cyprus, Ireland, Tokyo, Gdansk, Germany, Italy, Malta, Hong Kong and the U.S.A.
Mixing a rigorous approach to the text with a modern physical aesthetic, they have been influenced by mask work, animation and classic and modern film and music from all ages. Productions are directed by Edward Hall, designed by Michael Pavelka with lighting designed by Ben Ormerod. Ed Hall is an associate director at the National Theatre, the Old Vic and the Watermill Theatre, as well as artistic director of Propeller Theatre Company.
This week’s performances mark Propeller’s second appearance under UMS auspices. The company made their debut in March, 2011. | <urn:uuid:14ca5465-e33f-495b-9ccc-3af7945936f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ums.org/performances/propeller-shakespeares-twelfth-night | 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 | 0.954626 | 596 | 1.578125 | 2 |
What should we do with the end of days?
My take on making predictions as to when the world will meet its end.
The book is a translation of China, and about the Amish in the book is, the ability and the uniqueness of the words, and terms that have been translated, but the Amish use the German language.
The sociological phenomenon proving they were right.
Below I explain the possibility’s of what will happen on December 21 2012.
About this this world’s fate, how God sees this world, and myself with a message from God to all of civilization including non believers; and that is because believers most certainly do not believe.
Is the prophecy of the End Times related in the Bible real? And if so, what are the signs we are to look for?
Whilst I know what my life consists of, as do we all, the question of what happens when we die is an open one. Many people dedicate their lives to teachings, which could very possibly present the answers to these questions. Yet for a person lacking in faith, the evidence for the truth of these teachings can often ring hollow. What I write here are some general musings on the subject, which I have attempted to keep as detached as possible from specific religious, teachings and limited to the ability of my mind to think. I don’t wish to blindly accept an answer, I wish to be able to see the underlying logic in it, and following this if I wished I could look in depth to find all of the wonders and intricacies maintained by those who promote these beliefs.
Do you ever wonder if one day someone will come along and mislead the world? | <urn:uuid:9304e1a6-d29f-4f0d-9c0c-7399117c2e67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://relijournal.com/tag/end/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970668 | 346 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Author: Tony Ballard
New but somewhat equivocal light has been cast on what “communication to the public” (“CTTP”) means in European copyright law by two judgments delivered by the Court of Justice on 15 March 2012 (Societa Consortile Fonografici (SCF) v Marco del Corso and Phonographic Performance (Ireland) Limited (PPIL) v Ireland).
What CTTP means matters as online digital delivery increasingly replaces physical carriers, such as CDs and DVDs, as the means of distribution of music, films and other copyright content. Rights owners, broadcasters, platform operators, users, device manufacturers, dentists (as to which see below) and lawyers (especially) need to know when, where and in what circumstances the making available of content requires authorisation by or payment to rights holders. The Information Society Directive does not say what it means and the spate of recent decisions in the courts have enlarged its apparent scope in some surprising ways. Gone is the comfortable assumption, for example, that CTTP is limited to transmissions on electronic networks – recent decisions of the Court of Justice have held that it includes showing films to customers in a pub and even (in one of the 15 March judgments) leaving CDs and players in a hotel room for the convenience of guests.
Various aspects of the CTTP right remain to be clarified in outstanding references to the Court of Justice but as some holes are filled, others appear, as these two most recent cases show.
They were both brought by collecting societies representing phonogram producers. They sought to collect equitable remuneration for the playing of records in hotel rooms on the one hand and in a dentist’s surgery on the other on the basis that this amounted to a CTTP. The decision was that the first was, and the second was not, a CTTP. But the surprise in this case was that, far from following the SGAE v Rafael Hoteles case (where the distribution by a hotel of television signals to guest rooms was held to be a CTTP under the Information Society Directive and led to a string of cases including Airfield where provision of a satellite platform was held a CTTP), the Court held that CTTP under the Rental and Lending Directive had a different meaning. It was a surprise because it had hitherto seemed that the Court had been seeking to establish what it called in the SGAE case an autonomous and uniform interpretation of the concept throughout the Community.
In these two new cases, however, the Court started from the proposition that EU legislation must, so far as possible, be interpreted in a manner that is consistent with international law, in particular where the legislative provisions are intended specifically to give effect to an international agreement concluded by the EU. In the case of these two Directives, each was intended to give effect to different international agreements and the Court took the view that the CTTP concept in each of them had to be interpreted in a way which was compatible with the particular international agreements to which the Directive was intended to give effect, taking account of their context and purpose. That led it to adopt a different approach to the assessment of whether a CTTP had taken place under the Rental and Lending Directive from that which applied under the Information Society Directive.
The details are less important than the fact that the interpretation of CTTP under the one Directive was held to be different from that under the other. It means that cracks have appeared in what hitherto seemed to be a single, unitary concept of CTTP. Its interpretation will depend on whichever Directive applies to the facts. It also means that the answer to the question where a CTTP takes place, which has been referred to the Court of Justice in the Football Dataco v Sportradar and which is keenly awaited, may not necessarily apply to copyright at all since the issue has arisen not under the copyright Directives but under the Database Directive. That would be a huge step backwards.
So far as the details are concerned, the Court in the case of the dentist’s surgery approached the question whether there was a CTTP in the surgery by taking account of a number of what it called complementary criteria, including the role of the user, the nature of the listening public and whether the communication was profit-making. On the one hand this contrasts with the approach of the Court in the SGAE line of cases under the Information Society Directive, where the question turned on whether there was an intervention by which protected works were made accessible to a new public. On the other hand, it is similar to the multi-factorial approach that Floyd J used in trying to apply that very question in ITV v TVCatchup to online retransmission of over the air broadcasts and which was the basis of his reference of the matter back to the Court of Justice.
That reference back may be an opportunity for the Court of Justice, by adopting what was in the dentist’s case a multi-factorial approach similar to that taken by Floyd J, to align its decisions under the various Directives, to prevent the cracks from spreading and to restore something of a unitary interpretation of CTTP, a key concept in the new digital environment. | <urn:uuid:ace7f707-6116-4bd6-bf62-5f692c6ebc65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.harbottle.com/dm/?p=51 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975532 | 1,058 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Irish Pub Experience
Friendliness, humor, hospitality, fine Irish food and drink: all these combine to create The Irish Pub experience.
There is nothing to equal the ambience of an Irish pub, nothing to match its casual and attractive sociability. The Irish have always known that. Irish pubs allow people to relax and be themselves, to take pleasure in company and enjoy the art of conversation; to revel in music and song; to combine good wholesome food with satisfying and distinctive drinks. Hospitality exudes naturally from Irish staff; they are a good-natured mixture of gossip, wit, conversation, debate and information, proffered with friendly and efficient service.
Ireland is known for its amazing profusion of pubs and its exuberant pub culture, with a population of 3.6 million and 10,500 pubs, the public house is considered the center of social life and a social institution. 90% of all beer consumed in Ireland is sold in pubs.
Pubs have been the nucleus for Irish of every ilk, from plebian dockworkers and drovers to aristocrats and genius writers. Venerable pubs are the quintessence of Ireland, embodying local customs, traditions, folkways, wit and character that give the country its unique ethos. No other country in the world is so famed for its rich pub culture.
The Art of Conversation
From the ancient alehouse days onwards, conversation has been the very essence of public house life. At Tigín the art of conversation thrives like no other social setting, with the regulation of televisions the art flourishes. We believe the quality of pub conversation is vastly superior to a blaring picture box (unless there's a match on of course!).
It is well known that many of Dublin’s great writers gathered rich literary fodder from simply listening attentively to conversations around them in pubs. Many characters and much dialogue in the works of James Joyce, Sean O’Casey and Brendan Behan were extracted from Dublin pubs.
The publican is the person in charge of our pubs (the General Manager). The Publican has always been one of the most essential ingredients in the composition of the public house. Their role goes far beyond being the congenial host behind the bar.
Historically, they have been the leading figure in the community performing valuable services for people in times of need. No ordinary man, a publican must know something of everything and be something of a psychologist, able to understand human nature, judge character and resolve conflict or as the Irish Licensing World more poetically put it, ‘A publican must be a democrat, an autocrat, an acrobat and a doormat.” A publican’s character and demeanor set the tone for their establishment, attracts customers, blends socially with them and keeps order.
In days gone by publicans lived above their shop, knew their customers intimately, generously dispensed advice, guidance and even mediated family disputes. A good publican was a like a father to the community. In contrast to good Irish pubs, traditional American watering houses are essentially pubs without publicans, with the ever-present insidious intrusion of television looming in the foreground. | <urn:uuid:2e061ffd-d2fe-48a2-819b-97ba980c1bd8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tiginirishpub.com/stamford/irish-pub-experience | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957842 | 652 | 1.695313 | 2 |
By Arshad Mohammed and Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday forcefully defended her handling of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi and denied any effort to mislead the American people.
The attack by armed militants that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans threatens to stain Clinton's legacy as secretary of state and could cast a longer shadow should she decide to make a White House run in 2016.
By turns emotional and fierce, Clinton choked up at one point in six hours of congressional testimony as she spoke of comforting the Benghazi victims' families and grew angry when a Republican accused the Obama administration of misleading the country over whether the attack stemmed from a protest.
"With all due respect, the fact is that we had four dead Americans," Clinton said angrily as she testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an appearance delayed more than a month because of her ill health.
"Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?" she said, making chopping motions with her hands for emphasis.
"It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again."
During the morning Senate hearing and a later session in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats pointed fingers at each other, with Republicans accusing Clinton's State Department of mismanagement and Democrats defending her.
But little new information about the Benghazi incident and the administration's response to it emerged from the lengthy hearings. Clinton did say that there were at least 20 other U.S. diplomatic posts under serious security threat, but declined to name them at the public session.
Clinton cast the Benghazi incident as part of a long history of such violence as well as the result of instability since the Arab Spring of popular revolutions began in 2011, toppling authoritarian rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
"Benghazi did not happen in a vacuum," Clinton said. "The Arab revolutions have scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region."
'I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY'
On the same day as the Benghazi assault, a mob angered by a U.S.-made video depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a fool and philanderer attacked the U.S. embassy in Cairo. There were later attacks on U.S. embassies in Tunisia, Yemen and Sudan.
Republicans harshly criticized Clinton, and President Barack Obama's administration more generally, with Senator Bob Corker saying the Benghazi attack and the U.S. response displayed "woeful unpreparedness" for the events sweeping the region. Senator Rand Paul said Clinton should have been fired.
Clinton, echoing comments she first made on October 15, said: "I take responsibility." She stressed that she had accepted all the recommendations of an independent panel that investigated the incident and that held lower-level officials responsible.
"Nobody is more committed to getting this right. I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more secure," Clinton said.
Militants attacked and overwhelmed the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 in a sustained assault.
The official U.S. inquiry released on December 18 concluded that "leadership and management failures" in two State Department bureaus led to a security posture "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."
The unclassified version of the "Accountability Review Board" report also faulted poor coordination and unclear lines of authority in Washington. Four lower-level officials were placed on administrative leave following the release of the inquiry, which did not find Clinton personally at fault.
Clinton is expected to step down in the coming days once her designated successor, Senator John Kerry, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Originally due to testify on December 20, Clinton had to postpone after she suffered a concussion when she fainted due to dehydration. Doctors later found she had a blood clot in her head and hospitalized her for several days.
Several senators, noting the vehemence of Clinton's defense, said she appeared to have fully recovered.
While many senators warmly praised her four-year tenure as secretary of state, and several hinted at the possibility of her running for president in 2016, some Republicans were scathing.
They pressed Clinton about what they described as an August 16, 2012 cable from Stevens saying that the Benghazi mission could not withstand a coordinated attack.
"That cable did not come to my attention," Clinton replied, saying that the State Department receives 1.43 million cables a year.
"Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables ... from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it's inexcusable," Paul, a Kentucky Republican, told Clinton.
'AS COMBATIVE AS EVER'
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told Clinton it was "wonderful to see you in good health and as combative as ever," before going on to say that he categorically rejected one of her answers and found others unsatisfactory.
While clouding Clinton's tenure at the State Department, the controversy over the Benghazi attack also cost Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, her chance to succeed Clinton as secretary of state.
Republicans in Congress blasted Rice for her comments five days after the attack in which she said it appeared to be the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a planned assault.
Rice, who has said her comments were based on talking points from the U.S. intelligence community, eventually withdrew her name from consideration for the top U.S. diplomatic job.
"We were misled that there were supposedly protests and then something sprang out of that, an assault sprang out of that," Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, told Clinton, referring to Rice's appearance on Sunday television talk shows.
Clinton rejected the charge.
"People have accused Ambassador Rice and the administration of, you know, misleading Americans," she said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
Earlier in her testimony, Clinton appeared to try subtly to distance herself from Rice's comments.
"The very next morning, I told the American people that heavily armed militants assaulted our compound, and I vowed to bring them to justice. And I stood with President Obama in the (White House) Rose Garden as he spoke of an act of terror," she said.
Clinton's voice cracked as she spoke of comforting families who lost relatives in the incident, the first since 1988 in which a U.S. ambassador was killed.
"For me, this is not just a matter of policy - it's personal," Clinton told the Senate panel.
"I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews," she added, her voice breaking as she described the ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland when the men's remains were brought home.
"I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers, the sons and daughters and the wives left alone to raise their children," she said.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Will Dunham and David Brunnstrom) | <urn:uuid:6be351af-9e3c-44fa-9e57-edea82d2cb46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://b93radio.com/news/articles/2013/jan/23/clinton-defends-her-handling-of-benghazi-attack-in-testimony/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975961 | 1,518 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Help children languishing in orphanages around the world by supporting Both Ends Burning, a pro-adoption campaign. Lynn and I will match up to $500,000 of donations made by December 31, 2011–an increase from the previously promised $100,000.
Our friends Craig and Kathi Juntunen lead an effort called Both Ends Burning to reduce the costs, delays, and bureaucracy of international adoptions.
According to Craig, “Our Both Ends Burning Campaign is on a mission to create a culture of adoption and transform the current process that has spiraled out of control.”
The basic human right for children to grow up in families “is denied far too often due to the current dysfunctional adoption systems,” Craig says. “The success of Both Ends Burning is measured by increasing the number of children adopted in the years ahead.”
Watch this 8 minute 25 second video clip to a new film Both Ends Burning is releasing soon that will help you understand their motivation and intentions. Craig and Kathi are also partners in the Haiti Renewal Fund, which, among other things, has given assistance to orphans. The Juntunens have themselves adopted three Haitian children.
And read about the Both Ends Burning campaign in a Washington Times story by Andrea Poe (over half a page/329 words). | <urn:uuid:1aba3a3a-a83a-44ad-893d-babec136daf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fosterfriess.com/campfire-blog/2011/11/01/adoption-campaign-matching-grant-increased-to-500000/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944399 | 272 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Bill Little commentary: And now,
It was, without question, the most popular television show of the time, and the theme song of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson," was almost as familiar as most children's nursery songs.
So when Johnnie Johnson became the best punt return man in all of college football in the late 1970s, the late Jones Ramsey, UT's Sports Information Director, came up with a gimmick.
"The Tonight Show" always began with the theme song, and then announcer Ed McMahon would say, stretching it out as long as he could, "And now, heerree's Johnny!"
Ramsey, who was always looking for a way to publicize his players, got a copy of the music for the Tonight theme, got it to the Longhorn band, and every time Johnson would go on the field to return a punt, they'd play it, and then chant, "And now, here's Johnnie!"
Ramsey would be smiling today as the National Football Foundation announces its latest class for induction into the College Hall of Fame, because, well, now, "Here's Johnnie!"
Johnnie Johnson, a two-time all-America defensive back during his career at Texas from 1976 through 1979, becomes the 14th Longhorn player named to the Hall, and the 16th overall inductee, including coaches Dana X. Bible and Darrell Royal.
The names of fame include end Hub Bechtol from the 1940s; running back Earl Campbell, who played with Johnson in the late 1970s; Chris Gilbert, running back, 1960s; Malcolm Kutner, end, 1939-41; Bobby Layne, quarterback, 1940s; Roosevelt Leaks, running back, 1970s; Bud McFadin, guard, 1948-50; Tommy Nobis, linebacker, 1963-65; James Saxton, running back, 1959-61; Harley Sewell, guard, 1950-52; Jerry Sisemore, tackle, 1970-72; Bud Sprague, tackle, 1923-24; and Harrison Stafford, halfback, 1930-32.
Johnson's selection is significant in that it comes at a time when Texas is in the midst of a phenomenal run of defensive backs that re-establishes it as "Defensive Back U." Ironically, with almost two dozen former Longhorns going on to play professionally in secondaries throughout the NFL and half of those earning all-American honors, Johnson is the first UT defensive back named to the Hall of Fame.
But the evolving of the profile of the position has cast new light on a spot that has been a staple historically for Texas Longhorn teams.
The Jim Thorpe Award, which goes to the nation's top defensive back and has been won the last two years by Longhorns Michael Huff and Aaron Ross, didn't exist in Johnson's time. Instead, in 1978, the Downtown Athletic Club of New York -- the folks who award the Heisman -- named the top position players in the country. And Johnnie Johnson, who had just completed his junior season, was their choice as a defensive back.
Johnson's prowess came as no surprise to Darrell Royal, who had recruited him out of LaGrange, Texas, in 1976. Johnnie had gotten off to a great start as a freshman that season, but a freak leg injury that started as a "Charley Horse" kept him out most of the season. That was but one of the myriad of injuries that plagued Royal's final Texas team that season.
In 1977, Fred Akers was the head coach, Johnson was well, and so was Texas. The Longhorns, with Campbell running for the Heisman and Johnson leading a rugged defense, marched unbeaten through the regular season to a No. 1 national ranking before losing their bowl game to Notre Dame.
It was a time when Texas was producing tremendous secondary players, such as Raymond Clayborn, Glenn Blackwood, Ricky Churchman, Derrick Hatchett and Johnson. All went on to start in the NFL.
Johnson, because of his punt returning ability, as well as his ability to play safety with cornerback speed and a linebacker's hitting ability, became the poster child of the group.
He has a showcase tackle in 1977 to stop a late Oklahoma drive, but perhaps his showcase moment actually came in 1979 against an Iowa State team whose young offensive coordinator was a guy named Mack Brown.
In the opening game of the season, Brown's Cyclones had stunned a packed Memorial Stadium crowd by leading at halftime, 9-3. Texas defensive coordinator Leon Fuller challenged Johnson and his defense. In the first half, Iowa State had run 43 plays and had 132 yards of total offense. In the second half, they ran only 19 plays and gained a net of only 20 yards. Johnson finished the game with 10 tackles.
The nine points which Iowa State posted would turn out to be the average surrendered by that Texas defense, which allowed opponents only nine points a game for the entire season.
Johnson still holds several UT punt return records. During his time, he set records for most punt return yardage in a game (131), most punt return yardage in a season (538) and most punt return yardage in a career (1,004). He averaged 12.2 yards per return for 44 returns in 1977. For his career, he finished with 114 punt returns, had 13 career interceptions and 282 tackles. He was named to the Southwest Conference's all-decade team for the 1970s.
He was a first round draft choice of the Los Angeles Rams, and highlighted his rookie season with a then NFL record 99-yard pass interception return for a touchdown. He played 10 years with the Rams and a season with the Seattle Seahawks. Following his career, he became a popular motivational speaker and author, living in Los Angeles.
He was inducted into the Longhorn Hall of Honor in 1990, and was a two-time consensus all-America and a three-time all-Southwest Conference selection.
And now, he's headed for New York in December, where one more time, the memory of that catchy tune and those special moments will trigger thoughts of a football field far away, and a distant cry at the door of the Hall of Fame, saying, "Here's Johnnie!" | <urn:uuid:546c3f2a-1767-4bf3-bf13-ea1d21633c31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.texassports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/050907aaa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978442 | 1,283 | 1.609375 | 2 |
HIV Budget Cuts: A Life-or-Death Matter
Facing budget shortfalls, states are cutting medicine funds for low-income HIV patients -- and a coalition of black church folks is fighting back.
Favorite and Warnock are both members of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, a nonprofit designed to educate and mobilize local black communities around HIV/AIDS. On the issue of ADAP funding, the organization argues that the government's failure to sufficiently support the program is not only morally outrageous but also illogical from public health and economic angles.
A recent clinical trial released by the National Institutes of Health found that HIV-positive people who received early treatment reduced their risk of passing the disease on by 96 percent. Furthermore, while HIV medications are expensive, the cost to taxpayers rises astronomically if untreated patients require frequent hospitalizations.
NBLCA also helped develop the National Black Clergy for the Elimination of HIV/AIDS Act, which would shore up more funding for prevention, testing and treatment in African-American communities. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) introduced the bill in April, and it now has 23 co-sponsors.
"We're very serious," said Warnock, who, along with other black clergy members around the country, is lobbying Congress. "If we can spend $2 billion a week in Afghanistan with no obvious end in sight, we should be able to fight a war against HIV/AIDS."
In the meantime, black church leaders nationwide are meeting with local legislators on ADAP cuts, and continuing to engage their congregations about everything from the importance of knowing their status to collecting offerings for care organizations. With the disease's ties to sexuality, it is work that hasn't always meshed easily with the pulpit.
"We've had some pushback from other pastors who say that we really shouldn't be involved in this," said Favorite, who became an AIDS activist four years ago upon seeing the disease's devastation in his community. "Primarily it's because they don't understand what's happening."
Warnock also got involved after taking notice of the high AIDS rate in his church community at the time. Blasé attitudes over the recent budget cuts, he said, also reflect a general misperception that the epidemic is under control. "In some ways, the successes in treatment that we've seen over the past 30 years are creating a new set of problems," he said. "Because we don't see the emaciated bodies that we saw in the 1980s and early '90s, people have become very relaxed. But this virus is very much with us."
Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter. | <urn:uuid:aa0d9c61-f017-46db-aa0f-80e9c2abcfc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theroot.com/views/life-or-death-budget-cut?page=0,2&wpisrc=root_lightbox | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97676 | 566 | 1.78125 | 2 |
School: Hamilton Middle School
Video: Click Here
Question: What is your favorite school subject:
Answer: I love all of the school subjects. My favorites are math and science. I enjoy them because I have always loved science(explained later) and math is very interconnected with science.
Question: What hobbies or extra-curricular activities do you enjoy and why?
Answer: I enjoy playing guitar in a school jazz band, swiming in a swim team, and guitar lessons. I enjoy jazz band and guitar lessons because I have always enjoyed music and it is fun to have a whole band to play with. I like swim team because I also love the water. For my hobbies, I enjoy entering in brainy competitions, playing guitar and violin, playing flight simulator, (occasionally coding html), short filmaking, and I am currently working on a plan to turn my old rc airplane into a boat. (I can't enter into the science fair because my school doen't participate.)
Question: What career do you want to pursue and why?
Answer: I want to become an electrical engineer who works in the field of environmentalism. I want to do this because I want to help solve the issues that we are having with global warming and electrical engineering is somthing that is going to help get whatever inventions are thought up running and maintained.
Question: What prompted you to enter the Young Scientist Challenge?
Answer: I saw the Mythbusters episode with the YSC last year and I decided to enter. Last year I made it into the semifinals and I found it to be an enjoyable experience so I decided to give it another go.
Question: What about science fascinates you (or more simply, what do you like about science)?
Answer: I love science because it can answere our biggest questions like; are we alone and; what is our biological history. I also love it because it can solve the problems that we create such as global warming and crimes.
Question: Anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself?
Answer: I am very interested in electrical engineering, aviation, and music. I understand a basic concept of elecricity, ohms law, which is voltage=current x resistance. I also have a flight simulator that I enjoy flying and I recieve 3 aviation magazines. In 4th grade I made it into the city science fair. When I was in the 5th grade I recieved a mentorship where I made an elctrolyzer. Finnaly, last year, I made it into the semifinals of the Young Scientist Challenge with my video on the nature of a spacecrafts orbital path. | <urn:uuid:2dc1429e-e4cb-4417-bcfa-577333331869> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.youngscientistchallenge.com/09challenge/finalistBios2009.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971574 | 543 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Interviews on Preaching & Teaching
Preaching Today Radio Broadcast
John Piper answers questions on issues raised in his book on preaching.
Watch John Piper talk about preaching for a very small group of people.
John Piper talks about how to take criticism and how to give it.
John Piper talks about what pastors should consider as they prepare for Sunday.
John Piper talks about how to replace doctrinal confusion with conviction.
John Piper says pastors need to test their hearts as they consider what to preach.
John Piper shares some of the reasoning behind using video-recorded sermons in corporate worship.
John Piper says to draw as much as you can out of a passage, but then to be honest about the rest.
John Piper says that a preacher should consider his hearers' needs, be himself, and pray.
John Piper talks about how he chooses what books of the Bible to preach from.
John Piper mentions who he is reading and how each helps his study of John.
John Piper says that expository preaching is about exposing a text's meaning, and stories have meaning.
John Piper looks to Paul's words to Timothy for how to view preaching.
John Piper wants to be careful to criticize himself before criticizing another.
John Piper says that every Christian sermon should point to Jesus somehow.
John Piper describes his method of sermon preparation, but doesn't recommend it for other preachers.
John Piper preached to 60,000 students in the Georgia Dome for Passion 2013.
John Piper shares about his takeaways from Passion 2013 and offers one particular lesson for everyone involved in leading student ministries.
In this episode we ask Pastor John Piper about preaching joy in God during seasons when he didn’t experience personal joy in God. And did he disclose his personal condition in those sermons?
“No pastor lives up to what he preaches. If he does, he is preaching too low.” You wrote that on Twitter a few years back, Pastor John. How does a pastor think through this? Talk to the pastor who is preaching high, and feels overwhelmed and burdened because of it. Is this a healthy tension for him to feel?
In Episode 49 John Piper talks about why he uses hand gestures while preaching.
In Episode 50 John Piper says, “Preaching, to me, is expository exultation. Expository means I am explaining things. I want to make them clear. And so my hands are trying to do in the air what I am saying with my mouth.”
In Episode 54 Pastor John talks about Christian communication, including the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our creativity with words.
In Episode 56 someone asks if men reading biblical commentaries written by women violates Paul’s instruction 1 Timothy 2:12.
In Episode 74, John Piper talks about the weighty responsibility of teaching the Bible. | <urn:uuid:0defc6b2-9236-4bed-86b6-5a6be1532c2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/interviews/by-topic/preaching-teaching?turn_off_admin_bar=true | 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 | 0.961869 | 590 | 1.507813 | 2 |
To briefly recap, Windstream is a provider of wired telephone and DSL Internet services. Its primary markets are the rural areas in the southern and southwestern United States. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of the fixed line business of Alltel with Valor Communications. Like many telecommunication companies, Windstream offers a bundle of services that include local and long-distance calling, broadband Internet access as well as cable television. The fixed line business has generally been affected by a combination of competing technologies such as mobile phones and voice-over-Internet-protocol (Voip). In addition, the major cable TV companies such as Comcast and Time Warner are competing to provide households with broadband Internet services. Because of the predominantly rural market which Windstream service and which is traditionally slow to adapt to new technology, Windstream has been relatively sheltered from these threats so far.
The telecommunication industry in the U.S. is highly competitive and dominated by the three major players, namely AT&T (T), Sprint-Nextel (S) and Verizon (VZ) which cumulatively account for a little less than a third of the total revenues in the business. There are a host of smaller regional players who are competing fiercely for business and using innovation and a redefinition of the role of telecommunications to grab market share from the more established players. Windstream is a midcap regional telecommunications company with a market cap of just under $7 billion that offers yield investors a great investment opportunity because the dividend payout of $1 works out to a yield of well over 8% based on current market prices. Now the dividend has been held steady since 2006, it remains to be seen whether the dividend can be held at the current level without being forced to reduce unless the company is able to generate substantial additional revenues. The company has shown a year-on year revenue growth of over 23% which is substantially higher than both AT&T and Verizon. Sprint Nextel has shown negative earnings and is expected to show losses again in the year 2012.
In an attempt to broaden the scope of services, diversify its sources of revenue, and stay ahead of its more established rivals, Windstream has made several clever acquisitions such as D&E Communications, Iowa Telecom, NuVox, Lexcom, Kentuck Data Link and Norlight. The $2.3 billion takeover of Paetec last year is expected to add around $2 billion yearly in revenues and the net effect of all these acquisitions will mean that almost 70% of Windstream revenues will come from services that are not based on landlines. The Paetec acquisition is also expected to result in significant tax breaks because of the losses carried forward on its books. Cost savings from this acquisition are expected to be in the region of $100 million every year. All of these moves have a Windstream in a strong position to cope with the inevitable decline of landline revenues. In addition, I expect that the economies of scale and the cost synergies that will accrue when these acquisitions have been fully integrated and go a long way in rationalizing the cost structure of the company. Windstream also expects to incur capital expenditure of around $1 billion in the current fiscal to continue to improve its technology base.
A major focus area for Windstream and where it is well ahead of its competitors has been in the high-growth potential area of cloud computing. Its expansion in the cloud computing space has been innovative and aggressive and big bets have been placed on the business potential with the acquisition in particular of Norlight and Hosted Solutions. Other telecommunication companies have been much slower in making their moves in cloud computing and are only now getting themselves ready for these services. The strategy of shifting from traditional telecom services to the newer technologies make a lot of sense to me because of the better margins and revenues that premier value-added services should hopefully provide.
The Windstream acquisition spree has had its impact on the financial position of the company. On the positive side, the net worth of the company has increased sharply over the last year and the generation of operating cash flows should also increase substantially when the acquisition synergies are fully realized. However, on the negative side, the acquisitions have led to a substantial debt burden which is currently around $9 billion and has led to at least one credit rating agency downgrading the credit rating of Windstream recently. To be fair, I should tell you that more than 50% of this debt is not due for repayment until 2017 which gives the company plenty of elbow room to generate the cash for debt servicing. The company is also looking seriously at debt rescheduling options to minimize the impact on business operations.
Despite the dividend yield, which may or may not last, Windstream should essentially be regarded as a speculative play on new technology and its ability to satisfy subscribers. If cloud computing turns out to be as big as many people think, investors in Windstream could profit handsomely. However, it will take time for the company to execute that strategy and integrate its acquisitions and it is quite likely that you may see sharp gyrations in the stock price for the next couple of years. You will need to be a long-term investor with lots of patience to remain invested in the company's stock. An area of focus will continue to remain the predominantly rural nature of the company's markets because of the regulations (both state and Federal Communications Commission (FCC)) that could limit the pricing to customers. If you have an existing investment, I would recommend a hold without adding to the investment until it becomes clear how the diversification strategy is playing out. | <urn:uuid:b673399d-a815-46bb-b1ef-707a6aa12f70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gurufocus.com/news/171921/what-does-windstreams-new-strategy-mean-for-investors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970342 | 1,127 | 1.710938 | 2 |
hackingbear writes "The Xinhua news agency reports that a signaling equipment circuit design flaw and lack of safety alertness in railway management caused a high-speed train to ram into a stalled train near the city of Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province on Saturday, leaving 40 people dead and 191 injured. A lightning strike triggered the malfunction, which resulted in a green alert light failing to turn red, leaving railway personnel unaware of the stalled train, the official said. The Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication Co., which was responsible for designing and building the signaling system, has posted an apology letter on its website, offering condolences and promising to 'shoulder any due punishments that may result from the investigation.' Domestic media has raised more questions over the explanation. 'Why was such seriously flawed equipment in use for nearly two years without being detected? Why was it installed in as many as 76 rail stations across the country? Are there other problems with the railway apart from equipment flaws?'" | <urn:uuid:01dfe750-7a8b-48c1-8911-88cf35309ce3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/29/212238/circuit-flaws-blamed-for-china-train-crash?sdsrc=prev | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971427 | 203 | 1.6875 | 2 |
A couple of days ago, I spent the morning at the MoMA seeing their Miró show (if you're in NYC, go. It's was an amazing show and the sculptures are not to be missed). It was a cold, rainy, all around crappy day, perfect for museum-going. Also perfect, it turns out, for Norwegian bun-making. Because when I got home, R had a wrack of these little beauties just coming out of the oven. He's had buns on the mind for a while now (that sounds a bit strange...), convinced nothing we have in America quite approximates what he's used to at home. I'm calling these Norwegian Cardamom-Raisin Buns because that's a fairly good descriptor, although R insists they're "just buns." Okay.
I see cardamom called for in a handful of recipes these days, and it seems to be a fairly trendy spice in baking. But it's surprisingly scarce in New York. So when I stumbled on an exorbitantly priced bottle, I bought it anyway. Evidently it's as common as ginger in Scandinavia, and comes from the same family. You can also easily find it in Indian stores (right Hanne!), assuming you can easily find an Indian store.
If you happen to speak Norwegian, the original recipe comes from this website. If not, I forced R to translate and you'll find his version below. This is a rather forgiving recipe, as R didn't bloom his yeast or weigh any of the ingredients, just eyeballing instead. In any case, they're prefect for a cold, rainy day after a morning at the museum.
1 liter all-purpose flour
1 package active dry yeast
3 1/2 deciliters milk (not fat free, but actually that works fine)
Raisins, as much as you'd like (some alternatives would be chocolate, marzipan or other dried fruits)
100 grams butter, melted
1.25 deciliters sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 egg, beaten, for the wash
Mix flour, yeast, sugar and cardamom. Add the milk to the melted butter, and heat to 40 degrees Celsius for dry yeast (which is just a bit warmer than body temperature). Add the milk and butter mixture to the flour mixture and mix until a smooth dough forms. At this point, kneed the raisins into the formed dough, just until incorporated.
Sprinkle a bit of flour on top, cover the bowl and allow the yeast to rise for 30 minutes or double the original size.
Kneed the dough a bit, then split it into 16 pieces. Form each piece into a bun by rubbing it between the palms of your hands or against the table with one hand. The pressure should start out hard and get progressively lighter. There should not be cracks in the dough, but if there are, face those down toward the pan so they'll be pretty. Brush the tops with the beaten egg.
Oven should be preheated to 400 Fahrenheit (200 Celsius). Bake on sheets for 10-15 minutes.
* * * | <urn:uuid:c6f585e2-cf85-43ac-a068-32d74173cfea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cooking-books.blogspot.com/2008/12/norwegian-cardamom-raisin-buns.html?showComment=1228332360000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957245 | 647 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Many Faces of Megan Wells
A former theatre-arts major enthralls audiences with
stories of modern heroes and ancient myths.
Inside the Uncommon Ground Coffee House on Chicago’s North Side, Megan Peterson Wells ’81 stands on a barstool, hands and arms splayed back and upwards, head and chin jutting violently downward, eyes narrowed to slits. Her voice is high-pitched, wizened.
She’s well beyond pretending to be Jupiter’s eagle from a mythical Greek tale about Eros, the god of love. For the moment she is this bird creature. Her nose appears sharp as a beak, and the sleeves of her diaphanous white tunic have spread like plumage. For the audience, the wooden floor of the coffeehouse looms below like a deep canyon and the perilous “under river” of a mythical world.
Moments later, Wells jumps off the stool, and the transformation is startling. She’s now Psyche, a young maiden, facing death at the River Styx, risking all, completing several life-threatening tasks in order to prove her love for Eros. Then she’s Aphrodite, a demanding, vainglorious queen of beauty and potential mother-in-law, then Eros himself, beaten at his own game and smitten with Psyche.
For an entire hour, the lithe and energetic Wells disappears completely, calling up male, female and even animal characters with voice changes and body language that suggest the work of a medium. Her large sapphire eyes change constantly, like sky and water—liquid blue one moment, stormy gray the next, sometimes black and menacing with pupils wildly dilated. “I have often described this as a possession state,” she says later. “But as I see it, we’re all multiple personalities. I experience this as a calling.”
To say the characters speak through Wells is an understatement. They flow in and out, filling the room with the help of a small microphone, owning it, devouring the attention of a tightly packed audience.
Wells’ performance at Uncommon Ground culminates an evening of storytelling that has included tales from less-seasoned storytellers. Afterwards, several performers approach her to offer compliments and seek advice. It’s understandable that the novices would salute her performance with hoots and hollers, but she’s managed to reach others as well. “I had my doubts about coming here, but her performance was incredible,” says Steven DeFalco, 24, a law student from Darien, Ill. “She was very vivid, and there was just so much emotion. She really got your attention, and the story kept getting better and better.”
Wells has been enchanting audiences with her storytelling talents since 1987. That year, while attending a storytelling festival, she approached an open microphone and recounted a true story of a friend who died of AIDS. “He had had a powerful dream about a wave that took him, and a voice of wisdom told him to lean into the wave,” she recalls. “In the dream, his face goes peaceful and he starts to cry.” Later, when her friend was dying in San Francisco, she wrote out his dream and mailed it to him, and it seemed to comfort him. He died a week later.
Wells’ story provoked more experienced storytellers to encourage her. From there she was on her way toward mastering an art that is as old as history. While storytelling has been an integral part of human society for thousands of years, its importance faded with the advent of print and, later, radio and television. Efforts in the last 30 years to preserve oral traditions led to a revival of the art of storytelling that really exploded in the early 1980s. By the end of that decade, there were 114 large festivals solely dedicated to storytelling in the United States. This boom has been accompanied by rapid growth in the number of professional storytellers, many of whom are now trained in master’s programs at universities across the country.
As a professional storyteller, Wells performs for schools, libraries, community organizations—even large corporations. In 1999, she was honored at the Illinois Storytelling Festival as “Outstanding Illinois Teller.” That same year, she released Fire in Boomtown, a collaboration with folk singer Amy Lowe which earned both the EdPress Distinguished Achievement Award and Parents Magazine Parents’ Choice award. Combining storytelling, singing, and music, the CD tells the story of the 1871 Chicago fire that left 300 people dead and another 100,000 homeless
Fire in Boomtown is typical of the kind of story Wells likes to write and perform—one in which the hero faces an epic struggle that brings him or her closer to enlightenment. The hero in Fire in Boomtown is an exhausted fire captain who surveys the devastation to Chicago, the town he has been assigned to protect. Wells recognized him as an archetypal hero—a man who attempted and failed to enforce a boundary against a mighty enemy, wind and fire. The struggle, not the failure, proves his valor, she says, and the town, which has a spirit of its own and is destined to boom, rises from the ashes even stronger.
Listeners’ reactions to the heroic captain’s struggle in Fire in Boomtown have been especially emotional since the terrorist attacks last September in New York and Washington, D.C., says Wells, who believes her purpose as a storyteller is not just to entertain audiences, but transform them. Wells has faith that stories have the power to mend wounded souls and reconnect people with the purpose of their existence. “The right story can heal,” she insists.
Where the World Makes Sense
Wells discovered the healing power of art and performing when she was only 9, growing up in Des Plaines, Ill. Playing a character in a children’s theatre production of The Miracle Worker—a play about young Helen Keller’s struggle to come to terms with her deafness and blindness—Wells said she immediately felt the stage was a place “in which the world made sense. Plays came to a resolution. Heroes suffered for a reason. There was always peace in theater work for me.”
She continued to act in high school but it wasn’t until attending Illinois Wesleyan as a theatre-arts major that Wells discovered she also had a talent for writing. Wells made that discovery in a class taught by former English professor Dorothy Berkson, who “taught me how to write,” Wells says. “First she flunked me, then she allowed me to rewrite until I earned an A. There was no coddling...[but] I would not be a writer without her.”
Wells’ skill and confidence as a writer grew to the point where, in her senior year, she collaborated with former history professor John Heyl on the writing of an original play, Father of the Revolution. Based on the life of Karl Marx, the historical drama—also codirected by Wells—was performed at the university’s Lab Theatre. Wells describes this experience of bringing history to life as “formative.”
After graduating from Illinois Wesleyan, Wells continued her studies at Illinois State University, earning a master’s degree in theatre arts in 1985. Just one year later, she made her mark on the Chicago theatre scene by winning a coveted Jefferson Award for her work as codirector of the Absolute Theatre production of C.P. Taylor’s play, Good.
While her theatre career was growing, Wells spent time studying with a shaman, who she says introduced her to the mystical art of healing. She had always felt a spiritual purpose in her work as a performer and when she discovered her talent for storytelling, that purpose seemed even clearer. Long ago, storytellers were regarded as healers, Wells says. “When you were ill, you didn’t need a pill. You needed a story because the right story gave you a sense of place in your emotional struggle.”
For inspiration in writing narratives that she will later perform as a storyteller, Wells often turns to ancient myths, like the story of Psyche and Eros. “I turn to these myths,” she says, “because they are the source of our codes.” Wells defines these codes as “the unconscious rules of behavior that shape our response to life’s deep mysteries: birth, death, love, war, honor, wisdom, generosity.” Channelling stories and voices from our past can open up a new understanding of the world, she says, “making choice, and change, possible.”
Once Wells originates an idea and conducts research, the creative process begins. “I sit down at my computer and write for a while, and eventually one of those voices will show up,” she says. “I write and edit, write some more, edit.”
After writing comes memorization and recitation—essential skills for a storyteller. Having practiced memorization since she first started acting as a child, Wells says she has no difficulty reciting stories she’s heard only once with accuracy and in great detail. “Your mind is just a muscle,” she says. “You just have to work it.”
After memorizing the story, she invites friends to listen. “In the first 20 times telling the story, there’s the process of moving from creation to sharing,” she says. “There’s the journey from recitation to storytelling.” The amount of time taken for this process varies. In some cases, stories evolve over several years and several retellings.
King Midas and Cookie Dough
Perhaps the most unexpected listing on Megan Wells’ list of credentials is “business consultant.” Her list of recent clients is a corporate “who’s who”—Ace Hardware, AT&T, Kraft/Nabisco, Nalco, MasterCard, Motorola, and Northwest Airlines all have used her services.
Wells’ application of her storytelling talents to the corporate world came at the request of Kay Allison. A brand-management consultant serving Fortune 500 companies, Allison discovered Wells during a performance at an art salon, and was impressed by not just her storytelling, but by what transpired afterward. “Megan asked each person to tell her what image stayed with them and what it meant to them,” says Allison, who highly values interactive experiences that stimulate creativity.
Allison—who has a black belt in karate, as well as a reputation for coaxing corporate executives to break boards—saw Wells as a perfect fit in her efforts to enhance corporate brainstorming sessions. “Rather than saying, ‘Now, let’s think really hard about this,’ I have them experience new things,” Allison explains. “Megan is one of those firecrackers I bring in.
Wells’ first corporate gig worked to restore harmony to a food company coping with a merger of competing brands and competing staffs. “Here you have an organization suddenly composed of individuals who never before would have dreamed of cooperating or sharing information with one another,” Wells says. To counter this feeling of distrust, “We opened the session with an emotional myth of generosity,” she recalls. “That set the tone for the rest of the day and gave them a metaphor to refer to from that moment on.
Wells later had the group imagine a primary encounter with one of their products: the childhood experience of eating raw cookie dough from a bowl or beater. “I put them back in touch with their historical roots and the deep sacredness of family tradition, which their brand was rooted in. Once I put them back in touch with these things, it seemed to revivify their connection to the source of their passion.
For a global-brands communication company, Wells told the tale of King Midas and advised staff to be vigilant of what they would choose to love and hold precious. For a pet-food manufacturer, she told a story of how the canine species made the leap from wolf to dog. Allison admires Wells’ ability to jump so smoothly into the corporate mindset while maintaining the essential strengths of her storytelling art. “She’s able to translate between the two worlds,” says Allison.
Wells says she is almost always “amazed” at the results of combining business and storytelling. “The world of business is hungry to revive the imagination and is coming to value it again. I am happy that my life is coinciding with this reawakening of business.
Awakening people to the joys and healing power of imagination remains Wells’ primary effort as a storyteller. Whatever bigger projects she may pursue in the future, she says she will continue to perform in more intimate settings such as schools and libraries. “Though my life commitment is primarily to bring storytelling back to adults, I will always remain close to the children,” she adds. “They feed my soul and nurture the work in incomparable ways.”
Now her own children—Claire, age 6, and Hannah, born last October—are benefiting from Wells’ talent as a storyteller. When she and husband Gary tuck them into bed at night, Wells often reads them stories, or imagines stories on the spot that address various events that came up during the day. She says she finds a deep satisfaction in sharing this gift with her daughters. “I keep thinking that someday I’ll find a way to teach this stuff to other parents,” she remarks.
To spend more time with her children, Wells has cut back a bit on her appearances lately, but she remains focused on several new projects. Among them is an ongoing collaboration with the vocal group Chicago a cappella. Wells is writing, and will direct, a story opera about Helen of Troy, featuring original music by Chicago a cappella’s artistic director Jonathan Miller. Previously, Wells and Miller created The Nordic Wolf, a weave of Scandinavian music and the firebird myth, and Wells also collaborated with the vocal group on Go Down Moses, which she describes as “a weave of spirituals with an oral history of slavery.”
This slate of collaborative ventures doesn’t mean that Wells’ passion for one-woman performances is flagging. “I don’t ‘prefer’ one format or another, but it seems that certain stories do. So if a story requires one voice, I’m the voice—if the story requires more dimension, then collaboration it is.”
In fact, despite her long-held love of the stage, Wells admits, “I tend to shy away from big theatrics, actually. The power of storytelling is its mysterious ability to create hypnotic images in the mind of the listener. If the audience spends a lot of time being aware that they are looking at something outside of themselves, then the images in their heads diminish. It’s like mind cinema; my goal is to create the images somewhere in the invisible space between their imaginations and mine.”
“My life’s work is an attempt to live a ‘realized’ life, and to help others do the same,” she concludes. “I tell these stories to awaken people’s minds and hearts to the wonder of being alive.” | <urn:uuid:d24fe9ce-9fc0-4ab7-85a5-edda30988d5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iwu.edu/magazine/2002/fall/wells.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971643 | 3,272 | 1.671875 | 2 |
More on the Manassas Battle.
The following interesting letter from an officer in Major Wheat’s Battalion, addressed to his father, in this city, will be read with interest:
Battle-Field, Near Manassas Junction,
Wheat’s Battalion, July 2[?], 1861.
Dear Father — I received yours of 16th inst. yesterday night. I wrote you about same date from camp “Stuart,” and expect that you are in receipt of it, long ere the date of this.
We have been for the past week or ten days constantly on duty, our position, as the advance portion of the army, necessarily involved incessant and unflinching duties from officers and men. The enemy, previous to the 21st inst., were ubiquitous. The three or four battle previous to that date were well contested, but all resulted in their defeat. The camp equipage, baggage, &c., of our command were sent to the rear on the morning of the date of my last letter, and since then till now your son has been innocent of a change of linen or water to wash himself, except what the Heavens furnished in the shape of rain and dews, and they only contribute to render his dusty habiliments of the hue and character of the soil and road, with variegations of colors fixed and indelible.
Our duties have tried the mettle of our men; without covering, without blankets, half clothed, scarcely half fed, bivouacked where duty demanded our pickets to be placed, our men have stood it all, and bravely. I have seen them night after night lying uncovered in woods and fields, hungry and half-naked, (officers faring the same,) expecting the advance of the enemy every moment, without a murmur. Day after day, exposed to rains and an almost intolerable heat, they unflinchingly performed their duties. After marching and counter-marching, without tents, clothing or anything to render them at all comfortable, they were led on the glorious morning of Sunday, 21st inst., to beat back Lincoln’s horde of northern barbarians, when for forty-eight hour previously they had not tasted food. Most gloriously did our battalion acquit itself. We have earned an undying fame.
The enemy, variously estimated at from 40,000 to 60,000, made a feint upon our front, which was easily and readily understood. Our battalion being in advance, and holding the post of honor on the left, were ordered to meet them as they endeavored to flank us. Our whole force did not number on the field 1800 men. Marching to take our position, we were fired upon by the South Carolina regiment and one of our company shot down; he fell at my feet. After the fire of the South Carolina regiment upon us from a point blank distance, concealed as they were in the woods, the enemy opened upon us a most terrific storm of shell, canister shot, chain shot, &c., taking position with only our little battalion, about 420 strong, the balance of our force of 1800 being under cover, we charged the enemy at the point of the bayonet and maintained, under the most incessant and murderous fire, for fully one hour, our position; and had our little battalion been supported we could have captured the enemy’s batteries and soon given another turn to events as they transpired.
I am anxious that you should hear from me, and cannot enter into a lengthened detail of the battle of the 21st. I write in a great hurry, but this I can say, that but for our battalion assuming the position it did, crossing a field at the charge, under the fire of eight thousand of the enemy, in position, protected by artillery, armed with the most improved weapons, the field would have been lost. All kinds of praise is accorded us. From Gen. Beauregard to the humblest private it is a source of wonderment how, being volunteers and unaccustomed to battle, we stood the fire we did. i can only say, personally, I endeavored to do my duty. I escaped most miraculously; fully one hundred shots were fired at me in a single instant. I entered into the engagement in my short sleeves, and showing a conspicuous mark, was fired upon from all points; just at the moment, at a deliberate aim, with my little carbine, I killed and officer or a man in front of their standard. The order to us being to fall back, as I retreated, being all alone, openly exposed, my white shirt a mark, I thought the eight thousand men opposed to our little battalion had opened upon me. Such an avalanche of shot, shell, &c., I do not care very soon to experience or risk the hazard of facing.
Our battalion was terribly cut up, seven commissioned officers of the eighteen who engaged in the battle being wounded. Our company lost half of its numbers in wounded. The flag we bore – ours being the centre flag company – evidences the fire we stood, there being no less than fifteen to eighteen perforations from the enemy’s bullets. I have not time to enumerate the wounded and killed, except of our company, and even this I may err in recapitulating, as returns are not complete: Capt. Miller, small bone of leg broken; Lieutenant Dickinson, acting adjutant, shot through the thigh; Lieut Care, son of Dr. Carey, shot in the foot, and when lying on the field stabbed through the thigh by a Yankee officer, whom he killed; Major Wheat was shot early after the opening of the engagement, through the body, the bullet going entirely through his body, just back of both nipples; we thought he was killed, but he was brought from the field alive, and though pronounced mortally wounded he is fast recovering, and we only hope for him to live to lead us to millions of such glorious victories. We can whip the Yankees. At no time did we have more the 15,000 men engaged. Our battalion have earned their laurels. I cannot write more. I will send details, though I may have to copy many things embraced in this letter.
Thank God for my escape.
Daily True Delta, 8/8/1861
*Possibly 1st Lt. William D. Foley
Contributed by John Hennessy | <urn:uuid:b63d0cdc-c3ae-4c10-98f8-2ac7dec63bda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bullrunnings.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/w-co-e-1st-special-louisiana-battalion-on-the-battle/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=bc4cf9c758 | 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 | 0.975597 | 1,324 | 1.757813 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (Aug. 22, 12:25 p.m. ET) — Another California city has banned single-use plastic carryout bags, bringing the number of plastic bag bans in the United States to 81 — with more than half of them, 43, enacted this year. Meanwhile, a bag recycling bill in Illinois has yet to be signed by Gov. Pat Quinn with the Aug. 28 deadline for his decision fast approaching.
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Plastics News' experts analyze North American thermoformed packaging sector performance and prospects for future growth. View analysis of processors operating within this segment as well as perspectives from industry though leaders on economic and political conditions, market trends, legislative/regulatory activity impacting supply and demand and manufacturing technology.Learn more | <urn:uuid:d9dba8de-575c-4988-90d2-a3e9f2ad6271> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20120822/NEWS/308229963/another-california-town-passes-bag-ban-fate-of-illinois-bill-still-uncertain&template=emailthis | 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 | 0.932721 | 250 | 1.664063 | 2 |
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Topics addressed on February 20, 2008:
Truncating Social Security numbers on Experian credit reports
I was told to request that my reports do not include the first five digits of my Social Security number. Should I do this, and if so, what is the process?
The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) is best known for making one free report available to everyone once a year. But it also did a number of other things, among them giving you the ability to ask that the first five digits of your Social Security number be truncated when the report is disclosed to you.
But you do not need to make the request at Experian. A number of years ago Experian began removing your correct Social Security number entirely when we send a report to you because of concern about the risk it could pose when we delivered your report. Clearly, you knew your correct Social Security number when you requested the report, so there was no reason to repeat it on the report we sent.
So, on your Experian report there is nothing to truncate.
Experian does include other Social Security numbers that are reported to it as belonging to you so that you have a record of the variations. I discuss that at length in my response to ATR in this column.
The policies of the other national credit reporting companies may be different, so you should contact them separately to verify their processes.
Thanks for asking.
- The "Ask Experian" team | <urn:uuid:641536c4-c46f-423e-9d67-9cb78ffd44d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.experian.com/ask-experian/20080220-truncating-social-security-numbers-on-experian-credit-reports.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951654 | 465 | 1.523438 | 2 |
DAMASCUS // Syria's high judicial council has announced the prosecution of opposition members will be suspended so that they can join a national dialogue. It did not specify which crimes were affected by the ruling.
It comes after the interior minister, Mohammed Al Shaar, vowed to make it easier for Syrian opposition members living in exile to return to take part in the dialogue proposed by the president, Bashar Al Assad, this month.
"The high judicial council has decided to discontinue all prosecutions against opposition forces and individuals so they may participate in the national dialogue," said the official news agency, Sana.
The council stressed that those "opposition forces will be designated by the government or first ministerial action group charged with implementing the preparatory phase of the programme to resolve the Syrian crisis".
In his speech on January 6, Mr Al Assad proposed talks with opposition figures who were not "slaves of the West" and on condition that "terrorist attacks" ended before any political transition. The regime has branded activists and armed insurgents alike as terrorists.
Mr Al Shaar has said the directive allowing Syrians living abroad to return was not a blanket amnesty.
The United Nations said that more than 60,000 people have been killed during Syria's uprising, which began in March 2011 with peaceful protests and escalated into an armed insurgency after a harsh regime crackdown. | <urn:uuid:638676da-337c-4f16-bc32-d39d3c4d7696> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/syria-pledges-to-suspend-prosecution-of-opposition-members | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974781 | 271 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Rare Chinese moonflask discovered in Dorset
07 Nov, 2011
A rare Chinese blue and white porcelain Moonflask discovered at a village antiques day in Dorset is expected to fetch around half a million pounds at Woolley and Wallis's Asian Art sale on 16th November.
The vase’s octogenarian lady owner took it along to an antiques event organised by the WI, where the delighted antiques specialist recognised its rarity and suggested she contact John Axford, Woolley and Wallis’s Asian Art specialist. John confirmed that the vase was in fact a rare Ming-style Moonflask, of the highest quality, created for the Imperial Qing Dynasty in the 18th century. The vase is painted with delicate cobalt blue designs of birds perched on a prunus branch, a popular and auspicious theme for porcelain painters, believed to herald Spring.
In fact, the moonflask is such a fine example that John, a regular expert on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, included it in the Roadshow’s ‘Basic, Better, Best’ feature. In the episode, filmed at the Weald and Downland Musuem near Chichester, John challenges presenter Fiona Bruce to tell the difference in quality between three Chinese moonflasks. John chose this example as the best. The episode will be screened in Spring 2012.
The moonflask is Lot 747 on the second day of our three day Asian Art sale which runs from 15th to 17th November. | <urn:uuid:21d66628-ece5-4649-89c1-57686adac21f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.woolleyandwallis.co.uk/news/rare-chinese-moonflask-discovered-in-dorset.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930213 | 323 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Iran is making China fear democracy
Evan Osnos has a typically thoughtful blog today about China's reaction to the events in Iran.
He notes that while the official newspapers are quick to portray the riots as "Western interference", something that is calculated to get Chinese backs up, there is a more nuanced conversation among intellectuals.
"Wu Jiaxiang, an intellectual and former researcher in the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee wrote the other day:
For over ten years, Iran’s presidential elections have had turnout exceeding seventy percent, so much so that the closing hours had to be delayed until midnight. What does that show? It means that indifference towards democracy comes from the lack of democracy. There is no excuse for non-democracy.
Mao Anlin, another blogger, goes one step further:
Even Iran, such a religious country, has had so many years of elections. Candidates can squabble, the results can be questioned, the legislature can talk, and Khamenei can keep right on working. We [in China] insist on appointing every single candidate in advance, even for the chief of Macau. This is more than a little lagging behind Iran."
Meanwhile, on the internet, the meme of the moment is: "Tiananmen Square + Twitter = Tehran".
However, there is another side to the debate in China about the Iranian elections. The prevailing fear in China, schooled into every student since the 1989 protests, is of instability. The idea is that China is such an unwieldy and large country that it must be controlled carefully, or it will lapse into chaos.
(I subscribe to the other side of this view, which is that China's history is littered with cycles of repression leading to rebellion).
At any rate, there is a widespread view on the Chinese internet, documented by Shanghaiist, that democracy leads to instability – it encourages people to lose their heads and riot.
Having seen the Iranian riots, "I am more sure than ever, Chinese people should be supervised and controlled," said one blogger (maybe it was Jackie Chan). "Now that elections have triggered so many protests and riots, I am not sure what the liberal wings would think of them. Use the army!" said another.
Meanwhile there still seems no official line from Beijing. It appears the politburo is waiting to see how things eventually pan out.
Although the English-language China Daily newspaper has written about the need for Western governments to stop meddling, this is probably designed for foreign consumption.
There's no ideological line across the Chinese-language media, or any firm indication from the People's Daily, which is what the leadership uses to inform cadres of its opinions.
The Chinese High Street has more muscle
February 27th, 2011 10:17
Chinese graduates sign up for a soldier's life
January 13th, 2011 7:37
Who is Li Keqiang?
January 11th, 2011 8:12
How much are we really paying for the pandas?
January 11th, 2011 7:18
Why does China block foreign websites?
December 30th, 2010 10:54 | <urn:uuid:50f1d54c-7f9b-43c1-ba26-2a51cb422088> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100000795/iran-is-making-china-fear-democracy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971127 | 648 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By Christine Dugas, USA TODAY
A diverse economy helped boost Birmingham's housing market while much of the country suffered in turmoil. In 2006 and 2007, the largest city in Alabama experienced its best home sales periods ever, says Hal Tillman, president of the Birmingham Association of Realtors.
But it's hard to maintain such momentum. Sales are down significantly in 2008 because Birmingham is not immune from today's economic challenges, says Grayson Glaze, executive director of the Alabama Center for Real Estate.
Unemployment is rising, although it is not as high as in other parts of the nation, says Sam Addy, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama.
That's because the local economy has shifted from iron and steel mills to manufacturing. And over time it expanded into banking and health care. But even in Birmingham, housing sales have plummeted, in part because home buyers are worried about their financial futures and are holding back.
Home inventory has risen. But that is also because too many homes were built in recent years. As inventory became unrealistically high, home prices dropped, Tillman says.
"As the state's largest metro area, Birmingham has a greater share of distressed properties that continue to apply downward pricing pressures," Glaze says.
Unfortunately, many home buyers are not able to take advantage of the great deals because they are finding it harder to qualify for mortgages. And many don't have enough money for down payments.
Birmingham real estate "will continue to reflect a period of correction as fragile consumer demand and an overabundance of housing supply struggle toward greater balance," Glazer says.
Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more. | <urn:uuid:c2c34f76-d76e-414a-b92e-4a7c2239f86b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/closetohome/2008-12-15-closetohome-birmingham_N.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962421 | 383 | 1.75 | 2 |
COLUSA, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown waded into potentially hostile territory as he pitched his plan to reshape California's water-delivery system with a $14 billion tunneling project below the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The governor on Wednesday spoke during the annual breakfast of the Colusa Farm Show, one of the biggest such events on the West Coast.
He acknowledged that many people in the region north of the state capital have a different political philosophy than he does, noting that he has never won Colusa County in any of his statewide races. Yet he told hundreds of attendees that he would promise to protect their water.
After his speech, several farmers said they were wary of the tunnel project, fearing it would siphon more Northern California water to farms and cities to the south. | <urn:uuid:81386bce-9bb5-43a3-91a9-a40f8337c6f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130206/A_NEWS/130209924/-1/A_SPECIAL34 | 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 | 0.984034 | 166 | 1.578125 | 2 |
“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” - Albert Einstein
By Leo Babauta
Recently I published the Four Laws of Simplicity, which talked in part about decluttering your home and office … and it seemed to strike a chord with many of you.
Clutter, apparently, has invaded all of our lives.
And the inevitable fact is that, no matter how much we simplify our lives, even after a huge decluttering session and after a vow not to buy anything ever ever ever again … entropy always always sets in.
It starts out as one item on the floor. Just a simple box, or a toy, or a piece of clothing. Such a little thing, nothing to worry about. But that one little thing will attract a second, and then a third, and soon clutter will grow insidiously in our homes until it overwhelms us. And then we’re back to square one.
Don’t let it happen. Be vigilant.
Here are my favorite tips for beating clutter entropy, for the minimalists among you.
1. One in, two out. Make it a rule: for every new item that comes into your life, you need to remove two. That means gifts, clothes, shoes, books, magazines, anything. It’s great to have a place where you put things you’re going to get rid of … whether to give to other people or to donate to charity or to take to a used book store. Then you can just grab the stuff on your way out to do errands.
2. Limited storage. I like this rule because it fits in with my philosophy of self-set limitations: don’t allow yourself to have tons of storage space. The more storage you have, the more stuff you’ll keep. Instead, have limited storage and if stuff doesn’t fit in there, get rid of it. That forces you to make choices. They key is making those choices … if you don’t, you’ll end up with clutter.
3. Clear floors and flat surfaces. Keep them clear. A room looks so much cleaner if all flat surfaces, from the floor to tabletops to countertops, are clear of clutter. Remove everything from these surfaces except perhaps one or two decorative items (don’t clutter with knick knacks). If you find stuff making its way here, clear it out. Clearing surfaces once a day or every couple days is a good routine.
4. Designate a home for everything, and be fanatic. When you find stuff on flat surfaces, or draping over a chair, it might be because you don’t have a designated spot for that kind of thing. If you don’t, designate a spot for it immediately. If stuff doesn’t have a home in your home, you need to get rid of it, or it will forever wander around the house. The other problem might be that you have already designated a spot for it, but you’re just not good at putting it away. In that case, take a month to build up the habit of putting things where they belong immediately. It’ll make a huge difference.
5. Regular decluttering sessions. Put in your calendar. Even the best of us need to declutter regularly. If you’ve decluttered your home, things might be great now, but you’ll need to do clutter maintenance. Put it in your calendar: perhaps once a month, once a week, or once every few months. Experiment to see what interval works for your life.
Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. - Lao Tzu
6. Reduce your desires for more. If clutter is coming into your life at a rate that’s too great for you to handle, you might need to look at your buying habits. Do you go shopping for clothes or gadgets or shoes or books every week (or more)? Are you always buying stuff online? If so, is it out of real necessity, or do you just like to buy stuff? It’s important that you take a look at these desires, and see if you can address them. Reducing your desires will go a long way to reducing your need to fight clutter.
7. 30-day list. This is really a way to control the desires I mentioned in No. 6 above. Make a list: anytime you want to buy something (other than absolute necessities), put it on the list with the date you added it. Then, don’t allow yourself to buy something until it’s been on the list for 30 days. By then, your desire for that item might have passed. It’s a great way to control that impulse to buy. (A cool alternative: the Want book.)
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein
8. Change your habits. Clutter didn’t create itself. It’s there because you put it there. What habits do you have that created the clutter? There may be many of them, some of them already mentioned above: you buy a lot, you don’t designate a home for things, you don’t put things away, you buy but don’t remove things … you may have other habits that create clutter. Change those habits, one at a time. Take 30 days and focus on a clutter habit, and see if you can create a new habit that will reduce your clutter. | <urn:uuid:86f0fbac-0b9a-4bef-b0b2-25b77ecad179> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zenhabits.net/the-minimalists-guide-to-fighting-and-beating-clutter-entropy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94243 | 1,193 | 1.671875 | 2 |
I now have a "server closet" where I keep my home server, terastation, switch, dsl modem, wifi station, ups and so on. In order to track the temperature inside the closet I ordered a "USB Thermometer" from usb.brando.com.hk. You just plug it into the USB port of a Windows computer and it will measure the ambient temperature.
The device arrived in an envelope within a few days together with a mini cd-r. That's right, not a factory made cd-rom but a normal burn-it-at-home cd-r with the software on it. And the software seems quite home made as well.
I read some review saying the device was "designed to be used in laboratories". Right.
You need two drivers to get it to work. First a USB-Serial -adapter and then a driver for the thermometer. It seems they use some old thermometer solution designed for serial-connection and simply put it on the same USB stick as a USB-to-Serial -adapter. But it works. And the temperature is very close to what my stand-alone thermometer says when placed nearby.
The software shows most of the captions in English and is capable of logging temperatures at different intervals - although only as a list on screen, not to a file. There is a "updata software" option in the software as well, but it is only a mailto: link to a suspicious looking address".
Not a great device but not very expensive either and it works. I just wish they had made logging to file available and used fewer colors in the user interface.
There are two alternative programs available for this device:
- TermoHID (link updated 10.9.2011)
- UTAC (link updated 28.4.2011)
Both of these are much better than the original one. | <urn:uuid:9715b78b-e257-446f-b76c-43e28ff0f45e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://life2go.net/comment/1047 | 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 | 0.947741 | 393 | 1.617188 | 2 |
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