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dududuedu wrote:Nowadays, there are few planets and moons where there would be the basic conditions to life development. Most of the discovered planets are big and very hot and too near to its stars. However, when they improve the way they look for planets they will be able to detect small planets too. Even so I think it would be very hard to find inteligent life.
What do we call intelligent life?
Are we intelligent? Are we superiors?
Do we live our life in harmony?
Let us see, we are killing ourselves, we are destroying the planet earth and we not doing anything to improve our spiritual life.
We don’t understand life itself; never the less, we don’t understand, what is love? In a mess, we are living and dyeing; the universe’s forces we don’t understand and control.
But, let us give some credit and see if there is intelligence in our life!
Must of us, won’t like to be where is war, hunger, sickness, hate, darkness, ignorance, etc. we won’t like to be part of a community of worm eating a dead animal body, a community where everything stink, an environment where is too cold or too hot or not life friendly at all.
I can assure you that must of us, won’t come near to any unfriendly situation like that.
As a result, what do you think a really intelligent life being wanted to be amount us?
I believe that is some of the reasons why we can not see intelligent life being; also, there is lower condition of life than ours. We don't see them because: they can’t come to us and we can not go to them.
We won't see others out space being until, we become tuned with the universe.
But believe me, there is others lives (intelligent) in the universe. | <urn:uuid:fc5d596a-ab9f-4d58-a49c-d59b5efdd8f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.englishclub.com/esl-forums/viewtopic.php?p=390569 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946829 | 404 | 1.78125 | 2 |
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... join top why why would mark a all be heritage bonded to block one of the heavy weapons ... spectrum ... Bob Laughlin aam ... or talk about something ... to me is just ... an orderly intrigue a on and I do not understand until you the truth ... the United States State Department is sponsoring a film Festival where about twenty nine movies in it ... among the films they've chosen is off the document recall the gas line ... Gasland is indeed one the most controversial documentaries that has been made on in recent years ... it is essentially ... a documentary that ... overwhelmingly to tax the idea of hydraulic fracking ... fracking ... nonetheless our State Department has somehow included this movie and saw its film festival could you elaborate a little bit on what exactly is going on here ... sure well with the festival were in the workshop it's a little more after his his mind to showcase American society and culture as the State Department stands for foreign audiences ... but as you mentioned Gasland is not just a controversial film ... but the new resistance is its back are we in that period ... it exaggerates it in this represents the truth ... in some of the most iconic images such as the kitchen faucet being lit on fire ... are based on writer half truths or outbreak misrepresentations of fact ... yes I think we've got a clip of from a trailer that ... may show a famous scene in which of ... the year though ... the ... faucet catches on fire ... um ... so what exactly was the ... apparel and you're the one who started writing about this up and exposing early spring at the light because as such the sort of paradoxical thing for the State Department be doing ... um apparently has caught the attention of some of the members of Congress who of God and taught troops that are ... yet they sent a letter to ... the state yesterday thirty two members of Congress are known to eat ... and essentially said you with this is if this is meant to be showcasing American culture ... why would we be showing a film that eight ... represents a view that the American people don't share the majority of Americans to favor hydraulic fracturing ... and he ... doesn't even act your accurately present the material that he'd stopped ... him he was he was a film that ... director Josh Fox has acknowledged is factually inaccurate many instances but for some reason didn't feel that it was relevant to ... point out was an activist Barbara show clip from the trailer now and allow it to ... explain give us an example of those sorts of inaccuracies that saw you've analyzed inside gas line ... sure well ... you know they're there are numerous ... in ... the range from for instance saying that ... natural gas companies or are are precluded from having to to follow the Clean Water Act in the clean Air Act ... which is just blatantly on true ... to the scene ... to scene where a gentleman in Colorado awaits is ... this faucet on fire for flammable chemicals coming out of his boss that ... you know that's that's a scene that that is technically true then it happened ... what goes on mentioned is that that was happening in the nineteen thirties ... decades before hydraulic fracturing was invented ... us so clearly was not a a result of a fight going back ... well blocked Wallace talk little bit ... about exactly what is going on here and why or how the to come to pass that the State Department under with ... a ... program that ... will replace describes as smart diplomacy ended off including ... such Ohio we partisan political ... film as Gasland in it so ... it's a compilation of don'ts ... will be thirty two members of Congress to send the letter suggested that it was part ... of an ongoing effort to speak to them to ... push a radical environmentalist agenda ... but it's also true that ... gasoline came out a few years ago and has received nearly the amount of scrutiny ... that I've that ensure that it was very critically claims ... of perhaps because film critics tend to be ... probably further to less than your average American ... I it has really been vetted and we're now seeing upper sections ... of a follow-up document recall racked nation ... by on a pair of Irish film makers so ... that that's going to support the claims a little more depth ... but we haven't seen this sort of betting they would CEO ... you know it the more mainstream piece of journalism so ... it is entirely possible that the State Department um that simply didn't know about all the spectral an actor sees ... of but it's also possible especially given recent decisions there involving the Keystone XL pipeline ... that there is an ideological component ... I guess but it would seem all that the third inning on apace with other president who was trying to house we were just discussing Joe rego ... follow a kind of middle ground on energy policy and and when you listen to speeches that includes fracking saying ... I'm not completely against it ... Gasland is totally categorically against bracket ... true and and I would imagine are confronted on that ... confronted one of the president would say something along the lines of ... it fracking is important but given the dangers violated in films like Gasland ... other needs to be greater oversight or transparency or something along those lines ... so there may be a middle ground that the state doubt but you're right there's no question that is ... completely ... one hundred percent oppose the practice ... and that does lend some credence to the claim that these members of Congress for making ... that is an ideological decision to include ... all right ... well thanks for being with this actually fascinating story | <urn:uuid:56f0f053-abb8-4c17-b4fb-6d570f989fa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://live.wsj.com/video/opinion-hillary-clinton-fracking-propaganda/2D4EA567-7912-41AA-AFC7-FD6EABA58752.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_VideoModule_14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982353 | 1,119 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Yes, that topic is covered by Grossman in the book; On Killing.
SLA Marshal a high ranking US Army officer did in depth research about combat troops & how they conduct missions.
It puts a lot of topics into perspective re: military training, legal issues(UCMJ, treaties, rule of land warfare etc).
In many cases, real front line troops fired guns or killed enemy troops because they did not want to be looked at as cowards or to viewed as unreliable.
It's worth noting too, that due to extended DoD/service member study-R&D, the rates of fire in combat went from approx 15-20% to approx 90-95%(combat units in SE Asia, 1962-1975 era) over many years.
Training & conditioning(mindset, motivation) assisted greatly with these service members.
Grossman's writings about the types of kills; mechanical, distance & personal makes a lot of sense. It's a Oprah "aaa-hah" moment
. Personal kills seem the most stressful & the root cause of the most mental health issues for the obvious reasons. It was interesting to read how the USMC combat veteran(SE Asia conflict) described Marines who would cut or cause injury to their own hands, when doing a sentry elimination method in low light.
Blood, gore, injury, trama, etc are all a direct part of personal kills. | <urn:uuid:0aae8c7b-05e9-489f-8f9b-ebdaa26c6d17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5419484&postcount=27 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964819 | 291 | 1.695313 | 2 |
A gunman at a Connecticut elementary school killed more than two dozen people, including children, on Friday. Here is a look at some other recent school shootings:
- April 2, 2012: A gunman killed seven people in a rampage at a California Christian university. Jongjin Kim, the Oikos University, said the suspect, One Goh, was angry because administrators refused to grant him a full tuition refund after he dropped out of the nursing program.
- Feb. 27, 2012: Three students were killed and two wounded in a shooting spree that started in a school cafeteria in Chardon, Ohio, as students waited for buses to other schools. Police have charged T.J. Lane, who was 17 at the time, as an adult.
- Feb. 14, 2008: Former student Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., fatally shooting five students and wounding 18 others before committing suicide.
- April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, fatally shot 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then killed himself.
- Oct. 2, 2006: Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, shot to death five girls at West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania, then killed himself.
- March 21, 2005: Jeffrey Weise, 16, shot and killed five schoolmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard at a high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota before taking his own life. Weise had earlier killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.
- Oct. 28, 2002: Robert Flores Jr., 41, who was flunking out of the University of Arizona nursing school, shot and killed three of his professors before killing himself.
- March 5, 2001: Charles "Andy" Williams, 15, killed two fellow students and wounded 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, Calif.
- April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school's library.
- May 21, 1998: Two teenagers were killed and more than 20 people hurt when Kip Kinkel, 17, opened fire at a high school in Springfield, Ore., after killing his parents.
- March 24, 1998: Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, killed four girls and a teacher at a Jonesboro, Ark., middle school. Ten others were wounded in the shooting.
- Dec. 1, 1997: Three students were killed and five wounded at a high school in West Paducah, Ky. Michael Carneal, then 14, later pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and is serving life in prison.
- Oct. 1, 1997: Luke Woodham, 16, of Pearl, Miss., fatally shot two students and wounded seven others after stabbing his mother to death. He was sentenced the following year to three life sentences.
The Associated Press | <urn:uuid:9d2ad738-cb99-42b5-8329-825e77c51873> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wkyc.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=273674 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9739 | 634 | 1.585938 | 2 |
These cold winter days are hard on all of us, but especially on those without a home. Hennepin County has reached a ten-year high in homelessness. Despite some great progress (such as cutting veterans’ homelessness in half), the need has just gotten way too high for our community’s service providers to handle. They run programs with great proven results, but they’ve been tapped out for years and just don’t have the resources to help everyone coming to their doors.
We can do better to serve our neighbors in need. Providing housing is better than struggling with this rising tide of homelessness. Not only is stable housing more dignified for our neighbors, but it’s actually cheaper to all of us. Folks in crisis use expensive crisis-care services: shelter, emergency rooms, law enforcement, and mental-health interventions. Folks with housing are more productive workers, are healthier, and cost us less as taxpayers—even when this housing is publicly funded. A little upfront investment goes a long way.
We can all play a role in ending homelessness. We can advocate at the Capitol for better services for those in need. We can encourage our neighborhoods to welcome mixed-income housing developments. We can donate or volunteer for our community’s excellent nonprofits. And we can all look upon our homeless neighbors with a little kindness and compassion during these cold days.
Colleen O’Connor Toberman | <urn:uuid:f6d2eee9-1f36-4dfc-abb2-6c02a95ee515> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.journalmpls.com/voices-feed/we-can-do-better-for-the-homeless | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948615 | 295 | 1.75 | 2 |
A comprehensive new water-trail map of the upper and middle Rogue River is now available to rafters, fishermen and boaters who navigate the Rogue between Lost Creek Dam and Grave Creek.
The map, which costs $6, was produced at a cost of $7,500 by Travel Southern Oregon in conjunction with Oregon State Parks and Recreation, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon State Marine Board, Travel Oregon, Bureau of Land Management, Josephine and Jackson County Parks, regional cities and Rogue River guide companies.
"It's completely waterproof," said Carolyn Hill, chief executive officer of Travel Southern Oregon. "The first thing some of us did when it arrived was put it in water to test it out. I can see it being used for years."
The Rogue's demeanor has changed with the removal of Gold Ray and Savage Rapids dams, providing some impetus for the new map. The state parks department previously produced water-trail maps for the Sandy River near Portland and a portion of the Willamette River.
"The goal of the map is to have an essential resource for the thousands of visitors to our region who come to enjoy the Rogue River," Hill said. "It's a boost for our hospitality and tourist places."
The full-color Rogue River Water Trail map includes river features such as riffles, rapids and falls, as well as landmarks, put-ins and take-outs, recreation areas, river highlights, historic references, restrooms, camping and picnic areas. The map also includes rules and regulations for navigating the Rogue River, showing boat ramps and trouble spots.
Design for the map was provided by Jeffery Jones Advertising and Marketing in Ashland and it was printed by Ram Offset Lithographers of White City.
The Rogue River Water Trail map can be purchased at Grants Pass/Josephine County Chamber and Visitor Center, Grants Pass Downtown Welcome Center, Orange Torpedo Trips, Rogue Wilderness Adventures, Morrison's Rogue River Lodge and other locations.
"It took a while to get this done," Hill said. "But I think this is something that could be done for the Klamath, Williamson and Illinois rivers, too." | <urn:uuid:fdb58a0b-56e2-4f24-b2b7-6d91d2ead10e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120804/NEWS07/208040333/-1/ROGUERIVER | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960872 | 441 | 1.695313 | 2 |
There’s a certain swaggering presumptuousness in authoring a book of advice. Telling troubled people how to lead their lives is a substantial endeavor with potentially weighty consequences. It’s hard to imagine too many people pulling it off gracefully. That’s why, as a society, we officially and unofficially limit serious advice-giving to credentialed experts, spiritual leaders, and Oprah Winfrey.
But apparently those limits don’t apply to Augusten Burroughs, who has written a new book guiding us through some of life’s most consequential situations. In This is How: proven aid in overcoming shyness, molestation, fatness, spinsterhood, grief, disease, lushery, decrepitude & more– for young and old alike, Burroughs tackles touchy subjects with sage-sounding prescriptions that are in no way substantiated through science, expert testimony, or convincing anecdotal evidence. Which would be forgivable if the book were as tongue-in-cheek as the longwinded title suggests, but Burroughs is earnest to a fault.
That’s not to say his book isn’t interesting or well-written. If you’re a fan of his previous works (Dry, Running with Scissors), you know that he learned many of life’s lessons through the school of hard knocks – and him meditating on those hard-won truths, what’s saved him, is actually fascinating. But the book is self-reflection awkwardly packaged as advice. It reads as if he was trying (and failing) to not write another autobiographical work.
So let me try my hand at some advice: if you have the stomach for profundities like – “Seeing the truth means looking at everything for the first time, every time.” – then this book should prove to be thought-provoking and inspirational, if not entirely useful. – Ransom, Reference | <urn:uuid:2401b918-86fe-4a34-bcb2-ad728938c652> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lawrence.lib.ks.us/2012/07/this-is-how/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956477 | 411 | 1.710938 | 2 |
We're learning how to be free, says Morsi
- From: AAP
- November 29, 2012
PRESIDENT Mohamed Morsi has vowed in an interview to surrender his new special powers when a new constitution is in place, and pleaded for patience as Egypt learns to be free.
Morsi dismissed criticism of his power grab and said protests on the streets of Cairo were a positive sign that Egypt was on the path to democracy after overthrowing dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
"The world stage is very difficult. It's not easy to be on the world stage," admitted Morsi, who won a cliffhanger election in June, speaking briefly in English at the start of his interview with Time magazine, which was published on Wednesday.
"My chief responsibility is to maintain the national ship to go through this transitional period. This is not easy. Egyptians are determined to (move) forward within the path of freedom and democracy," he said.
Morsi's remarks amounted to a plea to the international community for patience after his decision to grant himself sweeping powers until the new constitution is ratified in a referendum.
Egypt's highest appeal court is on strike over Morsi's decree putting his decisions beyond judicial scrutiny, and protesters have flocked back to Cairo's Tahrir Square, epicentre of the protests that toppled Mubarak in February 2011.
Tens of thousands protested in the square on Tuesday, in the largest opposition rally since Morsi's election in June.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the formerly banned opposition movement through which Morsi rose to power, and its Islamist allies have called their own protest in Tahrir for Saturday.
"I'm not worried. I'm concerned," said Morsi. "We're learning. We're learning how to be free. We haven't seen this before. We're learning how to debate. How to differ. How to be majority and minority."
The president referred to a two-month process of drafting and vetting the new constitution before it went to the people in a referendum.
But the interview was overtaken by events as it was announced that the panel considering the constitution was going to rush out the draft on Wednesday in a bid to quell the mounting protests.
The state news agency MENA reported that the panel would vote on the draft on Thursday morning. It will then be put to a referendum.
In his Time interview, Morsi, a 61-year-old former engineering professor who earned his PhD in California, indicated that he would give up his special powers once the constitution was ratified.
"If we had a constitution, then all of what I have said or done last week will stop," he said, wiping his hands to stress his point. "I hope, when we have a constitution, what I have issued will stop immediately."
Asked about warnings from critics that he wants to become a new pharaoh, Morsi repeated "New pharaoh?" disbelievingly before letting out a big laugh. "Can I be?" he asked incredulously. "I've been suffering, personally!"
"I am keen and I will always be keen on transfer of power," he said. "I'm an elected president." | <urn:uuid:77a89838-117a-4045-9e5c-9572762cb52f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/egypt-top-court-strikes-over-morsi-decree/story-e6freoo6-1226526168253 | 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 | 0.984879 | 639 | 1.59375 | 2 |
100% Vegetarian, Eating Naturally from Your Grocery Store
For just $7.95, this cookbook can be yours. It's easy
to follow and inexpensive.
Mad Cow Disease has finally come to the USA. In all probability it was here before but went undetected,
since US cows generally get slaughtered before there's time for symptoms to occur.
Okay, so you'd like to try vegetarianism, but how do you do it?
Most vegetarian cookbooks use ingredients you may never have heard of before from stores you may never have
been to before. But this cookbook is different.
If you can't find the ingredients at your local grocery store, they
just aren't in this cookbook. And that means that
your grocery bill for these delicious, mouth-watering
vegetarian recipes will be a lot lower than if you had to buy specialty ingredients at a
107 recipes fill its 120 pages. Find help with breakfasts and main
dishes, salads and dressings, sauces and spreads, vegetables and desserts,
soups and breads. There's also a section on meal planning and a section on
reasons to consider vegetarianism.
The binding allows it to lay flat while you work. The cover is
laminated so you can easily wipe it clean, which is mighty handy in the
Have any friends you want to introduce to vegetarianism? Give this vegan cookbook as a gift.
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Quantity discounts: 10%, 15%, or 20% when you order 5-9, 10-29,
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About the author: Julianne Pickle used to be the head cook of
the diet kitchen at Uchee Pines's health conditioning center. It was her
task to provide tasty vegetarian meals for the guests. These guests would
come with a variety of ailments. For those ailments the physicians would
prescribe a variety of special diets. To cook in such a way that the
guests, unaccustomed to such fare, would be pleased with the food required
a special degree of skill. Julianne performed admirably.
It is from this rich background of experience that this book was
Shipping for this item in the USA: Starts at
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go to the Check Out page, and input your state and zipcode or your country.
Order online, or by mail, phone, or fax. | <urn:uuid:09047f62-5ad3-4019-8514-26f95233736b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pickle-publishing.com/books/vegetarian-cookbook.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940997 | 560 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Many today refer to a Democrat in step with the party’s platform as “socialist’ and a few parallel history and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as “socialist.” I am pleased to elaborate on this.
Was FDR a socialist? I lived through part of the Great Depression wrought by corporate and banker greed. I know what Roosevelt did to help make the country “free from fear.” I saw TVA bring electricity and development to my home areas. I went to schools, libraries, museums, and parks developed by programs that otherwise would never have been. I know men and women, and most in my family, who helped create these miracles out of disaster. As a principal in Buckingham, Va., we were still using a building from those days when Republicans brought misery, much created out of a greed for a buck on the backs of the common worker, the farmer, builder or just plain laborer — most found a way to feed his family.
My father helped rebuild the agriculture of the South. My wife’s Dad, to make ends meet, hiked a ride on a freight car to find work, as did millions. Do not bleed facts to me about the good in having banks and Wall Street back in power. Barack Obama, whatever you judge him to be, kept this country from being on its knees.
Maybe Mitt Romney is centrist enough to keep the wolves from the farm and the home-but his reactionary backers will spell ruin to this nation if he allows the reins of sanity to go the way of 1929. If you lived through it, knew it, saw the misery of it, the President’s race and attacks on his place of birth and his so called Muslim connection are the real hidden issues for many in this election. His seeking the peace overseas and saving our economy at home are above these selfish prejudices. Be forewarned — the future is not to be what Mitt may say if the whacko far right gets its way and creates a 1929 disaster. So let it be said — God help us that it may not be done.
Finally, re-read Eisenhower’s speech as he left office, that of the “industrial and military complex” and the powers that are now a testament to that speech. The prophecy of the latter is the harbinger of history recycling, and a “maybe it’s so” just isn’t worth the prejudices therein.
JOHN T. HENDRICKS | <urn:uuid:b91df618-9963-44d7-9781-3950c2389adf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.griffindailynews.com/view/full_story/20626714/article-Democrats-are-not-Socialists-?instance=special_coverage_bullets_right_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970743 | 511 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Some Four State students showed off their spelling skills in Joplin on Monday morning.
The 36th Annual Joplin Globe Spelling Bee featured 84 students between 4th and 6th grade from Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Last December students began preparing for the contest when schools received a study list of about 2500 words.
To advance to the spelling bee students first had to win their school bee.
The winning word - paladin - correctly spelled by Jaden Gallagher, a student from Truman Elementary School in Nevada.
Second place went to Silvio Venturella , a student at Steadley Elementary in Carthage.
Third place was claimed by Kelsey Kerrigan, a student at Stapleton Elementary in Joplin. | <urn:uuid:671e37c0-dcca-40af-bbf0-53ed4e66bce8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.koamtv.com/story/21674690/36th-annual-spelling-bee-held-by-joplin-globe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972104 | 150 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Proletarian Rock and Revolutionary Music – Standing against Copyright
Is it revolutionary that my CDs, my books, my songs, or my movies use obsolete copyright laws, those that are used by large entertainment transnationals to fine and arrest people who like my work?
In other countries, the copyright war is intensifying; large entertainment companies order the shutting down of websites, people’s arrest, and the implementation of controversial laws that support their interests, such as the SOPA and PIPA in the US, Sinde-Wert in Spain, Doring in Mexico, Lleras in Colombia, and the ACTA agreement in 31 countries.
While some musicians agree that someone should be arrested for downloading their MP3, in more civilised countries like Venezuela, artists instead feel honoured when the people know about them, and download and share their songs.
New models are being experimented with that allow artists to earn a living from their music and their fans to obtain their songs without the majority of the money going to multinational economic groups.
Groups such as Dame Pa Matala are used to playing their music and selling their CDs, not in music shops, but rather at their own concerts, with amazing success. Many people have downloaded their MP3s from the Internet, but this doesn’t stop them selling hundreds of CDs at their concerts.
Other groups usually go to the barrios and populated areas to play live music, without stages or barriers or much paraphernalia, and spend some time with them directly. Last week, people in Caracas could see the Argentinean reggae, rock, and ska group Las Hormigas Negras (the black ants) playing in Sabana Grande boulevard in an improvised style, without a stage or anything else apart from two speakers and their instruments. And the people bought their CDs directly, without a music shop in between them to take a percentage of the money.
The group was visiting Caracas to play in a local shopping centre in Chacao [an upper class area] as part of a tour of Latin America, but that didn’t stop them playing spontaneously in one of Caracas’ main boulevards to an audience who might not know them in person.
El Pacto publishes its CDs on the internet with a Creative Commons license.
However one experience which most draws our attention is the one with proletarian and campesino (rural worker) rock group El Pacto (EP), which has spent more than twenty years infecting Venezuelans with its music. Originally from Lara [state], the people know them for hits such as Chimborazo, La Caravana, Explosion San Jose, and Pueblo a la Calle (people to the street), among others. In their concerts stilt walkers and artists perform street theatre, interacting with their fans, giving them a unique experience.
The thing is that El Pacto made two controversial decisions: They put their most recent CD, ‘Dancing with roosters’ on their webpage, www.elpacto.com.ve for everyone to download, and they gave it a Creative Commons license [translator’s note: the same license Venezuelanalysis.com uses], giving legal permission to people to download and share the CD with friends- exactly the opposite of what we see with commercial CDs, which come with legal warnings, even prohibiting that you lend the CD to your friends.
The use of Creative Commons “fascinates us, because we don’t agree with copyright,” Jose Gabriel Alvarez, main vocalist of the group, explained to us last Friday on the program Copiate esta Radio (Copy this radio) on the radio station Alba Ciudad 96.3 FM.
“It’s very hard to say that a work [of music, art, etc] is completely yours when you’ve been influenced by everything. The license recognised that the music belongs to El Pacto but you can share it, use it, and that doesn’t affect our authorship of the music at any time.”
“It’s important that we break away from this siege of patents and registries, which belong to consumerist and capitalist society,” he added. “Just the opposite: we want our music to be used by humanity, to be useful, to have a function, and in order for that to happen it’s essential that it has a certain freedom of movement too.”
Models for change
This involves a change in the way things are done in the music world. The entertainment industry uses mechanisms like the payola (bribes to operators and owners of radio stations) so that a song made by a company is played simultaneously on hundreds of radio stations and TV channels. Later, they sell their CDs to recover the “investment”. They usually pay large amounts of money, between 30,000 and 60,000 bolivars per month (US $6,976 – US $13,953), so that an artist is heard a lot. The adverse affect of this is that those musicians who can’t pay simply aren’t heard on the radio. In that way, local culture is displaced by music that the companies want to impose.
El Pacto and other alternative and traditional groups are instead making themselves known through direct contact with their fans and through state and community media, social networks, and the internet, so their songs and videos are circulated.
“For us, the most important thing isn’t to earn money with the recordings, but rather that the people know us, that the most amount of people possible can acquire [our music], and that this translates into live shows, which is what we really like to do,” said the leader of El Pacto.
“Thanks to god and this revolution, we were able to shake-up this dictatorship of the music companies,” he said.
For Alvarez, the topic of copyright goes beyond music and affects freedom of expression and the thoughts of the peoples directly.
“He who has eyes, look: those countries in the so called first world repress freedom of thought and expression, and we’re advancing towards greater freedom of thought, greater freedom of expression, greater artistic creativity and greater freedom to do these things”.
CDs verses Internet
The leader of El Pacto compared the physical distribution of the CD, which was published a month ago and 300 copies of it have been sold, to the number of Internet downloads. “In the same period of time almost 2000 copies of the CD have been downloaded. One of the things that surprised us was that the second country for the most downloads is France, and the third is Chile. It’s something that we would never have imagined”.
‘Dancing with roosters’ was printed by the National Disc Centre (Cendis), an entity of the culture ministry. It can also be bought in the South Bookshops [state owned book chain] for 30 Bs [US$ 7). With the [Bolivarian] government there weren’t any problems in using this distribution model through the Internet, but it’s unlikely that a private music company would have been in agreement with the proposal.
Octavio Rossel, a free software activist, was who recommended that El Pacto use Creative Commons. El Pacto’s website is also made with free software, and Alvarez announced that, over the next few days, they will upload all of the group’s discography, as well as videos and three songs recorded in a studio.
Worrying attitudes from the left
El Pacto played last Sunday in Maracaibo along with Manu Chao, brought to Venezuela by the government to do two free concerts.
Manu Chao is a group that is strongly identified with the left and that became known because they went to the barrios and humble places to play for the people, without worrying about intellectual property nor author’s rights.
However, their recent attitude has left some of their fans worried. In Venezuela, their managers resorted to copyright laws to prohibit state channels from transmitting the Maracaibo concert. They treated the press badly at both events- mostly state and alternative media- removing photographers and journalists with the argument that they “didn’t have the right to take photos”.
The Caracas concert on Friday was transmitted in its totality by the public state channel TVES, but Manu Chao’s managers got extremely angry because the contract supposedly only gave the channel permission to broadcast a small part of the event. In reprisal, the managers prohibited Vive TV- also public and state owned, from transmitting the Sunday Maracaibo concert.
The U.S. lawyer Lawrence Lessig wrote, in 2004, the book ‘Free culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity’, which summarises how large transnationals have modified author’s rights and intellectual property laws in order to damage our own culture.
Lessig proposed a set of alternative licenses to traditional copyright, called ‘Creative Commons’, in which the authors, musicians, and cinematographers can... allow people to share their works. The artist can select certain conditions if he or she wants; the material can’t be modified, or that it can’t be used for profit.
Under government consultation
The National Centre of Information Technology (CNTI, an entity of the science and technology ministry) began a process of public consultation in February for the adaption of Creative Commons license to the Venezuelan legal framework. “People interested in participating in this process should register on the page of the International Organization ‘Creative Commons’ (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Venezuela/Public_Discussion) and from there express their suggestions and opinions,” said John Pinango, leader of the CNTI project. The consultation process was open during March.
It’s important that artists and musicians study this proposal in order to make it as Venezuelan as possible. But also, grassroots support for artists who decide to confront traditional models imposed by music companies is important, in order to make direct distribution, the creative commons license, and concerts new forms of subsistence.
Revolutionary artists are against the criminalisation of those who download their MP3s, but they also need to earn a living from their music. So, if you like a musical group and you see that they are experimenting with new forms of distribution, support them! Buy their CDs, especially when you see that they make them themselves, and the money doesn’t go to a transnational. Get out to their concerts and performances. Support them when you see them live. Let’s not leave all the weight of supporting these artists to the government. If you want to help change the world and bring down the capitalist system, you should also do your part.
Translation by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com | <urn:uuid:6042b3b1-a4d7-4b67-a5b2-e54d51cf6c7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/proletarian-rock-and-revolutionary-music-standing-against-copyright-by-luigino-bracci-roa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959723 | 2,295 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Using the Carbon Comp Resistor for Magic Mojo
Copyright 2002 R.G. Keen. All rights reserved. No permission for local copies or serving from pages other than http://www.geofex.com.
|The carbon composition (CC) resistor has been extolled as
the paragon of pure tube tone by almost everyone who has a stake in
vintage sounding amplifiers and effects. It's reputed to be imbued with
almost mystical powers to make toneless, lifeless guitar signals take on
tonal advantages that only Zeus from Mount Olympus might achieve on his
Is this real? Are Carbon Comps really magic tone mojo?
Maybe. Like everything else, there's the hype, and then there's the real world. A good maxim to remember about electronics is that if you can't express it in numbers (that are also measurable by someone else, not just made-up numbers... there are those around too 8-) then you really don't know the thing at all, you're only believing the myth.
The vintage amps we all love had CC's in them, and they certainly
have their share of mojo, but the makers of those amps in the 50's and
60's used them because that's what was available. Today we have lots of
resistor options. What's different about carbon comp, and can we express
it in numbers so we don't keep being superstitious?
1. high voltage across the resistor is necessary, in the range of
100V on up
Guidelines 1 and 2 are simply the recognition that the voltage coefficient of resistance is not very big. In fact, although the coefficient is small, it was specified to be small by the makers and controlled tightly, indicating that it was a recognized problem. In the Radiotron Designer's Handbook ( 4th edition, pg. 1345) they list the JAN-R-11 specification for CC resistors as less than 0.035% per volt for 1/4 and 1/2W resistors, and 0.02% per volt for higher power ratings. Given that the max voltages for these parts was 1/4W- 200V; 1/2W - 350V; 1W and 2W - 500V, that works out to a 7% change in resistance for a 1/4 W part used at its max voltage, a 12.3 % change for a 1/2W, and a 10% change for bigger resistors. That's one of the thrusts of guideline 4 - pick the smallest dissipation resistor you can, to maximize the coefficient.
Of course, that's as big as the effect can get, and you would have to carefully set up the situation to get that much resistor distortion. In an amp, you probably won't be able to get that close to max voltages or signal levels. Realistic levels might be 200V across a 1/2W resistor, and a 75V signal swing. That would give you a 2.6% distortion - enough to be audible as sweetening. That's the point of guideline 3 - you have to have a big enough signal swing across the resistor to have the signal distorted significantly by the voltage coefficient.
But with a 10V signal, you only get 0.35% distortion, and it starts down the slippery slope to inaudibility. More importantly, these percentages represent the maximum beyond which a resistor would have been rejected in the 1950's. Today's CC resistors are much lower distortion. From IRC's web site, we find some numbers. A typical resistor voltage coefficient can be seen at http://www.irctt.com/pdf_files/IBT.pdf - which shows carbon comp at 0.005%/volt for that company's products. Another was 0.008%/V. These are smaller than the max allowed under the JAN military spec.
So where do they work best? Where can we use CC's for their soft distortion, and where can we sidestep them to lower noise?
First, they do no good and lots of noisy bad where the signal level is small and the following amplification is high - a classical description of an input stage. The input to an amp should probably have a metal film plate resistor to minimize noise. Grid resistors in all but output stages also do no good, because the signal level is typically too low. A 12AX7 can be driven from cutoff to positive grid voltage with a couple of volts of signal, so the grid resistor never has a big enough signal to be distorted appreciably.
Cathode resistors are another poor use of CC. They typically only have a few volts across them, and they're often decoupled with a capacitor, both of which would minimize the resistor distortion. In cathode followers, there can be substantial DC and signal voltage across a cathode resistor, but in this case, the resistor is driven by the low impedance of the cathode, and the voltage across the resistor is controlled by the grid voltage very tightly, so the exact resistor value doesn't matter much - there won't be significant distortion.
The place to use CC's is where there's big signal - plate resistors, and ideally the stage just before the phase inverter. The phase inverter would otherwise be ideal, with plate resistors carrying the highest signal voltage in the amp, but phase inverters are often enclosed in a feedback loop. The feedback minimizes the distortion the resistor generates.
Use CC's sparingly - only where your personal ears tell you that they
make a difference.
So now you know what's happening, and something of the numbers
involved. The effect is real, though slight. | <urn:uuid:2d8accdd-7353-4592-be1b-6abf3675c61c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/carbon_comp/carboncomp.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955 | 1,171 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Thursday, 09 Aug 2012
Doctors in India
An overseas elective used to be an opportunity for final year medical students to give of their time and training to under-staffed and under-funded healthcare facilities, in developing countries. In an interesting twist, Swansea-based Medco Global Exchange sends British undergraduate medics to state-of-the-art hospitals and healthcare institutions in emerging markets.
The company is an offshoot of clinical services provider Med-Co Group. Med-Co (Europe) Ltd was established in 1998, providing temporary staffing solutions to GP surgeries across the UK. The company has since diversified to run specialist GP-led medical services for the Navy and the National Health Service (NHS), and this has motivated it to set up a number of new companies and to look into overseas opportunities.
“Our parent company found its niche in medical recruitment and continues to fill locum positions throughout the UK,” says Ian Rees, Chairman at Med-Co Group. “There are a lot of players in the UK’s healthcare sector, and we wanted to use the collective expertise of our staff to differentiate and expand our operations. Although we will continue our work in clinical recruitment and service delivery in the UK, we felt that there were international opportunities to be explored.” | <urn:uuid:c867b9c7-1837-4a23-b94b-3f992411bd73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ukti.gov.uk/de_de/uktihome/aboutukti/item/353660.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965234 | 266 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The concept of this diving system is hightly innovative because it is completely containerized and therefore, it can easily be shifted in three different positions on the main deck of the SSCV (port side, starboard side and blow) allowing a maximum operational flexibility wich up to now has been obtained only by small and light-weight air diving systems. The shifting can be made in a few hours by the use of one of the SSCV'S cranes.The whole diving system can be transferred on the vessels without any heavy demobilisation and remobilisation. The total weight of the package is 300 tons and its main dimension are 16.5 x 9.5 x 7.4 meters. A hyperbaric lifeboat (50 tons) is also included in the system. The main package consists of 6 separate containers wich are installed on two levels. On the first level are located the decompression chambers ( total capacity for 14 divers and maximum working depht of 450 MSW), the transfer lock, the life support system, the hydraulic power pack, the oxygen storage and the moonpool area. On the second level are located the complete diving bell launching and recovery system (cursor winch, trolley, heave compensating unit, etc), the dive control center, the environamental control units and the potable water and fire suppression system.
The system has been designed to operate under harsh environments (arctic and tropical) and it is classed by Lloyd's Register and Registro Italiano Navale (R.I.N.A.). It also complies with the latest requirements of the Norvegian maritime directorate. | <urn:uuid:426e1e41-f118-4748-9242-811c11f839c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drassgaleazzi.com/galleria_specifica.asp?G_ID=2&M_ID=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936557 | 338 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Deer hunting harvest regulations as we have known them for a long time in South Carolina are likely about to change. For several years, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) has been conducting public meetings, biological studies and crunching numbers to determine what they feel is best for the overall deer herd in South Carolina.
Based on all this, some specific information is now posted on their website of which hunters need to be aware. Most of the legwork for new regulations has been done. There appears to have been good “buy-in” on these regulations by the majority of deer hunters via the public meetings and public input stages. It’s very possible that the following will be implemented soon. Much of this information is directly from their website data, but will be of keen interest to all of us who deer hunt. My personal viewpoint is I want to have a stable, healthy deer herd, one that can be maintained at a good level for hunting where we can harvest a reasonable number of deer and enjoy the sport.
With that introduction, here’s some information you need to know.
The SCDNR Board recommends a statewide limit of five bucks per hunter per year with no more than a total of three bucks per hunter in Game Zones 1 and 2 combined. The board supports a mandatory deer-tagging program whereby all harvested deer (bucks and does) must be tagged with tags provided by the department.
The fee structure for the recommended program, resident hunters would receive all necessary deer tags for $20 and nonresidents would receive their tags for $30. This means that each hunter would get five buck tags and four doe tags as part of the deer hunting privilege. Resident hunters who currently get four optional doe tags would pay no more than they currently do under these recommendations. It is also recommended that a “limited deer tag” option be made available in which more casual hunters could receive one buck tag and one doe tag for $10 for residents.
Nonresidents could receive the limited tag option for $15. Youth hunters could receive the full complement of buck and doe tags at no cost. Hunters who hunt exclusively on properties in the Deer Quota Program would not be required to purchase the regular tag package because tags for the property would be in place. All other hunters would have to purchase their tags annually. Revenue generated from the program would be earmarked for the administration of the program and for deer research, management and law enforcement.
The number of doe tags available to each hunter would be determined annually based on management needs in addition to the proposed limit of five buck tags per hunter. The current recommendation is set at four doe tags per hunter with tags being valid on any day starting Sept. 15, in Game Zones 2-6 and Oct. 1 in Game Zone 1 (a lower number of doe tags would be valid in Game Zone 1 due to the lower deer population density). Under the new program, statewide “doe days” would be eliminated because all hunters would have doe tags as part of the deer hunting privilege.
The Antlerless Doe Quota Program (ADQP) currently available to property owners and hunting clubs will continue and be expanded to a Deer Quota Program (DQP) in which quotas for bucks and does would be issued for tracts of property based on the size of the property and the deer management and agricultural objectives of the owner or manager. It is recommended that the application fee for the program be increased from $50 to $200.
White-tailed deer are the official state animal and the most economically important game species in South Carolina. There is currently no enforceable limit on the number of bucks a hunter can take during the season. Although there is a five-buck limit prescribed by law in the two Upstate Game Zones, these limits have never been enforceable. In the four coastal plain Game Zones, state law specifies there is “no limit” on antlered deer. This lack of a reasonable bag limit on bucks in the Palmetto State is in stark contrast to the approach in other states and to the approach with other fish and game species in South Carolina, which typically have bag limits.
Most hunters perceive that the current system leads to over exploitation of bucks, particularly young bucks, resulting in a poor overall management approach. Annual deer harvest figures support hunters’ allegations that some hunters take unfair advantage of the lack of bag limits. Recent harvest data indicates that only four percent of hunters take more than five bucks annually, however, as a group these hunters take 20 percent of all the bucks in the state each year. Similarly, only 11 percent of hunters take more than three bucks each year, but they take 43 percent of all the bucks annually.
Other data also supports hunters’ desires to see a more conservative approach. Although there are still a few areas in the state that have high deer populations, the overall statewide population has moderated during the last 10 years resulting in an estimated 25 percent reduction. This is likely due to changes in habitat associated with forest composition and growth, urban/suburban development and many years of extremely liberal deer harvests. Also, coyotes are a recent addition to the landscape in South Carolina and appear to be having a negative impact on deer. Deer in most areas are now well or slightly below the natural carrying capacity thus allowing for local adjustments in deer populations based upon the interest of the various communities.
The SCDNR staff recognizes the interest of hunters in some areas for an increase in local deer populations. The requirement for the tagging of all deer, bucks and does, will provide the tools for total deer herd management. | <urn:uuid:d036b732-c48f-4b74-a011-c19564614d33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clarendoncitizen.com/article/comprehensive-deer-management-recommendations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95489 | 1,161 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Some in S.C. consider seceding
This time, it’s being handled in a more cordial fashion than lobbing artillery shells at Fort Sumter.
A group of relatively anonymous people numbering in the thousands is using a White House website feature to urge President Barack Obama to allow South Carolina to secede and form its own sovereign state.
There is at least one petition seeking to let the state secede and form its own government.
It’s unclear who is behind the move. All signers are identified only by their first name, last initial and hometown, though anyone with a functional email can sign up for an account using whatever information they please.
The relatively new feature notes that those petitions receiving 25,000 “signatures” in a month will receive an official response. Texas already had passed the 80,000 mark as of Tuesday afternoon, so presumably a response is coming soon.
As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, South Carolina’s petition had more than 12,000 signatures.
It’s by no means unique to this state and Texas. Neighbors North Carolina and Georgia have petitions. Similar petitions have been started for such states as Alaska, California, Delaware, Idaho and Wyoming. In all, there were 46 petitions regarding secession as of Tuesday afternoon — some states had more than one, and some were from in individual cities.
There are petitions calling for stripping the citizenship from — and/or deporting — those who signed secession petitions.
David Gillespie, who teaches political science at The Citadel and College of Charleston, has heard about these petitions from this students and others. Talk of secession or moving to Canada has become a sort of post-presidential ritual, he noted.
It’s rarely more than just that — talk.
“I think we settled this at the end of the Civil War,” he said.
And the petitions are sprinkled in with other issues, such as regulating Internet pornography, enacting a national standard for congressional redistricting and stopping drone strikes.
Some already have drawn detailed responses on such issues as reforming the Postal Service and immigration reform.
But not all pertain to serious matters of national policy: In one official response, the White House posted its recipe for brewing Honey Ale. | <urn:uuid:9376306d-a479-419e-8985-86da4d7c83a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20121114/PC16/121119647 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961444 | 471 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Tests in The Hypervisor lab show that although VMware ESXi is extremely quick and easy to deploy, it currently lacks support by several leading third-party tools.
ESXi is the embedded version of VMware’s industry leading ESX Server hypervisor. ESXi is often stored on a Flash memory module fitted in the server chassis. This enables vendors such as Dell and HP to preload a VMware hypervisor, making it extremely quick and easy for small firms without VMware specialists to deploy VMware virtualisation.
Both ESX Server and ESXi are based on Linux kernel “service console” operating systems. However, in ESXi VMware disables any meaningful access to this Linux environment and does not support ESXi configurations that have been modified to allow such access. Unfortunately many third party applications require access to the service console operating system to function.
For example, Vizioncore vRanger Pro is the leading third party backup suite designed specifically to backup virtual machines running in VMware virtual datacenters.
vRanger Pro supports a variety of features, such as making full and differential backups of running VMs without any downtime. However, vRanger Pro can make backups of ESXi hosted VMs only if used alongside VMware’s Consolidated Backup (VCB) suite. While VCB is a good option for large VMware deployments, many smaller firms shy away from VCB, and VCB is not included in the free version of ESXi.
Similarly, the recently released Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro suite cannot work with VMs running on ESXi because it requires a VMware console operating system.
Some other vendors, such as Veeam, support all versions ESXi in their products. Vizioncore said it will launch versions of its tools that will work with ESXi, but could not tell us when these versions would be available.
Meanwhile, system administrators should think carefully about how they will make backups and run other utilities to manage their VMs before deploying ESXi. | <urn:uuid:7ad5e7b2-f2c9-4631-b548-fad67787c8dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehypervisor.com/2009/03/esxi-short-on-support/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943339 | 408 | 1.773438 | 2 |
While I have lived in the southern United States most of my life, I have mostly known I live in a cultural wasteland. Most natives find themselves daydreaming of the good old days of yore while I do the same. I have studied the era of my parents–the art, the culture, the music–I know it all too well. Lest we forget, nostalgia can be wild and wily.
I have just spent my summer in the green pastures of western Germany. I have found here a people that decry their checkered past; there is no nostalgia, only history. Despite this, some can find a semblance of pride from what art has left to them. They can appreciate music, sculptures, architecture, art and everything that makes life more colorful: and it shows.
Even my relatively small city boasts quite an elaborate concert hall and opera house. Flowers line the streets and bus stops. Sculpted fountains with strange themes of alcoholism and misspent youth are sprinkled throughout the town. It is culture, it is art, it is the greener grass.
From where Allies had leveled buildings and destroyed entire cities, they have rebuilt anew with modern and post-modern architecture. They have rebuilt historical buildings untied by history to the world wars. Incredible gothic churches tower most cities, offering to God the best they could do.
Office buildings are something more than a place for ones workers to work. They are modern, efficient, and appeal as much as utilitarian beehives can. City after city, I saw only this design or the exemplary Germanic architecture. I saw only very modern art and sculptures.
From what is my own conjecture, these buildings stand so artful and streets lined with color in order to usher in the future–to declare that nostalgia has no purpose. It is to ensure that no one daydreams of the good old days of yore and the passed remains past.
I now wonder if this is what it takes for art to penetrate the minds and hearts of the natives of the south. Is it only when faced with inexplicable horror and default of identity that one can appreciate art and culture? Or is it only when one wants to make anew–to brush off their issues, capture them in a moment and leave it to those who might need it thereafter?
This post was originally written for the Paper ‘n Stitch blog in August of 2008. | <urn:uuid:508cbd63-5b44-4538-8f7d-4d62d19bee5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://h6o6.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969168 | 493 | 1.710938 | 2 |
A coalition of union groups aired ads during the NBC broadcast of the parade in a number of key states, urging Congress to resist cutting entitlement programs. Since Election Day, another group, the National Coalition to Preserve Social Security and Medicare has collected 65,000 signatures, also urging Congress not to meddle with the retiree programs.
The debate over what Congress should do to avoid the troubling consequences of a series of tax hikes and spending cuts set to hit at the end of this year has underscored the intensity of the nation’s political divide, and the speed with which the partisan machinery can now shift gears from one big fight to the next.
Within days after the November election, the bus shelters and billboards were taken over by a group called Fix the Debt, which is urging a bipartisan deal to avoid the cliff.
All of that attention has the potential to change the character of dealmaking now beginning in the lame-duck session of Congress, which is faced with a series of monumental decisions about the nation’s fiscal future.
There appears to be little chance that even a post-election populace preparing for the holidays would miss it if lawmakers cast unpopular votes as part of a deficit-reduction compromise.
With the next election two years away, lawmakers have traditionally felt more free to take difficult votes during post-election sessions. In some of the busiest lame ducks, one party was about to lose its power — and sought to make a deal while it still had the power.
In 1994, the recently defeated congressional Democrats helped pass a massive trade deal. Just two years ago, Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) worked in near secrecy to hatch a deal to extend the George W. Bush -era tax cuts — now expiring again. House Democrats, dislodged from their majority in the midterm elections, grudgingly but quickly signed off.
This lame-duck session, however, will offer legislators less cover than usual. Few previous sessions have been as closely watched by outside groups, and none has ever occurred under the present level of moment-by-moment scrutiny made possible by cable news and social media.
“People are yearning for and very interested in a much more transparent process,” said John Hishta, a top official with AARP, which has urged Congress to avoid major entitlement cuts in the condensed hothouse of a lame-duck session.
Max Richtman, president and chief executive of the National Coalition to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said people are following developments so closely that the organization now tweets its supporters before and after each meeting their lobbyists hold with lawmakers. | <urn:uuid:ee2a122a-2cec-4bae-9a03-1bd63ffe924e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fiscal-cliff-brings-back-that-campaign-season-feeling/2012/11/26/c1ad33d8-37ff-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_story.html?wprss=rss_national | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967741 | 543 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Mason Texas, located on the western side of the Hill Country, offer’s a beautiful combination of rugged Texas landscape, historic, recreational and cultural opportunities for any visitor or resident. The first thing people notice is the town square, which is considered one of the five most beautiful squares in Texas by Texas Monthly Magazine. Once you've seen it for yourself, you will know why we are the “Gem of the Hill Country”.
Mason has been a significant place on the road from San Antonio to all points west since the mid 1800's. Its proximity to water and strategic location caused the US government to establish Ft. Mason. From 1851-1869 we were the edge of the “civilized” frontier. Twenty-six generals, including Robert E. Lee, served at Ft. Mason before the Civil War - more than any other post. You can step back in time today as you tour the replica of the officer's quarters at Fort Mason and enjoy the panoramic view from the Top of Post Hill.
The fertile land around Mason attracted settlers from Europe. In the 1920’s Mason was known for the quality beef and mohair produced here. This same landscape also holds a treasure trove of Pre-Cambrian fossils, pink granite, and blue topaz which bring rock hounders, rock crawlers, and geologists from around the world.
Wildlife is an abundant resource in Mason County, with an average of 12 -15 deer annually scoring higher than 145 on the Boone & Crockett scale. Those deer graze upon the same roadsides and pastures which are filled with wildflowers from April to July. Mason’s most populace animal can be seen every night from 6 pm -8 pm from May to October when millions of bats emerge from the James River Bat Preserve located just over 15 miles from Mason.
German heritage and Texas pride have allowed Mason to not only prosper financially but culturally for over 150 years. Mason’s Odeon Theater was built in 1928 and is West Texas’ longest running theater. It was here, in 1957, where the movie " Old Yeller “ premiered, written by Mason native Fred Gipson. Today this icon boasts high-definition digital projection and dolby surround sound.
Through the years Mason has been the home of many famous individuals including writers, statesmen, craftsmen, and artists. Two famous artists who have called Mason home for many years are Gene Zesch and Bill Worrell. In recent years Mason County has become home to a handful of vineyards and the award winning wines of Sandstone Cellars Winery.
Once you’ve seen the history, bought some antiques, ogled a star-cut topaz, viewed some art, tasted some wine, and seen the wildflowers, well, your Mason adventure is just beginning. Now, slow down, stay a while, soak up a sunset and enjoy the “Gem of the Hill Country”. | <urn:uuid:7e4a4506-0465-4a8f-b606-9c1788ffa2c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://masontxcoc.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959668 | 620 | 1.8125 | 2 |
In her keynote remarks at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in early November, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paused to reflect on the last 12 months: "What a year 2011 has been for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa."
For people in that region and around the world, this past year brought exceptional progress and challenges. Some dictators fell, while others tyrants teetered, and in Syria, yet another clung to power by inflicting terrible suffering on his own people. Demands for free and fair elections and for governance that can provide both human rights and fundamental economic needs spread from country to country and across the globe. TIME Magazine named "The Protester" as its Person of the Year. Whenever I traveled -- from Sudan to Russia to Burma to Bahrain -- I met with people who simply wanted to exercise their right to free expression, to have a say in how they would be governed, to practice their religion without fear, and to earn a decent wage.
For these reasons, last year was quite extraordinary for the men and women here at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). They each worked in close partnership with offices and embassies throughout the State Department on these issues, three of which I'd like to highlight here:
Middle East transitions: We worked in close coordination with State Department colleagues on the many challenges and opportunities that have arisen this year. In her NDI speech, Secretary Clinton addressed American commitments to promote reform and support transitions in the Middle East and North Africa. In May, I testified on Capitol Hill about the state of these political transitions. In July, I did the same regarding human rights abuses in Syria; and, more recently, in December, I briefed key lawmakers on my trip to Bahrain and the government's response to the landmark Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report.
Internet Freedom: Protecting the rights of individuals to exercise their fundamental freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association and religion on and offline is a signature issue for Secretary Clinton, our bureau and the Department as a whole. Last year, Secretary Clinton delivered two major policy addresses on the topic -- most recently at the Freedom Online Conference in the Netherlands, which launched a coalition of 15 countries committed to joint action in support of a free and open Internet. I also had the privilege of talking about Internet freedom at the New America Foundation "Future Tense" Conference and at the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference, where I emphasized the challenges and responsibilities the private sector has in this space. Since 2008, we have committed $70 million in programming to this cause. You can learn more about our continued efforts here.
LGBT: Integrating the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into American foreign policy has been a core priority for this Administration. In early December, Secretary Clinton delivered a historic speech in Geneva entitled "Free and Equal in Dignity and Rights," in which she addressed "one of the remaining human rights challenges of our time" and pledged to continue combating efforts to criminalize homosexuality. This speech followed on the heels of a June UN Human Rights Council session which passed the first-ever UN resolution on the human rights of LGBT people. Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan Baer later outlined the underlying American values and foreign policy rationales for the promotion of LGBT rights in this op-ed. A fact sheet about the Department and my bureau's collective work can be read here.
The year 2012 marks the 35th anniversary of the creation of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. As we embark on this new year, we rededicate ourselves to the American values and universal principles that guide our bureau, this government and this country. I look forward to working with you in 2012. | <urn:uuid:e19b1176-a540-4126-9086-e3c1055b0075> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.state.gov/stories/2012/01/05/year-review-democracy-human-rights-and-labor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951061 | 748 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Man dies after live roach-eating contest in Fla. (video)
MIAMI (AP) — A contestant in a roach-eating contest who downed dozens of live bugs and worms collapsed and died shortly after winning the contest in South Florida, authorities say.
About 30 contestants ingested the insects during Friday night's contest at Ben Siegel Reptile Store in Deerfield Beach about 40 miles north of Miami. The grand prize was a python.
Edward Archbold, 32, of West Palm Beach became ill shortly after the contest ended and collapsed outside the store, according to a Broward Sheriff's Office statement released Monday. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. Authorities were awaiting results of an autopsy to determine a cause of death.
The sheriff's office said none of the other contestants fell ill.
"Unless the roaches were contaminated with some bacteria or other pathogens, I don't think that cockroaches would be unsafe to eat," said Michael Adams, professor of entomology at the University of California at Riverside. He said he has never heard of someone dying after consuming roaches.
"Some people do have allergies to roaches," he added, "but there are no toxins in roaches or related insects."
There was no updated phone number listed for Archbold in West Palm Beach.
"We feel terribly awful," said store owner Ben Siegel, who added that Archbold did not appear to be sick before the contest.
"He looked like he just wanted to show off and was very nice," Siegel said, adding that Archbold was "the life of the party." Continued...
A statement from Siegel's attorney said all the participants signed waivers "accepting responsibility for their participation in this unique and unorthodox contest."
The bugs consumed were from an inventory of insects "that are safely and domestically raised in a controlled environment as food for reptiles."
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We'll be using this blog to publicize corrections to stories, to explain, if possible, how we made a particular mistake and to give you a better window into our reporting process.
City Editor Jeremy Schiffres comments about the news of the day and other topics that he finds interesting. | <urn:uuid:3cd17e4c-5118-411a-b5df-abc8a334e81d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2012/10/09/news/doc5073fbf33754b451810946.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951659 | 728 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Mitt Romney on Thursday blamed President Barack Obama for revised GDP numbers that revealed the economy grew more slowly in the second quarter than originally thought.
"This is a real challenge for us," Romney told a group of veterans at a rally in Springfield, Virginia. "And this is not just one quarter. This has been going on now for years."
GDP or gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic health, grew at an annual rate of 1.3 percent from April to June, the Commerce Department said Thursday, slower than the 1.7 percent rate the government last reported in August.
The downward revision came as a surprise to economists who were largely expecting the figure to remain unchanged. It also marked slower growth than in the first three months of the year, when GDP accelerated at a 2 percent annual rate.
Romney on Thursday warned that a weak economy showed weakness on a military front, as well. The Republican presidential nominee, who's recently sought to bolster his foreign policy credentials, pointed to two other countries as prime examples for the need to maintain a healthy economy.
"Russia tried for a while, the old Soviet Union, tried for a while to maintain a grade A, if you will, military. But they had a Grade B economy and they couldn't keep up," Romney said. "They finally had to -- well they collapsed."
Adding that the economies in both Russia and China are growing at several times the pace of the U.S. economy, Romney faulted the president for using the "same series of policies" over the last four years that "have not worked."
"I know what it takes to get us working. He's put us on a road to Europe," Romney said. "Europe doesn't work in Europe, all right? I want to get us back to being America."
Alan Krueger, the chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a post on the White House's website that the downward revision in GDP was due, in part, to the Midwest drought, the effects of which he said the Obama administration "continues to take all available steps to mitigate."
Obama's campaign, meanwhile, responded to Romney's remarks Thursday, saying his proposal to overhaul Medicare would have negative effects on veterans.
"His plan could result in deep cuts to the VA and he has suggested privatizing veterans' health care. And because of his refusal to lead his party and demand that Congressional Republicans, including his running mate, drop their opposition to asking for a penny more from millionaires and billionaires, he's stood in the way of preventing devastating automatic defense cuts," campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement.
Romney on Thursday also hit on the defense cuts scheduled to take place at the beginning of 2013, if Congress fails to come up with a new budget plan by the end of the year. The automatic spending decrease would especially pound Virginia's economy, home to several military bases.
Describing the cuts, known as sequestration, as a "gun-to-your-head" approach originally proposed by the White House and passed by Congress, Romney said the impact on Virginia would be "devastating."
He also cautioned the world was too "dangerous" to chip away at U.S. military power and surveyed what he views as the greatest threats to security.
"Look around the world. Look at North Korea. They continue to develop nuclear capability on their own part and export it to others. Syria, 20 or 30 thousand people killed in Syria. Iran, closer and closer to having nuclear capabilities. Egypt, now with a Muslim Brotherhood president. Pakistan, highly, um, tumultuous. Afghanistan, our men and women still in Afghanistan," Romney said.
He continued: "The idea of cutting our military commitment by a trillion dollars over this decade is unthinkable and devastating."
Both Romney and Obama are hitting the trail in the crucial battleground of Virginia on Thursday. A recent CNN Poll of Polls, which averages the latest three polls of likely voters in the state, shows the president ahead of Romney, 50 percent to 44 percent, in the Old Dominion.
Obama won Virginia in 2008, carrying the state for Democrats for the first time since 1964. | <urn:uuid:6f2a4a27-c09a-4fb4-a354-492c4d4e3ab1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickorlando.com/news/politics/Romney-hammers-Obama-over-sluggish-GDP-numbers/-/1637100/16764442/-/11qufj0/-/index.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 | 0.973948 | 859 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Rivera told The Daily News he hit the rodent once and it kept moving, but he struck it again and it died. "I'm not scared of rats," he said, "but I was scared of being bitten."
Rivera was filling a rat hole when three came running up at him, but he managed to kill only one.
Officials at Marcy Houses say sightings of the larger rats have been coming in for several years, but this is the first time one has been killed.
Animal experts say the rodent appears to be a Gambian pouched rat which have been outlawed in the U.S. since causing a 2003 outbreak of monkeypox that sickened 100 people.
Resident Stephanie Davis told The Daily News, "Even the cats are afraid of the rats. They get together and gang up on the cats." | <urn:uuid:f2435cdf-3ade-4787-9cdf-9b5470bb3b8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/three-foot-rat-killed-brooklyn-housing-project-2011-8?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984088 | 169 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Ronan Tynan has overcome tremendous odds throughout his life, rising to become one the world’s most inspirational men.
Tynan was born in Ireland on May 14, 1960. He suffered with a lower-limb disability, but kept very active in sports and excelled in horsemanship. Unfortunately, after complications from an auto accident, both of his legs were amputated when he was just 20 years old. However, he didn’t let that get in his way. Fitted with prosthetics, within days after his surgery he was climbing his dorm room stairwell, and challenging himself to push the limits of his “new legs”.
One year later, Tynan competed at the Paralympic Games. Between 1981 and 1984, Tynan took home 18 gold medals and set 14 world records, nine of which still stand.
But that was just the beginning of his success. Tynan was the first amputee admitted to the National College of Physical Education in Limerick, Ireland. After working a few years in the prosthetics industry, Tynan earned his medical degree at Trinity College Dublin in 1993, becoming an orthopedic physician specializing in sports injuries.
Following his career as a physician, Tynan began vocal training. Within just two years, he won three international vocal competitions. He toured and recorded as a member of the Three Irish Tenors. In 2005, Tynan released his first solo album which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard Magazine’s Classical Crossover Chart.
Tynan has performed at Madison Square Garden and gave a stirring vocal tribute at the funeral of U.S. President Ronald Reagan where he sang “Amazing Grace” and Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria”. Shortly following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Tynan sang “God Bless America” at Yankee Stadium, moving the crowd of thousands to tears.
Ronan Tynan’s memoir “Halfway Home, My Life ‘Til Now” was published in 2002. These days, he tours the country giving motivational speeches. Sharing his good humor and musical talent, Tynan works to inspire each person to achieve their dreams. He remains an avid supporter of the Paralympic Games, and the Special Olympics.
Ronan Tynan is a shining example of perseverance, and exemplifies the power of the human spirit. A devout Roman Catholic, he has a strong and abiding faith in God. He acknowledges freely that it has been heavenly power which has enabled him to walk through every door which has opened before him. May he continue to uplift, inspire and raise his beautiful voice of courage.
Ronan Tynan singing “Amazing Grace” | <urn:uuid:af124347-645b-4070-8e11-9ac5b9d7999f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mormonsoprano.com/2008/12/05/ronan-tynan-voice-of-courage/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=4e28c04ab9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98243 | 575 | 1.648438 | 2 |
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) will hold a public Commission Meeting on the tenth anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on Thursday, July 27, at 2:00 p.m. at agency headquarters in the first floor training center, 1801 L Street, N.W.
"The Commission looks forward to discussing the many accomplishments and future challenges of ADA enforcement as we commemorate the tenth anniversary of this groundbreaking law," said EEOC Chairwoman Ida L. Castro. "While people with disabilities have made steady progress in all facets of society since the ADA's passage, there are still too many obstacles preventing them from reaching their full potential in the workplace."
During the meeting, EEOC plans to issue new policy guidance on two significant disability- related issues. The Commission will also issue a comprehensive report analyzing the agency's enforcement of the ADA's employment provisions (Title I) since their implementation on July 26, 1992. In addition, the Commission will hold a wide ranging discussion with senior investigative, legal, and field office staff looking back at the history of ADA enforcement and looking ahead at challenges in the 21st century workplace.
Title I of the ADA prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, discharge, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms and conditions of employment.
In addition to enforcing Title I of the ADA, EEOC enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which prohibits discrimination against individuals 40 years of age or older; sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1991; the Equal Pay Act; and the Rehabilitation Act's prohibitions against disability discrimination in the federal government.
Further information about the Commission, including a preliminary status report on ADA enforcement, is available on the agency's web site at www.eeoc.gov.
This page was last modified on July 25, 2000.
Return to Home Page | <urn:uuid:2ff682a1-86b5-4caa-a1b2-21e49b746a34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www1.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/archive/7-25-00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938381 | 430 | 1.828125 | 2 |
While organizers of the JavaOne conference seem oblivious, there's a crescendo of complaints and near-universal agreement among security researchers that the Java Runtime Environment is full of holes and Oracle's attempts to shore it up have been ineffective.
Two weeks ago the InfoSec community breathed a great sigh of relief when Oracle issued Java 7 Update 7. Although the next Java security patch wasn't scheduled until October, Oracle pushed the patch through to cover two security holes with widely distributed zero-day exploits. That sigh of relief turned into gnashing of teeth when -- less than 12 hours after the patch was released -- Polish security firm Security Explorations not only identified an additional, similar hole in the newly patched Java 7, but also claimed that its researchers had warned Oracle about the original zero-day security holes way back in April.
Apple plugged the holes on its platforms a few days later.
Note that the vituperations are directed at the client side of Java -- the programs that run on user's PCs and Web-based applications that invoke Java from inside a browser. The truly lowest common denominator is the Java Runtime.
Who's lined up against Java? Security luminary Brian Krebs has renewed his call on users to uninstall Java from their systems -- a security step he's been advocating for years. Ars Technica's Dan Goodin agrees as does ZDNet's Ed Bott. After years of watching the carnage, I contended it's time to run Java out of town last April. F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen, who popularized the phrase "Friends don't let Friends run Java," adds, "If you're going to remain among the majority that keep it installed on your primary computer, do also remember that Java (as well as other plug-ins) can be invoked from applications with banner ads."
Of course, Microsoft wants you to disable Java whenever possible. It has a bit of a vested interest as Microsoft's .Net is -- at least on Windows clients -- a direct competitor to Java. But .Net has its problems.
If your shop isn't tied to the Java runtime, your users may be able to give it the heave-ho. While there are thousands of applications that require Java -- NetBeans, the open source HTML editor (which includes a Java IDE); Woopra, the Web traffic tool; the Eclipse programming tool (which also includes a Java IDE); JDownloader; and many others. They serve niche needs that may have similar Java-free alternatives.
For big applications: LibreOffice itself doesn't require Java but some of its components do, most notably Base, the desktop database front end. Some portions of Adobe Creative Suite require it, although Photoshop and Illustrator on Windows do not. Over on the gaming side, Minecraft and Runescape are still wed to Java.
On the Web: Web analytic site W3Techs says that just 4 percent of all websites use Java, although the numbers don't break out how many sites require client-side JRE.
Upshot: Most users don't need Java. Unless your company foists it on you, you're better off removing or disabling it.
A quick reading of the JavaOne Conference syllabus didn't turn up any sessions titled "Oracle's plans to get its patching act together." The only session that mentions security involves protecting Java Web apps with secure HTTP.
I'm sure it'll be a fine conference. But unless Oracle starts kicking butt on the security side of Java, attendees may soon find their customers have moved on to a less deficient alternative.
This story, "Battle lines drawn in the war on Java," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:d5baa290-6de9-4f40-84eb-cd2cce50e273> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoworld.com/t/java-programming/battle-lines-drawn-in-the-war-java-202227 | 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 | 0.951029 | 789 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Imagine you had an unlimited supply of money. You wouldn't need to worry about the various important dates that go with each purchase. You'd write a cheque immediately and be done with it. But coming back to reality, it does matter when you make payments.
Prior to working in property I owned an international franchise for a personal development self study course/seminar company. I would travel around the country giving seminars and conducting teleconferences. Throughout this time l realized a few things...
The question I pose to most of my clients when I first meet them is how do you create income from property? I get many different answers but in actual fact there are only 3 main ways of creating income from property.
I had a client who earned in excess of £100,000 yet only had £30,000 in equity in property. Now normally I would apply the "you spend your income and I will spend your capital rule" but in this case my first suggestion was different.
This is the first and probably the most fundamental strategy that you will begin with. It is used for those without a lot of experience in the buy to let market. In a nutshell, it works like this...
It may seem like an ambiguous term to use but portfolio is the way we describe two or more properties that you are currently controlling, managing or owning for profit. But there's much more to it than that.
My biggest bugbear in property is having surprises. In any other aspect of life I love the joys or challenges a surprise can bring, but when it comes to property it is just something I try to avoid.
The "2 year cash flow" is one of the most important concepts you'll learn. It's a simple formula that most people forget to calculate prior to committing to buying a property, yet it will guarantee the long term health of your portfolio
The one thing I have learned from investing in property is that it doesn't matter how good the deal is, unless you can get a tenant it will soon turn into a very painful financial decision. There's one sure way to ensure you don't fall into this trap. | <urn:uuid:b1f2d87f-b57f-4f3c-8885-92260e3f8129> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yourpropertyclub.com/educate/cat/conveyancing-and-solicitors/page/10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972755 | 434 | 1.5 | 2 |
30 April 2009>
A scheme to gate an alleyway, which has in the past experienced high levels of anti-social behaviour, has been launched in Trethomas.
The "Alleygating" scheme, which has been funded by the Safer Caerphilly Community Safety Partnership, aims to reduce levels of anti-social behaviour in the vicinity of Llanfabon Drive and Bryn Road in Trethomas, by restricting access to the lane, where anti-social behaviour has previously occurred.
It is hoped that the initiative will significantly improve the security of homes and businesses in the surrounding area. Feedback from similar schemes around the UK has shown that the installation of high quality, fully lockable gates at the entrances of alleyways can bring about a significant reduction in anti-social behaviour levels.
In addition, the new gates protect the alleyway from the possibility of fly tipping, dog fouling and vandalism, thereby improving the general environment for residents.
Only emergency services, residents and business owners from properties directly linked to the alleyway have been issued with keys.
Cabinet member for the environment, Cllr Lyn Ackerman said, "This excellent initiative is another important tool in helping us to tackle anti-social behaviour throughout the Caerphilly county borough.
The issue of anti-social behaviour has featured heavily at a number of PACT meetings in the Trethomas area over recent months, and this alleygating scheme really emphasises our commitment to putting the concerns of our residents first – we will not let the anti-social behaviour of a small minority adversely affect the lives of the majority."
Bedwas Neighbourhood Sergeant Gareth Jones, said: "The installation of the gate is just one of the ways that we are tackling anti-social behaviour in the area with our partners. We hope that it will prevent youths from gathering and causing a disturbance. Residents have raised it as an issue at PACT meetings, and this demonstrates that we are always looking at new ways to try and address these issues."
For further information, please contact the Safer Caerphilly Community Safety Partnership on 01443 864374.
- Return to News | <urn:uuid:12f7a1db-86d6-43d4-9a51-7bb56b9caa8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.caerphilly.gov.uk/application.aspx?s=Be1HHt9Zwb/k9c2sBn6kmf/lm65xq31VSCxrURXmb11P1/s92nOXOIrxyr1zRWx570nPvkE/AGg= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950097 | 443 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Discarded Lies: Free Iran
|Shortly after the reelection of George W. Bush a website was established showing photos of young Americans holding signs apologizing to the world for, among many things, our country having spearheaded the toppling of one of the world’s most brutal regimes. A corollary could be post WWII Americans apologizing to the world for having helped end Nazi Germany’s genocidal tyranny.
But those morally misguided Americans are not the only ones embarrassed and ashamed of their country. In fact, in the Middle East there is a nation whose behavior has compelled some of its sons and daughters to refer to themselves as “Persians” instead of “Iranians,” often because of the embarrassing associations connected with "Iran"...
...But unlike many Arab and other Islamic countries, the vast majority of Iranians are fed up with Islam dominating their lives. The 1979 Islamic Revolution that ushered in Islamic government has been an abject failure. It has turned Iran into an impoverished pariah state on a dangerous collision course with the West.
The ruling clerics viciously oppress the entire Iranian population, especially religious minorities and secular Iranians. Perhaps most oppressed are two of Iran’s indigenous religions, Bahaism and Zoroastrianism The former is a harmless faith that teaches the unity and betterment of humankind. The latter is the ancient pre-Islamic religion of Iran whose motto is “good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” The term “discrimination” does not do justice to describe the treatment meted out to Bahais and Zoroastrians; “decimation” is perhaps more apt.
And then there are Persian Jews- the oldest Jewish community outside of the land of Israel. At one time a thriving community, since 1979 the majority fled the rabid anti-Semitism of the Islamic revolution. The remaining Jews are unable to visit or communicate with their relatives in Israel and live under constant intimidation by Iranian security services.
But life in Iran is not much better for the majority Muslim population either. Shariah, or Islamic law, is the law of the land. Apostasy or leaving Islam are punishable by death. For women or young girls who have been convicted of extra or premarital sex, death by stoning is sometimes the preferred mode of execution. Unlike a hanging, death by stoning is an intentionally long and agonizing death. On numerous occasions Iran has executed children as young as fifteen.
Iran is also a huge state sponsor of terrorism. The Lebanese-based Hezbullah, the “Party of God,” has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans since the 1980’s. Financed and trained by Iran, Hezbullah is the first Islamist group to perfect suicide bombings. Iran also supports Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas- two terrorist groups dedicated to the destruction of Israel and responsible for the deaths of nearly a thousand innocent Israelis. Belying the oft-heard mantra that “We only hate “Zionists, not Jews,” Hezbullah and Iran are widely believed responsible for the July 18, 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 people and wounded more than 200. This would be the equivalent of blowing up the Jewish Community Center in your own community. To this day it remains the most deadly anti-Semitic incident anywhere since World War II.
Iran is also meddling in Iraq. According Iyad Allawi, Prime Minister of the Iraqi interim government, Iran has been attempting to destabilize Iraq by supporting radical Shiite groups; and according to Secretary of State Colin Powel, Iran has also lent support to arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
And if all that weren’t enough, Iran is dangerously close to obtaining nuclear weapons capability.
The danger of a country like Iran having nuclear weapons cannot be overstated. MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction, was the policy that prevented the US and the Soviet Union from all out nuclear war. The logic behind MAD being that the Soviets did not want to die, nor did we, and so a certain détente was reached.
But how could MAD work with an adversary that worships death?
On December 14, 2001 former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani declared that “the use of a nuclear bomb on Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.” In other words, tiny Israel would be destroyed by a single Islamic nuclear bomb, but the one billion-strong Islamic world would be able to withstand any Israeli counter-strike, despite the loss of millions of Muslim lives residing in the country that attacked Israel.
This blatant call for genocide should be a wake up call for the world because by all accounts Iran is frighteningly close to having nuclear weapons capability, as well as the capacity to deliver such weapons as far as Europe.
But the silver lining in all of this is that the clerics in Iran are intensely unpopular with most Iranians. The US and every peace-loving nation should do everything in their power to encourage Iranian democrats to topple the nightmare rule of the clerics once and for all. A democratic Iran would have far-reaching, positive implications for the region, not to mention the people of Iran.
The world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism would be out of business. Iraq and Afghanistan would have a peaceful democratic neighbor. Terror-supporting Syria would lose its closest ally. Perhaps most importantly, the wider Middle East would take note that the first country to usher in Islamic revolution finally repudiated that ideology in favor of democracy, freedom and human rights. | <urn:uuid:b3771153-ae87-4553-87ff-13a42674843f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2005/01/free-iran-shortly-after-reelection-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958965 | 1,148 | 1.6875 | 2 |
This week, they're sharing the legal-but-is-it-ethical spotlight.
On Sunday, "60 Minutes" looked at the handy way Congress has of writing rules that favor - you guessed it - Congress. The report originated with the book, "Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich off Insider Stock Tips," by conservative author Peter Schweizer.
The worst offender: Rep. Spencer Bachus, the then-ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, who cashed in by shorting the market after a 2008 pre-meltdown briefing with Treasury and Federal Reserve biggies. (In the corporate world, that would be insider trading, but in Washington, it's business as usual.)
"60 Minutes" also looked at the Pelosis' purchase of Visa stock in a 2008 initial public offering unavailable to the rest of us chickens.
At a news conference, "60 Minutes" reporter Steve Kroft asked Pelosi, "Do you think it's all right for a speaker to accept a very preferential, favorable stock deal?"
To which Pelosi replied, "Well, we didn't." And: "It only has appearance if you decide that you're going to elaborate on a false premise."
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington hit "60 Minutes" for implying that Pelosi might have used her leadership position to make a few fast bucks in the market by undermining proposed credit-card legislation. As her office pointed out, after husband Paul Pelosi bought 5,000 shares at $44 in the IPO, he bought an additional 10,000 shares at $64 and another 5,000 at $86. Pelosi still owns 19,000 shares.
OK, but Pelosi once promised that if she were elected speaker, she would "drain the swamp" in Washington. As speaker, however, she bought stock at an insider's discount. "60 Minutes" reported the story and spokesman Drew Hammill cried, "Right-wing smear."
Gingrich knows how to play that game, too. At GOP presidential debates, he frequently takes aim at the liberal media. Methinks the Newter wants to deflect attention from his own checkered record.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Freddie Mac paid Gingrich at least $1.6 million in consulting fees starting in 1999. Gingrich and Freddie's chief lobbyist say Gingrich did not engage in lobbying for the mortgage giant. At a CNBC debate, Gingrich acknowledged that Freddie paid him $300,000 in 2006 for his services as a "historian," and also warned that Freddie's lending practices were "insane."
Earlier this month, Freddie asked Congress for another $6 billion - which would put Freddie's bailout tab over $70 billion. Now, if Gingrich were the visionary that he presents himself to be, he would have refused to take money from a government-sponsored entity that he must have known was doomed to fail and become a burden on honest taxpayers. Its very willingness to pay Gingrich $300,000 in one year shouted that Freddie was bound to crash and burn.
In Iowa, Gingrich tried to put a happy face on the Freddie fiasco. "We just tried four years of amateur ignorance," quoth he, "and it didn't work very well, so having somebody who knows Washington might be a really good thing."
But really good for whom? | <urn:uuid:97adf400-525c-4a79-9292-4b9b1203c35e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/saunders/article/Newt-and-Nancy-together-again-2289160.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971503 | 680 | 1.5 | 2 |
"If thieves came to you, if robbers in the night-- Oh, what a disaster awaits you-- would they not steal only as much as they wanted? If grape pickers came to you, would they not leave a few grapes?16
But how Esau will be ransacked, his hidden treasures pillaged!
All your allies2 will force you to the border; your friends will deceive and overpower you; those who eat your bread3 will set a trap for you,a but you will not detect it.
"In that day," declares the LORD, "will I not destroy4 the wise men of Edom, men of understanding in the mountains of Esau?
Your warriors, O Teman,5 will be terrified, and everyone in Esau's mountains will be cut down in the slaughter.
Because of the violence6 against your brother Jacob,7 you will be covered with shame; you will be destroyed forever.811
On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots9 for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.1012
You should not look down11 on your brother in the day of his misfortune,12 nor rejoice13 over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction,14 nor boast15 so much in the day of their trouble.1613
You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster, nor look down on them in their calamity17 in the day of their disaster, nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster.
You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives,18 nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble.
"The day of the LORD is near19 for all nations. As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds20 will return upon your own head.
Just as you drank21 on my holy hill,22 so all the nations will drink23 continually; they will drink and drink and be as if they had never been.2417
But on Mount Zion will be deliverance;25 it will be holy,26 and the house of Jacob will possess its inheritance.2718
The house of Jacob will be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame; the house of Esau will be stubble, and they will set it on fire28 and consume29 it. There will be no survivors30 from the house of Esau." The LORD has spoken.
People from the Negev will occupy the mountains of Esau, and people from the foothills will possess the land of the Philistines.31 They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria,32 and Benjamin33 will possess Gilead.
This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan will possess [the land] as far as Zarephath;34 the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the towns of the Negev.3521
Deliverers36 will go up onb Mount Zion to govern the mountains of Esau. And the kingdom will be the LORD's.37 | <urn:uuid:0094b128-03c2-47ca-95ea-dcdcd820300b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biblestudytools.com/bible/passage.aspx?q=Obadiah+1:5-21 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955191 | 649 | 1.734375 | 2 |
As a landlord in a controversial low-income federal housing program, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury receives $639 per month of taxpayer money to rent a house to his 77-year-old mother on his Ojai ranch property.
Bradbury's mother, Marie, receives rent subsidies through the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 8 housing voucher program, designed to provide affordable housing to those who would otherwise be unable to secure decent accommodations.
However, the nationwide program in which Marie Bradbury participates is now under attack in Washington, and reforms due to take effect in September zero in on those landlords who rent to family members on government assistance.
Bradbury's mother has lived since July 1995 in a manufactured house on her son's four-acre Hang 'Em High ranch, assessed last year at $558,000. The dwelling sits next to Bradbury's five-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot main house.
The district attorney said he sees no personal conflict in taking the rent subsidy because his mother has been receiving it for more than 20 years, long before she began renting from him in 1995. He said it allows her to feel like she contributes to the family and is not being a burden on them.
"That's a major consideration for this woman because she has a great deal of pride and has worked hard all of her life," Bradbury said.
"This money is not important to us," added Bradbury, who earns an annual salary of $131,804. "It's important to my mother. If the money is not there tomorrow, that wouldn't cause us any concern because we would continue to keep my mother here."
But Bradbury's participation in the federal housing subsidy program drew mixed reactions last week from housing officials and taxpayer advocates in Ventura County, as well as from the county's two local congressmen.
In all, there are about 5,400 tenants in Ventura County who receive Section 8 rent subsidies, and about 6,900 more are on waiting lists that are three to five years long. So many poor people are waiting for help, in fact, that the county's Area Housing Authority was forced to close its waiting list last August. And officials don't see it reopening for another three years.
"I don't think that family members making that kind of money should make use of public funds to assist family members," said Sal Gonzalez, executive director of the Oxnard Housing Authority, which administers Section 8 funds. "We have such a tremendous housing need that the money needs to go to those who can least afford housing."
Gonzalez noted that he takes care of his 87-year-old mother-in-law, whose only income is her Social Security benefits and her savings, without any government help.
Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he doesn't know a lot about HUD's housing subsidy program, but he defended Marie Bradbury's right to receive rental help and said her son's income should not be an issue.
"I don't know what Mike Bradbury's balance sheet looks like, and quite frankly I don't care," he said. "I have great respect for this man's ethics. . . . I don't know if it's my role or anybody's role to question what he should do to support his mother."
Gallegly said Marie Bradbury worked hard all her life and had earned her place in the federal Section 8 housing program. He said he believes the district attorney could make substantially more money by renting the extra house on his property to someone else.
"Here's a case where an individual is subsidizing his mother," Gallegly said. "If he didn't care about her, he could rent the house out for several hundred dollars more than he is getting."
But according to HUD records, Bradbury previously rented the same dwelling to another tenant for $600. That is $250 less than listed on the current federal housing contract for his mother. The "last tenant made up the difference in rent by helping with ranch animals (feeding, cleaning, training, doctoring)," according to documents filed to support Marie Bradbury's housing application.
To qualify for the rental subsidy, Marie Bradbury cannot live under the same roof with her son, his wife and their 1-year-old son.
The rental subsidy program works like this: Low-income tenants rent dwellings from participating landlords, paying no more than 30% of their income for housing. The government pays the rest of the rent.
Marie Bradbury's HUD payment contract states that her current monthly rent is $850. Under her contract agreement, she is supposed to pay her son landlord $211 toward the monthly rent, while HUD picks up the remaining $639.
But Bradbury said his mother does not pay the tenant portion of the rent.
Doug Tapking, executive director of the Ventura County Area Housing Authority, declined to discuss Bradbury's case, citing privacy laws. But he said there is nothing in the regulations that specifically deals with landlords being required to collect the tenant portion of the rent. | <urn:uuid:68043b27-a6db-4419-ae27-81fad71ece6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/1997/aug/10/news/mn-21290 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98094 | 1,049 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Back to Resolutions
Confession of Faith, 1632
XVII. Of Shunning the Separated
Concerning the withdrawing from,
or shunning the separated, we believe and confess, that if any
one, either through his wicked life or perverted doctrine, has
so far fallen that he is separated from God, and, consequently,
also separated and punished by the church, the same must, according
to the doctrine of Christ and His apostles, be shunned, without
distinction, by all the fellow members of the church, especially
those to whom it is known, in eating, drinking, and other similar
intercourse, and no company be had with him that they may not
become contaminated by intercourse with him, nor made partakers
of his sins; but that the sinner may be made ashamed, pricked
in his heart, and convicted in his conscience, unto his reformation.
I Cor. 5:9-11; II Thess. 3:14.
Yet, in shunning as well as in
reproving, such moderation and Christian discretion must be used,
that it may conduce, not to the destruction, but to the reformation
of the sinner. For, if he is needy, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick,
or in any other distress, we are in duty bound, necessity requiring
it, according to love and the doctrine of Christ and His apostles,
to render him aid and assistance; otherwise, shunning would in
this case tend more to destruction than to reformation.
Therefore, we must not count
them as enemies, but admonish them as brethren, that thereby
they may be brought to a knowledge of and to repentance and sorrow
for their sins, so that they may become reconciled to God, and
consequently be received again into the church, and that love
may continue with them, according as is proper. II Thess. 3:15.
to Resolutions Index | <urn:uuid:a0f714be-4f2f-49a1-b44a-9b503be2b76b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcusa-archives.org/library/resolutions/dordrecht/dordrecht-17.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967086 | 418 | 1.75 | 2 |
What Is Posole & How to Make It At Home
Posole is a traditional Mexican dish from the pacific coast region of Jalisco. A thick soup that's usually made with pork, hominy, garlic, onion, chili peppers, cilantro, and broth. My neighbor Debbie found this recipe in a great looking cookbook that she just lent me called The Feast of Santa Fe by Huntley Dent.
This is a good recipe but I have learned a simpler, just as tasty recipe from my friend Paula who is from Mexico, is an incredible cook and never uses a recipe. She also always uses what's on hand and if we don't have one ingredient, she just finds something to substitute and her dishes always turn out great. Check out Paula's Posole recipe after this one from The Feast of Santa Fe.
What is Hominy?
If you remove bran (also known as the pericarp) and the germ from a kernel of corn, you are left with the endosperm or sometimes called hominy. When the hominy is ground, we have what is commonly called "hominy grits", a popular dish in the south.
Notes: 2/28/99 - My wife and I made this last night for some friends and came up with some additional ideas. We didn't add the optional jalapenos because we mistakenly purchased a couple of milder Anaheim chili peppers.
One of our guests suggested roasting them on our gas stove, slicing them, and adding them to the Posole. Great idea. Added another layer of flavor.
The next night we had the Posole leftovers and it was tastier than the night before which leads me to suggest you make this dish the day before you are going to serve it. Not a conventional idea but how many times have you had leftovers that were better than the first night?
Serves 8 to 10 depending on whose doing the eating.
This is a simplified verson of posole that is incredibly easy to prepare and has a mouthful of flavor with every spoonful AND gets better the next day. My friend Paula who is from Mexico and a wonder in the kitchen shows me how to prepare this dish and I'm amazed how simple she makes everything she does look.
She never measures anything out and uses what she can find in the refrigerator or in the pantry not depending on a recipe. Of course there are a few ingredients you must have like homminey and pork to make this dish, but then she gets creative and uses whatever ingredients she can find in the house. | <urn:uuid:74b33302-5e1d-45e7-bbd6-7bc5abd156f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reluctantgourmet.com/component/k2/item/143:posole-recipetrackback/ | 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 | 0.973637 | 526 | 1.8125 | 2 |
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it mandatory for at least 70 percent of books studied to be non-fiction.
To ready students for the workplace.
So books such as J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards.
Recommended Levels of Insulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory by California's Invasive Plant Council.
I kid you not.
Some of you may not like Lee’s work, much less Salinger’s. But let’s agree on what is going to be lost, shall we? It’s a single word:
And with imagination, the love of reading itself.
As I wrote in A Mind for God, I love to read. As a young boy, I can remember devouring Ellery Queen mysteries on long vacation drives; taking a hot bath and reading The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder; curling up in the bay window of a local library, as cascades of rain dripped down the glass, with a harrowing tale of Blackbeard the Pirate. I still have the copy of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, worn from countless readings, given to me on my 12th birthday by my grandmother. To this moment, the perfect day is one with a sky full of dark and heavy clouds, promising a furious storm or inches of snow, with a fire in the fireplace and a book waiting to be devoured by my side.
My love of reading as a boy grew into something altogether different when I became a follower of Christ in college. Reading took on an urgency that it had never held before. Attending a secular university as a new Christian was not an easy task. I was surrounded by very bright people who were not Christ-followers, and were eager to explain why.
To hold on to my faith, much less contend for it, would demand fulfilling the Bible’s clear and commanding exhortation to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (I Peter 3:15). I knew I had to out-think those who were challenging my faith; and to out-think them, I knew I had to out-read them. From this, reading moved from merely reading for pleasure to reading for purpose. No longer did it matter whether I enjoyed reading; it had become essential.
But if I hadn’t been given the love of reading early on, and had my imagination sparked by Oompa-Loompas and Orcs, Almanzo and sailing the seven seas, I wouldn’t have had the mind for C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Little wonder that a monk in Normandy penned these words in 1170: “A monastery without a library [sine armario] is like a castle without an armory [sine armamentario]. Our library is our armory.” This was certainly the conviction of the apostle Paul, who even from his prison cell in Rome implored Timothy to be sure to bring him his books (II Timothy 4:13).
And I am confident that in both cases, the books at hand were not all non-fiction.
So let’s prepare our children for the workforce. But in the process, let’s not fail to prepare them for the world.
James Emery White
“Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum,” The Telegraph, Wednesday, January 13, 2013, read online.
James Emery White, A Mind for God (InterVarsity Press).
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself.
James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, N.C., and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His newly released book is The Church in an Age of Crisis: 25 New Realities Facing Christianity (Baker Press). To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, log on to www.churchandculture.org, where you can post your comments on this blog, view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on Twitter @JamesEmeryWhite. | <urn:uuid:f9fb844d-4bc9-4d41-91be-ba6b77023306> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.religiontoday.com/columnists/dr-james-emery-white/so-long-holden.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 | 0.960736 | 973 | 1.671875 | 2 |
In Logan Square and Hermosa, home buyers on the hunt
Vanessa Valentin and James Rudyk aren’t exactly salesmen – they’re respectively a community organizer and executive director for the Northwest Side Housing Center – but they recently demonstrated the art of persuasion while leading a trolley-full of potential home buyers through the streets of Logan Square and Hermosa.
James Rudyk and Vanessa Valentin point out items of interest during a tour of Neighborhood Stabilization Program houses for sale in Logan Square and Hermosa.
Photos by Gordon Walek
The occasion was a tour of four formerly vacant, foreclosed houses that Mercy Portfolio Services, through the federally-funded Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), had acquired. The properties were rehabbed by NSP-approved developers and are now available to home buyers of modest means.
NSP has been acquiring similar properties on targeted blocks in 29 Chicago neighborhoods in hopes that returning vacant single-family houses and apartment buildings to productive use would arrest the slide of disinvestment and abandonment sparked by the collapse of the housing market several years ago.
Valentin and Rudyk – she in Spanish, he in English – weren’t just selling the four houses, though. They were selling the neighborhoods.
“We’re not going to pass it,” said Rudyk as the trolley approached the first house – a solid brick single-family at 1823 N. Tripp Ave., “but two blocks north of here, at 2156 N. Tripp, is the childhood home of Walt Disney.”
Who knew? A couple of blocks later, as the trolley rolled down Armitage, the tour guides noted that the Honduras consulate was just up the road, on Fullerton. And on Hamlin Avenue, Rudyk and Valentin pointed out Mozart Elementary School. “It’s one of five local schools where the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (which helped organize the tour) operates community learning centers,” they said. “They provide classes for adults – like English as a second language and GED – plus after-school programs and homework help for kids and lots of arts and cultural programs.”
The leafy streets of the Northwest Side neighborhoods are a lure for people who want not only a house but a good community to live in.
On a brief detour on North Avenue, through neighboring Humboldt Park, they passed a number of excellent restaurants, businesses, churches and key community agencies. The roughly 30 mostly Latino passengers, many with small children, nodded approval. The local amenities, coupled with the appeal of the leafy Logan Square and Hermosa streets, lined with tidy frame and brick single-family homes, made this expedition a realtor’s dream.
And the realtors were on hand, too, at each of the houses – 1823 N. Tripp Ave., 2028 N. Kilbourn Ave., 2016 N. Karlov Ave., and 3508 W. Palmer St., where they dispensed listing sheets and answered questions during the 10-minute house tours. The drill was repeated many times over the course of the day as two trolleys ferried about 150 people back and forth between the McCormick Tribune YMCA at 1834 N. Lawndale Ave. and the four houses.
At the Y, they had the opportunity to speak with lenders, meet with housing counseling agencies and eat lunch.
Juan M. Zapata was in the market for a house for his parents.
“This is a good program,” Juan M. Zapata, who was helping his elderly parents find a new, small house relatively close to where he’s living on North Springfield, said about NSP. He was impressed with the quality of the rehabs and the generous subsidies available through the program.
Ditto for Ana Jimenez, 22, and Anita Dzitkowski, 26, friends who currently live on adjacent floors in a Logan Square apartment building but are keen to move to single family homes. They’re familiar with the neighborhood, like it, and want to stay. And through NSP they might be able to own places with monthly payments comparable to their rent checks.
Last year, NSP had a similar tour of for-sale houses in Humboldt Park. They sold quickly and it wouldn’t be a surprise if those in Logan Square and Hermosa do, too. All properties showcased on the tour are currently under contract.
Anita Dzitkowski, left, and Ana Jimenez - neighbors in a Logan Square apartment building - were both looking for places to buy.
Spirits on the trolley were high, the houses and streets looked great, and despite the hardship and heartbreak that have afflicted so many homeowners as a result of the foreclosure crisis, plenty of people – many of them on the trolleys – remained convinced that home ownership is a worthy goal. Some of them will soon be moving in to the NSP houses they visited.
Posted in News | <urn:uuid:3944c129-9faf-4caf-867e-745bfc549573> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chicagonsp.org/news/2023 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969264 | 1,045 | 1.578125 | 2 |
the "no good Perl jobs"/"no good Perl programmers" myth
abw at wardley.org
Mon Aug 7 13:50:55 BST 2006
Adrian Howard wrote:
> I put it down to Perl being more approachable to many people so you get
> more unskilled people overestimating their competency.
I think you're right. That was certainly the situation 5-10 years ago
when the whole CGI thing took off and Perl ruled the roost. Anyone
could write a Perl program and most of them did... very badly.
Nowadays it's PHP that has pushed Perl out of the running for "language
any half-witted monkey can use to knock out an insecure, inefficient and
bug-ridden program". Python and Ruby are a little way behind, but still
in the running.
Perl is just "so last millenium" for these people. If it's not new
and happening then it must be dead and buried. Those that were on the
ship have jumped it, and those that weren't have kept a wide berth.
And good riddance, say I. It's those monkeys that tarnished Perl with
the "write once, read never" reputation.
Java, on the other hand is way too hard for monkeys to use. It's also
sufficiently unpleasant to use that most "real programmers" avoid it
like the plague. So Java tended to attract only career programmers who
just wanted to have the most marketable skills. They're the kind of
people who don't have their own opinions about a programming language
but use whatever LargeCorp's Marketing Dept tell them to use. Their
homogeneity makes them easy to hire and easy to fire.
So the only people left using Perl these days are those who *choose*
to use it because it's a powerful and flexible language that gets the
job done quickly and efficiently. They're the smart kids who know
better than to follow the latest fad.
So while it's easier to find a PHP/Java programmer or job, I think it's
easier to find a *decent* Perl programmer/job these days because the
Perl wheat has been separated from the web/CGI/monkey-hack chaff.
Of course, the above rant is peppered with sweeping generalisations and
a good pinch of tongue-in-cheekiness. But I assume you folk are smart
enough to figure that out. You're Perl programmers, right? ;-)
More information about the london.pm | <urn:uuid:d6643aa9-3a8a-4ea2-8b2b-4e24a217237d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20060807/003491.html | 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 | 0.947734 | 534 | 1.546875 | 2 |
If you're wondering what goes on behind the scenes of a theatrical production, nine Loveland High School students will tell all this weekend during their production of "Noises Off!"
"Noises Off!," a comedy written by Michael Frayn and directed by English teacher Danny Hollweg, is a witty, fast-paced play within a play that will provide a great laugh for audiences, said Jacilyn Hesting, social studies teacher at Loveland High School.
"It shows the backstage drama of putting on a production ... as well as the drama that goes with memorizing lines," Hesting said.
What: Loveland High School presents "Noises Off!"
When: 7 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday.
Where: School auditorium, 920 W. 29th St..
Cost: Students and seniors, $5; general public, $7; purchase at the door only.
The 2-1/2-hour comedy explains that "unspoken magic" of theater where the actors can pull off the show with little practice and have everything go smoothly, Hesting said.
"It speaks out to anyone who's ever been in theater or film and some of the silliness that goes on behind the scenes," Hesting said.
The staging area rotates 180 degrees to present two stage sets, that of a living room and of a backstage area.
"It's quite a complicated set," Hesting said.
The cast, which started practicing in January, includes John Dokter, Alex Forbes, Mallory Foster, Brady Hilgenberg, Reece Moellenhoff, Mackenzie Speer, Mariah Van Tress, Tomas Udlock and Maddie Waldrep.
"It's all about timing. The students have been doing a great job saying their lines with perfect timing," Hesting said.
The comedy includes all types of humor from low, or slapstick, to medium and high humor, and is appropriate for all ages, she said.
Shelley Widhalm can be reached at 669-5050, ext. 531, or email@example.com. Follow her on Twitter: @ShelleyWidhalm. | <urn:uuid:474f0040-edd3-4a5b-b66a-9a8c19aec67e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reporterherald.com/news/education/ci_22681712/loveland-high-school-will-stage-noises-off | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95878 | 468 | 1.625 | 2 |
An End and a Beginning
Emilia Tamayo, the Cohiba factory manager, steps down as a flood of new cigars hits the market
From the Print Edition:
Alec Baldwin, May/June 2004
"My last day is on Friday," said Emilia Tamayo, the head of El Laguito, the home of Cuba's most famous cigar brand, Cohiba. The strong 55-year-old woman looked vulnerable, almost like a child asking for forgiveness after doing something naughty. We stood together in the reception area of the Hotel Nacional in Havana for the start of a dinner during the sixth annual cigar festival on February 25.
It seemed slightly strange that she would no longer be in charge at what is arguably the best cigar factory in Cuba. Tamayo explained that she needed more time to spend with her family and she believed that she had already accomplished a lot in her small factory. But she was melancholy as she spoke of her retirement. Maybe she was upset that the production of Trinidad was moved to a factory in Pinar del Río. Or perhaps she was upset that her dream of producing all of the cigars in the Cohiba range would never be realized? One never knows the real reason for why things happen in Cuba.
Regardless of why she left El Laguito, Tamayo brought a professionalism and dedication to the world of cigar factories here. She ran the Cohiba factory as if it were her very own. That pride of ownership never wavered from the day she took over in 1995. "What do you think of my beautiful factory, Suckling?" she would say, beaming proudly when I would arrive for a visit. "This is like my own house. Only a woman can do something like this. It's a woman's touch that can make a factory even more."
In fact, Tamayo was the first woman to manage a Cuban cigar factory. She served as a role model to many other Cubans in the country's cigar sector. She never professed to be a tobacco expert. She left that to her team of technicians and workers, her "family" as she called them. She was simply the matriarch of El Laguito. Under her management, Cohiba became more than just a gift for diplomats; it became an icon for the island and for the world of luxury consumable goods.
Over the last decade, I occasionally wrote critical articles about her factory and others on the island. She always was one of the first to complain bitterly about it when I traveled in Havana. "You know that I never had anything against you," she said, sitting in her small,
second-floor office in a building next to the colonial-style factory just a few weeks before this year's festival. "But I took it personally when you wrote negative things about my factory and others. It really upset me."
That's what really impressed me the most about Tamayo. She really cared. "I will always love what I did at El Laguito," she said a few weeks before the party at the Nacional. "It was really like my own." It still amazes me how many Cubans like Tamayo still deeply care about their cigars, from the poorest tobacco farmers amid the red soils of the Vuelta Abajo to the heads of the industry in their spartan offices in Havana. Daily life in Cuba is no bed of roses for any Cuban, but many still have a deep pride in their country and for their work—especially those in the cigar industry.
Perhaps that's why there is so much excitement recently in producing new cigars and new humidors. Sure, the wrappers on many of the new cigars leave a lot to be desired. There is apparently a shortage of high-quality wrapper leaf. You need to go through five or six boxes of a particular size and brand in a Havana cigar shop to find dark brown, oily ones. But the new cigars coming on the market are exciting just the same. Their quality is getting better. If Cuba's factory overseers can get their hands on some better wrappers this year—and the prospects look good—we should have some superb smokes in a year or so.
It's almost hard to keep up with all the new releases. Since the beginning of the year, Habanos S.A.' the global distribution organization for Cuban cigars, has announced a new size, or vitola, for Montecristo—Edmundo—as well as a new limited-edition Montecristo humidor. In addition, special humidors popped up in Havana cigar shops in February for San Cristobal de la Habana and H. Upmann. And there are some new vitolas for the highly successful Edición Limitada. The Edición Limitadas have become annual releases for a handful of special cigars in a limited production. Colleción Habanos, Edición 2003 also is now available, the third in a series of small-production cigars that sell in a box resembling a bound book. There's even talk of a new brand and the reintroduction of green wrapper cigars called candelas.
"We have generated some expectations in our consumers for these new products," said Fernando Domínguez Valdés-Hevia, the co-president of Habanos. He said that the new products were all due to a philosophy of "quality and innovation" for Habanos based on "a strategy of value and image." In other words, consumers should expect to see many more new sizes, new humidors and even new brands as the Cubans and Spanish upgrade their cigar business. (The Spanish tobacco giant, Altadis S.A.' owns half of Habanos.)
You must be logged in to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:8a964ed9-4203-41e8-a044-6201162429d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatures/show/id/Cigar-Diary-An-End-and-a-Beginning_8450 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974616 | 1,184 | 1.5625 | 2 |
By Polly Keary, Editor
Gold Bar is a city between a rock and a hard place.
The cost of a large and ongoing number of legal challenges and public records requests have consumed an amount almost equal to 20 percent of the general fund balance for the whole city.
The public outcry against even considering the possibility of disincorporating the city and letting the financial liabilities pass to the county was such that the council declined to put it on the ballot.
So instead, they put out a levy that would have raised $100,000 to help pay back what has been spent on legal expenses so far.
Tuesday, voters shot that down.
Now Gold Bar Mayor Joe Beavers said he’s not sure what the city will do to survive.
In June, the city decided to set up a separate city fund to deal with litigation, since it was eating up such a chunk of the city’s money. That way, they could budget the rest of the city’s expenses independently.
They took $35,000 they had already budgeted for litigation and put that in the new fund. Then, estimating that legal expenses would top $100,000 in 2012, they borrowed $77,000 from the water fund.
The levy was intended to pay back that loan and replenish the litigation fund against future legal costs.
Now, the money to repay that loan will have to come from the general fund over the course of the next two years, Beavers said.
If the amount is repaid in two years, it will take a significant chunk out of an already-lean general fund budget; next year’s budget is projected at $546,000. But that’s not the town’s biggest worry, said Beavers.
“Repaying the loan is the easy part,” he said. “It’s how many lawsuits are going to show up.”
So far, Gold Bar has not lost any of the more than one dozen legal actions brought against it, but the cost of defense has been high.
A recent lawsuit against the city of Sultan that was dismissed cost that city $10,000. That is typical, said Beavers.
“That’s the minimum ante,” he said. “Next year if there’s $100,000 in litigation, we don’t have $100,000 next year to defend against lawsuits.”
Further lawsuits are not improbable.
Among Gold Bar’s residents are a handful who suspect officials of hiding secrets to protect themselves and a previous mayor.
They have requested thousands of public records, but remain concerned that within that small percentage held back by the city is the evidence they seek.
The withheld records were exempted, the city says, because they fall under the legal definition of records that don’t have to be released, or for reasons of privacy or legal privilege should not be released.
So far an in camera review, in which a judge goes through the withheld records and verifies the legality of their protection, has not been done.
Beavers said he wasn’t emotionally invested in the outcome of the levy.
“It was going to be a decision of the citizens, and on one hand I think we described well what the problems were with not passing it. But it was not for something physical they could see, like a levy for repairing Lewis Street, or a fire truck,” he said.
The city will start working on how to deal with the legal fund expenses over the next two months.
Beavers said that a city bankruptcy or a disincorporation are “still on the table.”
“There’s a lot of numbers to crunch and a lot of things to look at,” he said. | <urn:uuid:7dda8e77-4836-4330-8ab6-4a22671ca511> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.monroemonitor.com/2012/11/13/gold-bar-reassesses-after-levy-loss/ | 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 | 0.977818 | 793 | 1.578125 | 2 |
View Full Version : Hooks -vs- 5 pt patches
02-26-2003, 02:29 AM
Well I have been doing some tests lately with 10.0g, mainly because some people were complaining about holes in their models when exporting using my .OBJ exporter (as well as other exporters).
It seems that Hash treats hooks and 5 pt patches *very* differently in terms of how it breaks them up into quadrangles. When exporting to .OBJ (for instance), Hash will break 5 pt patches into 5 quadrangles (basically putting an extra control pt between all the existing control pts, and 1 in the center. It uses these new control points as the sides to the quadrangles. Hash will simply break a hook into 2 quadrangles.
It also seems, in my simple tests, that hooks will render *a lot* better than 5 pt patches (when rendering in AM). With 5 pt patches, you seem to get some sharp edges.
Can anyone who know this stuff tell me if this is true? Are hooks a better way to go than 5 pt patches in general?
02-26-2003, 03:32 AM
Hooks and 5 point patches solve two different problems. Hooks solve the problem of going from high detail to low detail. 5 point patches solve the problem of two different edge loop patterns meeting (an arm joining a torso for instance). If you don't use 5 point patches in these instances then you end up with three point patches or intersections of more than two splines. In either case the output will look far worse than a 5 point patch. The key with five point patches is to try to get them somewhere relatively flat.
As someone who works in the game industry, the way five point patches are subdivided makes my skin crawl. At my job, polycount is always important. The most efficient way to break up a five point polygon is with three triangles. Of course, I doubt this would work very well with Hash patches, since they don't handle triangles well at all. Also, the way the software chose to triangulate could result in either a convex or a concave surface (it would have to guess). That is why programs like 3ds Max have a turn edge command, for when the computer guesses wrong.
02-26-2003, 04:25 AM
Even three-point patches don't solve the problem. Any attempt to work around five-point patches will use broken splines somewhere in the area, sometimes including a three-point patch (say, connecting two points of the potential five-point patch with a single straight spline segment.)
As long as the splines are continuous, three-point patches cause very little difficulty in AM renders (though they don't work for export.)
02-26-2003, 08:20 AM
Does someone know why hash doesn't use 3 triangles for 5 pt patches? Did they in the past (I know they've changed how they treat 5 pt patches when they break it up). What were the problems then?
02-27-2003, 11:47 AM
For what it's worth, the AM exporter exports hooks & 5PP differently depending on if it's a poly export or a patch export. I remember that Patch exports (like AV2 I believe) seem to look better when exported. I don't remember if they used a square and triangle, but it did look better than the same section exported as a poly model.
I'm not sure what the reasoning is for how Hash exports them. I think they don't use three triangles because of an increased crease on export.
I'm working on a way to fix this on export for AMXtex (my DirectX .X exporter). If/when I get something working, I'll share my results.
01-14-2006, 12:00 PM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.
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By Amit Agarwal
If you search “pizza” on Google, the website will show you advertisements related to nearby pizza stores. That’s understandable, but later if you happen to visit an unrelated website, say an online art gallery or a friend’s blog, the same pizza advertisements might pop up here too. The ads follow you on the web.
Advertising networks have been tracking online users to serve them more personalized and targeted ads. Social sharing widgets, such as the Facebook “Like” and the Tweet buttons embedded on virtually all web pages now, can also track users as they jump from one website to another. The user just needs to be logged in to the social network — which most of us are all the time.
You may want to download a browser extension like Ghostery to learn about all the advertising networks, analytics companies and other third-party elements that are possibly tracking you. The list may surprise you at times.
Do consumers have a choice? Can we browse privately and opt-out of online tracking?
All major web browsers (except for the most popular browser - Google Chrome) now include built-in support for “Do Not Track,” a privacy preference that is designed to tell advertisers not to track your online activity. This is more of a request than an instruction because not all advertising networks and websites respect the user’s preference. Here’s a list of companies that have committed to support “Do Not Track,” and it includes Twitter as well.
Internet Explorer 10, the next major version of Microsoft’s web browser that is currently shipping with the preview release of Windows 8, makes it slightly more difficult for online advertisers to track you. It is the only browser in town that enables the “Do Not Track” preference by default, so as users upgrade to the new browser, they’ll be opting out of online tracking automatically.
Unsurprisingly the advertising industry isn’t very pleased with Microsoft’s move, but it is certainly a better choice for consumers, most of whom aren’t even aware that such a feature exists in their web browsers. Given the choice between privacy and targeted advertising, I think most users would pick the former. Microsoft’s new browser is a good step in that direction.
You can visit this page to know if your current web browser has a “Do Not Track” preference set or not.
It is also important to note that websites are not legally required to honor your “Do Not Track” request, but you can use the cookie approach to forcefully opt-out of behavioral advertising. The opt-out page at aboutads.info lets you easily block interest-based ads from all NAI members by setting the right cookies in your browser. However, if you switch to a different browser or clear your browser cookies, your opt-out preferences are lost as well.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @indiarealtime. | <urn:uuid:07ee65ac-a993-4aca-92f5-8689b2b46ed6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/06/07/tech-journal-how-to-avoid-online-ad-tracking/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935391 | 617 | 1.679688 | 2 |
AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to millions of articles from top publications available through your library.
Ted Kooser was one of the first people I met when I came to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1969. We may even have taught night classes together my very first semester. Our practice was to meet the full class enrollment jointly, then divide up the students. Though employed at his insurance company even then, Ted was trying to stay connected to poetry. We worked this way for a number of years, Ted staying connected, Greg trying to earn extra money. I remember I used to worry always that somehow I would get the wrong students, or worse, that I was the wrong person to work with them. I knew very little, that was for sure, but tried to keep it from being too obvious. I remember how Ted, in comparison, always seemed poised and in control. Maybe I was hoping a little would rub off on me?
Within a short time I had laid my hands on Ted's first book, Official Entry Blank. I remember I loved the cover, my favorite orange and brown, but didn't know what the image was--I had never seen a Nebraska windmill before. Maybe a few years later it dawned on me what it is. I love this book. There are maybe a dozen poems in it I still read off and on in my classes. I can recall many of them right now, though I don't know where my copy of the book is--probably somebody stole it now that Ted's our U. S. Poet Laureate! I would not blame them if they have.
"Lament" (one of my favorites), "'Old Man at Supper," with the great stuff about banging his meld "down on the table like a threat, forget what's trump and fall asleep," and the poem about the old woman (ah, I remember the title, "The Corpse of An Old Woman") lying "on her rug since yesterday at supper time"--and how "the neighbor ladies say / she lets the lights burn night and day.'" "The postman bangs the boxlid to be heard / someone may stop this afternoon for tea." lf I thought about it a bit more here I could get all the lines, and all the rhymes. Ted's work in this book is like Frost's. Years later you will find yourself, as I am here--maybe in a tight spot?-recalling nearly the whole poem word for word.
And then that wonder, "The Closet Zoo," that magical adventure in metaphor, "'clothespin parrots" and "samsonite rhinoceros.'" "'Umbrella bats hang upside down to dry their wings" and the "the easy going broom giraffe," and ending with "It makes the sporteoat gibbons hoot / with wonder in the closet zoo." It's a poem Ted wrote for a friend's children, and one I will want to read to our grand-daughter Alex in a year or two. | <urn:uuid:d19dceda-b60b-4937-bd7b-0eaf35905827> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-13777392_ITM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980292 | 621 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Wisconsin state and local government workers pay "$500, $600 or in some cases, $1,000" per year in union dues.
Scott Walker on Sunday, February 20th, 2011 in an appearance on a TV interview program
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says government workers in Wisconsin pay $500 to $1,000 per year in union dues
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has tried to sprinkle sugar on what many government workers see as the bitter pill he’s proposing in his controversial budget-repair bill.
Let’s see if what he is sprinkling is as sweet as he says it is.
For many state and local government workers, losing collective bargaining power is the bitter pill. The bill also would require most public employees to pay more for pensions and health insurance.
The hit would be $5,400 per year for a state employee who earns the average wage -- $50,000 -- and chooses the least-expensive family plan for health insurance, Walker’s administration says.
The sugar, at least the way the Republican governor presents it, is in another provision of the bill. It would prohibit union dues from being withheld from public employees’ paychecks. That means state and local government workers would have to pay their unions directly.
According to Walker, if workers opt out of the union, they could save a fair amount of money.
On Feb. 20, 2011, on the "Fox News Sunday" program, Walker said "for those workers who don't want to be a part of the union, if you don't want that deduction each month out of the paycheck, they should be able to get that $500, $600 or in some cases, $1,000 back that they can apply for their health care and their pension contribution."
Walker made a similar statement three days earlier on Fox television’s "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren." And Washington Post columnist George Will wrote that Walker told him that many employees could save $500 or $600 per year in union dues and that teachers could save up to $1,000.
Let’s find out if the governor’s figures are correct.
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie sent us a document that he said came from the state payroll department. Payroll would know the amount of union dues for state workers, since it withholds them from state workers’ paychecks.
The document indicates that annual union dues are as low as $208 for certain legal employees and $300 for apprentice sheet metal workers; dues are as high as $3,180 for plasterers and $3,465 for plumbers.
The exact range, however, could be different because dues for some employees are a percentage of their pay, and the document does not spell out those amounts. Moreover, the document does not specify how many employees pay the various dues amounts that are listed, and it does not provide any averages. We asked Werwie for more information, but he had not responded by publication time.
So, we contacted some of the major public employee unions to ask what their members pay annually in dues. Our list is not comprehensive, but it does cover tens of thousands of state and local government workers.
Most of the 23,000 state workers who are members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 24 pay $420 per year in union dues, though some pay $492, said Bob Allen, spokesman for AFSCME-Wisconsin.
They tend to be "front-line" workers such as correctional officers, administrative support staff, probation and parole officers and custodians, he said.
Members of Local 1914 -- one of the units of Council 24 -- pay $470 per year, according to the dues page on that local’s website. Those 300 members are state employees in Eau Claire, Chippewa, Rusk, Clark and Taylor counties, and hold non-academic jobs at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Members of AFT-Wisconsin who earn over $34,000 per year pay about $510 per year in dues, said president Bryan Kennedy. AFT says it represents 17,000 public workers in 500 different classifications.
Health care workers
Annual dues for the 15,000 members of the Professional Patient Care Unit of Service Employees Union International range from about $192 for home care workers to $864 or more for senior nurses, said president Dian Palmer.
Milwaukee Public Schools teachers paid $995 in dues in 2010, while educational assistants who worked more than 20 hours per week paid $469, according to the figures from the website of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.
That union says it represents more than 8,200 employees, including 6,000 teachers.
Green Bay public school teachers pay $834 in dues, said Lori Blakeslee, spokeswoman for the Green Bay Education Association.
The typical Wisconsin teacher who belongs to the state’s largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, pays $450 per year for the state and national portions of their dues, said WEAC spokeswoman Christina Brey. But the additional amount in local dues paid varies and Brey said she did not know what the range is. Both Milwaukee and Green Bay belong to WEAC.
Let’s return to the statement.
In pushing his budget-repair bill, Walker said state and local government workers could stop paying union dues and take home $500 to $1,000 more per year in pay. He didn’t say most or many, but his statement suggests that a significant number of public employees pay dues in that range. And we found thousands of public employees who do.
We rate Walker’s claim Mostly True.
Published: Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 at 9:00 a.m.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Wisconsin as ground zero: governor serene amid storm," Feb. 21, 2011
FoxNews.com, "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" video and transcript, Feb. 17, 2011
FoxNews.com, "Fox News Sunday" transcript, Feb. 20, 2011
Interview, Professional Patient Care Unit of Service Employees Union International president Dian Palmer, March 4, 201
Interview and e-mail interview, AFT-Wisconsin president Bryan Kennedy, March 3 and 4, 2011
E-mail interview, Gov. Scott Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie, March 3 and 4, 2011
Interview, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-Wisconsin spokesman Bob Allen, March 4, 2011
Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association website, union dues page and fact sheet page
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1914 website, dues page and about page
E-mail interview, Green Bay Education Association assistant director/communications specialist Lori Blakeslee, March 7, 2011
Walker administration memo, Feb. 17, 2011
Governor’s office, union dues document
Interview, Wisconsin Education Association Council spokeswoman Christina Brey, March 7, 2011
We want to hear your suggestions and comments. Email the Wisconsin Truth-O-Meter with feedback and with claims you'd like to see checked. If you send us a comment, we'll assume you don't mind us publishing it unless you tell us otherwise. | <urn:uuid:0095c7a8-0376-4da7-992d-44add99e599c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/08/scott-walker/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-says-government-workers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936284 | 1,499 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Mr. and Mrs Baxter and Mr. and Mrs Wallace were not only neighbours, they
soon discovered that they were blessed with membership in the same church.
That they were of similar age, shared likes and dislikes, together with
the fact that they, all of them, hailed from Glasgow. Scotland, "Could
not," Mr. Baxter stated one clear summer's evening, "be taken as a matter
of mere happenstance, my dear friends. Surely, it's plain to see, this
friendship is truly blessed!" It was therefore hardly surprising that they
would mould, tender and solidify such a friendship as would last a
Into this fertile soil of love and fellowship a child was born to each
family. George Baxter Junior was born on the eighteenth of December, 1915,
while Emily Wallace, arriving two weeks premature, was born on the third
of April, 1916. From the outset it was understood that George and Emily
would school together, pray together, and grow up together. The question
of marriage was never discussed, but when Emily, at a sensitive age
between adolescence and womanhood, vowed to one day marry George, the
prospect was not unwelcomed, least of all by George himself, who blushed
slightly, having been taken somewhat off-guard by Emily's resolve.
The death, however, of George's mother to tuberculosis in 1937 devastated
the young man to the point where he postponed all wedding plans
indefinitely. It was later realised that the child in Emily's womb could
not so easily be postponed, so that in the spring of 1938 Emily's child
was given up for adoption.
From that day forward, whenever tasks spared her, Emily prayed to a small
crucifix which she concealed in the palm of her right hand. Oftentimes
Emily would pray to God to guide the child, that he would live life in
such a manner that one day they should both meet again.
A little over three years later, in a small ceremony in the town of
Newmarket, Ontario, amidst war and the rumours of war in Europe, George,
resplendent and rather spiffy in the Air Force uniform, married his life
"I'm no' losing a daughter," Mr. Wallace pompously stated over his third
port wine. "I'm gaining a son!" If he did but know that Emily bore his
second grandchild, he may well have taken to a fourth port wine.
Seven months later, as George's Spitfire plunged into the English channel,
three miles off the Devon coast, Emily went into labour and later gave
birth to a beautiful baby boy. George Junior, however, went on to develop
complications and did not live out his first week.
The death of the infant, together with the news that George had been
killed in action, was more than Emily could stand, more than any woman
could stand. She has not quite been herself since.
Emily is eighty-four now, old cardigan over faded dress and her eyes are
failing. She still talks to Jesus in her hand, a frail hand now, half
crippled by life's hardships. I drop by whenever possible, put the kettle
on and have a chat. If a curtain needs fixing I mend it. If she requires a
drive I'm only too happy to oblige.
During these visits and excursions Emily often talks of George and their
childhood together. Tears well up in the old woman's eyes as she opens her
palm to display the small gold cross that has never left her side. As she
discloses the secret of the cross, she tells me of the child she had to
give up all those years ago. "It's my only regret in life," she explains
tearfully. "But you would have to understand how different things were
I do indeed understand. As I hope the reader will understand how I cannot
bring myself to tell Emily that I am the son she had given up all those | <urn:uuid:119a8482-d09e-404b-a2db-46fd18aa97fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electricscotland.com/poetry/logue/logue6.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981934 | 843 | 1.773438 | 2 |
I’m in the midst of making a new set of Perler Bead Coasters right now, but my progress has been stopped by the fact that we’ve run out of black Perler beads. So while I wait for my new bag of 6,000 black beads to arrive in the mail I thought I’d try to write out a tutorial for making video game based coasters.
I know I’m not the first person to come up with this idea as Etsy will attest, but I’ve seen very few websites that actually explain how you get from a picture of your favourite video game character to a finished coaster. You can certainly use the tutorial that Sprite Stitch has provided for making video game sprites into cross stitch patterns, but honestly that’s a bit more complicated than what you need to go through for Perler Bead Coasters. Perler Beads have a much smaller colour range than DMC embroidery floss does so you don’t need to worry (or have the luxury of worrying) about colour matching as much. For the coasters you should be able to use programs or applications that came with your computer and the process if fairly simple.
A quick word about Perler Beads
Perler Beads are fuseable beads that you stick on a peg board and then melt together with a household iron to make them stick together to form a picture. Once they’ve been fused together and made into a coaster it’s perfectly safe to set hot mugs of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, etc on them, however, I would not recommend setting hot casserole dishes from the oven or pans that have been on a hot stove element on top of them. This would probably result in a melty pile of plastic goo. As well, when the coasters get dirty just wipe them down with a damp cloth and a bit of dishwashing soap (if necessary.)
To make a set of coasters you will need:
a household iron
sheets of cork (can usually be bought by the yard at a home supply store)
strong glue (we favour Gorilla Glue)
Large Perler Bead peg boards (at least 2 maybe more)
When I first started working with Perler Beads I bought the large jar that contains 11,000 beads in a mix of colours. It’s a bit of a pain to sort through it looking for the colours you need, but otherwise this has been a great investment. There are enough of each colour in the jar to make at least two coasters with each colour. That is, two coasters that use a lot of red, two coasters that use a lot of green, etc.
After buying this giant supply I now just go online and replace individual colours as I need them. I like to buy from KoolStuff4Kids, but you can also make purchases directly from the official Perler Beads website.
The large square peg boards are 29 X 29 pegs, and they interlock with each other. If you’re picture is larger than this you can hook two (or more!) together to make your design. For me it’s been hard to find the large peg boards in stores locally, and I usuallly have to buy them online. I like to have a lot of them around so that you can set up 2-3 coasters and iron them all at once, rather than one at a time.
Finding a Suitable Picture
Do you already know who you want to make a coaster of? Has someone else already done it? If you’re making a Super Mario coaster or Pac Man someone else has already done the work for you. Check places like Etsy, Craftster, or Google Images to see if you can find a finished coaster with the character you want.. If you find one you can just copy the bead placement from their finished product. Save a picture of their finished product to your computer and look at it whenever you need to.
Want to create a coaster of a character no one else has used yet. To start with you need to find the sprite for that character or a good screencap of him. Some people have favourite sprite sites that they always turn to, but I like to just put my faith in Google. For this new set of coasters I’m making the characters come from a game called Adventure Island II and III. So I started with Google Images and searched for “Adventure Island II screencap” and when I found some pictures I liked I copied them to my hard drive. I also did the same search on regular Google and checked a few of the top websites that came up. Then I also searched for “Adventure Island sprite” and again copied results I liked onto my hard drive.
Always search using keywords like “sprite” and “screencap” and do a Google web search and a Google Images search. You will often get different results. Add the name of the game the characters come from to this search using “” around the title if it’s more than one word. As well, try searching by the name of the character you’re looking for and adding the workd “sprite” or “screencap”
If you get stuck and can’t find what you’re looking for it might be a good idea to hit Wikipedia and refresh your memory about the game you’re looking for. When I was trying to find the pictures for these coasters I couldn’t find any pictures of the green triceratops from the game. I had only been searching for Adventure Island II stuff, and it turned out that the green triceratops was only a character in Adventure Island III. Knowing this earlier would have saved me a lot of time!
Telling a Good Picture from a Bad
If you’re lucky enough to get sprites of your characters these almost always translate perfectly into a Perler Bead pattern. If you only have screencaps, it can be a bit more problematic.
Open one of the pictures you’ve saved to your hard drive in any program that will allow you to view it and zoom in on it. Now Zoom in a lot, until you can see the pixels.
See the difference here? You want to use pictures that look like the Blue Dino when they’re enlarged.
Pattern Making Options
So, now you’ve got pictures of the characters you want to use. Zoom in on them until you can see the pixels at a level you’re comfortable with. It may be even bigger than what I’ve done here. When you start placing Perler Beads on your peg board each bead will represent one pixel. You can count how many pixels your character is in height and width to determine how many peg boards you will need.
There are lots of options for how you can use your pictures as your pattern. If you’re comfortable making your coasters in front of the computer than you can just open your character picture and zoom in on it until it’s the right size every time you want to place pegs on the board.
Alternatively use your computer’s screen capturing tool to take a picture of the character while it’s enlarged. Then you can just open this enlarged copy when you want to work on your coaster, or make a print out of it if you want to work on it away from the computer. Don’t have a colour printer, or don’t want to waste ink? Take a piece of graph paper and fill in squares to represent where all the black beads will go. This way you’ll just have to refer to the picture on screen when it comes time to fill in the coloured areas.
Not much to say here. If your design is small enough try to start it about two or three rows away from the edges of the peg board, (which I failed to do for this one). You’ll find this makes it a little more sturdy while you’re ironing it.
Follow the instructions that come with the Perler Beads. My boyfriend does the ironing part usually and his advice is melt the first side you iron really good to hold the beads in place and then melt the second side to a lesser degree so the beads still hold their shape. The really melted side will be covered up with cork when you’re making coasters so no one will see it. Also if you’re making a character with a lot of pointy edges like this red dino, while doing the first side, pick the iron up and set it down on the piece (for a couple of seconds) a few times, especially near the edges.
Iron a side once, let the piece cool a bit, peel back the ironing paper carefully to inspect your work. If some parts don’t seem to be fused together yet, cover the piece with ironing paper again and apply more heat where needed.
If you’re using more than one peg board then the board might try to bend a bit along the join line while you’re ironing. Be aware of this and carefully check this area to make sure the beads there are fusing together.
After you’re done ironing your character may not lay perfectly flat. If he’s curving a bit, don’t worry, adding the cork will probably fix this problem.
This photo shows the first side we ironed. Compare it with the photo at the top of the finished product. You can see the difference between the really melty side that holds the piece together, and the less melty good side in which the beads maintain more of their original shape.
Adding Cork Backings
Cut the cork so it is about 1/2 a Perler bead smaller than the character on all sides. Apply a thin layer of glue to one side of the cork board and stick it to the side of your Perler bead character that is the most melty. Place a stack of books or other heavy, flat objects on the coaster and allow it to dry for 12-24 hours. The pressure will help the coaster to stay flat.
If anyone has any questions or useful tips they’d like to share, please leave a comment. | <urn:uuid:e7af5349-cfb9-41d1-9f06-cddd91ec5cea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cthulhucrochet.blogspot.com/2008/07/perler-bead-coaster-tutorial.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950329 | 2,152 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Visiting Architect Edouard François: New Works Wrapped In Green (Slideshow)
Image by Kelly Rossiter
Architecture doesn't get any greener than the work of Edouard François; we have called the Paris architect "the master of the green façade." François's work is decidedly low-tech and rooted firmly in the ground. We visited him in Paris and learned of some of his latest projects, like this Club Med northwest of Dakar in Senegal, where he is essentially building bird's nests for people -- pods on stilts made of wood, wheat, and clay. | <urn:uuid:96e20eed-c04c-4a7b-81eb-97d0c0ed7473> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/visiting-architect-edouard-franaois-new-works-wrapped-in-green-slideshow.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96997 | 123 | 1.679688 | 2 |
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ClassicsOnline Home » KHACHATURIAN, A.I.: Spartacus, Suite No. 4 / Masquerade / Circus
Aram Il'yich Khachaturian (1903-1978)
Spartacus: Suite No. 4 • Masquerade: Suite
Circus: Ballet Music • Dance Suite
The Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian was born in Tbilisi in 1903 and had his musical training at the Gnesin Music Academy in Moscow, entering in 1929 the Moscow Conservatory, where he was a pupil of Prokofiev's friend and mentor, Myaskovsky. He established himself as a composer during the 1930s and held official positions in the Union of Soviet Composers, although he was included in the condemnation of formalism, together with Shostakovich and Prokofiev, in 1948. Nevertheless his style of composition, with the use of regional elements from Armenia and elsewhere in the southern areas of the Soviet Union, in the end ensured his continuing reputation, enhanced once more, after the death of Stalin in 1953, by his ballet Spartacus, a work that combined spectacle in its crowd scenes and attention to individual virtuosity in its solos, with a plot that could not but satisfy the ideals of the regime. Writing in a tonal idiom with richly coloured orchestration, Khachaturian was opposed to modern experiment in composition and in spite of the condemnation of 1948 held publicly that Soviet composers enjoyed a creative freedom impossible in the West, with its modernising fashions, to which subservience was obligatory. During his life-time he received many honours, including in 1954 the title People's Artist. He died in 1978.
The ballet Spartacus, the score of which was completed in 1954, deals with the slave rebellion led by the hero of that name against Roman domination. The historical Spartacus himself was Thracian by birth, a shepherd who became a robber. He was taken prisoner and sold to a trainer of gladiators in Capua, but in 73 BC he escaped, with other prisoners, and led a rebellion during the course of which he defeated the Roman armies and caused devastation throughout Italy. He was eventually defeated by Crassus, a general well known for his wealth, and put to death by crucifixion, together with his followers. It should be added that to Karl Marx Spartacus was the first great proletarian hero, a champion of the people, while the ultimate fate of Crassus, killed in 53 BC during the course of a campaign that had taken him to Armenia, might have had a particular significance for Khachaturian.
Spartacus was first produced at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad in 1956, with choreography by Leonid Jacobson, and was re-staged at the Bolshoi in Moscow two years later, with choreography by Igor Moiseyev. The relative failure of these productions was followed by what must be seen as the definitive version at the Bolshoi in 1968, with choreography and a revised libretto by Yuri Grigorovich, Vladimir Vasilyev as Spartacus and Ekaterina Maximova as Phrygia.
The ballet opens in Rome, where Crassus is buying Thracian prisoners, including Spartacus and his wife Phrygia. Spartacus will not accept his fate. In the second scene the slaves are sold, below the walls of the Capitol, and Phrygia, separated now from her husband, laments her uncertain fate. She has been bought by Crassus and in his villa his mistress Aegina mocks her fears: she herself cares only for power, money and dissolute living. In an orgy two blindfold slaves trained as gladiators are brought in and made to fight each other to the death. One of them wins and reveals himself as Spartacus, dismayed now at having killed a fellow-slave. He wonders what his fate will be. The scene changes to the barracks of the gladiators, where Spartacus urges his fellow-slaves to fight for freedom. They swear to follow him.
The second of the three acts of the final version opens with a shepherd dance. Runaway slaves arrive and urge them to join the revolt, with Spartacus as their leader. He resolves to find and set free his wife Phrygia. Crassus celebrates his triumph and Spartacus now learns of Phrygia's fate. During a banquet given by Crassus, Spartacus escapes with Phrygia. Aegina does her best to gain her ends by dominating Crassus, who himself has grandiose political ambitions: he uses force and she uses her wits, but both have similar aims. At his villa the guests of Crassus celebrate, but news is brought that Spartacus and his men have surrounded the place. Crassus, Aegina and the nobles make their escape, leaving the slaves in charge of the villa. Spartacus realises that Roman strength lies in its armies and in the subservience of the people: in fact the Romans are cowards. In the fourth scene of the act Crassus is defeated and brought before Spartacus, who insists on single combat, rather than putting his enemy to death. Crassus loses, but is spared by Spartacus, who sends him contemptuously away.
The third act brings a conspiracy against Spartacus. Crassus is urged by Aegina to seek revenge and raises an army for the purpose. Aegina has time to give vent to her hatred of Spartacus and in the following scene enters the slave camp by night. Phrygia is uneasy and Spartacus tries to calm her. A messenger brings news of the advance of the Roman legions, against which Spartacus has a daring plan, to which his immediate supporters object. Aegina, meanwhile, with the help of the traitor Harmodius, is still intent on revenge. This she accomplishes as the slaves wait for their leader's battle signal. She now plies them with wine and brings women to corrupt and weaken them, leading to their defeat by Crassus and her own reward. Crassus is determined that they shall die. In a final battle Spartacus is surrounded and captured, to be raised up on legionary spears. Phrygia comes to seek him, and is left mourning over his dead body.
The first three suites from the ballet were arranged by the composer between 1955 and 1957, with a fourth suite in 1967, before the revision of the score for the Bolshoi in 1968. Music in the suites is taken from various scenes in the ballet, forming coherent musical sequences that do not necessarily follow the order of dramatic events in the original ballet.
The colourful incidental music for a production in 1941 of Lermontov's Masquerade serves its purpose admirably. The drama itself has, over the years, attracted a number of Russian composers, from Kolesnikov in the 1890s to operas by Mosolov, Denbsky, Bunin, Zeidman, Nersesov and Artamanov, a ballet by Lamputin and incidental music by Glazunov, Shebalin and Khachaturian. Lermontov's hero, Evgeny Arbenin, is bored with the world, despising the decadent society of St. Petersburg in which he moves, moody and suspicious. In a plot that follows the story of Othello, Arbenin is jealous of his wife, Nina, an innocent woman whom he poisons. The play is bitter in its criticism of contemporary society and was banned for some thirty years. Its appeal to more recent audiences is clear enough. Khachaturian's music for Masquerade, like Tchaikovsky's for some of the scenes in his opera based on Pushkin's Evgeny Onyegin, gives a glittering picture of social life, a contrast to the reality beneath.
The ballet music by Khachaturian for Circus is characteristic in its energetic style, typical of a form of composition which found particular favour with the contemporary musical establishment, as did that of his nephew, Karen Khachaturian, whose ballet Cippolino was awarded the Stalin Prize. It opens dramatically, proceeding with the brash and vivid energy that might be expected from the composer of the famous Sabre Dance, with a following series of episodes offering the necessary degree of excitement and tension, at times even with a suggestion of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Nevertheless the general musical idiom is firmly within the bounds of current official Soviet taste, aptly serving its practical function and ending, as it began, in a cinematic triumph that would not have disgraced Hollywood in its heyday.
Khachaturian's Dance Suite was his first major work for full orchestra, written in 1933, while he was a student at Moscow Conservatory in the composition class of Myaskovsky. He later explained how he had made use of Uzbek and Armenian melodic material, treating these melodies with some rhythmic freedom and adding motifs of his own. The first movement, Trans-Caucasian Dance makes use of folk-songs popular in Armenia and in Azerbaijan, Chem-Chem and Shalakho, while the second, the Armenian Dance, uses a well known Armenian dance-tune. The Uzbek Dance Tune has, as its second theme, the melody Kora soch, that Khachaturian also uses in the finale of his Clarinet Trio, while the fourth movement, Uzbek March, proclaims its source in its title. Khachaturian took particular pleasure in the final Ukrainian Lezghinka, which he preferred to his later version of the dance in the ballet Gayane. The first four movements enjoyed additional popularity in arrangements for wind-band, in celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Red Army.
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KHACHATURIAN, A.I.: Spartacus, Suite No. 4 / Masqu... | <urn:uuid:ce9552f6-a850-4219-b585-c85f856dae52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classicsonline.com/catalogue/product.aspx?pid=2326 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977233 | 2,075 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Play some kickball to get the family active
No matter what activity you do with your family, staying active is key to ensure that all members of the family are healthy, and live a better life the older they get. However, doing fun family activities and playing sports and games as a family, is a great way to ensure that you and your kids, stay healthy, and are still able to have fun and enjoy one another’s company together. Doing family activities together, will also allow you to keep an eye on your kids, and make sure they stay out of trouble, and are not hanging out with the wrong people.
A great way to spend an afternoon together with your family and kids is to play a game of kickball together. It can be extremely fun, you can invite their friends over so that they will actually want to play with you, and it is a great way to stay active together. Kickball is a very easy game to teach and to learn, therefore, it is something that all family members, no matter what age or skill level, can participate in together, and have a great time. It is also a great way to get in some cardio exercise with the running.
Kickball is a great sport to get your family together, get outdoors and enjoy a fun afternoon together. It is a great way to keep active, and is a sport that all family members, regardless of their skill sets, can learn how to play the game. | <urn:uuid:cbad19aa-041a-48e5-9b05-0083e9b490b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.backyardgames.org/backyard-game-ideas/play-some-kickball-to-get-the-family-active.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983107 | 298 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Your spouse will have put on weight gain during the pregnancy. While this is normal, many women worry about this increase in their weight following delivery.
These are important things your spouse needs to know if she is trying to lose weight:
- Weight gain may be normal: It is important for your spouse to determine whether the weight she has gained is within normal limits. Pregnancy weight gain of anywhere between 15 to 30 pounds is absolutely normal and she need not worry about it. However, if she weighs over 30 pounds more than before she became pregnant, she may need to consider losing some of it.
- Weight loss needs to be gradual: There is no truth in the popular belief that successful weight loss program has to be speedy. Actually post-pregnancy weight gain may take up to years to reverse and is dependent on many factors.
- ‘Quick fix’ methods do not work: Doctors do not generally recommend any quick techniques or drastic diets to lose weight following pregnancy.
Your spouse can effectively lose weight by:
- Staying away from any ‘fad’ diets likely to harm herself and, if she is breastfeeding, the baby
- Combining a healthy diet plan with a sensible exercise routine
- Aiming for a reasonable loss that she can maintain, rather than a drastic loss that is short-lived
- Consulting a dietician if her own efforts do not show results | <urn:uuid:2cff4ad5-b3a8-4682-9a5e-6449e66c4565> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greatdad.com/tertiary/271/1892/losing-weight-after-the-pregnancy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973135 | 285 | 1.6875 | 2 |
2 oil companies pay total of $700K for illegal sewage dumpingFARGO – North Dakota environmental health regulators Friday announced that two firms have agreed to pay penalties totaling $700,000 for illegal sewage dumping in the Oil Patch.
By: Patrick Springer, INFORUM
FARGO – North Dakota environmental health regulators Friday announced that two firms have agreed to pay penalties totaling $700,000 for illegal sewage dumping in the Oil Patch.
Hurley Enterprises, of Fairfield, Mont., doing business as Hurley Oilfield Services, will pay $500,000 in penalties. MonDak Septic Service, with offices in Stanley, N.D., will pay $200,000 in penalties.
As part of the agreement, half of Hurley’s payment will involve providing septic tank pumper compliance training for truck drivers in the Oil Patch.
Drivers responsible for the violations also each will pay penalties of $1,500, according to environmental health officials.
Dennis Fewless, who heads the water quality division of the North Dakota Department of Health, said the steep fines are intended to send a message.
“Certainly that is part of it,” he said. “There were numerous violations.”
The violations occurred in fall 2011 until early 2012, he said.
The number of septic disposal firms – and the volume of waste they must dispose – has risen dramatically in recent years in the Oil Patch.
“It’s the most we’ve ever seen,” Fewless said. “The businesses have increased tremendously over the last two or three years.”
Most of the violations by the two firms involved improper disposal of septic tank contents from modular housing for crews at drilling rig sites, Fewless said.
Some of the violations involved dumping in ravines or coulees that drain into streams, creeks and stock ponds.
“We had cases where there was erosion gullies,” caused by multiple discharges involving several thousand gallons of waste, Fewless said.
No harm to fish or wildlife or waterways was documented, “although there certainly was the potential,” he said. “The practice was caught before it went any farther.”
Dave Gorham, a consultant who is working with Hurley, said the violations resulted because of a lack of sewage disposal lagoons, many of which closed when they became full. Cities don’t allow dumping because they are at capacity, he said.
“Let’s face it, somebody permitted all those wells,” and the associated problem of waste disposal should have been anticipated by officials, Gorham said. “The problem is one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing.”
He added, “I don’t want to blame the state,” and said Hurley and MonDak are working with other companies to provide better disposal options.
North Dakota and many Western states allow septic disposal on farm fields under certain conditions. Hurley does not use that option, he said, and prefers to use lagoons.
A woman who answered the phone at MonDak’s office in Stanley said the company declined to comment on the violations.
MonDak has built regional domestic wastewater treatment lagoons that will help alleviate the need for field spreading, according to health officials.
Each company will be required to maintain detailed records of all domestic waste treatment and disposal activities.
The training program that Hurley will provide will be the first time such a course has been offered in North Dakota, Gorham said.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Patrick Springer at (701) 241-5522 | <urn:uuid:1806ac58-a089-4db4-b44f-dabf181d0111> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/387708/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961208 | 769 | 1.578125 | 2 |
One of the best things about the charter school community is the incredible people associated with them. Today I am writing about Jerry.
Jerry is a middle school English teacher. In fact, he taught my daughter when she was in junior high. I give Jerry credit for igniting the love of reading in her. He has that effect on students because he invests his time in his students. Jerry routinely takes small groups of students to lunch (with his own money) in order to get to know them better. He does this because he truly cares.
Jerry teaches students in a relaxed, but focused, classroom. He's studied different techniques, such as Quantum Learning, to make his classroom more engaging for students. In fact, Jerry is always open to learning new strategies and taking suggestions.
Jerry is a non-traditional teacher, though. He's not licensed. He has 2 or 3 Master's, but has never taken formal education courses. Jerry is proof that a teacher's license doesn't really mean anything about the quality of a teacher. He's one of those "naturals" that are easy to spot, even in a quick visit to the classroom. Jerry is an incredible asset to his charter school. I'm sure more students than just my daughter will remember him for the rest of her life as being an awesome teacher! | <urn:uuid:adab143f-1ac9-4718-b9dd-042ae6a2b35a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.charterschoolsolutions.org/2007/04/charter-school-hero-jerry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991773 | 268 | 1.507813 | 2 |
By Binu Paul email: firstname.lastname@example.org | Mar 11, 2013 08:24 AM EDT
We know Google Glass will power you up with the ability to record and upload videos on the move, search the Web through speech, receive and execute onscreen directions, and send voice-controlled messages. The search giant is not done yet with the concept of wearable technology. Google has been showing off a pair of talking shoes at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin this week.
The project is part of a Google initiative known as 'Art, Copy and Code' whose tagline is 'Advertising Re-imagined' which has developed the wearable device in coordination with interactive startup YesYesNo, ad agency 72andSunny, and Adidas.
The shoe is equipped with an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a pressure sensor, and Bluetooth so that it will provide you with feedback and motivation based on your move throughout the day. Google said it does not intent to make it a consumer product.
"By connecting a pair of sneakers to the web, we're creating unique opportunities between physical objects and digital ad spaces. Every move the user makes generates data that's captured using an accelerometer, gyroscope and pressure sensors," a statement on the project's website says.
"That data then gets pushed to a web app on your mobile phone and translated in real-time into funny and motivating commentary." These commentaries are then taken to various social media, paving way for the shoe to interact with the wear's social networks.
To put its function in the simplest terms, Google shoes will tell you what you are doing and what not. It will take the information and comments onto your phone via the Bluetooth connectivity or directly to you through the speaker connected in the top tongue of the shoe.
The idea behind the project is that the shoe would function like a lot other fitness-friendly devices out there in the market to motivate users to get moving and track their progress with the help of technology. "We developed a shoe that could talk and tell you things -that could pick up enough information about your exercise, whether you're walking, running, moving fast or slow," Leif Percifield, the developer of the device was quoted as saying to Fast Company.
Check out the shoes in action:
© 2013 Mobile & Apps All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. | <urn:uuid:0a123ddd-ad58-4f46-804d-034937d46adb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mobilenapps.com/articles/7842/20130311/google-talking-shoe-sxsw-project-art-copy-and-code.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948706 | 496 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Time and Money
Pre-Conference Book Discussion: Time and Money: Macroeconomics of Capital Structure (Routledge, 2000) by Roger Garrison (29:50) Austrian Scholars Conference, 2002
Professor Roger Garrison is a leader in the field of Austrian macroeconomics, and has had a burning passion for his whole career to present Austrian business cycle theory in terms that mainstream economists can understand and identify. This book represents the culmination of his efforts in that regard.
He sets the Austrian theory against the Keynesian and mainstream theory, and shows how they are different in terms of the relationship between money, interest, capital, and investment. By doing this, he not only shows the precise way in which Keynesian theory makes unrealistic assumptions about the way the world works; he also shows how the Austrian theory more fully captures the actual workings of the market in real-world settings. He thereby goes a long way toward refining the positive theory.
In particular, this volume is useful (and famed) for its clear graphical exposition of the trade cycle theory. He shows the interrelationship between all the factors that affect investment, without leaving out critical dynamic issues such as time and the heterogeneity of the capital stock.
This book is useful for anyone who seeks to gain the clearest possible perspective on the mechanics of the business cycle. But it will be especially appreciated by those who are confronted with Keynesian-style modeling in school or professional life.
The book was published in 2006, and is made available here at a price far lower than the original publisher put on the book. The hope is that it will lead to wide distribution of this important and modern contribution to Austrian macroeconomics. | <urn:uuid:c272fef4-47da-47b4-9440-7d4496765f20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mises.org/media/1098/Time-and-Money/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95586 | 340 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Recently Microsoft had announced a big feature of Windows 7, “XP Mode†as most call it. This allows people to install all their favorite XP software that won’t run in Vista or 7 in a XP virtual pc. Or at least as it was supposed to work, but many people with Intel processors won’t be able to use this feature. Microsoft is requiring that the computer on which 7 is installed to have hardware virtualization support. Since VirtualPC that the XP mode uses is a software hypervisor the decision makes no sense.
AMD processors have AMD-V (hardware virtualization) on all but their Sempron line. Intel on the other hand used the feature as a way to divide their processor models and don’t have as many models with the support. Tom’s Hardware has a list of all the Intel models that support VT-x. | <urn:uuid:cf5498f8-6c9d-4f75-83c1-e276e370c090> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clark-technet.com/2009/05/windows-7-xp-mode-mistake | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971182 | 184 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Gold, Is the Future Still Bright or Fading?
By Chris Puplava, February 18, 2009
As promised, today’s article picks up where last week’s article left off with the focus predominantly on gold, not gold stocks. This year marked an historic event, as something occurred for the third time in nearly 80 years, which is the value of gold exceeding the value of the S&P 500. The first occurrence was during the onset of the Great Depression with the S&P 500 falling below the fixed price of gold on October 29th, 1929. The gold to S&P 500 ratio fluctuated around parity until the stock market plummeted in earnest in 1931 and 1932, with the peak in the ratio ultimately rising to 4.76 in late February of 1933 as the S&P 500 finally bottomed.
The second occurrence of gold breaking above parity with the S&P 500 came during the severe recession of 1973, with gold rising above the value of the S&P 500 on June 29th of the same year. Gold hovered around parity with the S&P 500 for six months before it made a huge jump with the ratio climbing to 2.79 in early December 1974 as the stock market cratered. The top in gold was associated with the stock market bottoming as the correction in gold and the rebound in the S&P 500 drove the ratio of gold to the S&P 500 back down to parity by the summer of 1976. Just as the stock market was putting another top in 1976, gold had put in a bottom and the gold to S&P 500 ratio was making its second and climatic run.
While the stock market bottomed in 1978, gold failed to correct sizably as it did during the 1974 stock market advance, with the run in gold far surpassing the improvement in the stock market, driving the gold to S&P 500 ratio up to a peak of 7.58 on January 21st, 1980. The blow off top in gold was followed by the beginning of a secular bull market in stocks and a secular bear market in commodities that lasted roughly two decades. The ratio plummeted to a depth of 0.179 by July of 1999, roughly coinciding with the top in the stock market.
Since 1999 the ratio of gold to the S&P 500 has advanced in a stair step fashion where it rises for a period and then moves sideways. The ratio moved up significantly after the October 2007 stock market peak, with gold breaking above parity with the S&P 500 on January 20th of this year, marking the third such occurrence in nearly 80 years.
What is interesting to note is that the first occurrence of gold breaking parity with the S&P 500 came during the deflationary Great Depression, while the second occurrence came during the inflationary 1970s. This proves that gold can perform well under either a deflationary or inflationary scenario. Both prior occurrences of the strength in gold were associated with presidential decisions. Gold spiked 27% in one day when FDR devalued the currency after he took office in 1933 and confiscated privately held gold under Executive Order 6102, with gold remaining illegal for Americans to own until 1974. In 1971, President Richard Nixon removed the gold standard and ushered in an inflationary decade and a fiat monetary system that has been with us ever since.
Since gold has been de-linked from the USD it has displayed an inverse relationship with the USD. The top in gold in 1974 marked the bottom in the stock market and the top in gold in 1980 marked the turn of a secular bear market in gold and a secular bull market in stocks. The tables turned at the dawn of the millennium with gold beginning in a secular bull market and the S&P 500 beginning in a secular bear market. Using the two prior occurrences of gold breaking parity with the S&P 500 shows that once parity is broken the ratio typically stays near parity for several months and then explodes upwards and ends in climatic fashion. So, once parity is broken the action is typically not a whip saw event, where gold falls back below the value of the S&P 500, but the start of a significant outperformance of gold relative to the stock market.
While gold has moved above its former all-time high of $850/oz reached in January 1980, the gold to S&P 500 ratio is 83.42% below the level seen at gold’s prior peak. To reach the prior gold to the S&P 500 ratio high of 7.583 would take $5,984/oz gold using the yesterday’s close on the S&P 500, and if the S&P 500 fell to 600 as some maintain is still possible (Jeremy Granthom & John Hussman), we would need gold to reach $4,550/oz to reach the prior high. What this analysis shows is that there is plenty of room to the upside for gold to reach its prior mania high relative to the stock market, indicating gold’s secular bull market may not be young in terms of duration, though it certainly is in terms of magnitude relative to prior secular bull markets.
The Bullish Case
The long term picture for gold, as highlighted above, is that gold remains in a secular bull market until proven otherwise, while the intermediate picture is far less certain. A bullish case for gold is that so far the stock market remains in a bear market while gold is on the verge of assaulting its all-time high north of $1,000/oz. The inverse nature of gold and the stock market will prove favorable for gold as long as the S&P 500 remains on the defensive.
Additionally, growing balance sheets by world central banks and growing deficits in developed countries are putting strains on global currencies and credit default swap (CDS) spreads are rising on sovereign debt issues in the G7 countries. The rise in gold has been associated with rising fear levels by investors with soaring fiscal budgets across the globe. This can be seen when looking at the CDS spreads on 5-Yr Euro-denominated UST debt and gold below, with spikes in the CDS associated with spikes in gold, with both trends continuing to move higher. This same trend can be seen across G7 countries with the average G7 CDS on 5-Yr sovereign debt issues rising in tandem with gold as gold becomes the ultimate global safe haven currency.
Global currencies are falling apart relative to gold as gold hits new highs relative to global currencies (2nd panel below), and is on the verge of further currency breakouts relative to the Canadian Dollar (CAD), the Swiss Franc (CHF), and the US Dollar (USD) (1st panel). As long as fears remain high with respect to fiat currencies and ballooning government fiscal deficits, gold should remain strong.
Gold Denominated in Foreign Currencies: Rebased to 100 as of 03/14/2008
One other positive for gold right now is that gold stocks relative to gold have held up, which is significant as gold stocks typically lead the price action of gold. The AMEX Gold Bugs Index’s (HUI) relative strength ratio to the gold ETF (GLD) remains above its 50d MA and its RSI is still holding above 50. A break through the 50d MA of the relative strength ratio and a decline below 50 on the RSI would probably signal a top for gold, though gold stocks may underperform gold for a short period as they test the rising trend line of its relative strength ratio (top panel) before gold stocks may outperform once more.
The Bearish Case
While the inverse correlation of gold to the stock markets was cited above as a bullish support for gold, it can also work against gold. If the stock market bottoms this year there is a good chance that it will be associated with a top in gold, not necessarily “THE” top in gold for this cycle but “A” top. This relationship can be seen by comparing gold with the S&P 500 in the 1973 and 1981 recessions during the prior secular bull market in gold. The figure below normalizes gold to 100 at the onset of the recession and the x-axis is the duration in months before and after the recessions began. What is interesting to note is that gold is following a similar path to what was seen in the recessions highlighted below. If gold follows the 1973 path then it should be peaking in the next month or so at a new high before undergoing a sizable correction, which is certainly possible given gold’s close proximity to its former high. If gold follows the 1981 recessionary path, then we could see strength in gold for another six months before a correction is seen. At either rate, both recessions witnessed a peak in gold anywhere from 13-19 months after the recession began, pointing to a top of intermediate nature in gold’s future in the next six months.
While gold breaking parity with the S&P 500 is bullish in the long run, as once that feat is achieved gold experiences sizable outperformance relative to the stock market for several years, the ratio of gold to the S&P 500 also carries a negative current outlook. In terms of gauging peaks in gold relative to the stock market I looked at the 200 day moving average (200d MA) of the ratio of gold to the S&P 500. From there I took the deviation of the ratio from that average to measure relative overbought and oversold conditions. Not surprisingly, what I found was that large positive deviations of the gold to S&P 500 ratio from the 200d MA were often associated with significant peaks in gold, or at least marked the beginning of lengthy sideways consolidation in gold as it worked off its overbought condition. Additionally, what I also observed was that there is a shift in the overbought zone for the ratio depending on whether gold was in a secular bull or bear market.
During the secular bull market in gold of the 1970s, overbought regions for gold were seen when the gold to S&P 500 ratio was north of 40% from its 200d MA, while significant bottoms were witnessed when the ratio fell to 20% below its 200d MA.
After gold made a parabolic blow off top in early 1980 it began roughly a 20-year secular bear market. The first decade of its secular bear market witnessed a shift in the overbought zone in the gold to S&P 500 ratio from roughly 40%-60% north of its 200d MA to 20%-40%, while -20% below the 200d MA still remained a good entry point into gold. The latter half of gold’s secular bear market witnessed the overbought zone shift even lower, down to 10% above its 200d MA of the gold to S&P 500 ratio. Once again, -20% below the 200d MA of the gold to S&P 500 ratio often marked bottoms in gold.
As gold has shifted from a secular bear market to a secular bull market at the turn of the century, its overbought zone also shifted from 10% above the 200d MA of its ratio to the S&P 500 in the prior decade to 30%-40% in this decade. The first spike above 30% from the ratio came in September of 2001 and was followed by a ~7% correction in gold, while the next spike in the deviation was in 2002 that saw an initial 6.3% decline in gold followed by a five month consolidation before gold moved higher. The ratio reached nearly 30% above its 200d MA in early 2003, which witnessed roughly a 15% correction in gold over two months.
The next significant overbought condition in the ratio relative to its 200d MA came in May of 2006 when it rose to 34.6%. Gold fell over 21% in one month and then underwent a nearly year and a half consolidation before reaching a new high. The subsequent overbought condition wasn’t seen until March of 2008 when gold broke $1,000/oz, with the gold to S&P 500 ratio reaching nearly 50% above its 200d MA. Gold then witnessed nearly a 30% correction over eight months. During this eight month consolidation the ratio nearly reached 50% above its 200d MA for the second time last year in October, which witnessed a 21.52% correction in one month.
The recent surge in gold as it approaches its 2008 highs has pushed the ratio of gold to the S&P 500 nearly 60% above its 200d MA, the most overbought condition since the peak in gold in 1980, more than 28 years ago. Clearly at this juncture gold’s outperformance relative to the S&P 500 is reaching extreme territory. To put a more quantifiable context to gold’s recent outperformance I measured the standard deviation of the ratio to its historical average relative to the 200d MA. As seen below, the outperformance of gold to the S&P 500 relative to its 200d MA is nearly four standard deviations above the mean, an event that should occur only one one- hundredth of a percent of the time, or roughly once every 27 years, which is actually roughly the last time this event was witnessed as seen in the chart below.
What the figure above illustrates is that gold’s outperformance relative to the S&P 500 is clearly extended and likely to mean revert back to the 200d MA, which using yesterday’s close on the S&P 500 would imply $616.88/oz gold holding the S&P 500 constant, a decline of roughly 37%. This shows the magnitude of the outperformance of gold relative to the stock market and the size of the correction needed to bring it back to its 200d MA. While a sharp and violent correction in gold that brings its ratio to the S&P 500 back to its 200d MA is possible, further sideways consolidation is more likely while the S&P 500 finds its footing, which was seen in 2002 and 2003 when the ratio was significantly above its 200d MA.
What is also bearish for gold is the strength in the USD that is predominantly due to weakness in the Euro, which composes 57.6% of the USD Index. The Euro Index ($XEU) is on the verge of breaking down to new lows, which would likely take the index back down to the 2005 lows if it breaks current support at 123.94. A break in the Euro to new lows would lead to a breakout in the USD Index ($USD) which could put some strain on gold advancing much further.
While strength in the USD is bearish for gold, since September the correlation between gold (GLD) and the USD has become less negative, with a significant reduction in the correlation since the start of the year as strength in the USD is not translating into weakness in gold. While gold and the USD are both displaying strength this trend can not continue. A failure to breakout by the USD Index would clearly be bullish for gold, and may be the point where their correlation returns to a more negative relationship.
In Summary, gold is clearly still within the confines of a secular bull market until proven otherwise. Current conditions suggest gold is quite extended relative to the S&P 500 and may undergo a period of underperformance, though any corrections from current overbought levels will likely prove to be pit stops in gold’s assault to new highs and a move north of 4.0 in the gold to S&P 500 ratio before this secular bull breaths its last. The end to the current secular bull market in gold will likely be associated with a break through the lower channel of the gold to long bond ratio, the ultimate inflation/deflation monitor. While there is no doubt that we are currently in a cyclical episode of deflation, the trend in the ratio of gold to bond prices suggests that the secular inflation that began in late 2000 is still underway. Until gold breaks through the lower trend channel below, it appears that the future for gold remains bright.
© 2009 Chris Puplava | <urn:uuid:57d88294-005a-40e7-9111-c0f51f41f3fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.financialsensearchive.com/Market/cpuplava/2009/0218.html | 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 | 0.962043 | 3,284 | 1.78125 | 2 |
I just discovered this topic, so sorry for the late comments.
Most of the ideas I wanted to express have already been posted.
A few of the ones I agree with should be repeated:
A. Perhaps a nice (on site use only) "technical" resource library.
B. A basic "lab" setup (O-scope, Freq generator, etc) where Hams can learn from each other/experiment/build/repair without a bunch of negative criticism. (What use is a bunch of theory on paper without a little practical hands on to see how all the theory actually comes together?)
One of the best features of our club is the informal group of guys who assist local hams with their antenna installations, and go out to lunch afterwards to celebrate a job well done. As someone who has both a helper and a beneficiary of this loosely organized antenna committte, I can't say enough about the good will this kind of activity produces. This is what ham radio is all about!
the club has sponsered Technician and General licensing classes to do just that. We have a wide array of talents in many of our more active members and using that skillset, many of the members volunteered to teach sections of the license theory. These classes have been a great success
A friendly approach to new hams (I am one).
An active training programme, and in between that, if possible a mentoring programme to help those who have passed whatever exam there is, but realise its a licence to learn.
A clubhouse with a rig would be nice.
Regular meetings at least once a month, even if they are little more than a pint and a chat. You would meet at (see above).
A yearly trip to somewhere interesting to operate (maybe).
It comes down to activity, and services. I believe club members should be asking themselves "what can I do for the club?" And in turn, the club should be asking what can it do for it's members? What does your members need from the club?
NI0C's antenna party idea is great. Many club members do not have the means, or the ability, to work on antennas. Put together a team to help them out!
KD8DEY's tech lab idea is awesome. Put together test equipment that can be used by club members. Many of us can't justify the expense of buying an antenna analyzer, but could sure use one once in awhile. How about a good set of crimpers to install cable ends? Even a high quality watt / SWR meter and dummy load could be useful.
Activity, activity, activity... Plan some special events and get a team on the air. Field day is great, but it's only once a year. Have a group activate the club station for your state QSO party. You do have a club station, right?
Presentations are great. Particularly if you can attract some special guests. Just make sure the audience attendance is optional. I have given club presentations on contesting when I know some of the folks had zero interest, but felt obligated to be there. Not a good idea.
And lastly, do frequent surveys of your members. What do they want to see the club do? Pay special attention to members who aren't currently active. What will it take to get them back?
Good luck with your club, my friend. And by all means, if you discover something good that works, let us all know so we can put it to use in our clubs!K9ZF@yahoo.com
Amateur Radio Emergency Service, Clark County Indiana. EM78el
K9ZF /R no budget Rover ***QRP-l #1269 Check out the Rover Resource Page at:
<http://www.qsl.net/n9rla> List Administrator for: InHam+grid-loc+ham-books
Ask me how to join the Indiana Ham Mailing list! | <urn:uuid:cc84adc8-3980-4686-b773-6f1ee48c0ffe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eham.net/ehamforum/smf/index.php?topic=69984.msg493324 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947526 | 816 | 1.625 | 2 |
Senior Obama administration officials have agreed that the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. military deploys could be cut by at least a third without harming national security, according to sources involved in the deliberations.
They said the officials' consensus agreement, not yet announced, opens the door to billions of dollars in military savings that might ease the federal deficit. It might also improve prospects for a new arms deal with Russia before the president leaves office, the sources said, but is likely to draw fire from conservatives, if previous debate on the issue is any guide.
The results of the internal review are reflected in a draft of a classified decision directive prepared for Obama's signature that guides how U.S. nuclear weapons should be targeted in the future against potential foes, according to four sources with direct knowledge of it. The sources, who were not authorized to talk to a reporter about the review, described the president as fully on board, but said he has not signed the document.
The document directs the first detailed Pentagon revisions in U.S. targeting since 2009, when the military's nuclear war planners last took account of a substantial reduction -- roughly by half from 2000 to 2008 -- in the total number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. It makes clear that an even smaller nuclear force can still meet all defense requirements.
Although the document offers various options for Obama, his top advisers reached their consensus position last year, after a review that included the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the intelligence community, U.S. Strategic Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the office of Vice President Joseph Biden, according to the sources.
Several said the results were not disclosed at the time partly because of political concerns that any resulting controversy might rob Obama of votes in the November election. Some Republican lawmakers have said they oppose cutting the U.S. arsenal out of concern that it could diminish America's standing in the world.
The new policy directive, which formally implements a revised nuclear policy Obama adopted in 2010, endorses the use of a smaller U.S. arsenal to deter attack and protect American interests by targeting fewer, but more important, military or political sites in Russia, China, and several other countries. This can be accomplished by 1,000-1,100 warheads, the sources said, instead of the 1,550 allowed under an existing arms treaty.
The 2010 policy called for reducing the role of nuclear weapons, arguing that they are "poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorists and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons." But many critics have charged that not much of the policy has been implemented. Obama himself even joked in a video message to the Jan. 26 annual dinner of Washington's exclusive Alfalfa Club that he could not recall why he won his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. (The Oslo committee attributed it partly to his stimulation of "disarmament and arms control negotiations.")
With the election behind him and a new national security team selected, Obama is finally prepared to send this new guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to open a new dialogue with Russia about corresponding reductions in deployed weapons beyond those called for in a 2011 treaty, according to two senior U.S. officials involved in the deliberations.
"It is all done," said one. "We did so much work on that there is no interest in going back and taking another look at it." The second official said completion of the new directive would become public in coming weeks, when Obama may mention the issue in his State of the Union address on Feb. 12, or in another speech specifically dedicated to the subject, similar to the April 2009 Prague address in which he promised to "take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons."
Arms talks now being explored
While the draft directive opens the door to scrapping a substantial portion of the U.S. arsenal, it does not order those reductions immediately or suggest they be undertaken unilaterally, the officials said. Instead, the administration's ambition is to negotiate an addendum of sorts to its 2010 New Start treaty with Russia, in the form of a legally-binding agreement or an informal understanding. Officials said the latter path could be chosen if gaining the assent of two-thirds of the Senate to a treaty is not possible.
Preliminary discussions about this ambition occurred in Munich on Feb. 2 between Vice President Biden and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and additional talks are slated in Moscow this month with acting Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller and White House National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon. Obama "believes that there's room to explore the potential for continued reductions, and that, of course, the best way to do so is in a discussion with Russia," Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said on Jan. 31.
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined comment on Feb. 6 on the draft directive. | <urn:uuid:d5934db3-4688-4cce-b295-f596cc6443d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/08/obama_embraces_big_nuke_cuts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966781 | 992 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Philly’s Black men answer the call to become peacekeepers in their communities
Men "answering the call" to be peacekeepers within their communities to help stave off violence.
PHILADELPHIA (FinalCall.com) - Nearly 11,000 Black men answered the call to show up at Temple University’s Liacouras Center on Oct. 21 for “A Call to Action: 10,000 Men—It’s a New Day,” which helped start them on the path to becoming “peacekeepers” in a city that has seen too much bloodshed over the past decade.
Charles “Charlie Mack” Alston, hatched the idea for the Call to Action along with men such as Dennis Muhammad, Nick Reed, and Darryl Robinson, in the living room of his Delaware home. Since that day, many people had come aboard to make October 21, 2007 a day to remember.
“I cannot describe the feeling in my head, when I drove up to the Liacouras Center, and saw all those men in line as early as 9 a.m.—program didn’t start until noon—standing two deep in a line that went on for blocks,” Mr. Alston told the Final Call. “I know I felt the same way in 1995, when I looked out across the Capitol in Washington, D.C. and saw that sea of Black men, who had come for the Million Man March,” Mr. Alston admitted
“And just like that day in 1995, it was grassroots brothers who answered the call on Oct. 21, to atone, to stop the hemorrhaging in our community. We admitted that we had dropped the ball after 1995, but we had finally come together to set things right,” Mr. Alston said.
“What was my initial feeling seeing how many men showed up on [October] 21?” stated Kenny Gamble, chairman of the Philadelphia Millions More Movement, in response to a Final Call question. “The spirit of the Million Man March was alive and well,” that’s what I said to myself, Mr. Gamble replied.
“The MMM was our precedent—it just took this long to get it organized—to realize that we must come up to this universal level of thinking. No more excuses,” Mr. Gamble opined.
Organizers for the "Day of Action" on Oct. 21 hold a press conference to explain the goals of the event. Among them are Philadelphia Mayor John Street and Philadelphia Millions More Movement Chairman Kenny Gamble.
With the year 2007, coming to a close, more than 300 people have been murdered on the streets of Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth largest city, which has a population of 1.5 million (44 percent Black).
“Since 1990, there have been 2,889 murders in Philadelphia, and 1,906 of them were under [the age of] 34, and 44 percent of those killed were Black males,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson explained to The Final Call. “So, it’s time for [Black] men in this city to stand up,” he stressed.
Rodney Muhammad, the Delaware Valley Regional Representative of the Nation of Islam at Muhammad’s Mosque No. 12 in Philadelphia, said he was overjoyed that Mr. Gamble compared the gathering of “10,000” to the Historic gathering of nearly two million men at the Million Man March in 1995.
“I remember the Honorable Elijah Muhammad stating in his book, ‘Message to the Blackman in America,’ that there was a need to call Black scholars and professionals together to come up with a strategy to improve the condition of the Black man and woman in America.
“The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, in his call for the Millions More Movement, stressed that no one organization had the answer to our problems—so, a call for 10,000 men in Philadelphia was placed—and they came,” Mr. Muhammad said, stating that Philadelphia has become a “lightning rod” for the nation, igniting a movement which can further inspire Black men to take responsibility for solving their own problems.
“Ten-thousand Black men have shown that solving the overwhelming problems of our community is doable,’ he added.
Abdur-Rahim Islam, a Philadelphia real estate developer, is an integral part of the grassroots alliance that bought into Mr. Alston’s vision to put peacekeepers into the streets. “We want to do three things,” he told the historic gathering, according to press reports. “We want to inspire, educate and instruct.” Mr. Islam told The Final Call that there was a goal of bringing 350 organizations under the “call for action” umbrella, which 1,000 have already joined.
“The key message to the organizations was you have to change the thinking on the ground, bring about a paradigm in our community from dependence on others to ‘do for self,’” Mr. Islam noted. “Violence is just the symptom which comes at us from our blighted neighborhoods. But, not to worry—it is coming together,” he said.
According to Mr. Gamble, it has been coming together for the past two-and-a-half years with a lot of hard work; and a lot of hard working, dedicated people. He said over 1,200 men had shown up for the orientation workshops, which began on Oct. 23 at Dobbins High, Germantown High and South Philadelphia High.
Men line up at the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple Univ. on Oct. 21 for the "Day of Action: 10,000 Men--It's a New day."
“We work from what we call a logic model, which is decrease the violence and increase education. That is the solution to most of our problems. Education will help us to understand the need for morality and the need to raise our standard of living—how to protect our families,” Mr. Gamble stressed.
“Please do not write your story and not share how Minister Farrakhan inspired me,” insists Mr. Alston to The Final Call.
“I attended the hip hop meeting in Atlanta during the Holy Day of Atonement, that the Minister attended. After the event, I was with him in the car and he took my hand, after I asked him to pray for me to have a successful event on Oct. 21. ‘Allah [God] would not put you in this position, if He did not want you to be successful’—that is what he told me,” recalled Mr. Alston.
Mr. Muhammad said that when he had the opportunity to address the mighty gathering on Oct. 21, he said that God had ordained their coming together.
“I told them the story of how God blessed Joshua to take the city of Jericho. In truth, Philadelphia is our Jericho; and just like in Joshua’s day, God will give us this city, if we have the determination to organize and work together, he said.
While addressing a gathering in town for the 10th Anniversary of the Historic Million Women March on Oct. 25, Philadelphia Mayor John Street shared his thoughts on the Oct. 21 event: “We were there to make a statement. If anyone needs to make a statement, it’s Black men, and we made a statement that day.”
Nisa Islam Muhammad contributed to this article.
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not the actual Burmese python
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...tory?track=rssAn animal trapper this week was charged with crimes after staging a "public hoax" with a 14-foot-long Burmese python in the Tampa Bay area this summer, state officials said today.
Officials say Justin Matthews of Bradenton bought the snake from a reptile dealer in Tampa a month before he set it loose in a drainage pipe. Then he called the media and claimed he captured a large snake from a draingage pipe that had been threatening school children.
Matthews later admitted that he released the snake "and had staged the event to call attention to a growing problem of irresponsible pet ownership," according to a statement from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
"However, the release of the snake in the wild and a subsequent call to 911 to request emergency help have Matthews in trouble with the law for the very reason he says he sought publicity,'' the statement said.
Matthews was arrested Wednesday. He was charged with a third-degree felony for allegedly "misusing a 911 emergency system" and a second-degree misdemeanor for maintaining "captive wildlife in an unsafe manner - resulting in threats to the public's safety." | <urn:uuid:fa370978-40eb-40ca-a816-2b75bbd85b11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dreamindemon.com/forums/showthread.php?27637-Justin-Matthews-released-a-python-into-the-wild-to-teach-people-about-responsibility&p=317710&viewfull=1 | 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 | 0.965164 | 261 | 1.664063 | 2 |
His version of course is not about a lack of shame in relation to one’s character. When I mention “Shameless” I mean the literal definition: “A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”
I remember one of the first times I felt this painful humiliation. It was the summer after third grade and I was shopping around a drug store with my mom. At the time, my older sister had just graduated elementary school and was set to move up to the middle school in September. I remember thinking how much older she seemed and how far behind her I suddenly felt. My mom was teaching her to shave her legs and she was allowed to wear clear mascara and tinted chapstick to school. Meanwhile I was stuck back in munchkin land with the “little kids.” How I yearned to feel older and be “cool” just like her.
My mother walked over to the register and while she paid for her merchandise, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a bright blue mini bottle that read “Ice Drops.” I remember my sister and her friends talking about the liquid breath mint.
“Older girls carry it, so they are always prepared if a boy wants to kiss them.” I overhear them saying.
“We’ll have to get some now,” they giggled.
I saw that little blue bottle as my opportunity to “one-up” my sister and her friends. To finally attain something “cool” first, instead of always being the one to pull up the rear. I walked over to the display and I plucked one of those little bottles right off the shelf and tucked it into my jacket pocket.
“Come on, Lana,” my mother said as she retrieved her receipt from the sales clerk.
As my mother fumbled to put the bags in the back seat of the car, I rushed to tear the clear wrapping from the “Ice Drops.” I had to see what it tasted like so I could tell me sister all about it when I got home. I twisted off the white cap and squirted the blue liquid into my mouth.
Within second, an intense burning sensation burst through my mouth and down the back of my throat. Everything suddenly felt like it was on fire and I couldn’t feel air moving in or out. I coughed and choked to get a breath in. This stuff really was icy hot! As I struggle for air and hacked away, my mother rushed to my side.
“Lana, are you okay honey? What’s wrong?” My mother was deeply concerned, but I couldn’t respond. Each breath I took intensified the icy hot feeling. I opened up my little hand and showed my mother the bottle.
She gave me some water and when I finally stopped coughing I looked up at her with my big, brown, innocent eyes. “Thanks for helping me,” I weakly said.
She didn’t say, “Your welcome, I’m so glad your okay sweetie,” instead she firmly looked down at me and asked, “Lana… where did you get that?”
I looked down at my feet and twisted a stray piece of hair around my finger. I nervously responded, “I took it from inside” and used my free hand to gesture toward the store.
“You STOLE that?” she asked with her voice rising on the word STOLE. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
I suddenly felt awful. I didn’t even think about stealing, I was only thinking about being cool. I scrambled for an answer. “I didn’t steal it Mom, I just took it from inside because…” before I could answer my mother grabbed my arm and was dragging me back into the store.
When we got inside she asked to see the manager. We waited for a few minutes, which felt like a lifetime. When the man came out of the back room, my mother informed him I had something I wanted to share.
I stood silent engulfed in embarrassment.
“Go on” she sternly encouraged.
“I took this” I said, as tears welled up in my eyes. “I just wanted to be cooler than my sister for once and now I’m a thief.” I wailed.
Tears streamed down my face and between sobs I said “I’m….Sorry…Mister. You can…take me to jail now.”
I remember the man smirked at me and said he wasn’t going to take me to jail, the liquid mint was only $1 but he did make me promise to never do anything like that again. I think about my experience with shame and how shame is lacking in current society and pop-culture. The endless amounts of reality TV shows and social networking portals, opens doors to shameless behavior that never existed before.
Don’t believe me? Tune into The Bachelorette, The Jersey Shore, The Real World, Big Brother, even reality cooking shows and it makes you think, “Who in their right mind does that? Don’t these people have any dignity?” But it’s not dignity they are lacking; when we really look into the issues… it’s the absence of shame. The temptation of money, fame and ego all overshadow the feelings of shame.
We as viewers tune into these shows for the sensationalism. The way that people behave on these shows is so extreme we just can’t look away. It’s similar to the strong desire to “rubber neck” at a car accident while you drive down the turnpike. You don’t necessarily WANT to look at the crushed piles of metal, but you just can’t help yourself to take a quick glance and see what happened. I call this “The Curious George Complex.”
So, we viewers are just curious to look, but why? Why are we tuning in? Why is reality TV taking over television and in recent years become more popular than sitcoms? It’s because the people they find to participate in these shows are so shameless, we curious viewers just have to watch.
The show’s storylines are so bizarre that they have to be real. If a writer made them up, people would think it was just too crazy to be convincing. “I’m not buying that” we’d say. But on reality TV, all bets are off. A storyline doesn’t have to be logical or believable. Anything goes.
I guess that’s why the participants are so wild. Everyone is competing to have the craziest background, story, motive or experience. They act like animals on national TV and numb themselves to the “painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”
I think this separation of consciousness is made possible by lack of self-esteem, morals, values, self worth…but I also think technology is playing a very important role. The ability to just log onto someone’s facebook page and write whatever you want, then close the laptop and separate yourself from the comment, enables people to be irresponsible with their behavior. The glow of the screen welcomes us to write whatever we think, whenever we think it; without the consequence. We don’t have to wait to run into someone, we don’t have to hear ourselves say something terribly mean out loud; we don’t have to see the hurt wash over someone’s face when we’ve offended them. All of these burdens, which remind us to be responsible for our actions, are pardoned when we settle up behind the computer.
Bullying has intensified because it isn’t just limited to the school yard or work place. Family drama doesn’t end at Sunday dinner. Spats with friends don’t dissipate and die off as quickly as they used to. All because the internet acts as forum to keep the disagreement alive, as well as, shield the offender from facing their own shame.
A couple key strokes to spit venom, but the second you turn away from the screen you don’t have to feel bad about your comment. It allows people to be detached, from real relationships but more importantly from themselves. People no longer have to “own” their comments. We don’t put as much stock into what is said, because before can even read it over, we’ve already hit “ENTER” and clicked open another screen.
It all makes me wonder…would we think more about what we say if we stopped viewing facebook, MySpace, Linked In and other social networking as “Profiles.” If we think about what we type and post as a reflection of our character, instead of it being an online version of ourselves, where we can create whatever we want and say whatever we want.
Instead of separating ourselves and creating a “online reality” we should try and maintain real reality. Maybe if the computer had a pop-up that said “You should be ashamed of yourself” just as mother scolded me…maybe people would think twice about their sensational behavior.
SHORT AND SWEET…AKA…MORAL OF THE BLOGLike my mother taught me…No matter how desperate you are to be cool, (lifting Ice Drops, typing a nasty comment, or acting like a drunken fool on a reality show) the truth is, compromising your integrity and morals, never made anyone cool. In 2011, if we stopped worrying about “cool” and start worrying about “being ashamed” I think we’d see a much different outcome.
“The only shame is to have none” –Blaise Pascal
This article originally appeared on the blog 20 Something- Straight Up, On The Rocks, or With a Twist
About the Author
Lana Morelli is the Editor of St. Joseph's University's Literary Journal The Avenue. She is also a full-time reporter for a California based Legal Magazine, Courthouse News. Her freelance work has appeared in various publications, including Philadelphia Magazine, Delaware Today Magazine, The Garnet Valley Press, SJU Athletic Media Guides, Gimme This & That Magazine, Examiner.com and more. Finally, Lana operates her own website/blog, www.lanamorelli.com. | <urn:uuid:3e00a010-d65f-4a2d-bf7a-113d8d0d781a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thelunchbreakblog.com/slices-of-life/2011/8/13/shamelessits-icy-hot.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966452 | 2,226 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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Every month, ask your burning questions to our team – and get prompt expert replies
Here are some example questions—and the priceless replies…
- What is an acai berry?
Acai berries are small, dark purple berries that grows on large palms in countries like Brazil. The berry is about the size of a grape and is considered to be one of the healthiest foods in the world.
- Why is acai considered the #1 super food in the world?
Acai is considered the #1 super food because it has the highest concentration of antioxidants of any known food in the world. Fiber, iron, amino acids, and healthy omega fatty acids are also very important to our diets, and acai berries have high concentrations of them all.
- What are the origins of the acai berry?
The acai berry originates from the famous Amazonian Rainforest in Brazil.
- How much acai should I use each day?
It is recommended to use 1000 mg of acai each day. This can be taken 1000 mg once a day or 500 mg twice a day.
- Should I just let the pills dissolve on my tongue?
Yes, if you have melt-away tabs. I’ve also seen acai berry pills come in capsule form. You would just swallow those.
- What is the point behind the melt away tabs?
Your mouth has a higher nutrient absorption potential than your stomach. The fact that the antioxidants just sit in your mouth and dissolve, says a lot about the formulation of the uptake process of this supplement. If they didn’t really care, they would have just manufactured a solid, hard pill. Another place that has extremely high absorption is your eye ball, but I don’t think you want to put the acai in your eye.
- When should I take acai?
You can take your acai anytime during the day. We usually recommend either taking all your acai in the morning with your daily vitamin, or taking it in two 500 mg doses, once in the morning and once before bed.
- Will acai berries interact with my medication?
I don’t care what your medication is, if you have a question about it you need to ask your doctor. I am not a doctor and I can’t make that decision for you. That being said, acai berries are really just fruit. Most medications will not interact with fruit, but some will react with certain fruits depending on the nutritional content, so again if you have any questions ask your doc.
- How old do I have to be to use acai?
Well, acai berries are fruit just like blueberries. Therefore, in my opinion, if you are old enough to eat blueberries you are old enough to eat acai. For this rule to work, it needs to be a 100% pure acai supplement. I can’t speak for any other ingredients that might be in your acai supplements.
- Why, after I stopped taking my acai supplement for a couple days have I been feeling bloated and gassy, and how long will it last?
This is probably just gas. You might be experiencing an increase in gas and bloating because acai really helps digestion, and when you remove the acai you begin to again feel your normal digestive issues kicking in.You didn’t notice it before you used acai because you have been living with it for your whole life, but once you remove acai you will notice how healthy you really did feel when you were using taking it daily. This is just an indication that your digestive system benefits from using acai.
You will probably get used to this feeling again within a week or two, at which time it will feel as if it has gone away. In reality though, you have just become used to it again.
- Does acai increase your heart rate?
From my experience and the information I’ve gathered online, all indications point to no. Acai does not increase your heart rate by itself. It is the added ingredients like green tea and caffeine, in products like Acai Berry Select, that cause an increase in heart rate. Get a 100% pure acai product if you are concerned about that.
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Açai Nature’s Energy Fruit
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(ah-sigh-ee) is the high-energy berry of a special Amazon palm tree. Harvested in the rainforests of Brazil , Açai tastes like a vibrant blend of berries and chocolate.
Hidden within its royal purple pigment is the magic that makes it nature’s perfect energy fruit. Açai is packed full of antioxidants, amino acids and essential fatty acids. Although Açai may not be available in your local supermarket, you can find it in several health food and gourmet stores (often in juice form). A new product featuring the unsweetened pulp is now also available, and I highly recommend that you choose this form of Açai.
A remarkable concentration of antioxidants that help combat premature aging, with 10 times more antioxidants than red grapes and 10 to 30 times the anthocyanins of red wine.
A synergy of monounsaturated (healthy) fats, dietary fiber and phytosterols to help promote cardiovascular and digestive health.
An almost perfect essential amino acid complex in conjunction with valuable trace minerals, vital to proper muscle contraction and regeneration.
The fatty acid content in Açai resembles that of olive oil, and is rich in monounsaturated oleic acid. Oleic acid is important for a number of reasons. It helps omega-3 fish oils penetrate the cell membrane; together they help make cell membranes more supple. By keeping the cell membrane supple, all hormones, neurotransmitter and insulin receptors function more efficiently. This is particularly important because high insulin levels create an inflammatory state, and we know, inflammation causes aging.
The Perricone Promise, Nicholas Perricone, MD pages 62 – 63. Time Warner Books, 2004.
The Açai fruit is remarkably rich in a very large range of macronutrients, micronutrients and trace elements. It has a broad range of essential amino acids, carbohydrates, fatty acids and a complement of vitamins and minerals.
The Açai fruit has a very broad nutritional value to humans. It has remarkably high antioxidant activity.
Based on new data about the antioxidant levels of American foods that was published in early 2005 by US government, data shows that Açai has significantly greater antioxidant activity on a gram to gram comparative basis than any of the common fruits or vegetables Americans consume.
Thus, any juice blend rich in Açai fruit would help people meet their daily antioxidant requirements from food.
For additional information, refer to the book Açai (Euterpe oleracea): The Nutritional and Antioxidant-Rich Amazonian Palm Tree Fruit by Dr. Alex Schauss .
Fruit juice has never been high on my list of recommended foods. No matter how natural it is, it contains too much concentrated sugar.
One type of juice, however, merits a big thumbs-up: acai (pronounced ah-sigh-ee). Juice from the small, dark acai berries of the Euterpe olerace palm has been used for centuries in the Amazon rainforests to increase strength and stamina.
Açai is loaded with anthocyanins, known for their beneficial effects on the eyes, blood vessels, connective tissues, and nervous system. In fact, acai contains more antioxidant-rich anthocyanins than cranberries, red wine, and grapes. (Açai’s ORAC value is more than 6,000).
Unlike most juices, most of acai’s calories come not from sugar but from healthful omega-6 and omega-9 fats. It also contains hefty doses of fibre, potassium, iron, vitamins C & E, and other nutrients.
From A Special report from Dr. Julian Whitaker entitled The Insider’s Guide to America ‘s Worst & Best Supplements. May 2005, page5.
I have been a practicing cardiologist in Puerto Rico for the past 12 years. I am also involved with clinical research and controlled trials for a number of international pharmaceutical companies.
I have become a staunch believer in natural therapies and antioxidants and in recent years have relied heavily upon non-invasive care for my patients.
Açai seemed instantly to be an elegant and delicious alternative to coaxing my patients into taking big antioxidant pills. The strong, scientific data profile of Açai allowed me to proceed with much confidence.
I have noticed that my patients are refilling their Açai prescriptions without prompting. Among all age groups the results have been overwhelmingly positive.
Alexander G. Schauss, Ph.D, FACN has studied nutrition and botanical medicine for over 30 years. He has taught at Oxford and lectured in more than 40 countries. Dr. Schauss has published over 125 papers and 12 books. Currently, he serves as the Director of Natural and Medicinal Products Research at the American Institute for Biosocial and Medical Research.
- Gucci, CA
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Grants reward innovations in software, life sciences
Seven teams share $80,000 in funds to further research, disseminate progress
A total of $80,000 to develop products ranging from a dirty-bomb detector to a mobile app that acts as a virtual business card has been awarded to seven of 20 teams of students, fellows and faculty entrepreneurs who participated in the second annual Sprout Grant competition.
The purpose of the Brandeis Virtual Incubator Sprout Grant Program is to foster entrepreneurship in Brandeis students, post-doctoral fellows, staff and faculty and be a focal point for those interested in technology commercialization, the intersection of business and science. Funding is provided by the Office of the Provost and gifts from members of the Brandeis University Scientific Advisory Council.
The program was created as part of a movement among U.S. universities to create “proof-of-concept” centers -- programs which link entrepreneurial students and faculty to the resources they need, such as venture capitalists, angel investors, industry partners and entrepreneurs, to move discoveries coming out of basic university research to the market, for the public good. The Sprout Grant program is one of the first grant programs of this type established at a small research university. There were 20 teams and 65 participants this year. Some of last year’s winners have gone on to notable success.
StudyEgg, a study tool application that was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and is being sponsored in the Cambridge Innovation Center, has raised at least a year worth of funding. A team that is working to identify pharmacological chaperones that promote survival in mouse models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — often referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease — now have a patent under option, and a licensee funding research costs.
“We had many more software applications this year than last, which I think comes out of the efforts that have gone on in the computer science department to support entrepreneurship,” said Irene Abrams, associate provost for innovation and executive director of the Office of Technology Licensing.
Professor of computer science Tim Hickey and adjunct professor Pito Salas, have been involved in a Justice Brandeis Semester program (JBS) creating mobile apps, which Abrams feels has inspired many students to further their interests in entrepreneurship.
Of the 20 applications submitted this year, half were software related, half life sciences related. Thirteen groups were asked to return for in-depth interviews, coaching and presentations to outside panels of industry judges. Seven of the thirteen applicants were awarded grants to help move their projects further toward market.
“We took more pains to get to know the finalist teams this year,” said Salas, who chaired the judging of the software teams. “Instead of basing everything solely on the applications, Irene Abrams and I met with the teams that we felt to be the most promising for an informal coaching and brainstorming session before presenting to the judges.”
Among this year’s life science winners is a project out of the Hedstrom Lab to inhibit Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. Suresh Gorla, a post doctorate and lead in the project says that over 30 percent of the world population is infected with tuberculosis — and their laboratory has identified nine compounds that inhibit Mtb in a test tube. With the Sprout Grant funding, they will be able to study the efficacy of these compounds in animal models.
“Our technology is novel and affordable to the developing world,” says Gorla. “We hope to develop a lead compound against tuberculosis infection within one year, and license this technology to pharmaceutical companies.”
Another project, BNX, is a nuclear radiation detector. Led by high-energy physicists Lawrence Kirsch and Hermann Wellenstein, the team was able to work on a solution to one of the most practical and serious problems of our day: protecting the nation's ports from the import of radioactive material which could be used to create devastating attacks by terrorists. The design takes advantage of techniques used in many experiments by the Brandeis High Energy Physics group, but it has been modified to use readily available materials to search efficiently for contraband cargo.
“The grant money will allow them to build a prototype and to get access to a neutron source so they can actually test it,” Abrams said. “Once there is a prototype that can be tested, they will have enough evidence to try to find a path to market.”
Another project seeks to learn how the brain rewires itself by studying the communicating connections between neurons, known as synapses. Approximately 1,000 types of proteins are found in a synapse. David DeRosier, an emeritus professor of biology, and his team in the Turrigiano lab wanted a method to determine the organization of these proteins and to examine the changes in organization that take place during rewiring.
“Every time you see something that you read, touch or hear, your brain must rewire in order to store the memory,” says DeRosier. “This occurs with any external stimuli.”
Their method to learn how the brain rewires: build a microscope that can handle viewing slides that are extremely cold, as samples can be perfectly preserved if fast frozen and kept cold.
The software teams proved impressive as well, with two teams delving in to the social networking arena.
One, CampusBash, is a user-driven web service that forms a hub to find out what’s happening on college campuses, such parties and sporting events.
Another winner is a tool from a Brandeis team called Innermost Labs. They’ve developed a mobile app which combines a virtual business card model with a map-based visualizer; once people are entered into their address book, they’re tagged according to shared interest and location, making future meet-ups easier. The app was actually tailored for an organization conference called RootsCamp and used by attendees.
“The Sprout Grant experience gave us the kick in the pants to create the startup we'd been idly considering for months,” a team member said. “It forced us to improve and think about every element of how our business would work.”
Abrams said the judges loved the passion that this team had and despite current competition for conferencing applications, they felt that their connections to the activist, grass-roots community would aid in their ability to make it work.
“I really want to see Brandeis become more of a force in the start-up scene in the Boston area,” said Salas, who credits programs like the Sprout Grant, the Justice Brandeis Semester (JBS) program and the 3 Day Startup (3DS), a business school event in which teams of students, entrepreneurs and investors choose a software idea during a Friday brainstorming session and finish a minimal prototype by Sunday night. The goal is to build enough momentum among a network of motivated people to sustain the company beyond the weekend.
“All of these programs are part of building up the real-world knowledge experience, insight, and feel that our students have when they graduate. It gives them a real presence in the start-up world in Boston and around the country.”
2012 Sprout Grant winners, life science:
Radiation detector, Wellenstein, PI $20,000
Tuberculosis treatment, therapeutic, Hedstrom, PI $17,000
Cold Stage for Light Microscopy, microscope tools, Turrigiano, PI $16,000
Conditional gene silencing, research tool, Lau PI, $6,000
2012 Sprout Grant winners, software:
Innermost Labs, social network, Hickey, PI $7,500
Digital Learning Analytics, learning analytics, Larusson, PI $6,000
CampusBash, social network, Jafferji, PI $6,500
Life science judges included:
• Eric Furfine, Ph.D. ’88, president of research and development at ElevenBio.
• Cindy Bayley, Ph.D. affiliate of ARCH. co-founder deCODE Genetics, Adolor, , Elixir Pharmaceuticals, Plectix BioSystems
• Jonathan Behr, Ph.D. senior director, technology and business development, Enlight BioSciences
• Renee Cohen V.P., head of corporate strategy at Shire Pharmaceuticals
• John Edwards, CEO at F-star Biologics and Executive Chairman at Permeon Biologics
• Lori Pressman IP strategy, business development and Tech Transfer consultant, director Harris & Harris Group
• Stacie Weninger, Ph.D., executive director of the Fidelity Biosciences Research Initiative
Software judges included:
• Jeffrey Beir, partner at seed2A; Founder & CEO at RoadAhead
• Melissa Leffler, VP, engineering and operations at Awareness Networks
• Jordan Pollack, chairman of Computer Science at Brandeis
• Paul English, CTO and Cofounder of KAYAK
• Andy Singleton, founder and president of Assembla
• Deb Shurfin, director of investments at Brandeis University Office of Investments. | <urn:uuid:12e71836-7523-4435-aab0-279de813bd44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2012/april/sproutgrant.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952286 | 1,931 | 1.65625 | 2 |
April 12, 2005
Coast protection vessel Abeille Bourbon enters service
Abeille Bourbon, which arrived in Brest, France on April, 8, is the first of two identical UT515 coast protection vessels designed and equipped by Rolls-Royce.
With twin independent winches, offering 200 tonnes of pull, and two 1600-metre towlines, the Abeille Bourbon is equipped to assist and if necessary take in tow any type of vessel in difficulty--notably the largest tankers, dangerous goods carriers and the most recent containerships--so as to prevent the dangers of a shipwreck or an ecological disaster.
Les Abeilles International, part of Groupe Bourbon, will operate the new UT 515 design vessels on long term charter to the French navy.
Abeille Bourbon was built by Myklebust Verft (part of the Kleven Maritime Group) on the west coast of Norway, and the hull was fabricated in Poland.
The sister vessel, Abeille Liberte, is scheduled for delivery later this year.
The ships will be stationed at strategic locations on the French coastline, one in Brest, the other in Cherbourg.
The UT 515 design vessels are multipurpose salvage tug, coastguard and standby vessels. Principal roles will include assistance to vessels at sea, deep sea towing, salvage of vessels in distress, fire and flooding control and anti-pollution activity.
On trials, Abeille Bourbon achieved a bollard pull of just over 201 tonnes was achieved, together with a speed of 19.8 knots at maximum continuous engine rating.
Abeille Bourbon is 80 m long, and has a beam of 16.5 m and a service draft of around 6 m.
Two Kamewa Ulstein CP propellers in nozzles are powered by four medium speed diesels producing a total of 16,000 kW. Renk combining gearboxes with power take-offs for the shaft generators were bought in and supplied by Rolls-Royce as part of the equipment package.
For steering and maneuvering there are two Rolls-Royce classic rudders with independent Tenfjord steering gear. Two Kamewa Ulstein TT 2200 tunnel thrusters are located at the bow, each rated at 883 kW. There are two smaller tunnel thrusters type TT1650 of 515kW located in the skeg aft. The system is controlled and monitored by a UMAS V system.
On deck, Abeille Bourbon is essentially laid out as a deep sea towing and salvage tug. The main towing winch is a Rauma Brattvaag two drum hydraulic unit. It has a 250 tonne pull on the first layer and can hold 500 tonnes on the brake. Each winch drum can hold 1600 m of 80 mm wire rope. Two low pressure hydraulic motors power the winch and each of these has three chambers. By altering the number of motors and chambers under pressure, the line hauling and paying out speeds can be varied within wide limits.
Winch wires are led over a towing arch across the aft deck and below the arch is a deck house containing four powered rope reels. Towing pins and shark jaws are located on the stern bulwarks, which are rounded over to give a clean lead for the tow wires. Also located on the aft deck are two Rauma Brattvaag capstans and a tugger winch. Up to 300 tonnes of cargo or equipment can be carried out the aft deck, which has an area of 350 sq.m. A Hydramarine crane rated at 23 t/11 m serves the working deck and there is another crane of the same manufacture further forward for handling stores and provision.
Electrical requirements are handled by two shaft generators driven by power take-offs from the main gearboxes and each is rated at 2,400 kVA. These are supplemented by three 500 kW auxiliary generators, one of which is in an acoustic enclosure for harbor use. There is also a 164 kW emergency generator.
External fire fighting to FiFi II standard is provided. There are three monitors on the upper platform, two of which can handle foam. A total of 7,200 cu.m/h of water can be supplied by two Kvaerner fire fighting pumps driven by Kumera step-up gears from the forward end of the two inner engines.
A specially designed hull was developed for these vessels, having a bulbous bow and relatively v-shaped aft sections. The superstructure is located close to amidships, helping to reduce motions in the accommodations, and a passive roll reduction tank system is installed.
Accommodations are provided for a total of 25 people, spread over four decks. At main deck level are the crew and officers' messes and a hospital with a four berth sick bay alongside it.
On A-deck is the recreation room and a block of two berth and four berth cabins. Here also is the salvage operations control room. On B-deck above are single berth cabins with facilities and at C-deck level are the suites for the master and chief engineer, the officers' lounge and the ship's office.
The wheelhouse is arranged to suit various operations. The forward facing console has a single chair moving side to side on rails and some of the instruments in an overhead display. To starboard is a free standing console mainly dedicated to safety systems and communications. The aft control station overlooking the working deck has three consoles with two chairs sliding fore and aft on rails between them. Maneuvering controls are also available at stations on each bridge wing and the casing for the exhaust uptakes and other services occupies part of the port side of the wheelhouse.
Large store spaces for salvage equipment are provided either side of the main winch house, in the forward end of the aft deckhouse and in the hold. Two 20 ft equipment containers can also be located on deck, one on either side of the hatch.
Abeille Bourbon carries a selection of rescue craft. There are two MOB boats of the Springer 741 design under single point Hydramarine davits, plus an inflatable with an outboard motor.
There are 32 vessels of UT-Design in the Groupe Bourbon fleet at present and other vessels are under construction.
Main particulars--UT 515 Abeille Bourbon | <urn:uuid:68ed8647-9c95-483c-bdf3-bcdfd98eb665> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMV/2005apr124.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947553 | 1,303 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Today is the inauguration and the beginning of President Obama’s second term in office.
Ralph Nader, for one, isn’t impressed with inaugurations. As he noted Sunday:
“Tomorrow I’ll watch another rendition of political bulls—- by the newly reelected president, full of promises that he intends to break just like he did in 2009.”
Nader might be a bit harsh in his evaluation. I doubt that President Obama assumed office in 2009 with the intention to break his promises. More likely, he issued his promises to build a coalition and did so before he fully understood the intrinsic complexities of the issues and the limitations of the office. In the end, there are distinct limits to what a president can achieve given our system of separate institutions sharing powers. Certainly, President Obama seems to have had distinct difficulties with Congress, even when there was unified Democratic control (e.g., health care, Dodd-Frank, climate change). Whether this was a product of his inexperience or his management style is the subject of ongoing debate. Certainly, things have only become more difficult in the post-2010 period with the GOP in charge of the House. The sluggishness of the recovery (in part a product of public policy and regime uncertainty) has imposed its own set of constraints.
This weekend, Ed O’Keefe provided his assessment of the past four years (WaPo), comparing the campaign promises of 2008 with the performance record. His assessment:
- Afghanistan: partially achieved
- Iraq: achieved
- Climate change: incomplete
- Health care overhaul: partially achieved
- Guantanamo Bay: failed
- The economy: failed
- Transparency/government openness: partially achieved
- Making government “cool again”: incomplete
- United States’ standing in the world: partially achieved
- Financial overhaul: partially achieved
- Breaking the partisan logjam: failed
- Supreme Court appointments: achieved
I would issue a somewhat harsher evaluation of Afghanistan, climate change, transparency and the financial overhaul. Beyond these items, I would make more of the expansive use of drones and the carnage it has created for civilian populations (apparently, we mourn only the innocent children killed within our own borders).
Looking to the future, my guess is that some of the promises of the past will be recycled. Others (gun control, immigration) will rise to the top. The constraints imposed by our fiscal problems and the economy will continue to impose limits, both in terms of new spending programs and their crowding out other items on the policy agenda. All in all, I can’t imagine that there will be much of a legacy emerging out of the next four years.
Do any Pileus readers want to issue their own assessment of the past four years?
Any predictions of what the next four years will hold? | <urn:uuid:b0aae3c6-d630-4fdc-a614-db9ee15f6cc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pileusblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/the-second-term-begins/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=ad7ead3064 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957892 | 581 | 1.703125 | 2 |
- Filed Under
Toyota's problems with runaway acceleration just won't go away.
Three years after the company recalled its first cars over unintended acceleration, it has identified two more models at risk. They are the 2010 Lexus RX 350 and RX 450H SUVs.
Toyota said Friday it will recall 154,000 of the SUVs because their floor mats can trap the gas pedal and cause the SUVs to speed up without warning. U.S. safety regulators, who asked Toyota to recall the vehicles, may investigate whether the company reported the problem fast enough.
Toyota's action adds to a string of embarrassing safety recalls that began in 2009. The Japanese automaker has recalled more than 14 million vehicles globally to fix problems including sticky gas pedals and floor mats. | <urn:uuid:97fd7665-adb1-4816-b97a-4b8e94c0276b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indystar.com/article/20120630/BUSINESS/206300326/Toyota-acceleration-problems-persist-after-three-years?odyssey=nav%7Chead&nclick_check=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945597 | 158 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Master of Education with Specialization in Bilingual Education
Houston Baptist University offers a 36 semester-hour MEd program for already certified teachers students who wish to improve their skills and pursue a master’s degree. This program leads to an MEd in Bilingual Education. It strengthens the knowledge and skills of currently-certified bilingual teachers. It also enables students to add bilingual education certification to valid Texas teacher certificates.
All prospective bilingual teachers must be fluent in both Spanish and English before beginning their bilingual teacher training component. To become an ESL teacher, one needs fluency only in English.
Advantages and Opportunities
In the Houston area, Bilingual teachers are highly recruited. In addition, most schools in this area require ESL certification for all of their elementary teachers. Throughout this program, students develop knowledge and skills through working with children and teachers in elementary school settings with a variety of backgrounds. Because the School of Education maintains close ties with area schools and school districts, students benefit from the practical experiences and the professional opportunities available. Most graduates of this program are employed in Houston-area schools.
To gain admission to the Bilingual Education program, the prospective student must achieve the prerequisite scores on proficiency tests in English and in Spanish. On the MLA Cooperative Language Proficiency Test in Spanish (Level M), the prospective student must achieve a minimum overall score at the eightieth (80th) percentile. In addition, each student must achieve a minimum score at the eightieth (80th) percentile in each of the four skill areas (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), or must take the appropriate course or courses to remove language deficiency in each area where the score is less than the minimum standard.
Students who earn the ESL post-baccalaureate supplemental certification may apply their ESL graduate courses to the 36-hour master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. | <urn:uuid:40da8d9b-0df8-4c8e-b57a-19944c411428> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hbu.edu/Choosing-HBU/Academics/Colleges-Schools/School-of-Education/Graduate-Degrees-and-Programs/Majors/Masters-in-Education/MEd-in-Bilingual-Education.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930322 | 383 | 1.84375 | 2 |
A long history
Hesse has a long history of going on the offensive. During his 23 years at AT&T, he developed a reputation for pushing boundaries. As the CEO of AT&T Wireless — the original, before it was acquired by Cingular, now part of the new AT&T — Hesse revolutionized the wireless business by introducing Digital One Rate. The plan offered consumers 600 minutes of anywhere calling for a flat fee of $90 a month. Rivals were outraged: Digital One effectively erased roaming and long-distance charges, which at the time were big moneymakers for cellphone carriers.
As customers began bolting to AT&T, however, carriers had little choice but to follow Hesse's lead. With that, the notion of wireless as a national service was born.
Making lemonade out of lemons is one of Hesse's specialties. Nowhere is that more apparent, perhaps, than with his plans for the Nextel network.
Under Forsee, Nextel's network faltered badly. Performance problems were a function, primarily, of dwindling capacity. Trying to fix the problem, Sprint started moving Nextel customers to Sprint's network, with the goal of retiring Nextel's network over time. A complicating factor was the incompatible technologies of the two networks. Sprint's network is based on CDMA technology; Nextel's IDEN network is based on another standard.
A lot of Nextel customers were unhappy with this solution, and left. The exodus continues.
The lemonade part of this story? So many people have left "that we have spare capacity that we can use" on the Nextel network, Hesse says.
Before the merger, he notes, Nextel claimed deep customer loyalty and the highest revenue-per-subscriber in the wireless business. Hesse thinks he can regain Nextel's glory — and customer loyalty in the process.
How? By rolling out a bigger, even better generation of Push-to-Talk services that will do much more than talk. "Think of it as Push-to-X," Hesse says, ticking off a long list of applications such as e-mail, location services and picture-sharing that can be enabled by Nextel's technology.
This spring, Sprint plans to introduce a family of high-performance Push-to-Talk services that will work flawlessly, he says, on either network. Push-to-X products and services aren't far behind. By doubling down on Push-to-Talk, "We'll get two bites at the apple," Hesse says, adding, "This is a distinct opportunity for us."
Another opportunity, he says, is WiMax. Under Forsee, Sprint sketched out an aggressive plan for investing in WiMax, a next-generation wireless technology that takes the idea of Wi-Fi — small Internet hot spots — and beams it nationally. Sprint, working with Clearwire, planned to spend $5 billion to construct a national WiMax network, with the goal of turning the USA into one, big hot spot.
After Forsee left, some investors pressed Sprint to table WiMax plans, arguing the company needed to focus on its core wireless business. Hesse says no final decision has been reached on WiMax, "But I see no reason to abandon it and don't plan to."
To all those critics who say WiMax will never pan out, Hesse just smiles. "If you looked at the business case for the (Apple) iPod, you never would have done that, either," he says.
Hesse's point: Sometimes leadership is as much about vision as it is about business plans. He gives Foresee a lot of credit for being willing to back WiMax. "It could turn out to be a stroke of genius." | <urn:uuid:4e3603e7-72e0-4677-909d-f50ccbc0e596> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4270814&page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9692 | 778 | 1.664063 | 2 |
President George Bush decided to surge, to send more troops to Iraq. His top two Generals told him that this would be a bad idea. President Bush proceeded to fire them and replace them with General David Petraeus, a man whose own boss Admiral William Fallon calls a sickening, boot licking, toady and sycophant with political ambitions. General David Petraeus then appeared before Congress and stated that the surge in Iraq was working. General David Petraeus was reading the script prepared for him by President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. General David Petraeus is the dummy Charlie McCarthy and Vice President Cheney is the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Moveon.org took a shot at General Petraeus and the Congress voted to condemn Moveon.org. Moveon.org has become the new Dixie Chicks and their lead singer Natalie Maines.
Oxford Research Group, their staff, board of directors and patrons are the top intellectual minds in the world dedicated to bringing about world peace. http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk Today Oxford Research Group issued a report saying that not only is President George Bush’s war on terror failing, but it is backfiring and increasing support for Muslim extremist movements. Oxford Research Group said that a fundamental rethink is required if the Global Muslim Terrorist Network is to be rendered ineffective. Oxford Research Group said that “If the Al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut.” Oxford Research Group called the U.S. invasion of Iraq a “disastrous mistake” which has helped establish a “most valued jihadist combat training zone for Al Qaeda supporters.”
Oxford Research Group’s report, “Alternatives to the War on Terror” called for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq coupled with intensive diplomatic engagement in the region, including with Iran and Syria. The report also called for immediate scaling down of U.S. military activities in Afghanistan. Oxford Research Group said “failure to make the necessary changes could result in the war on terror lasting decades.” Oxford Research Group also said that the United States was now heading to war with Iran, and “going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of Muslim extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region. Whatever the problems with Iran, war should be avoided at all costs.”
Oxford Research Group said that “If the Al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the ROOTS of its support must be understood and systematically undercut.” If you have weeds in your backyard and you simply mow your lawn, your weeds will always spread and return. The only way to eradicate your weeds safely is to buy a $2 weeder, get down on your hands and knees and dig out the roots of the weeds. The American people will never understand the roots of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban and Mahomoud Ahmadinejad’s hatred of Israel and America because President Bush and the mainstream media continue to lie to them. Jesus Christ, the Jewish born Rabbi and Messiah of both Christianity and Islam said, “The truth will set you free if you act upon it, and the lies of your leaders will burn you alive in your own man made inferno.”
This week President George Bush said at a Muslim celebration at the White House, “The Islamic religion is a great religion that preaches peace, and Americans are free to worship any way they see fit. Religious freedom is a right that I jealously guard.” Four years ago President George Bush publicly declared a Christian Crusade. Every Muslim person knows that the Crusades were a thousand years ago when the Pope marched his Christian army across Europe slaughtering every Jew in his way to reclaim the Holy Land until the Christian soldiers stood knee deep in Muslim blood in Jerusalem. So far George Bush has conquered Muslim Afghanistan, Muslim Iraq and he is now in the final stages of preparation to conquer Muslim Iran. When the Muslim people hear that George Bush says that Islam is a great religion of peace that Americans are free to worship it, it sounds to them like Adolf Hitler saying that Judaism is a great religion that Germans are free to worship. You can say whatever you like about President Bush but you can never say that he is lacking in chutzpah. The American people must be wondering, ‘If Islam is a great religion that preaches peace then why did 9/11 happen and why is President Bush now systematically ethnic cleansing the Muslims?”
The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The American people hold up their Constitution like they hold up their Holy Bibles as though both documents were carved in stone by God the Father, aka Allah and Elohim. What if a religion spread to America whose Holy Scripture read, “God commands you to kill all white people and in return you will be rewarded with eternal paradise and all the white virgins you want.” Would the white American people still be championing their freedom of religion?
The Holy Scripture of Islam the Koran says, “Make War upon the Christians and the Jews. Do battle with them. Kill the infidels, the non Muslims wherever ye shall find them. Besiege them and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush. The believers shall be rewarded with eternal paradise in Heaven with God of Mount Sinai, crystal clear springs, trees clad with fruit, extended shade, flowing waters, 72 virgins and 80,000 servants. The non Muslims shall suffer pestilential winds and scalding water and live in a hot black smoke.” (Koran, Sura, Chapter 9:5, 29-30, Chapter 56, and the Hadith). Recently Osama bin Laden said on videotape, “Jihadists go get your virgins.” It sounds like something in my spam email folder.
Oxford Research Group said that “If the Al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the ROOTS of its support must be understood and systematically undercut.” The ROOTS of Jihad and the Muslim War on Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism and the retaliatory war on terror is Islam and the Koran and Hadith, no matter what George Bush and the American mainstream media tell you. The ROOTS of the Christian Crusade is the Christian Holy Bible, with its countless passages with the bible writers commanding all Christians to throw all of the non believers into the fire because they are devils. The New Testament says that when Jesus Christ returns he will order the Christian people to throw all 4 billion non Christian men, women and children into the fire to burn alive because they are all devils. (Matthew 13:36-43). President George Bush is playing from this playbook.
The Hebrew Old Testament which is the Holy Scripture of Judaism, Christianity and Islam has countless commands of the bible writers to kill all the non believers, and Pslam 2 promises that when the Messiah comes he will smash the non Jews with a rod of iron like a potter’s vessel into thousands of pieces and conquer the world for Judaism. When Christianity adopted the Old Testament the bible writers changed the words “non Jews” to “Heathen”, non Christians. When Islam adopted the Old Testament they changed it to “Infidels”, meaning non Muslims. The world is now being dragged by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into the Apocalypse, Nuclear World War III, which every nuclear scientist knows will have no survivors. We are all now caught in our own bible trap.
Unbelievably, our way out of this mess is right in the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran, in the parts they don’t teach you in your religious schools which are laid out neatly in The Temple of Love – The World Peace Religion website. http://www.thetempleoflove.com
God the Father aka Allah aka Elohim calls your Holy Bibles man made forgeries of his will. (Ezekiel 13:6). Your God said that your drunken bible writers created for you a shelter of lies which would cause the people to fall backward and be broken and ensnared and taken. (Isaiah 9:15). Your God of Mount Sinai’s plan for everlating world peace spoken through every Biblical Prophet in the Old Testament, New Testament and Koran, is to now purify Judaism, Christianity and Islam down to belief in God of Mount Sinai aka God the Father, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Allah and Elohim, and to obey the 10 commandments carved in stone by God of Mount Sinai Himself, including “Don’t Murder” and “Don’t Steal” and “Don’t lie about people, calling them devils.” This is
The Temple of Love - The World Peace Religion of your God of Mount Sinai.
Your God of Mount Sinai’s roadmap leads to world peace. Where is your religion leading you? In case you didn’t know, the Revelations story holy scripture of Christianity and Islam of Prince Jesus flying down from heaven on a flying horse to conquer the snake, goat, lion Beast, Devil, Satan was written by Greek authors and is a dead on plagiarism of the Greek Myth of Prince Bellerophon on his flying horse Pegasus conquering the snake, goat, lion Chimera. Contrary to Christian and Muslim belief, the Apocalypse will not lead to your rapture, only to you burning your children and yourself alive in man made nuclear world war 3. Wake up! | <urn:uuid:d6ee4160-1306-412a-9c90-c32ce43748f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=24676&aut=3188 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937884 | 1,990 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Sometimes everything about a movie can be right--story, direction, acting, and art--yet the movie becomes a box-office disappointment. It happened this summer to The Iron Giant, an animated feature from Warner Bros., based loosely on the 1968 story Iron Man by British poet laureate Ted Hughes and directed by Brad Bird, who has also directed the animated TV show, The Simpsons. The movie received glowing reviews on the Internet from moviegoers and in the press from movie critics. Harry Knowles, influential host of the Ain`t It Cool News movie Web site, raves, ". . . purely and surely, one of the greatest films, animated or live-action, I have taken into my heart." This month, Warner Bros. plans to release video and DVD versions, and reportedly will launch them with a new marketing campaign.
The Iron Giant takes place in the small town of Rockwell, Maine. It`s 1958. Russia has launched Sputnik and plunged the US deep into Cold War paranoia. The story centers on Hogarth Hughes, a headstrong nine-year-old voiced by Eli Marienthal; his single mom Annie Hughes (Jennifer Aniston), a waitress in a diner; the Iron Giant (Vin Diesel), a 50-foot robot who drops from the sky; Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick, Jr.), a beatnik junk dealer and sculptor; and Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) an over-zealous government agent. One night when Hogarth is home alone watching TV, the transmission suddenly stops. He quickly sees why: The antenna is missing. Determined to find it, he follows a clear path through the woods that leads to the power station. There he spots a 50-foot-tall "metal man" munching the antenna, power towers, and other metal parts. When Hogarth switches the power off to save the robot from electrocution, he earns the Iron Giant`s loyalty. Meanwhile, Mansley, who has heard rumors of this alien monster, becomes determined to find and destroy it.
Made with 7000 parts, the Iron Giant is a 3D model created in Maya, rendered as a cartoon in Renderman, then imported into Cambridge Animation Systems` Animo.
All the characters in the film are 2D animations created in Cambridge Anima-tion Systems` (Cambridge, UK) Animo, with the notable exception of the Iron Giant himself, the first title character in a 2D animated film to be created with 3D computer graphics. The Giant was modeled with Alias|Wavefront`s (Toronto) Maya, rendered with Pixar`s (Pt. Richmond, CA) Renderman, and imported into Animo. "We chose to do the Giant in 3D because he did not belong in the Rockwell, Maine, cartoon world," explains Tad Gielow, CGI department head at Warner Bros. "By using CGI [3D computer graphics imagery], we could give him a different feel and a more mechanical look than the 2D characters."
To build and animate the Giant and create software that would render him as a cartoon in Animo-friendly formats, Gielow organized a team of 34 technical developers and directors. The team was so successful they found themselves creating 3D props--51 in all, according to Gielow. "The pipeline was very efficient," he says. "We did over 1000 feet of prop work that was not in the original plan." Among the props were machines such as jeeps, cars, trucks, tanks, bicycles, motorcycles, and jets, as well as things the Giant interacted with, such as junk in the junkyard, parts from the power station, train tracks and railroad ties, and a rock. Most difficult, though, was the Giant himself.
The Giant required more than one model: In addition to creating a "normal" Giant, digital sculptor Hiroki Itokazu used Maya to create a broken Giant, a battle Giant, and the Giant as a sculpture. The normal Giant has 7000 parts; the Battle Giant has 10,000 parts.
In order to place the Giant into the animation, every visible surface of those parts had to be rendered as a "toon," that is, inked, painted, and converted into Animo files. To do that, they needed to convert Maya files into Renderman RIB files and the 2D rendered output into Animo format. With no commercial software available in 1997 to do this, they began "rolling their own." Andy King worked on the Maya conversion; Brian Gardner created an entire image-processing pipeline, now named "Gartoons," to render the models and create Animo Layer Files.
|In this scene, Hogarth is a hand-drawn element. The Iron Giant and the railroad rails and tracks are 3D models. |
"Brad Bird was keen to have the CG look like hand-drawn animations from the `40s," says Gardner, "but it struck me that although CG [3D computer graphics] has worked for backgrounds in film, it has not worked very well for characters," he says. Thus, when Gardner received the mandate to create a system for The Iron Giant, he began interviewing people in the color-modeling and mark-up departments to learn what they needed to make a CG character fit into hand-drawn animation. He discovered that they wanted to receive Animo Level Files that were inked and painted but not irreversibly; that is, they wanted the option to change the colors of the rendered images.
The first problem to solve was producing inked lines that correctly defined the Giant`s parts and looked hand-drawn. Using Renderman, Gardner created a Gartoons shader that drew textured lines of varying thickness, a technique he named "line glomping." In addition, he added line wobble to Gartoons to create temporal antialiasing from frame to frame. This allows rendering on "twos" (every other frame) so that the CG animation will match similarly drawn 2D animations without strobing. And, as requested, Gartoons produces several ink, paint, and matte layers as Animo Level Files, each controlling such things as line color and matting for tone, highlights, and effects.
To avoid rendering separate passes for each layer, Gardner created plug-ins for Renderman`s device drivers as well as for the shaders. Device drivers care about entire images in 2D space, he explains, while shaders care about single pixels in 3D space. By encoding 17 channels of color and surface attributes into three color channels that are fed to a device driver and later expanded, Gartoons can render everything in one pass. The result can be a particular Animo layer needed by a department or a preview of a composite image. Gartoons can put each layer into a separate buffer, then display a composite image, which allows a kind of interactive rendering as colors are changed. "Once the buffer data is recalculated, the screen is repainted," Gardner says.
To animate the Iron Giant, Warner Bros. used Maya. To render him as a `toon, the studio created custom plug-ins for Renderman.
In addition to Gartoons, another innovative tool used for the film was a 3D/2D camera integrator that Gielow created as a plug-in for Maya. "This allows animators to match the Giant to the layout," he says. The blend seems to have worked well enough to draw people into the story and capture the hearts of children and adults alike. Adults like the witty satire and the message that we can choose not to be weapons. And one six-year-old posted this review on the Internet Movie Database site (http://imdb.com): "I liked the Iron Giant. They tried to hurt him because they didn`t understand him. That`s not nice. You have to try to get to know someone . . .This was a good story without so many songs, and it made me interested for a long time."
Barbara Robertson is Senior Editor, West Coast, for Computer Graphics World. | <urn:uuid:3b0b6cfb-8651-4638-8b6c-b9c3ce5df290> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/1999/Volume-22-Issue-11-November1999-/TEN-TON-TOON.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955819 | 1,668 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Have you seen pink mustaches placed on a car? Well if you have that is because of Lyft. Lyft is a peer to peer transportation company based in San Francisco, CA and launched in June of 2012. They match drivers in a community with passengers that are heading towards the same destination. Their service is along the lines of other collaborative consumption businesses that have taken off especially with the wide spread use of Facebook. Airbnb is the most successful company using this model.
Zimride the owners of Lyft are not the first to offer this type of service, but I think they are very innovative in how they are promoting the business as well as the way they are operating the business. It is different from similar offerings by Getaround, Ridejoy, and RelayRides in that it is mostly mobile focused. It provides a real time mobile car sharing assistance. I also think that their marketing of the company with the pink mustache is innovative.
The company makes money from each transportation that occurs. Lyft will get a percentage of the money that goes to the driver. As long as the company continues to grow to different cities and the word spreads about the company.
The company doesn’t present a unique business, but they are offering the best service. Lyft is offering real time ride sharing, which I don’t think is being offered by other companies. They are also inspecting each driver’s vehicle, doing background and dmv record checks for drivers. As well as providing a rating for both drivers and passengers to build trust. Both drivers and passengers must also have their Facebook and credit cards on file, which is another factor increasing trust.
I think the future of the business looks very well. I believe they are in the process of opening new operations in different cities around the country. They will have a lot of competition from companies who will offer similar service but they are ahead for now and it will be difficult for others to catch up.
The insight that I gain from this company is that it is important to keep up with technology and to think about how this new technology can improve upon current business models.
I think I will be copping a new phone when the Iphone 5 comes out in early October. There have been significant improvements over my current phone the 4. The new phone is slimmer and thinner, has an extra speaker, and a lot faster.
Under pressure from motion picture associations and recording industry association Google has appeased their demand for Google to negatively impact the search engine results for sites that have incurred copyright violations. This move can go a long way to lowering the websites that promote copyright infringement and allowing searchers to find legitimate, copyright authorized websites for entertainment purposes. I see this as a good step to fighting copy right infringement on the web.
As I had mentioned pre-IPO, I was not too impressed by Facebook’s prospect in the market, and a month after IPO facebook is down about 25%. There is a recent article out at the Washington Journal detailing the decline in growth for Facebook, which is about the same idea running through my head and why the company lost favor with me. It is worth a read if you have any interest in the internet giant. According to Comscore data the U.S. unique visitors to the website increased to 158 million for the month of April (only a 5% from April 2011). This is a rather minimal increase in unique visitors for a company with valuation of 100 times earnings. My suggestion for anyone considering this stock is to tread lightly. Upsides are fairly limited while downside is huge. Unless Facebook continues to reinvent the social medium, the stock will be under a lot of pressure.
The biggest IPO in the United States history will be taking place in two days. Facebook is expected to price at a valuation at 75 billion but expectations are that it will reach 90 to 100 billion. However Facebook only had revenues of 4 billion last year and a net of 1 Billion. However popular Facebook is, it will have issues with monetizing it’s users and I for one am not buying into the hype.
In other news GM just announced that they will stop advertising with Facebook and commented that they have found advertising on Facebook didn’t have a good return on their investment.
Here is a video provided by Yelp explaining how and why Yelp filters some reviews. Many people have been pissed with the way Yelp is filtering bad and good reviews. The video is basically a propaganda about why they are filtering reviews doesn’t provide any details as to how the process works, probably for good reason too. This way spammers (fake reviews) will be kept in the dark just a while longer. Overall the filter process is working pretty good and Yelp is the best online review site so kudos to them. While many are frustrated over having legit reviews filtered, as long as the process is arithmetically based without any biased towards advertisers I think the system is just fine.
Travel deal sites have advanced tremendously since the heyday of the web. Online flight deal sites have made it really easy for consumers to get the best price for any flight plans for travel or business. Here is the list of the TOP 10 Flight Deal sites.
Great America is an amusement park located in Santa Clara, California, USA. Great America is one of four major amusement parks that operate around the San Francisco Bay Area, the other three being Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, and Gilroy Gardens in Gilroy. California’s Great America is the only theme park in northern California that has a water park in it, although there are several other dedicated water parks in the area, including Raging Waters in San Jose and Waterworld in Concord.
Below are some Coupons for Great America in Santa Clara:
The Park is currently closed for the 2011 season, however you can buy season pass for 2012 season for $54.99 . | <urn:uuid:92834ef9-0284-4748-91f8-1a754b34b5eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.idleweb.com/ | 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 | 0.970945 | 1,205 | 1.679688 | 2 |
While many CD burners have suitable buffer amounts that should allow you to multitask while burning, this is not recommended. Extra draws on the system resources can reduce the chance for a successful burn, as well as causing errors in otherwise perfect CDs.
If you are running Windows 9x or ME, it might be best if you reboot before beginning a burn. Many times the system will not release memory that was in use by processes that you have used while the computer was on, and can cut severely into available system resources. 70% or higher is recommended before beginning a burn.
So, when burning a CD, the ideal condition is a PC under light use (preferably very little other software running).
The PCMech.com weekly newsletter has been running strong for over 8 years. Sign up to get tech news, updates and exclusive content - right in your inbox. Also get (several) free gifts. | <urn:uuid:a574eff1-2793-4707-8e9b-273a6b7584cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcmech.com/article/avoids-burning-coasters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943713 | 186 | 1.632813 | 2 |
A great proposal speaks directly to a customer’s preferences and unwritten requirements. So how exactly do you do that when you really don’t know them that well or you’ve never spoken directly to them? Believe it or not, classical marketing techniques can help.
But first, if you don’t know the customer, you ask yourself whether or not you should be bidding. It depends on the nature of your business and the amount of lead times your customers give. For example, companies that deal with municipalities (of which there are thousands) on small or medium sized projects may only find out about new business opportunities when they are publicly announced and not be at a competitive disadvantage. On the other hand, a company that has targeted a customer organization and has multiple contacts and existing relationships clearly has a competitive advantage. If you don’t know the customer, you should ask yourself if the best way for you to win more business would be to bid fewer opportunities to customers that you know better. If the answer is that you must bid to a customer you don’t know, then let’s get on with how to do it and still win.
Start with classical market segmentation. Which part of the market are you targeting? Your company’s strategic plan should provide some guidance. Within your target segment(s), who are your potential customers?
Once you’ve identified your market segments, then you can think about the attributes of the buyer. What is their risk tolerance? What is their level of technical expertise? What attributes define their culture?
Profiling the customer
When you haven’t had personal conversations with them and don’t have deep insight into the potential customer’s preferences, you can still attempt to speak directly to them through profiling. Profiling is just a way of describing the attributes of your potential customers. Really what you are doing is speaking directly to a kind of customer. Ask yourself, “What kind of person or organization buys from my company?” Answer this in enough detail to speak directly to their key concerns.
Profiling works best in combination with market segmentation. For example, if you do business with the Government, you can segment the market into civilian and military business. You can segment civilian business down into agencies. You can also segment by maturity of the program, by asking whether your offering is something needed for a new program or the continued operation of an existing program. There are many, many different ways you can segment the market.
When you don’t know the customer personally and you write to your profile, it’s a calculated risk. What if your profile is wrong? This often leads people to hold back and write a lame, boring, standard issue, just barely good enough proposal that is based almost exclusively on the RFP. If you want your proposal to be great, then work on perfecting your profiling technique and use clever copywriting to mitigate the risks of being wrong. You may not hit the bull’s eye when anticipating your customer’s attributes, but you can still sound useful and beneficial. You can still sound great.
Weigh the benefits of writing a great proposal against the risk of losing because you wrote to the wrong customer attributes. When the attributes are based on market segmentation and strategic planning, then if the customer doesn’t match your profile, they are probably not in your targeted market segment and are less likely to have been a potential buyer anyway.
Your goal is a great proposal, one that speaks directly to their goals, interests, concerns, and unwritten requirements. You can get there if you think in terms of what “customers like this one” want, or in terms of what “the kinds of people and organizations who become our customers” want. When you do so, you can prepare great proposals for the companies in your targeted market segment. You can’t be everything for everybody, and when you try to be like that in your proposals you just end up watering things down to where you are unimpressive to everybody. Who cares if your proposal doesn’t speak to people who aren't in your target market? Focusing on being great means being great to those you are focusing on.
Implement our off-the-shelf process and you can consistently prepare great proposals. Plus it comes with online training and lots of other goodies.
Get a Corporate License and revolutionize your entire business | <urn:uuid:9c2391e0-6acf-41e5-9c91-a2990ea6cdc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.captureplanning.com/store/index.cfm/fuseaction/feature.display/feature_id/112/index.cfm?CFID=3656973&CFTOKEN=20435325 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954011 | 917 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Going Up: Real Estate Is on the Rise Again in JapanPublished: November 29, 2006 in Knowledge@Wharton
Nothing symbolizes Japan's bubble economy, or its subsequent long slump, more than real estate. Now, after dropping by as much as 70%, real estate prices are ticking up, signaling a renewed Japanese economy.
A major restructuring of the nation's financial system, along with an injection of foreign capital and the introduction of publicly traded real estate investment trusts, are driving the real estate revival, according to Wharton faculty and real estate analysts working in Tokyo. "The no-growth swamp is over. Not only is real estate coming back, but it's coming back strong," says Wharton real estate professor Susan Wachter.
For the first time in 16 years, land prices rose in Japan's top three markets -- Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya -- during the 12 months that ended in July. Commercial land prices were up 2.6% while residential property was up O.4%. In addition, new development is visible in Tokyo, rents are on the rise and investors are returning to the market.
Speaking at the fall members' meeting of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton, Michael Pralle, CEO of General Electric's $48 billion real estate unit, said Japan is his top pick among current global real estate hot spots, including China, India and Germany.
GE has been in Japan since 1998 and owns $3 billion in real estate assets, including 120 office buildings and 9,000 residential units. Last year, it formed a partnership with Shinsei Bank to increase its holdings. "We like Japan a great deal," said Pralle, noting that GE is drawn to Japan by strong yields, attractive land prices that are still near 25-year lows, tax advantages and improving economic conditions overall.
According to Wachter, because real estate is viewed as a long-term asset, renewed confidence in the industry reflects optimism about the long-term prospects for Japan's economy. "The structure of Japan, Inc. has been substantially reformed and there is no going back at this point."
In addition to banking and other financial reforms, Wachter says a key element of today's interest in real estate is the government's willingness to abandon politically popular, but economically unjustified, public works projects in rural and agricultural areas. As a result, a drain on government spending has been eliminated, and more deserving projects in urban areas will receive more support. "There's no more business as usual," says Wachter. "This is a long-term structural reallocation that will not only affect Tokyo, but also the second-tier and even third-tier cities."
The Rise of REITs
Another driver of the real estate recovery is the same cure that was used for the United States' real estate crash following the savings and loan collapse of the 1980s: real estate investment trusts. Japan enacted new laws creating real estate investment trusts, known as J-REITs, in 2001. Now there are more than 30 J-REITs in operation with assets of $30 billion.
Nomura Real Estate Holdings raised the most money in an initial public offering of any Japanese company this year, trading up as much as 13% during its first day of trading in October. Nomura's debut topped the record set a month earlier by the Nippon Commercial Investment Corp., a real estate investment trust of Pacific Commercial Management.
Andrey Pavlov, a visiting professor of real estate at Wharton, explains that because REITs can be exchanged at any moment, managers are responsive to the market. Better response to market conditions helps prevent disconnects between supply and demand that lead to boom and bust cycles in real estate. "REITs are a great source of capital because they provide fairly-priced financing and there is a lot of discipline due to that immediate and direct connection to shareholders," says Pavlov.
Concerns are overblown that investors in REITs will be able to pull out abruptly if they unexpectedly need access to their capital, forcing REIT managers to unload long-term assets at what might be a low point in the market, he adds. "That's typically not a problem. REITs get the money from investors to buy the assets but the REIT itself is unaffected. There is no cash flow change."
REITs in Japan, and elsewhere, are a better way to finance real estate than bank lending, Wachter notes. Banks often structure deals with incentives or fees that encourage lending, leading to transactions that are often not aligned with market demand.
REITs also are structured with tax incentives that tend to draw international capital to Japan and other markets, she notes. REITs pool money from the sale of stock and use that to make investments in real estate. The shareholders then receive dividends paid out of profits earned by the REIT on rents or property sales. The dividends are not taxed.
For example, Nippon Building reported a 37% rise in net income to 9.85 billion yen ($84 billion) for the six months ending in June. The REIT paid out a record dividend of 19,391 yen, up from 17,046 yen for the same period a year earlier.
Wachter also points out that REITs are not closely correlated to the stock market and can provide balance for institutional portfolios, another draw for foreign capital. Finally, REITs bring transparency and better analysis to the market in which true value is often hard to gauge because shopping malls and office buildings, even homes, don't come up for sale everyday. "Once the funds are large enough, then you can have analysis with an entirely new level of sophistication, which again brings discipline," says Wachter.
The Japanese mortgage market is also moving toward greater securitization which will give investors another reason to invest, Wachter adds.
Following World War II, Japan created the Government Housing Loan Corp. (GHLC), to provide easy residential financing for homeowners. During the bubble years, as housing prices skyrocketed, Japanese homeowners were offered numerous types of exotic mortgages, including a 100-year mortgage to be paid off by the borrower's grandchildren.
As part of the nation's economic reforms, GHLC in 2001 was converted from an issuer of loans to a packager of mortgage-backed securities. By 2003, GHLC had securitized $8 billion in Japanese mortgages. Next year a new agency, the Japan Housing Finance Services Agency modeled on Fannie Mae in the United States, will begin securitizing loans written by private financial institutions.
Poised for the Future
Richard Georgi, a guest lecturer in real estate at Wharton and managing partner of Grove International Partners, a global private equity firm, estimates that Japan's economy bottomed out in 2002 and 2003. While hopes of earlier recoveries based on fiscal and monetary stimuli were subsequently dashed, Georgi says the current optimism is deserved because the government and the Japanese people have made significant changes to their economic system. "We are now starting to see some emerging growth patterns that we think are sustainable because they are on the back of real reform," says Georgi, who is based in Tokyo.
Rents are starting to tighten in Tokyo, which Georgi notes is double the size of Manhattan and four times the value. "This is a supertanker economy, so small changes can result in huge movements of capital."
As the nation's deflationary spiral comes to an end, interest rates will likely continue to rise. As that happens, investors sitting on yen-denominated Japanese government bonds will seek new asset investments. The capital-starved real estate industry will make an attractive investment, Georgi predicts, adding that the rest of the developed world has been in recovery for some time and is now priced high. Other countries, he says, will need to work off a real estate bubble created after the sharp interest rate declines that followed the September 11 terror attacks. "Japan is poised for future growth, although it is still at a low base compared to historic norms."
Foreign investment has played a part in Japan's recovery, but will not be a dominant force going forward, Georgi suggests. Changes in the nation's postal saving system, he notes, could free up vast pools of household savings that will flow into real estate. "Foreigners are here, and they have been playing a role in injecting liquidity into the market. But the most important transformation looking ahead will be the return of domestic capital to the real estate market," says Georgi.
Yasuhiko Watanabe, senior advisor at Mitsubishi Estate Co., says the Japanese real estate revival started in spring 2005. Vacancy rates for Class A office space in central Tokyo are now less than 1%, compared to 4% to 6% a year ago. Rents in the desirable Marunouchi district, located between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace, are up 20% from a year ago. "Probably we are now in a position to worry a bit about too much too soon," he says.
Japan's strong corporate comeback and infusions of domestic and international capital are feeding the real estate resurgence, says Watanabe, who also cautions that excess liquidity in the global economy could set off a financial crisis if the system experiences a shock. "The market could lose its steam if, for any reason, today's high level of liquidity becomes vulnerable. Geopolitical risks as well as financial and economic risks might play a significant role in the outlook for the market."
In addition to the new REIT investment vehicles, Eric Perraudin, managing partner of Japan Management Consulting in Tokyo, says ultra-low interest rates are contributing to the recovery. Investors can borrow 80% of the value of a building with a non-recourse loan at a rate of 2%. At the same time, building regulations governing the density of buildings have been eased, allowing developers to build more space on less land.
Pavlov warns that despite confidence in the real estate turnaround, the Japanese economy is still in a delicate state and policymakers will need to steer a careful course between stimulating growth and guarding against inflation. "As the economy picks up there will be more demand for real estate," he says. "It is very important that, in the face of the up-tick in demand, there is sufficient availability of funding, whether its bank loans, equity investment or private investment. You don't want to be in a credit crunch. Even if people want to buy and develop real estate, if they can't get the financing, nothing happens."
According to Pavlov, there is often a fine line between too little credit and too much. "Let me emphasize that you should never stimulate or encourage policy with the availability of cheap or under-priced financing. It has to be fairly priced," he says. "But you want to make sure lenders and other sources of capital don't overreact to the previous crash and stop lending altogether. There needs to be a golden balance between sufficient financing and not under pricing.... It's not an easy thing to do."
Perraudin notes that prices for commercial buildings have recovered about 30% to 50% from the bottom reached in 2002-2003. However, the gains are concentrated in Central Tokyo, Central Osaka and Nagoya. In other major cities, the market is flat, and small cities and rural areas are still experiencing declines. "Demand for real estate in central areas is limited," he says. "Demographics are bad, with the Japanese population and workforce shrinking."
He points out that land prices in some regions are still artificially high, propped up by subsidies for agricultural use and ownership of property by debt-ridden public institutions and governments.
John Percival, a Wharton adjunct finance professor, says that despite all the reforms that have been made in Japan, real estate is likely to remain cyclical. While companies and financial institutions have undergone major reforms, there remains more cross-shareholding between banks and other businesses than in the United States and much of the rest of the world. "Real estate is coming back," says Percival, "but that's the good news and the bad news. If there's another bubble, then we'll go through this whole process all over again." | <urn:uuid:9bc8786f-68bb-4beb-af56-a2f92bdde3ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1612 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964527 | 2,515 | 1.632813 | 2 |
405 Cleveland Street,
2 people favorited this theater
Opened as the Capitol Theatre in 1921, it had a seating capacity of almost 1,000. It is the only opera house in Clearwater. It is known for having some of the best natural acoustics in the southeastern part of the United States.
Later renamed the Royalty Theatre, it could comfortably seat between 434 and 520 people. Interestingly, the theater’s seats (which come in six different sizes) are the same seats that were originally installed when the theater opened.
The Royalty Theatre underwent a complete restoration from May 1999 and re-opened in the summer of 2000 as a performing arts and cultural centre. It was purchased in 2009 by the city of Clearwater, together with the adjacent building and has reverted back to its original Capitol name. Ruth Eckerd Hall, Inc. is contracted with the city to manage, program and renovate the theatre.
The seating capacity is now reduced to 433, with space for 475 for an event. Progaming consists of independent and classic movies, live concerts which cover the spectrum from rock, blues, jazz, country to classical. Also presented is dance and plays, and the theatre is available for events.
In 2011, active fundraising is occurring for renovations which will bring back the 1920’s glory, while adding modern touches such as modern restrooms, dressing rooms, lighting, seating, sound and projection equipment and LEEDS certification.
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater | <urn:uuid:b22a91a1-b73a-4d69-b240-61354a0ff704> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/473/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964992 | 308 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Q is for Quarrelsome
Before I get myself into trouble let me state that my amazing wife is NOT a quarrelsome wife!
I've chosen Q for quarrelsome today to highlight some of my favourite verses in the bible, or perhaps I should be clearer and say that I'm highlighting some of the verses that I think are funny.
Proverbs 21 verse 19 is a great place to start: "Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife." I love the humour of this one and so too did the psalmist as he put it in there twice, see 25:24!
Proverbs 27 verse 15 is also in there twice and is also quite amusing. "A quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm;"
I really like the verses about the sluggard too, especially the one about him turning on his bed in Proverbs 26 verse 14 "As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed." - The imagery of the door hinge turning only partly as the door opens so the sluggard is too lazy to turn over fully. Brilliant!
Song of Songs is another great source of amusing verses, the best (in my opinion) being chapter 7, verses 7 and 8: "Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, "I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit."" - Many years ago on a CYFA Venture we got some of the youngsters to act out a few scriptures and this was one of them. How mean was that!
There's even a verse about going to toilet in Deuteronomy 23 verse 13 which amuses me but I'll let you look that one up for yourself. The bible is a far from being a dull book, it's actually full of amazing stuff and some pretty funny stuff too.
This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2012.
Another stunning flower in our garden. No idea what this is but it's simply gorgeous!
6 months ago | <urn:uuid:6f5cafd5-2f8a-4cd1-a909-cbe57cdc77fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dpfinnie.com/2012/04/blogging-from-to-z-challenge-q.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974213 | 443 | 1.546875 | 2 |
“He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” Titus 3:5a, NLT).
Many people, both inside and outside church, believe the only way to be in God’s favor is to be good and to do good things for others. Even some who believe in grace often hold fears deep inside that it might not be enough. Or they think grace and forgiveness are God’s side of the deal, and we still have to do our part, including racking up points for a reward in heaven.
All we know is the system of works and rewards, so we mistakenly think God’s system is the same. God could have set it up that way, much the way things work on earth, but he didn’t. He doesn’t practice noblesse oblige, which is “the moral obligation of those of high birth, powerful social position, etc., to act with honor, kindliness, generosity, etc.” (dictionary.com). He saves out of his incredible mercy, pure and simple. It’s mercy that extends from the most evil of sinners to the sweetest grandmas, high, wide and deep enough for the whole world. And there is no “our part.” He’s done it all. | <urn:uuid:f11ade06-6d22-4936-b325-2c5157bf5558> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gemsofgodsgrace.wordpress.com/tag/noblesse-oblige/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964949 | 281 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The price of light sweet crude oil topped $100 in commodities markets Tuesday, hitting a record $100.10 during the day, and closing for the first time above the century mark. Retail gas followed on its heels, topping $3 a gallon nationwide for the first time in a month, and threatening to go as high as $3.75, according to various experts quoted in major media sources today.
The price of oil is about where it was during the oil crisis of 1980 (adjusted for inflation, the price then was between $99.04 and $101.70, according to the Los Angeles Times).
So what happens next?
The factors driving up the price of light sweet crude were cited as follows, according to reports in the L.A. Times, USA Today, Toronto Star and Newsday:
The prospect of decreased supply: Responding to the end of the heating season and the faltering U.S. economy, OPEC may cut back oil production when it meets on March 5. Less supply can mean higher prices.
Oil bickering, as Venezuela, one of the world's biggest oil exporters, and Exxon Mobil, the world's largest company, fight over access to the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere.
A false report out of ever-volatile Nigeria, another top oil exporter, claimed that a prominent rebel leader had been killed. This is not the first time that violence in Nigeria, or the whisper of the threat of violence, even if it has no direct effect on oil production, has affected world oil commodity prices.
The increasing weakness of the U.S. dollar, which means one dollar buys less oil.
A refinery explosion at Alon USA Energy's refinery in Big Spring, Texas, and its subsequent closure.
The waning economic influence of the U.S. Even as oil demand in the U.S. has fallen, worldwide demand has not waned because of the huge growth in China, India and other developing nations. This is a new paradigm, since in the past, U.S. demand was the driving force behind world oil prices, on the demand side.
Speculation: Analysts quoted by the Los Angeles Times saw no "sound economic rationale for oil at $100," and called crude oil and other commodities "a tremendous speculative bubble."
Too little conservation: While experts have mapped out many ways U.S. consumers can decrease energy demand without significantly altering their lifestyles, conservation remains, sadly, the "personal virtue" that Vice President Dick Cheney once labeled it.
The degree to which these forces remain in play will determine what happens next. Certainly, the refinery explosion in Texas is a passing event, and neither the threat of Nigerian violence nor the fight over Venezuelan oil are likely to subside anytime soon but what about the other factors? Will the U.S. economy rebound? Will viable alternatives and true energy conservation emerge?
Those are the key questions, because the speculators aren't likely to stop speculating.
Enter your city or zip code to get your local temperature and air quality and find local green food and recycling resources near you. | <urn:uuid:1717ecff-daa3-48dd-937d-7dad8bbd4b16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/oil-47022002 | 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 | 0.959254 | 637 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Though located in Cuba, our Guantanamo detention camps are profoundly and entirely American, the fruits of an America that should never have come into being. With one tumbling crash we—once a leading light of justice, freedom and human rights—have flushed humane treatment of others straight down the toilet.
Witness our hysterical fear-jerk following the attacks of 9-11. In an instant, we forgot who we were and what we stood for. Practices for which we sent others to prison and even to the gallows were suddenly deemed legal and necessary interrogation techniques. So-called enemy combatants, many of them entirely innocent civilians sold to our military by profiteering Afghan headhunters, found themselves hooded and shackled on flights half a planet from home. A novel creation fabricated by administration apologists like UC Berkeley's John Yoo, enemy combatants were stripped of all rights and legal standing. Guilty or not, charged with crimes or no, adult or mere child—hundreds were stripped of the writ of habeas corpus and subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques," otherwise known as torture.
But out of darkness there often comes art. Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, tells the documented stories of five Gitmo detainees using their own words from letters and interviews to create a theatrical interpretation of terrorism. Co-written by Guardian foreign correspondent Victoria Brittan and novelist Gillian Slovos, Honor Bound premiered in London, but has since drawn rave reviews in major cities across America. In part benefiting Sonoma County Veterans for Peace, this local production is directed by Chris Ginesi and depicts our nation's "war" on terrorism.
Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom comes to Santa Rosa's Glaser Center for a three performances only, Saturday&–Sunday, May 24&–25. Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Saturday at 2pm and 8pm; Sunday, 8pm. $10. 707.568.5381.
Museums and gallery notes.
Reviews of new book releases.
Reviews and previews of new plays, operas and symphony performances.
Reviews and previews of new dance performances and events. | <urn:uuid:3b99cc5d-d7b1-49d7-8ce7-b3a89a3a7605> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bohemian.com/northbay/tortured-freedom/Content?oid=2172162 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945548 | 448 | 1.75 | 2 |
Canadian special forces soldiers are already deployed in Mali protecting Canadian diplomats, CBC News reports, but according to the government they are not on a “combat” mission (“Canadian special forces on ground in Mali, sources say,” CBC News, 28 January 2013):
Canadian special forces are on the ground inside the troubled West African country of Mali to protect Canadian assets there, CBC News has learned.
The special forces are not there to train Malian troops — and they are not involved in any combat role, as the government has repeatedly stressed and Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeated again Monday in the House of Commons.
The Department of National Defence would not confirm or deny the special forces are in Mali due to issues of security of personnel.
But a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs told CBC News, “Steps have been taken to ensure our mission and Canadian personnel are protected.”
Evan Solomon, host of CBC News Network’s Power & Politics, reports the special forces on the ground are protecting Canadian assets such as the Canadian Embassy in the capital Bamako, according to sources.
On January 25th, Ceasefire.ca noted the presence of Canadian special forces in the region and asked whether they might soon be operating in Mali. As Monday’s news reports indicate, it now appears that they are already there, although for the time being at least they are not in “combat”.
- “Canada’s special forces in Mali, but not in combat role,” Canadian Press, 28 January 2013
- Steven Chase & Campbell Clark, “Canadian soldiers on ground in Mali’s capital,” Globe and Mail, 28 January 2013
- Mark Kennedy, “Canadian special forces on the ground in Mali,” National Post, 28 January 2013
Photo credit: DND | <urn:uuid:52d6495c-fd63-425a-8dd7-af2498b62ce0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ceasefire.ca/?p=14602 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961762 | 378 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Animal activists are celebrating one of the laws that Gov. Rick Scott signed this week.
It makes dogs involved in fighting more adoptable.
Under the new law, dogs confiscated from fighting rings will not automatically be labeled as "dangerous."
The dogs will still be evaluated by shelters to see if they can be adopted into new homes.
Previously, these dogs would be automatically euthanized.
The law takes effect next Friday. | <urn:uuid:1b04ba98-c5ac-4d55-ace5-3256e8ae1106> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news4jax.com/news/Gov-Scott-Signs-New-Dog-Fighting-Bill/-/475880/1949344/-/dgebwwz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954092 | 89 | 1.5625 | 2 |
For both visitors and Thais, travel in Thailand is very convenient; the Thailand transportation infrastructure is modern and well-organized, and exploring the country is a very straightforward experience. Whether your Thailand travel preference is air, rail, bus, road, or water, most modes of Thailand transportation are use to catering to foreign visitors and have frequent departures. Consequently it’s easy to move about the country or explore sights around particular destinations. The inland cities and coastal resorts are well connected to each other, so when you travel in Thailand you can spend a few days in Bangkok, a few more at the beach, and still visit Chiang Mai or Ayutthaya alternatively traveling via bus, boat, train, or plane to get from A to B to C. Bookings and reservations for travel in Thailand should be done in advance as even in the “low season” many Thai people holiday in their own country and transportation is often booked well in advance. Nonetheless, when you travel in Thailand, there are always options for travelers, even at the last minute, particularly as departures of busses, planes, and trains are very frequent. When you travel in Thailand you can select from many domestic air carriers that service a majority of Thailand’s large provincial cities; local trains that connect Bangkok to all regions of the country; and long distance coaches that connect all major cities.
Travel Around Thailand
A visit to Thailand is an opportunity to discover a spectacular range of landscapes, so deciding how you will travel around our country can be as important as choosing where you want to go.
Serviced by both international and Thai airlines, Thailand acts as a hub for international travelers and there are numerous domestic airports providing various flying options.
There are numerous Tourist Information Centers throughout the kingdom that provide maps, brochures, hotel recommendations, and other advice to travelers in nearly all Thailand tourist destinations. Select this link if you wish to get a full list of Tourism Information Centers throughout Thailand. | <urn:uuid:f2be1154-4502-4f1f-a96d-44ec892b5f52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tourismthailand.org/Travel-and-Transport/travel-around-thailand/transportation-options/underground-bangkok-mrt-subway | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938999 | 399 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Admittedly, this idea needs a bit more than Google Maps, but it definitely needs your car's windshield.
Any web service today which offers any kind of geo-spatial data becomes useless if you can't get "there" easily. Sure, my cellphone can probably show me a tiny map with directions to my destination, but a hands-free method would be much better. And much safer when I'm driving.
Scenario: A wireless device in your car is sent a message from your favourite geo-app. This device illuminates the interior surface of your windshield with a street overlay. From your perspective it looks like your route has been painted onto the street with your favourite colour. Choose a green line, a red dashed line, a thin yellow-bricked line, and follow it, left, right, and straight to your destination.
Safety issues? Sure, there are probably many. But I'd rather be looking straight ahead at a cool transparent green line, then constantly referring to a small unreadable map terminal to my right (or left, if you're in Japan, England, and all those other cool countries.) These issues can surely be dealt with.
This could be extended to (and I think some engineering groups have already done work in this direction; again, I wish I had become an engineer!) glasses, sunglasses, contacts, motorcycle helmets, planes, trains, etc.
Where's the Web 2.0 element? Coming in the next post. Stay tuned. | <urn:uuid:b0031b3a-65af-4a0d-b160-6ad681dc71ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web201.blogspot.com/2005/10/google-maps-car-windshield-mashup.html | 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 | 0.950918 | 304 | 1.742188 | 2 |
October 24, 2009
Happy United Nations Day!
October 23, 2009
Reminder: Tomorrow is United Nations Day!
Saturday, October 24, is United Nations Day. Do your part to share with students, colleagues, and neighbors your thoughts on why we need the United Nations. And if you're in the United States, you might also share the news that the U.S. has finally paid up its dues.
In the photo to the right, I am pictured with a group of law students from Stetson University College of Law and the University of Lucerne (Switzerland) at the U.N. in Geneva.
October 22, 2009
International Law Weekend (ILW) Starts TODAY in New York City
The American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA), in cooperation with the International Law Students Association (ILSA) and with the support of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and the American Bar Assocation Section of International Law, starts its annual International Law Weekend today at the New York City Bar Association and Fordham University Law School.
The annual International Law Weekend in New York, bringing together hundreds of practitioners, members of the governmental and non-governmental sectors and students. And yes, I'm going!
The conference will feature numerous panels, distinguished speakers, receptions, and the ABILA's annual meeting.
International Law Weekend 2009 will take place at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (42 West 44th Street) on October 22, 2009 (that's TODAY), and at Fordham University School of Law (140 West 62nd Street) on October 23rd and 24th (that's FRIDAY and SATURDAY).
The Weekend's theme is "Challenges to Transnational Governance." The economic, political, and social changes of the last decade have re-shaped international law and deeply affected its role and practice, along with the identity and attitude of its participants. This year's Weekend will address the challenges posed by these changes with an emphasis on the emergence of the notion of "transnational governance" and the issues related to it, including:
- Re-ordering, organizing, and monitoring: Is this what transnational governance is about?
- Who is in charge of transnational governance?: A discussion of the (sometimes new) role of international organizations, states, NGOs, regions, companies, private individuals, and others.
- Governing what?: The contents and scope of transnational governance
- The impact of transnational governance on international trade, foreign investment, and dispute resolution mechanisms.
- In the new context, what is the role of regulatory international law?
The ILW 2009 co-chairs are Pierre Bodeau-Livinec (of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs), Wil Burns (Editor in Chief of the Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy), and Aníbal M. Sabater (Partner at Fulbright & Jaworski International LLP).
Mark E. Wojcik, Chair, ABILA Committee on the Teaching of International Law
October 21, 2009
NYU to Honor Memory of Thomas Franck on October 28
The New York University School of Law community will celebrate the life and work of Thomas Franck, Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law Emeritus, at a memorial service on Wednesday, October 28, 2009, at 5:30 p.m., at the NYU Law School.
Tom was a leading figure in the field of international law, a leader in the American Society of International Law, and a beloved member of the Law School faculty for more than forty years. He died in May of this year. Click here to read our post about his passing.
Throughout his life, Tom greatly enriched the field of international law and made a profound impact on many people and numerous institutions. In addition to his teaching, Tom was the director of the Center for International Studies at NYU from 1965 until his retirement in 2002. He acted as legal adviser or counsel to many foreign governments, as an advocate before the International Court of Justice, as a judge ad hoc before that court, and as a member of the Department of State Advisory Committee on International Law. A two-time Guggenheim Fellowship winner, Tom authored more than 30 books and innumerable articles, addresses, legal arguments and judgments. Despite his illness, he continued to work passionately, committed until the very end to advancing the values that animated his life’s work.
Adapted from a message sent by Dean Richard Revesz, Dean and Lawrence King Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law
October 20, 2009
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee is expected to be granted observer status at the U.N. General Assembly today. Twenty-five nations (including the United States and the United Kingdom) are supporting a draft resolution to give observer status to the IOC, which will allow the IOC to observe UN General Assembly Meetings and to provide information on matters of interest to the International Olympic Committee.
Hat tip to Robbie Artz
October 19, 2009
U.N. Expert Praises Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
A press release received today from the United Nations . . .
The international community showed its support for the world’s nearly 400 million indigenous people by adopting the landmark 2007 declaration outlining their rights, a United Nations independent human rights said today.
The adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People came after more than two decades of debate.
“The adoption of the Declaration signals the strong commitment of the international community to remedy the historical and ongoing denial of the rights of indigenous peoples,” James Anaya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedom of indigenous people, told reporters in New York.
The text is based on the principles of equality, self-determination and respect for diversity, which form the “basic tenets of the modern human rights system,” he said.
A non-binding text, the Declaration sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues.
The Declaration emphasizes the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations.
It also prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them, and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development.
In his briefing to the General Assembly today, Mr. Anaya, an unpaid independent expert who reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, said that he described the scope of his mandate and the activities he has undertaken since assuming his position last May.
His work, he said, falls within four interrelated areas: promoting good practices; thematic studies; country reports; and responding to cases of alleged gross violations.
In the past year, the expert has wrapped up reports on Brazil and Nepal after visiting the countries, as well as a follow-up trip to Chile. He has also conducted missions to assess indigenous persons’ conditions in Australia, Botswana, Russia and Colombia.
Election Fraud in Afghanistan
Here is a press release received today from the United Nations . . .
The United Nations-backed panel probing allegations of irregularities in the recent Afghan elections today submitted its findings to the national electoral body, which will now determine whether or not President Hamid Karzai received more than 50 per cent of the votes in order to avoid a run-off.
The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) was tasked with auditing suspicious ballot boxes and other complaints related to the 20 August presidential elections.
Following its investigations, it ordered the Independent Election Commission (IEC) – which organized the polls – to invalidate 210 polling stations around the country where the ECC found clear and convincing evidence of fraud.
“Now that the ECC has published its orders we expect the IEC to implement them without haste and move swiftly to announce either a final certified result or the requirement for a second round as required by Afghanistan’s electoral law,” said Aleem Siddique, spokesperson for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
Last month, the ECC decided to take a closer look at roughly 10 per cent sample of the 3,377 fraud-prone ballot boxes from the presidential elections.
During the process, 343 suspicious ballot boxes were randomly picked from across the country and flown into the capital, Kabul, where they were examined by a team of officials from the IEC, ECC, and the UN Development Programme’s election project, known as UNDP/ELECT.
The ECC also gave a decision on the 646 polling stations that the IEC had quarantined after the election, because they contained more than 1,000 votes, or were cast in a polling station that was closed, or stations where the number of votes recorded in polling centre overall were greater than the number ballots issued by the IEC.
The Commission removed 628 stations from the final tally.
The ECC’s order has now gone to the IEC, which will make the necessary calculations by discarding the ballots declared as fraudulent from the preliminary results.
The IEC is expected to announce the final certified results within the next few days.
Public Hearings at ICJ on Kosovo's Declaration of Independence
In 2008, the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to render an advisory opinion regarding whether Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia is in accordance with international law. The ICJ has announced that it will hold public hearings on the question from December 1-11, 2009. Thirty States have announced their intention to participate in the hearings. At least three European Union (EU) States, Spain, Romania and Cyprus, have announced their intention to oppose independence for Kosovo. Other EU States, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, are scheduled to testify in favor of independence for Kosovo. While the ICJ's opinion will only be advisory and will not decide any contentious cases, it will certainly provide ammunition to parties in other matters relating to statehood and independence.
October 18, 2009
Torture, national security and the rule of law: On a welcome ruling of the UK High Court
On too many occasions since 9/11 have
national governments relied on “national security” grounds to hide illegal
actions, prevent political embarrassment, or more prosaically, to secure
domestic political gains. Politicians should therefore not be surprised that
judges are now more willing to double-guess them when they argue, for instance,
that some allegedly sensitive material cannot be made public.
In a ruling issued on 16 October, the High Court in London, for the first time, refused to accept the British Foreign Secretary’s argument that the public release of litigious material, sought by the lawyers of a former Guantanamo detainee, would threaten national security (judgment available here). At issue was a previously censored 7-paragraph summary of the Guantanamo detainee’s “treatment” by US authorities made by the CIA and sent to the British Security Services. Reversing their prior holdings, Lord Justice John Thomas and Justice David Lloyd Jones convincingly and reasonably held that the public interest in making the paragraphs public is not only overwhelming but that the risk to national security alleged by the British government is not a serious one:
“We consider that, viewed objectively, a decision by a court in the United Kingdom to put the redacted paragraphs into the public domain in the circumstances of this case would not infringe the principle of control over intelligence. The principle admits an exception in the case of court ordered disclosure, which is plainly applicable in the present case for the following reasons:
i) It is necessary and justifiable:
a) It was BM’s case that the United Kingdom Government had facilitated or become mixed up in wrongdoing of the United States, alleged to amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or torture.
e) … the suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials in circumstances which cannot affect in any way national security is inimical to the rule of law. Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of democracy.
ii) It is exceptional. …
iii) As between the United States and the United Kingdom, it is accepted that the court of each State can order there be put into the public domain information otherwise subject to the principle of control. …
… In our view, as a court in the United Kingdom, a vital public interest requires, for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom, that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain in the United Kingdom.
We have therefore conclude that, as the public interest in making the paragraphs public is overwhelming, and as the risk to national security judged objectively on the evidence is not a serious one, we should restore the redacted paragraphs to our first judgment by addition these to paragraphs 87 and 88 respectively. We shall therefore re-issue our first judgment with the paragraphs restored.”
Unsurprisingly, the British government agreed yesterday to appeal this ruling. | <urn:uuid:e7be99ae-e1ab-43f7-b150-61145548f450> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/international_law/2009/week43/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954805 | 2,741 | 1.664063 | 2 |
He brought good news with him: DOT has made available $775 million to transit agencies to upgrade their bus systems.
Peter Rogoff, photo courtesy of The Washington Post
Bringing the nation's transit services into the state of good repair Americans deserve is a challenge FTA is facing head-on. And these discretionary bus and bus facility awards are a good start.
Look, the Obama Administration knows that budget shortfalls in state and local governments around the country have filtered down to transit agencies. We also know that in times of economic hardship, transit revenues fall.
But a good portion of the nation's bus systems have aging equipment and outdated facilities. And--particularly for those who cannot afford the luxury of driving a personal vehicle and those who simply are unable to drive-- we cannot afford to skimp on the reliability of transit.
As Administrator Rogoff told the Bus & Paratransit Conference attendees, "Well maintained, clean and reliable buses make a world of difference to the millions of Americans who use transit every day."
So FTA will review applications and prioritize proposals based on how they address a transit system’s state of good repair and recapitalization needs.
I know buses may not seem as exciting as subways, metros, or light rail to those who are fortunate enough to live in cities with rail transit. But millions of Americans rely on buses every day to get to their jobs and to basic services. For those who don't live near a rail stop or those who live in communities without a rail system, transit means buses.
And, as we emerge from these economic hard times, this DOT will keep the buses rolling reliably for those riders. | <urn:uuid:16bad04b-493f-4ef1-93b4-8542ac43ab13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/05/dot-announces-775-million-to-upgrade-americas-bus-systems.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960465 | 338 | 1.742188 | 2 |
By Bill O'Reilly
Emotions still running high after 20 children were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut. The President, Congress and we the people all want to do something constructive to make sure this horror doesn't happen again. The problem, it will happen again no matter what we do. But that doesn't mean we should do nothing.
However, before acting, let's take a look at the facts. Mass shootings in the USA are actually on the decline. According to criminologist Grant Duwe from the Minnesota Department of Corrections, mass murder in America was most severe in 1929. In recent years, there were 32 mass killings in the 1980s, '42 in the '90s and 26s in the first decade of this century.
According to the Department of Justice, murders of school age children have declined by 42 percent in the past 15 years. And the latest stats show that just one percent of the murdered kids died at school.
Now, that's not to diminish the horrible crimes we have seen in Connecticut and other places recently. All Americans should understand that violence like that harms America's image throughout the world and we do have a gun culture here. No question about it.
If the feds can tighten up gun laws without violating constitutional rights, they should do so. "Is It Legal" is investigating one glaring question in Connecticut. How could the mother of the killer have acquired an AR-15 when Connecticut has tough gun laws? The ladies will be here in just a few moments.
To build a better country, a safer country, we don't need knee-jerk reactions after heinous crimes. We need smart solutions.
Listen to this exchange at the White House yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You name one thing the President has done in the last four years to help remove weapons of war from our streets?
JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The President supports the assault weapons ban. And the reinstatement of this assault weapons ban. But we have to --
TAPPER: One measure, one act. One to remove the weapons of war he talks about.
CARNEY: Again, he supports legislation that is designed to ban some weapons. But as you know, this is a complex -- this is a complex issue and that requires complex solutions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Mr. Carney is correct, it is complex issue. And all new legislation should be based on facts and constitutional protections. It's interesting to see the far-left in America calling for a ban of all hand guns. That is clearly unconstitutional. Their answer to that? Well, the Constitution is outmoded. That's very dangerous.
But the far-left have been pushing that point of view for years. The truth is they don't like the Constitution. Because they want the federal government to have far more power than it already has. And they use appalling crimes like Newtown to push that agenda.
In the months to come, "Talking Points" will take a very hard look at how the Obama administration handles the public safety issue vis-a-vis guns, as always, our analysis will be based on facts.
And that's "The Memo."
- You can catch Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" weeknights at 8 and 11 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel and any time on foxnews.com/oreilly. Send your comments to: email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:a9cd4421-dd2a-4c73-b42a-b4f4a6bddc08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2012/12/19/bill-oreilly-truth-about-guns-murder-and-children-usa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956804 | 737 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Swiss bank UBS (UBS) could pay about $1 billion in fines related to the Libor interest rate rigging scandal, according to published reports citing unnamed sources.
The settlement may not be announced until next week. If the reports by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal prove accurate, the fine would be more than double the $450 million penalty regulators imposed on British bank Barclays (BCS), so far the only bank to settle.
Neither UBS nor the U.K. regulators commented on the reports.
Regulators say banks rigged the London interbank offered rate — the key international benchmark rate commonly known as Libor — for several years to profit from trades on it and to make themselves look healthier during the global financial meltdown.
The probe has since widened to include other banks in Europe and the U.S., including HSBC (HBC), Royal Bank of Scotland, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Citigroup (C).
Banks are trying to rebuild tarnished images with politicians and regulators after some embarrassing mistakes and misdeeds.
UBS last year was hit with a $2.3 billion loss from a rogue trader in London. JPMorgan this year lost at least $6.2 billion on botched credit hedges.
And on Tuesday, HSBC agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine to U.S. regulators to settle charges its lax money-laundering and other controls allowed Mexican drug lords and rogue nations to shift hundreds of millions of dollars through its doors. | <urn:uuid:5aa75101-26a0-4b93-a853-6bd110741be6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.investors.com/business/121312-636953-ubs-libor-rigging-probe-1-billion-fine.htm?ven=fox_businesscp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941771 | 306 | 1.5 | 2 |
A nation that was assumed to have tilted Right instead showed itself to be evenly and ideologically split; Israelis may have become cynical about the prospects for peace, the message seems to be, but they might not have abandoned them entirely.
The clear loser, at least according to conventional wisdom, is Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel's prime minister.
Despite his early declarations of victory, he finds himself with a heavily reduced mandate after his Likud Beiteinu bloc lost 11 seats to give it a total of 31 in the new Knesset.
As leader of the largest grouping, Mr Netanyahu remains in pole position to form the next government. But last night's result was hardly a ringing endorsement from an electorate that had already experienced four years of a Likud-led administration.
Some Israeli commentators seemed keen to write Mr Netanyahu's political obituary on Wednesday. Nahum Barnea, writing in Yedioith Ahronoth, called him a "tragic figure" while Shalom Yerushalmi in Maariv concluded that voters had deliberately set out to weaken Mr Netanyahu when he had been expressly marketing himself as a "strong" prime minister.
And yet Mr Netanyahu may ultimately succeed through the default of others. If his night was a failure, what of Naftali Bennett, the charismatic self-made internet millionaire who had been assumed to be the star of the campaign? His pro-settler Jewish Home party may have been a victim of its own hype. A perfectly respectable tally of 11 seats now seems like failure because it fell below expectations.
More pertinently, the 60-60 Left-Right split may mean the Jewish Home is not in a position to join a government that it can then drive to the Right, as feared beforehand. That scenario could have made Mr Netanyahu a virtual hostage to a settler movement that balks at the suggestion of Palestinian statehood.
By contrast, the unexpected strong showing of the centrist Yesh Atid party, led by Yair Lapid, a former journalist, facilitates Mr Netanyahu's goal of heading a "balanced" broad-based coalition. The pro-secularist Yesh Atid, which won 19 seats, favours a two-state solution but said little about the peace process in its election campaign, focusing instead on domestic issues.
Its presence in a coalition may suit Mr Netanyahu – who veered Right in recent weeks by approving a succession of settlement expansions – by lending him political cover to respond flexibly to anticipated western pressure to make concessions on peace initiatives. That may come as no surprise to hardline settlers, who have viewed the prime minister's recent settlement announcement cynically, viewing his previous commitment to accepting a Palestinian state.
Being head of a coalition that is not dominated by the hard-Right may also give Mr Netanyahu added international authority when demanding action on the Iranian nuclear programme, an issue he stressed during the campaign as the biggest problem facing Israel but which gained little traction with ordinary voters.
The Israeli political arena now faces weeks of bargaining and manoeuvring, as parties jostle for inclusion in a new coalition.
Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, – who has taken a dim view of recent policy towards the peace process – has the prerogative of deciding who to call on to form a government. All the variables make the outcome as unpredictable as last night's poll. | <urn:uuid:88098134-f464-41c9-8e18-867ffa21ffd6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/9820308/Israel-election-analysis-Benjamin-Netanyahu-may-yet-benefit-from-poor-showing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967747 | 684 | 1.53125 | 2 |
One of the best winter gardening activities is actually spent indoors, reading all those gardening books you never have time to get to in the growing season. I have wanted to share a few titles that I have been reading lately. Disclaimer: I am not receiving any incentive to write this review, but the book link will take you to my Amazon store page. If you buy something from that store page, my family gets a small kickback.
Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens That Honor Plants, Place and Spirit is one of my new all-time favorite garden books. It was written by Steve and Lauren Springer Ogden, who have written other books and are beautiful designers in their own right. But before you run out and buy this book, beware that this is not a book to be loved by everyone.
This book will appeal to landscape architects and very serious designers. This is not a “put this plant here” type design book with planting plans and flowering plant lists. Most of the negative reviews I read were from people who misunderstood the audience for this book and the writers’ approach.
That said, they do include several plant lists like “Conifers deserving more use” or “Woody plants with precocious flowers”. Not exactly mainstream planting lists, but something I lapped up. They tackle interesting topics like designing within microclimates, designing plants to capture light (either rising or setting sun), looking to nature to guide us toward plant communities, using plants to give us a sense of place, etc. The photos are gorgeous, inspiring and educational. It’s a book I will keep and use for decades in my journey as a landscape designer.
Designing edible landscapes is not something covered by this book, but rarely if ever have a seen an edibles-only garden that looks decent. Even my garden still has a fair share of ornamental plants as a backdrop or compliment to the edible plantings. If you are looking for not-your-run-of-the-mill design inspiration or just a book for the plant nerd in your life, you might consider this gem. | <urn:uuid:8c79bb6e-1941-458a-a96f-1f85d82fc6c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hipchickdigs.com/2013/01/book-review-plant-driven-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961505 | 436 | 1.554688 | 2 |
States receive more flexibility, resources to implement Affordable Insurance Exchanges
More than half of states now creating marketplaces to help millions of families and small businesses buy insurance
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today awarded nearly $220 million in Affordable Insurance Exchange grants to 13 states to help them create Exchanges, giving these states more flexibility and resources to implement the Affordable Care Act. The health care reform law gives states the freedom to design Affordable Insurance Exchanges – one-stop marketplaces where consumers can choose a private health insurance plan that fits their health needs and have the same kinds of insurance choices as members of Congress.
The Department also released several Frequently Asked Questions providing answers to key questions states need to know as they work to set up these new marketplaces. Critical among these are that states that run Exchanges have more options than originally proposed when it comes to determining eligibility for tax credits and Medicaid. And states have more time to apply for “Level One” Exchange grants.
Today’s awards bring to 29 the number of states that are making significant progress in creating Affordable Insurance Exchanges. States receiving funding today include: Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Vermont.
“We are committed to giving states the flexibility to implement the Affordable Care Act in the way that works for them,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. “Exchanges will give consumers more choices and make it easy to compare and shop for insurance plans.”
In the new Exchanges, insurers will provide new information such as an easy-to-understand summary of benefits and costs to consumers. The level of detail will sharpen competition between carriers which will drive costs down.
HHS also released today a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in anticipation of state legislative sessions beginning in January. Answers will help advance state policy development for Exchanges. For example, they clarify that Exchange grants can be used to build a state Exchange that is operational after 2014; that state-based Exchanges will not be charged for accessing Federal data needed to run Exchanges in 2014; and that state insurance rules and operations will continue even if the Federal government is facilitating an Exchange in the state. HHS will also allow greater flexibility in eligibility determinations, allowing, for example, a state-based Exchange to permit the Federal government to determine eligibility for premium tax credits.
Of the 13 states awarded grants today, 12 are receiving Level One grants, which provide one year of funding to states that have already made progress using their Exchange planning grant. The 13th state, Rhode Island, is receiving the first Level Two grant, which provides multi-year funding to states further along in the planning process.
Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia have already received planning grants, and 45 states have consulted with consumer advocates and insurance companies. Thirteen states have passed legislation to create an Exchange.
States have many opportunities to apply for funding. To accommodate state legislative sessions and to give states more time to apply, HHS also announced a six-month extension for Level One establishment grant applications. Applications now will be accepted until June 29, 2012 (the original deadline was December 30, 2011).
For the FAQs, visit http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/regulations/index.html#hie.
For more information on Affordable Insurance Exchanges, visit http://www.HealthCare.gov/law/features/choices/exchanges/index.html
For more information on the states receiving grants, visit http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/2011/05/exchanges05232011a.html | <urn:uuid:2dc18cc6-ec1d-4ec2-8f15-e402240f2eb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.akbizmag.com/Alaska-Business-Monthly/November-2011/States-receive-more-flexibility-resources-to-implement-Affordable-Insurance-Exchanges/ | 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 | 0.945775 | 766 | 1.539063 | 2 |
CBLDF Wins Victory in Arkansas
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 19, 2004 - 12:13
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund welcomes the November 16 ruling of U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele of the federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas who ruled that Act 858, amending the Arkansas Code, is unconstitutional. The amendment criminalized the display of books which are inappropriate to younger minors but constitutionally protected as to older minors and adults.
The challenge to the law, resulting from its amendment in 2003, was brought by a broad-based coalition of plaintiffs including That Bookstore In Blytheville, along with trade associations representing bookstores, librarians, book publishers, comic book publishers and retailers and distributors in Arkansas, as well as the ACLU of Arkansas.
The CBLDF and co-plaintiffs believed that the law unconstitutionally required retailers and libraries to prevent all minors from accessing constitutionally protected materials that may be considered inappropriate for younger minors. By requiring plaintiffs physically to segregate such material, the statute unconstitutionally restricted adults and minors from browsing materials protected by the First Amendment.
Judge Eisele had directed certified questions as to the meaning of the amended statute to the Arkansas Supreme Court. Based on the response from the Supreme Court, the judge found the display provisions "facially unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution because such provisions are overbroad and impose unconstitutional prior restraint on the availability and display of constitutionally protected, non-obscene materials to both adults and older minors."
CBLDF Director Charles Brownstein says, "This is a victory for readers and retailers in Arkansas whose First Amendment rights have been preserved by this well-considered decision." | <urn:uuid:204d02da-bc49-45a7-8a06-55725fbf974e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://comixtalk.com/node/1963 | 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 | 0.948924 | 359 | 1.8125 | 2 |
On Wednesday, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, and 53 other House members sponsored a bipartisan resolution to aid the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
In a statement, Nadler said the resolution would ensure New York residents that Congress supported sending aid to Sandy victims.
“This no-nonsense bipartisan resolution sends an important message to millions of Americans whose lives have been profoundly altered by Hurricane Sandy: Congress is committed to cutting through bureaucracy to provide immediate assistance, to help you rebuild your homes and businesses, to repair the infrastructure that was damaged, and to reemerge in the not-so-distant future a nation that is stronger and better prepared,” said Nadler, in a statement.
Because Sandy was responsible for more than 100 deaths as well as billions in damages and widespread power outages throughout the eastern coast, the resolution serves to promise necessary resources to those affected.
“Every day in my own district in New York, I witness utter devastation throughout the streets and neighborhoods and I pass businesses that are shuttered or destroyed,” Nadler added. “We must now do everything in our power as elected officials to meet the needs of our communities.” | <urn:uuid:436e30fe-0d72-4f4e-94fe-161ffd159f99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bayside.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/rep-nadler-sponsors-sandy-aid-house-resolution | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953056 | 245 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said UK firms may put hiring on hold amid a subdued and uncertain recovery.
While it said the economy will shrink by a lower-than-feared 0.1% this year - a marked improvement on the 0.7% contraction it predicted in September - it added there were major headwinds facing the UK from the wider global economy.
In its half-yearly forecast, the group said: "Although employment grew strongly in 2012, unemployment is expected to rise slightly in 2013, as the subdued recovery and continued uncertainty may make firms hesitant to hire," although it expects the UK economy to grow by 0.9% in 2012, rising to 1.6% in 2014.
The OECD added Chancellor George Osborne should push back his debt reduction target if growth proves slower than expected, believing the Bank of England should continue with its economy-boosting quantitative easing (QE) programme, which is "providing significant support".
Its comments come amid mounting speculation over whether QE will be extended beyond £375 billion following comments from Bank policymakers suggesting current conditions mean it is having little further impact.
In its global forecasts, the OECD said the world's economic recovery will be "hesitant and uneven" next year and warned the risk of a deep recession cannot be ruled out, and it expects the 17-country eurozone to struggle further in 2013 despite recent positive steps to stabilise the crisis.
It forecasts a 0.4% contraction this year in the eurozone and a 0.1% fall next year, a 2% growth in the US economy next year, and growth across the OECD nations is expected to grow by 1.4% this year and next.
Angel Gurria, secretary general of the OECD, said: "The world economy is far from being out of the woods.
"The US 'fiscal cliff', if it materialises, could tip an already weak economy into recession, while failure to solve the euro area crisis could lead to a major financial shock and global downturn." | <urn:uuid:f2d719bb-0cce-489a-8a6b-4f9d3be34778> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/360908/OECD-warns-on-rising-unemployment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942833 | 422 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Computers at the Department of Motor Vehicles are due for an upgrade next year.
Plans for the upgrade started three years ago. It will be a cloud based system which officials say will cut down on the amount of paper work needed to process renewals and other related business.
One thing it won't do though is cut down on the amount of time people spend at the DMV. Officials say that all of the changes will only be noticed behind the scenes.
The software upgrade will take place in two phases. The tag offices will get the first upgrade in January, and the drivers' license offices will be upgraded in the spring. | <urn:uuid:d7dfb57b-f600-43a3-9a4d-91f82c455934> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kwch.com/news/factfinder12/kwch-news-djr-dmv-software-upgrade-causes-headaches-20111103,0,3068170.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966839 | 128 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Atheistic attacks on Christianity
Real Christianity is nothing if not Biblical. The Bible & its teaching, laws and gospel is the very basis of our faith, and all attacks on Christianity boil down to one thing: an attack on the reliability of the written word of God, and a consequent undermining of Christian liberty.
Creation & evolution
There is a concerted attempt, led by the humanist establishment, to debar teaching on Divine Creation in our schools, even in âFaithâ schools. Richard Dawkins, the high priest of atheism suggests that to teach children that God created is a form of child abuse. We all deplore child abuse, so what do you do to âFundamentalist Christiansâ, who dare to do such a thing? The humanistic consensus regards any kind of criticism of its assumptions to be heresy. This means we now have humanism, evolution and atheism enthroned like a religion as intolerant as was medieval Romanism.
Historic Biblical Christianity has taught that sexual activity is to be confined to marriage between one man and one woman. Humanism wants to make us believe first of all that the marriage covenant is irrelevant, and that any form of sexual activity, whether heterosexual, homosexual or âbisexualâ is completely acceptable and not to be opposed. People who publicly affirm the traditional Christian view are already penalized; they can and do lose their jobs & livelihood. Thirty years back this would have been unthinkable.
On the other hand the same people, who declare that marriage is irrelevant or unnecessary, want to legalize same-sex marriage. This has already occurred in some countries. But be warned, if it ever becomes law in Britain we are only a step away from being forced to recognize its validity & to perform such âmarriagesâ in our church premises, and to be punished if we speak out against it. It could become a âhate crimeâ.
This all adds up to one thing: an attack upon the word of God, and thus upon God himself. Furthermore it is an attack on our freedom as Christians to speak out our faith in the public domain. We should pray and take action against these things.
If all faith in God is a delusion, if every deity is imaginary, then it follows that no religion is any better than any other. They are all equally false, so they must all be seen as equal. To say that faith in Jesus as Saviour is the only way of salvation is tantamount to attacking Islam, Rabbinic Judaism & every other manmade religion on earth. This is why Religious Education teachers in our schools are forced to teach comparative religion & instruct our children that every expression of whatever faith is equally valid. The real goal of this is to devalue Biblical Christianity.
How sad that so many in our churches are swallowing the humanist agenda whole. Evolution, the claims of the LGBT lobby & the drift towards not only union with false churches, but unity with any & every kind of religion you can imagine. Our Protestant forefathers saw the harlot of Revelation 17 as the Roman Church. But we can now see that she is more than that. She is surely an amalgam of religions all ultimately coming under one umbrella, that of Rome.
So what do we do about it? Do we just sit down & mope? I think not. Surely we should do what our fore-fathers in the faith always did, which is to hold to biblical principles and preach the gospel whatever the cost and continue instant in prayer & fasting. If Jesus comes soon let him find us faithfully proclaiming his truth. If he delays his coming, may he send gracious revival to gather in his elect bride. âBlessed is that servant, whom his Lord when he cometh shall find so doingâ Matthew 24:46. By the way, donât forget that the God revealed in the Bible is definitely going to prevail over all the things we have mentioned above
God bless and shalom
Jean and Keith Parker | <urn:uuid:d1517781-9fc9-4d10-86e1-e8497f1e4c5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moriel.org/MorielArchive/index.php/discernment/news-from-jean-and-keith-parker | 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 | 0.961465 | 815 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Francis A. L. Darling was not what one typically thinks of when considering the masses of humanity that emigrated to this country at the beginning of the last century. He came from a comfortably off, upper-middle-class English family and arrived as a first-class passenger on the ship he sailed in on. Francis was sent to live with relatives in Massachusetts because his father had been killed in a freak accident while riding in a hansom cab in London, and his mother was considered incapable of raising Francis and his sister Nanette on her own due to a propensity to dipsomania, which became chronic with the shock of her husband's untimely death. Or so the story goes. Interestingly, Francis' mother was also named Frances (pronounced identically but spelled differently), but was known as Fanny, which caused me and my siblings no end of amusement growing up, since her maiden name was Longbottom.
Prior to moving to this country, Grandfather Darling attended Mill Hill School in London, an all boy's public school (it has since gone co-ed). He finished his secondary school education in America, where he attended the Mount Herman School for Boys (as it was then known), followed by Yale, and then the Union Theological Seminary. As I have written in a previous post, Grandfather Darling was a man of the cloth and spent the better part of his career as a minister leading a large and robust congregation of the faithful in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
|Dr. and Mrs. Frank A. Darling, circa 1938|
At some point after moving to America, Francis A. L. Darling legally changed his name to Frank A. Darling, masculinizing his first name and dropping his second middle name. When I asked him as a boy why he did this, he told me that it was because it sounded more American to him, and he wanted to fit in in his adopted country. However, given what I have subsequently learned about his rather tumultuous adult relationship with his mother, who ultimately went certifiably mad, I believe his real motive was to sever such a direct connection to the woman whom he believed to have abandoned him as a boy, when he was sent off to live in this country with no prospect of ever returning to England. He clearly had issues with this, and with her. And I think I would have issues, too, if I had been sent off as a boy of fourteen by my mother to live with distant relatives in a foreign land, never to return.
Frank Darling was a great clothes horse for most of his life and also a great pack rat. It was a family joke that it was virtually impossible to get him to part with something once he had acquired it, clothing in particular. When he died in the mid 1970s he left behind an astonishing amount of clothes and related accessories that he had accumulated over fifty or more years. If I remember correctly, and it has been some time now, I think there were more than sixty suits in his closets, over forty sport jackets, and seventy or so pairs of trousers. Plus there was an equally jaw-dropping number of shirts, ties, shoes, hats, etc. Included in this mass of clothing were such oddities as a pith helmet (to our knowledge he had never been to such a place that required the use of one), his running shoes from when he was on the Yale track team, and a blazer from the Mill Hill School.
While most of my grandfather's clothing was sent to a nearby college's theater department, my mother--who was given the task of sorting through and packing up his clothes--put aside several of the more interesting pieces for me and my brother, Frecky. The frock coat and collapsable silk top hat that I got are long gone, but I have managed to hold on to my grandfather's Mill Hill blazer.
Made out of chocolate brown wool with stitched binding in the same color, the blazer has silver buttons and the school's crest on the breast pocket, along with the letters OMRFC. The maker's label is so frayed that it is impossible to read who made it. Inside the blazer's breast pocket I found this card, written in my grandmother's handwriting, that explained what OMRFC stood for:
"Old Millhillians Rugby Football Club." I have always found it amusing that my grandfather, who, according to my grandmother did not play rugby at Mill Hill, owned this blazer. Clearly he had fond associations of the school, for he bought the blazer twenty or more years after he would have graduated from it, had he stayed in England. But how is it that he came to own this particular one, with the OMRFC letters upon it?
When I inherited the blazer it did not fit me. I was able to wear it for a time, though, after I had the body taken in and the sleeves lengthened. However, with the thickening that middle age has brought upon me the blazer no longer fits me, and it mostly hangs in a closet. That is, when Boy doesn't wear it, as the blazer fits his more youthful figure, and he goes about in it from time to time. But it is a rather fragile garment, having been made over eighty years ago, and Boy only wears it infrequently, on special occasions.
My grandfather's blazer is a treasured possession of mine, and something that I will never part with so long as I remain sentient. I value it because it is a vivid connection with him, and one that is intensified by knowing that he not only owned it, but wore it, too. The blazer was something that my grandfather valued sufficiently to seek out and buy on a return trip to England, and then kept (along with a lot of other clothes) for more than fifty years. While I also own a number of other things that I inherited from him (bits of silver, cufflinks, and such), none of them resonate with me in quite the same way.
Tell me, do you have something that you inherited that you also treasure? | <urn:uuid:360de9ef-6d7b-4d41-9b38-24dd8ef009d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reggiedarling.blogspot.com/2010/09/old-mill-hillian-rugby-football-club.html?showComment=1295544510215 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991208 | 1,252 | 1.546875 | 2 |
A State Department cable released this week by WikiLeaks has revived a lingering debate about whether the 9/11 hijackers may have had a covert “support network” within the United States that was never fully identified by the FBI before its members fled the country.
The February 2010 cable, sent from the U.S. Embassy in Qatar to the State Department, asked that the Department of Homeland Security place a United Arab Emirates citizen on the terrorism “watch list” because of suspected links to the 9/11 attacks. The cable states that the suspect, identified as Mohammed Al-Mansoori, was being investigated by the FBI because he had associated with three Qatari men who had flown out of the U.S. on the eve of the attacks after allegedly spending time casing the World Trade Center and the White House.
The cable was generated by fresh intelligence that the Qataris were planning to return to the U.S. just last year, law enforcement officials told NBC News, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Qataris later abandoned their plans, but the new information prompted the U.S. Embassy in Doha to alert Homeland Security officials to the fact that their U.A.E. associate should be added to the watch-list "as an individual who may pose a threat to civil aviation in the U.S. and abroad," the cable states.
Plot to build 'Hiroshima light switch' weapon foiled: Feds
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U.S. law enforcement officials stressed Wednesday that there was no active investigation of the Qataris and Mansoori. They said that the information about the four men was just one of many leads that were thoroughly investigated at the time and never led to terrorism charges. No evidence has since emerged in detainee interrogations or elsewhere linking Mansoori or the three Qataris -- identified in the cable as Meshal Al Hajri, Fhad Abdulla and Ali Al Fehaid -- to the 9/11 plot, one senior official said.
'This adds to the concerns'
Eleanor Hill, the former staff director for the congressional joint inquiry that investigated the 9/11 attacks in 2002, said the State Department cable reinforces questions that she and others had at the time about the thoroughness of the FBI’s investigation..
“This adds to the concerns that we had eight years ago,” she said. “One of the issues we had was did all the (the hijackers) just show up here or was there in fact a support network that was helping them” prepare for the attacks?
Hill said she doesn’t specifically recall receiving information about the Qataris or Mansoori. But she pointed out that the congressional inquiry ultimately concluded that such a support network had existed, helping the hijackers open up bank accounts, find housing, obtain drivers’ licenses and otherwise prepare for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
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The FBI “kept focusing on whether these people knew about the plot or the attacks,” said Hill. “But our view was, they didn’t need to know about the plots and attacks. The issue was, were they sent to the country and told to help” the hijackers. Given al-Qaida’s penchant for secrecy and compartmentalization, it was likely the members of the network were never told the ultimate purpose of their mission, she added.
The 9/11 commission raised similar questions in its 2004 report, particularly focusing on several associates of two of the 9/11 hijackers in Southern California. (One of them was Anwar Awlaki, a radical imam later deported who has since resurfaced as a major recruiter for al-Qaida in Yemen and a top target of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.)
But asked specifically about the Qataris and Mansoori, Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 commission’s executive director, said in an email: “In 2004, the commission did not have information reliably linking these people to the 9/11 plot. As best we can remember, we were aware of a lead with some of these elements. At that time it had been further investigated and, from what we could learn, it had not panned out.”
The broader issue of a possible support network, which is likely to get more attention as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches later this year, surfaced this week when the London Daily Telegraph published the WikiLeaks-obtained cable, which was sent last February from the U.S. Embassy in Doha.
The “priority” cable requests that Mansoori be added to a watch list as an individual “who may pose a threat to civil aviation.” It identifies him as an individual who is “currently under investigation by the FBI” for “aiding people who entered the U.S. before the (9/11) attacks to conduct surveillance of possible targets and providing other support to the hijackers.”
The cable further identifies the three Qataris as men who flew to the U.S. on Aug. 15, 2001, and then visited the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the White House and various areas in Virginia. The men flew to Los Angeles on Aug. 24, where their activities raised the suspicion of hotel staff, the cable states: They paid for their room in cash and requested that it not be cleaned. “Hotel cleaning staff grew suspicious of the men because they noticed pilot type uniforms, several laptops and several cardboard boxes” addressed to various countries in the Middle East as well as Afghanistan, it said. The men also had a smashed cellular phone in the room and computer printouts listing pilot names, airlines, flight numbers and flight times, according to the cable.
“A subsequent FBI investigation revealed that the men’s plane tickets were paid for and their hotel reservations in Los Angeles, Ca. were made by a convicted terrorist,” the cable states. The investigation also revealed that the men spent a week in California, with Mansoori traveling to different destinations in California.
The Qataris were initially booked to fly from Los Angeles back to Washington on Sept. 10, 2001, on an American Airlines flight, but never boarded. (That same plane was hijacked the next day by the 9/11 hijackers and crashed into the Pentagon.) Instead, the Qataris boarded another flight on Sept. 10 from Los Angeles to London. They then flew home to Qatar two days later.
Current and former FBI officials involved in the 9/11 investigation said the bureau was flooded with hundreds of leads after the attacks that ultimately went nowhere. The case of the Qataris falls into that category, they said.
But FBI officials were unable to explain why the cable, sent in February 2010, would have described Mansoori as being “currently under investigation” or say who the “convicted terrorist” was who paid for the Qatari’s plane's tickets.
The cable's author, however, may not have had his facts entirely correct. News reports in 2002 and 2003 identified a Qatari terror suspect who lived in Chesapeake, Va. Fahed Alhajri, a sportscaster for Qatari television who left the country in 2003after being convicted in a student visa fraud scheme. Alhajri, who initially aroused suspicion when he was discovered to have had photos of Osama bin Laden and the World Trade Center in his apartment, as well as a datebook with only one entry -- on Sept. 11.Story: Report: Army was warned about Manning's state of mind
Convicted of visa fraud, not terrorism
According to the reports, he also had paid for the Los Angeles hotel room and plane fare of his brother -- Meshal Alhajri, one of the Qataris identified in the cable -- and two friends, according to the reports. But a May 2003 Philadelphia Inquirer story -- and court records – show that Fahed Alhajri was convicted of visa fraud, not terrorism.
A senior U.S. law enforcement official said that the counterterrorism division of the FBI has requested that officials responsible for the 9/11 probe review the matter. The bureau’s response may be hampered by the fact that most of the agents involved in the initial probe have left the agency, the official said.
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The official also said that, unlike the Qataris, Mansoori remained in the U.S. and was questioned by the FBI in the course of a years-long investigation into his activities. Although the bureau never developed sufficient information to charge him, he was deported by U.S. officials several years after the attacks. “I don’t think people were in love with him,” the official said, implying that the FBI continued to have suspicions about him.
After the State Department cable last year, it was “safe to say” he was added to the U.S. government’s watch-list, the official said.
The three Qataris, however, have never been questioned by the FBI, the official added.
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I love animals and wildlife experiences are amongst my most favorite whenever I travel. Of course I always make sure that the experiences are done in as a sustainable way as possible and more than anything else that the animals aren’t hurt. Besides zoos, another wildlife related activity I’ve been known to engage in is to visit aquariums whenever I travel. I still have great memories of visiting the National Aquarium in Baltimore as a young child and marveling at the giant tanks and the rainforest recreated on an entire floor of the massive institution. But the more I visit these sights, the more I realize how similar they all are to each other. No, not just similar, but almost the same.
The Largest, Bestest in the Whole Entire World!
It seems like every aquarium I’ve ever been to has had some superlative attached to it. The largest tank, the biggest building, the most impressive squid – you name it, they all seem to feel the need to impress with size. You don’t see this in the zoo world; the National Zoo doesn’t advertise by saying it has the world’s largest camel enclosure. (It doesn’t, I made that up) I don’t understand why size has to play into it at all actually. If an aquarium is well curated with interesting exhibits, I don’t care how big it is. In fact, the larger it is the greater the risk of them screwing something up.
Every aquarium is exactly the same
Yes, that’s right, every aquarium is the same; each and every one features the same general displays. There’s the ‘indigenous’ section where local fish and small mammals are displayed in a sometimes awkward but usually boring fashion. The Georgia swamp exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium was just painful. So while yes, this section changes by the location, its very presence is entirely predictable and you know what, it’s usually not all that interesting.
Then there’s the cute animal section, usually populated by manatees, dugongs, dolphins, river otters or the like. This is when the kids and those with fancy cameras get all excited, even though it in no way differs from any other aquarium in the world. There’s also usually a freaky or scary fish section with piranha, things that light up and a few poisonous things, preferably dart frogs.
To shock and amaze, every aquarium also has one of those water tunnels, under which not really surprised visitors pass in order to see the underbellies of rays or sharks.
I realize I’m not the demographic towards which these are geared, but they’re there so I’m going to talk about them. When is the last time you went to an aquarium show without someone under the age of ten? Try it and let me know how long you last; I bet it won’t be long. First, there are some ethical concerns about putting on entertainment shows using hyper intelligent dolphins or snappy looking seals, enough of a concern that I refuse to participate. Even if the institution can prove the animals are fine, unless you are the aforementioned toddler you only need to see one in your life. Just make sure to take a lot of photos so that you’ll remember it and you’ll be fine.
And that brings me to the last point. Children, in a far greater ratio than zoos or other similar experiences, heavily populate aquariums. That’s fine, but I think that’s also why I won’t be visiting any more aquariums. I just don’t think I’m their demographic any more. I think that for children the idea of seeing animals, any animal, in action isn’t only a great learning opportunity; it’s a lot of fun for them. They haven’t been jaded by visiting far too many of these watery wonderlands and instead will hold that day in their memories for the rest of their lives, just like I have.
And maybe that’s the real issue here, maybe in reality aquariums really are for kids, for families. Maybe that’s why I’ve grown apart from them, even though I still love exploring new (reputable) zoos. Yes, I do think every aquarium is pretty much the same. They all have a couple of small, unique exhibits that separate them from others around the world, but even those don’t matter. Do you think kids care who has the largest tank or the most impressive whale sharks? Naw, they don’t care. The parents don’t’ care. Most visitors don’t care. Other scientists care though and I’m sure it’s a nice fundraising tool, but in the real world of deciding whether or not to visit an aquarium, such thoughts don’t enter into the equation.
What does enter the mind of prospective patrons is what the experience will do for them and their families. You SHOULD visit an aquarium if you’ve never been to one before. You SHOULD visit an aquarium if you have kids. But, if you’re like me simply looking for new and fun animal experiences, then this is an entirely avoidable stop on your travel itinerary.
So aquariums, while I do love you (I really do) you and I are done, and I think I’m ok with that.
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