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One of the first things that Naughty Dog wants to make clear in the development diary is that the infected are not zombies. Instead, they are the result of a fungal parasite inspired by a Planet Earth documentary the developers watched featuring a fungus taking over ants. This makes the infected a living but still deadly organism versus the dead and decaying zombies.
We're not sure if that makes much of a difference beyond semantics but it does allow Naughty Dog a little more freedom in how the infected creatures act in the game. The video shows the final stage of infection where the fungal growth on the human body essentially renders the creature blind. The only way for the creature to "see" is to emit clicking sounds like a bat using echo-location. The result should be some tense moments as Joel and Ellie maneuver around the game environment and try to distract the infected by creating noise elsewhere.
You can watch "The Last of Us" development titled "Hush" in our video gallery. The game is currently scheduled for a June 14 release. A demo will be included with copies of "God of War: Ascension" which releases in March.
Via: PS Blog | <urn:uuid:69862fb1-b353-4cca-b477-1c58ad804bac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.examiner.com/article/the-last-of-us-dev-diary-looks-at-the-non-zombie-infected | 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 | 0.948286 | 234 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Geographical Index > United States > New York > Rockland County > Report # 5022|
Submitted by witness on Sunday, September 29, 2002.
Tracks found in snow & other stories from vicinity of Bear Mountain State Park
(Show Printer-friendly Version)
STATE: New York
COUNTY: Rockland County
NEAREST TOWN: Stony Point
NEAREST ROAD: Cedar Flats
OBSERVED: My incident was no visual in the sense of seeing bigfoot itself. another family member of mine has seen him before. So it has been common in the area. My incident however was simply footprints in the snow. I saw the footprints in the snow in the morning. We had snow the night before. The footprints started around a tree in front of our house. I followed them and they led around the back of our house to another tree. The footprints then circled around the area in front of the tree about 4 full circles and then stopped. There were no footsteps leading from the circle to anywhere else, as well as no footsteps back to the front of the house. I put a garbage can lid over one of the prints to preserve it until I could take a picture of it. Unfortunately I never had a chance.
OTHER WITNESSES: there were others that saw the footprints with me, but I can guarantee that they want nothing to do with this.
OTHER STORIES: The other incidents that I heard of came from within the same street. In my incident I talked about the chicken coup and shed/rabbit cages. Well the raspberry bushes in between had a trailer in front of them, and the main house in front of the trailer. One incident occured when someone was cooking in the trailer and found themselves from the story I was told looking eye to eye with bigfoot. The person was in shock, lying under the bed, and the other person in the kitchen with them ran to the window after the person who made eye contact ran. the second person saw the rear of the animal and it was hairy. They never said if it was on all fours, or on two feet. But the window in the trailer was at least 7 foot off the ground outside.
TIME AND CONDITIONS: I saw the footprints in the morning, so it was at some point during the night. We had no snow previous to that night.
ENVIRONMENT: The area is fairly dense forest. We live pretty much in Bear Mountain state park. So there is a combination of coniferus and decidous trees. The area where the footprints led to was our chicken coup. I can't remember if at the time there were chickens in it or not. Where the footprints started there was a cherry, apple, and chesnut tree. About 30 yards to the right of the chicken coup there was a shed that we had built little cages for our rabbits. In between the chicken coup and shed/rabbit cages was a thick area of rasberry, and black berry bushes. And to the immediate front right side of the shed/rabbit cages was a young pear tree. | <urn:uuid:f658df72-f50c-47a2-a79a-3919d62eeb33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=5022 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982755 | 644 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Rochester and Jane. Photo from the official Focus Features website.
I should preface my review with the disclaimer that I am prodigiously difficult to please when it comes to adaptations of novels. I should also say that when it comes to Jane Eyre in particular, my perspective is necessarily an academically skewed one tainted by years of close study, so I hope the review that follows won't unduly offend anyone; it certainly isn't intended to do so, and I completely understand how someone coming to the film without such excess "baggage" would view it with a much milder eye. But I'll begin with the positive - the good stuff - the costumes!
Visually the film is very, very strong. The cinematography is stunning and the location shots and color palates are gorgeous works of art. The costumes, designed by Oscar-winning Michael O'Connor (of The Duchess fame), are fantastic and one of the greatest assets of the film. Apparently, both O'Connor and the director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, elected to set their adaptation in the 1840s because they both dislike the excesses of 1830s fashion. The only costume in the film styled to date from the latter period appears on Aunt Reed at the beginning of the movie. With the director as invested in the details of dress as the costumer designer, it's no wonder the costumes here achieve such a high standard of superior excellence and accuracy which makes all the difference to the film as a whole.
Jane's beautifully understated wedding gown.
I wish I could find a close-up of the sheer bonnet because
I'd love to try to make something like it.
Photo from Vanity Fair.
From leather to hair accessories to shoes, O'Connor describes how the details of the period correct drove his design decisions. He used antique textiles from the period wherever possible, though due to their rarity, he explains, they were most often able to be integrated only in small amounts as trims and laces. All of his fabric choices and designs are based on meticulous research, and his mantra throughout this film rings sweetly in the ears of historical sewers. "The lining, the buttons, the stitching, everything was totally researched. I always say, ‘Is there a reference for that, is that something they did?’ And if people say [they] don’t know, then I say we can’t do it—there’s so much information from that time that there’s no excuse not to have it." For the full Vanity Fair interview from which this quote and much of this information is drawn, click here. For a closer, very sigh-worthy look at some of the costumes and accessories, accompanied by comments from O'Connor and Fukunaga, see this movie "Style Gallery" from THR.
The straw bonnet at right was made with antique hat braid gifted to the filmmakers.
I wish I could find a picture of the back because it's an amazing piece. I want it!
Photo from the official Focus Features website.
Some of the film's costumes were recently on display to promote the film, and can be seen on the Hollywood Movie Costumes and Props blog. Be sure to check out the wedding gown, Jane's plain grey dress, and the cloak and plaid gown Jane wears when she flees Thornfield.
The stunning ensemble worn in the final scenes of the film.
The dress fabric is a reproduction cotton and the hat made from antique hat braid.
Photo from the official Focus Features website.
All that said, I was quite disappointed with this movie when it came down to the interpretation of the story by both the screenwriter and the actors, especially after all of the hype surrounding the film. One reviewer praises "the freewheeling adaptation [which] drops needless scenes and spurs the story ahead with galloping momentum," but I read these characteristics very differently. I appreciated the intriguing re-organization of the timeline of the story; the Moor House scenes are privileged at the beginning of the movie, which was a productive move on the whole because film adaptations in general conveniently forget or downplay that rather difficult-to-reconcile (yet so crucial) portion of the book. On the other hand, though, there were just too many other scenes vital to the complex and multi-layered overall meanings of the novel that were completely left out: Bertha Mason was relegated to less-than-a-subplot (a strange move, considering the fantastically gothic feel of the film overall), there was little dialogue at all provided for the fleeting Gateshead opening (though these famous opening chapters establish the basis for who Jane becomes and what ultimately motivates her throughout her life), and Blanche Ingram, that essential figure of contrast, self-doubt, and ultimate self-definition for Jane, remained one-dimensional and almost unintegrated into the plotline. I was also a little surprised by the abrupt ending and the lack of any real show of remorse by Rochester during the "confession" scene (which has some of the finest dialogue in all of English literature). The re-writing of so much of the original dialogue in general across the whole of the film seemed a little unnecessary. Also, the incredibly understated nature of Mia Wasikowska's Jane was a little too quiet and subdued for the Jane that Bronte seems to imagine. But in the end, I'm left wondering how many of these faults are the result of some unfortunate editing, necessitated by the all-too-brief two-hour feature film requirements.
Blanche Ingram's fabulous riding habit.
The hat is trimmed with an antique veil.
Photo from the Enchanted Serenity of Period Films blog.
As I'm certain many of you know, there are numerous film and television adaptations of Jane Eyre. My personal favorite is the 1983 BBC miniseries starring Zelah Clarke and Timothy Dalton; not only does it preserve almost all of the original plot and its structure, but also much of the dialogue is drawn verbatim from the pages of the novel. For those used to big-budget, bright-and-shiny Hollywood adaptations (or even BBC productions of the last 15 years), the starkness of the sets and the simplicity of the cinematography will be a shock, but you quickly get used to it and I almost prefer that style because it privileges the story, rather than the medium used to represent it. The 2006 Masterpiece Theatre version is also good and worth watching (Toby Stevens makes a very fine Rochester!). The other adaptations I don't much fancy and wouldn't recommend, either for reasons of mis-cast lead roles or because they ignore or re-write massive chunks of the original novel.
Marla Schaffel and James Barbour in the 2000
Broadway production of Jane Eyre: The Musical.
Photo from Playbill.com.
But by far and away the finest adaptation of Jane Eyre ever made is - believe it or not - the musical version, written by Paul Gordon and John Caird, which played on Broadway from 2000-2001. If you aren't familiar with it, this review from Playbill.com gives a fantastic overview (except when it comes to that last paragraph, which is wildly inaccurate, in my opinion). Luckily, I've located some amateur video of the production on YouTube (follow the links to the "Jane Eyre: The Musical" in parts at the side), and although the quality isn't the best, it gives a fine idea of how the musical achieved what (to date) no film or television adaptation has: representing the passion and the soul that motivate the story in the first place. It's just a shame that something necessarily as ephemeral as a theatrical production is the dramatization that has come closest to "getting it right." | <urn:uuid:1a67d71c-91c8-42e1-92ba-aeb7455c349b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fashionablefrolick.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-personal-eyre-affair-newest-jane.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96534 | 1,618 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Home » Posts tagged 'NBA'
Tag Archives: NBA
Today’s quote is from the amazing Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time.
Jordan made the profound statement:
“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.”
That’s important insight into the value of expectancy.
As a differentiating value, expectancy means anticipating with confidence of fulfillment; or a belief centered on the future.
Jordan didn’t become so great by accident or luck. He believed in a great future by anticipating it.
His confidence came first, and then his competence quickly followed.
Many people like to reference the statement “believe in yourself.” But Jordan’s statement brings greater clarity to this idea. His belief is centered on the future because he expects it. And he expects it from himself.
What about you? Do you have a dream? Do you have a desire to do something great or become the greatest in your field? If so, I encourage you to carefully study the value of expectancy. When you combine anticipation with confidence, and a willingness to challenge yourself, you might just become the Michael Jordan in your field.
Now, wouldn’t that be cool?
As one of the greatest, most celebrated athletes in history, Michael Jordan conquered professional basketball as no one had before. Powered by a potent mix of charisma, nearly superhuman abilities, and a ferocious need to dominate the game, he won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and captured every basketball award and accolade conceivable before retiring and taking a top executive post with the Washington Wizards. But retirement didn’t suit the man who was once king, and at the advanced age of thirty-eight Michael Jordan set out to reclaim the court that had been his dominion. When Nothing Else Matters is the definitive account of Jordan’s equally spectacular and disastrous return to basketball. Washington Post writer Michael Leahy reveals the striking contrast between the public Jordan and the man whose personal style alienated teammates and the Washington owner who ousted him.
With the possible exceptions of boxer Muhammad Ali and baseball player Babe Ruth, no athlete has made a greater impact on American society-or in the world-than Michael Jordan. Follow the life of one of the most recognizable athletes and living brands inside this engaging and balanced biography.
He is among the best-known and wealthiest athletes in the history of organized sports. With the possible exceptions of boxer Muhammad Ali and baseball player Babe Ruth, no athlete has made a greater impact on American society-or in the world-than Michael Jordan. Follow the life of one of the most recognizable athletes and living brands inside this engaging and balanced biography.
When basketball stars Larry Bird and Magic Johnson retired in the early 1990s, Michael almost single-handedly propelled the NBA to stratospheric levels of success and international visibility. As a player for the Chicago Bulls, he generated instant crowd thrills with his record-setting drives and dunks, selling countless books, newspapers, videotapes, NBA game tickets, and hours of television time. The NBA promoted Michael, basing its popularity on his image as the greatest showman in sports history. Yet his sports hero status extends beyond NBA records. Michael changed the game by becoming the most effectively marketed athlete of his generation. Nike and many other companies rode-and continue to ride-on the coattails of Air Jordan’s legend. Author David Porter highlights Jordan’s on and off the court accomplishments and examines his relationship with Chicago Bulls’ coaches, his commercial endorsements, and his current role as part-owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. A chronology, photos, career stats, and a bibliography of print and electronic resources round out this biography of one of the most influential athletes of the twentieth century.
The most gifted athlete ever to play the game, Michael Jordan rose to heights no basketball player had ever reached before. What drove Michael Jordan? The pursuit of team success…or of his own personal glory? The pursuit of excellence…or of his next multimillion-dollar endorsement? The flight of the man they call Air Jordan had been rocked by controversy. In The Jordan Rules, which chronicles the Chicago Bulls‘ first championship season, Sam Smith takes the #1 Bull by the horns to reveal the team behind the man…and the man behind the Madison Avenue smile. Here is the inside game, both on and off the court, including:
- Jordan’s power struggles with management, from verbal attacks on the general manager to tantrums against his coach
- Behind-the-scenes feuds, as Jordan punches a teammate in practice and refuses to pass the ball in the crucial minutes of big games
- The players who competed with His Airness for Air Time — Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Bill Cartwright — telling their sides of the story
- A penetrating look at coach Phil Jackson, the former flower child who blossomed into one of the NBA’s top motivators and who finally found a way to coax “Michael and the Jordanaires” to the their first title
A provocative eyewitness account, The Jordan Rules delivers all the nonstop excitement, tension, and thrills of a championship season — and an intense, fascinating portrait of the incomparable Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. But his pre-eminence is more than just extraordinary athletic ability: the lessons of his life-such as focus, passion, hard work, perseverance and accountability-have shaped him into one of the most revered celebrities of the 20th century.
In this inspiring book Pat Williams, motivational speaker and senior vice president of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, reveals Jordan’s method for living a life of greatness that we can all incorporate into our lives. Fascinating anecdotes and quotes from those who know Michael best provide a glimpse into a persona as sweeping and immense as any generation has ever witnessed. Peppered with examples from Williams’s life and those of other star athletes and celebrities, this uplifting book shows that we are, indeed, all capable of fulfilling our full potential. Readers from all walks of life can appreciate and aspire to living life like a champion.
Dwyane Wade, the eight-time All-Star for the Miami Heat, has miraculously defied the odds throughout his career and his life. In 2006, in just his third season in the NBA, Dwyane was named the Finals’ MVP, after leading the Miami Heat to the Championship title, basketball’s ultimate prize. Two years later, after possible career-ending injuries, he again rose from the ashes of doubt to help win a gold medal for the United States at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As co-captain, he helped lead the Heat to triumph in the 2012 NBA Championship. Little wonder that legendary coach Pat Riley has called Dwyane “B.I.W.”—Best In the World.
As incredible as those achievements have been, it’s off the court where Dwyane has sought his most cherished goal: being a good dad to his sons, Zaire and Zion, by playing a meaningful role in their lives. Recounting his fatherhood journey, Dwyane begins his story in March 2011 with the news that after a long, bitter custody battle, he has been awarded sole custody of his sons in a virtually unprecedented court decision. A Father First chronicles the lessons Dwyane has learned as a single dad from the moment of the judge’s ruling that instantly changed his life and the lives of his boys, and then back to the events in the past that shaped his dreams, prayers, and promises.
In A Father First, we meet the coaches, mentors, and teammates who played pivotal roles in Dwyane’s stunning basketball career—from his early days shooting hoops on the neighborhood courts in Chicago, to his rising stardom at Marquette University in Milwaukee, to his emergence as an unheralded draft pick by the Miami Heat. This book is a revealing, personal story of one of America’s top athletes, but it is also a call to action—from a man who had to fight to be in his children’s lives—that will show mothers and fathers how to step up and be parents themselves. | <urn:uuid:87bf770b-0967-441f-aa82-87acf8c23828> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lugenfamilyoffice.com/tag/nba/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963348 | 1,708 | 1.515625 | 2 |
This week, the Washington Post wrote this headline, “Maryland Woman is Charged in Death of Two Girls: Children Were Found in Adoptive Mother’s Freezer Last Year.“ (emphasis added)
This is a horrible story. But can you tell me why it’s important to the narrative that the woman was their mother by adoption? Is the Washington Post suggesting this was somehow more heinous because the mother had adopted them? That it would have been less horrible if the crime had been committed by a biological parent? This sort of writing is one of my pet peeves as a mother by adoption — the fact that the children were adopted is irrelevant to the story, so why mention it?
When I’ve asked reporters that, they say, well, it’s an additional fact and we like to include as many facts a possible. That’s nice, but as a journalist and an attorney, I like facts too — if they’re relevant. The not-so-subtle inference in many if these stories is that somehow families by adoption are suspect. If there is another reason to include the information about how a family is formed, then why not include it in each story?
And don’t get me started on this whole Madonna brouhaha. Pop culture media loves to mock celebrities who want to adopt children from countries. Last night, CNN was having a discussion about why there isn’t more of an effort to have celebrities set an example for the rest of us by “adopting American.”
To say I was insulted is an understatement. Where does the media get off telling families where and who they should adopt children from? Really, if they want to go down this road, then I want to see coverage about all the celebrities who have used extensive fertility treatment to have bio kids. Or, if they’re looking for a real discussion, not a sensational one, let’s talk about the realities of adoption here and abroad, plus how each family should be entitled to determine for themselves what’s best when making a family.
I agree with one thing CNN is suggesting — it is time for a serious look at the adoption process in this country, but to suggest that there are half a million kids ready for adoptive homes is inaccurate. While there may be that many children in foster care, the point of the foster care system, while far from perfect, is to ultimately reunite families and keep them together, not to be a feeder system for adoption.
As for the critics are are pointing and yelling at Madonna for heading back to Malawi for another child, I’ve got news for you. PunditGirl talks all the time about her wish that she had a sibling from China and wishes there were other people in our family who are Asian and “look like her” (there are, but they live thousands of miles away). At nine, she longs for more of a daily connection to her birth culture. We’re doing the best that we can, making sure she learns Chinese language and culture and that we actively cultivate friends who also have Asian children. But at the end of the day, it’s not enough for her.
In light of our “advancing ages,” there isn’t another sibling in PunditGirl’s future. But if we were a tad younger, I think it would be a good thing for her and would help give her more of the connection she’s searching for.
Given the fact that Madonna already has a child from Malawi, she’s actually doing a responsible thing by making a choice to adopt from the same country as her son, David. But I guess that’s not a sensational enough story for the tabloids.
Photo by PunditMom | <urn:uuid:9ef54b8f-1d87-497d-a37a-3b0b3aa78549> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.punditmom.com/2009/03/punditmom-rants-again-about-media-coverage-of-adoption-its-not-just-about-madonna | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972243 | 797 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The jury's verdict has come back on the first phase of the Oracle-Google trial, and while they found that Android had infringed Oracle's copyright, the jurors couldn't decide unanimously on the issue of fair use.
Throughout the case, Google has argued it made "fair use" of the Java APIs in question when developing Android. Because the jury couldn't rule that Google acted outside of fair usage in its actions, the verdict is effectively a deadlocked one, and the strongest part of Oracle's case has rather stalled.
Judge William Alsup told both sides yesterday that without a verdict on fair use, there was "zero finding of copyright liability".
The result means that there doesn't seem to be much chance of Oracle coming away with the billion dollars in damages the firm had hoped for.
The jury's verdict was expected to be delivered last week, so evidently there was a great deal of arguing over the fair use aspect, which wasn't resolved ultimately. Now the second phase of the trial, which concerns patent infringement, has begun - but this is a less weighty issue than the key one of copyright.
Google also now intends to push for a mistrial on the copyright issue, arguing that the verdict has no standing without a decision on the issue of fair use.
Oracle could opt to attempt to persuade the judge to issue a verdict on fair use himself, but that's not likely to be a productive avenue. Alsup said of that prospect: "I could do that at any time, but I may never get there. I think there are arguments that go both ways on that." | <urn:uuid:2dc23998-3468-460b-9d55-ec5bacf1efd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itproportal.com/2012/05/08/google-infringed-oracle-copyright-but-trial-deadlocked/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978682 | 324 | 1.710938 | 2 |
x-posting it here because I'm still looking for more information concerning the why of this subject. Hope you can help me.
First: this should not become another AMD vs Intel discussion.
There's something I don't understand: When I compare the specs of the Intel Core i7-377K to those of the AMD FX-8350, the AMD scores higher on every point I know is relevant for the speed, except the L1 data cache (the i7 has 4x32kb, the FX 8x16, does that make a real difference?). The AMD has twice as much cores, (much) higher clockspeed, and a some more cache.
But in practice, those two CPU's don't preform that much different. In many benchmarks (this one as example) the AMD scores slightly less, or at least never significantly better. Can someone explain why? Thanks in advance. | <urn:uuid:9f302755-2f43-48a5-b9b0-4fde05417e3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/18ttq4/can_someone_please_explain_this_to_me_xpost_from/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959642 | 186 | 1.664063 | 2 |
May 10, 1986 |
Prince Charles talked Zen with Buddhist monks, and Princess Diana slipped on a peach kimono given to her by the mayor of Kyoto yesterday as the royal couple got into a Japanese state of mind in their first full day in the East. "Should I put it on?" Diana asked Charles when she was presented with the kimono at a garden party on the grounds of a 17th-century shogun's castle. As Charles smiled, she did, to the "oohs" and "ahs" of onlookers, and then took a few dainty steps. The garment, with floral decorations, was made especially for the princess and took six months to fashion.
December 6, 2003
Is Russia in, out, or just thinking about the Kyoto agreement on climate control? Thing is, it doesn't matter much. That's because we're out. The U.S. Congress, led by stiff opposition by business, slapped Kyoto forcefully down in 1998. And no global agreement is very global without us. So the question is: Since we don't have Kyoto, what can we have? What would a good climate-control treaty for the future look like? Here are a few broad things such a treaty ought to have: Flex.
December 7, 1997
Few issues have generated more submissions to this page lately than the Kyoto conference. Below are some selections. Just who are the 2,600 scientists proclaiming the certitude of human-caused global warming? Nine out of 10 are unqualified to render expert opinions, according to a Citizens for a Sound Economy study. Among the so-called experts: a plastic surgeon, landscape architects, lawyers, dermatologists, English and linguistics experts, a hotel administrator, a gynecologist, sociologists - even an expert in traditional Chinese medicine!
December 8, 1997 |
If there were a contest for the most overblown news event of 1997, the global warming summit in Kyoto ought to win hands down. The editors of my hometown paper, the Bangor Daily News, were charitable in labeling it merely "hot air. " Meanwhile, we've been distracted from the real issue: the economic gains that sensible greenhouse reduction strategies would bring. Kyoto seems hollow indeed when we consider the quieter but more significant politics of transit policy. While U.S. delegates to the global summit trumpeted this nation's newfound commitment to the environment, Congress struggled to approve a paltry two-year $2.3 billion-dollar subsidy for Amtrak.
December 14, 1997
The Kyoto global climate treaty is a big surprise in many ways. Surprise No. 1: A treaty happened. Surprise No. 2: The United States, the roped-down Gulliver of the negotiations, led the way, sort of. Despite a foggy keynote address, Vice President Gore sent the right message: Loosen up. And people did. Surprise No. 3: This thing has guts. The United States agrees to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The European Union had wanted 15 percent.
April 19, 1986 |
A seven-man Japanese delegation headed by the vice mayor of Kyoto completed a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia-area plants yesterday in what both the visitors and their hosts hope might start a new high-tech partnership between the two cities. Accompanied by their own interpreter, the trade group came here seeking to attract investment in Kyoto, Japan's oldest city. Like Philadelphia, Kyoto (population 1.7 million) is rich in history and culture but has fallen behind in economic development.
September 28, 1987 |
ENIAC, the world's first computer developed at the University of Pennsylvania, is headed for Japan as part of Philadelphia's contribution to the World Exposition of Historical Cities. The exposition will be held in Kyoto from Nov. 8 to 29 to commemorate that city's installation as the capital of Japan 1,200 years ago. Officially, the exhibit is only open to cities that are more than 1,000 years old and have a population exceeding 500,000 people. While Philadelphia obviously does not fit both of those criteria, the city was invited to attend because numerous area businesses have been active in Kyoto, according to Lee T. Stull, managing director of the Greater Philadelphia International Network.
December 11, 2000
"Doesn't it make sense to keep our options open so we can implement [Kyoto's] terms without harming, disrupting or complicating our lives?" opined former U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop, a virulent opponent of the Kyoto protocol. Nothing's that easy, buddy. Sure, it was more convenient to dump raw sewage into rivers, throw away aluminum soda cans, and use aerosol hairspray, but Americans have adjusted just fine to sewage plants, recycling and pump spray-bottles. And our environment is better for it. Similarly, Americans can painlessly step up to slow global warming.
December 5, 1997
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto involves 1,500 delegates from 150 nations, a cloud of greenhouse gases and some of the most complex international negotiations ever attempted. Clearly, the nations of the world need to do something. The oft-heard claim that "global warming is bad science" is bunk. The massive preponderance of scientific wisdom tells us the atmosphere has warmed and greenhouse gases are involved. But science can't tell us yet what it all means.
June 3, 2012 |
Most tourists traveling to a foreign country are looking for a guidebook vacation. That was my intent as I planned a recent family trip to Kyoto and Tokyo to visit our son. He has been living on the northern island of Hokkaido since July. I imagined visiting the serene shrines of Kyoto, the tall towers of Tokyo, and viewing the scenery from the high speed bullet trains. While I did enjoy these experiences in Japan, the memories that will remain with me are the details I discovered along the way. Take umbrellas, for example. | <urn:uuid:97081098-34ca-4217-96ed-af99b407e98a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.philly.com/keyword/kyoto | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954991 | 1,228 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The BC Safety Authority (BCSA) held its annual public meeting today (June 13) to report back on its 2011 accomplishments to the people of British Columbia. The yearly meeting is part of the BCSA’s commitment to maintain transparency and accountability.
The BCSA is the provincial regulator that oversees safety for a variety of technical equipment including amusement rides; boilers, pressure vessels and refrigeration systems; electrical equipment and systems; elevating devices such as elevators and escalators; gas appliances and systems; passenger ropeways such as ski lifts; and provincial railways.
“We oversee the safe installation, maintenance and operation of equipment in these seven technologies,” said Catherine Roome, BCSA President and Chief Executive Officer. “We have programs, practices, policies and regulations in place to continually improve the safety system end-to-end, especially the interaction of people and technology.”
At the annual meeting, the BC Safety Authority also reported that in 2011:
- Over 60,000 physical assessments were conducted across all technologies
- Over 195,000 permits, licenses and certificates were issued.
- Over 160 compliance orders were issued.
- Over 500 incident reports were received.
- And 71 Electrical Tech Talks and three Gas Tech Talks were offered to clients across the province.
The British Columbia Safety Authority keeps people safe by mandating the safe installation and use of technical equipment. The BCSA also issues permits and licences, educates, and conducts onsite inspections of high-risk situations.
BC Safety Authority | <urn:uuid:67fbee45-8a89-449c-96c9-ea00d27fd74f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://safetyauthority.ca/news/bc-safety-authority-conducts-annual-public-meeting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960147 | 314 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Sometimes you need to send out a quick e-mail for a project that you are working on, something really important that you just remembered, or perhaps just a note to yourself. If you use Gmail and like keeping things simple then join us as we look at the GmailThis! Bookmarklet.
GmailThis! in Action
To get set up all that you need to do is visit the webpage (link provided below) and drag the bookmarklet to your “Bookmarks Toolbar”.
For our example we decided to go with the “personal note” approach. As you can see here we selected/highlighted a portion of the text and then clicked on our new bookmarklet.
The bookmarklet will automatically copy and paste the name of the webpage, the URL, and any text that you selected/highlighted into the new e-mail. A nice feature that we liked was that it opened in a new temporary window to help focus on composing our letter.
This is what you will see when you have finished your letter and clicked “Send”. The window will automatically close itself after a few seconds so that you do not even have to worry with it afterwards.
Looking at our “Inbox” there is our new e-mail looking oh so nice.
If you need to send out a quick e-mail using your Gmail account then this bookmarklet makes it as quick and simple as possible. This is definitely one to add to your bookmarklets collection.
- Published 04/16/10 | <urn:uuid:f06551b4-69a3-4363-a4b6-3d3785e940db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11805/send-an-e-mail-quickly-with-the-gmailthis-bookmarklet/?showcomments=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934683 | 319 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Imagine this: Arnold Schwarzenegger travels back in time to defeat Sarah Connor, mother of the future rebel leader John Connor. But instead of a shotgun, his only weapons are … rock, paper and scissors.
You now have the chance to beat the Terminator in a new online game of rock-paper-scissors on The New York Times’ website.
Sound boring? It’s not. The machine hand you compete against represents a sophisticated computer program that can learn your patterns and strategies. The longer you play, the more it learns — and the harder the game gets.
And it gets really hard if, instead of choosing the “beginner” difficulty level, you choose “advanced.” Then you’re playing roshambo against a computer that has learned overall patterns of all the human opponents it has faced since going live on NYTimes.com Saturday.
Check it out at NYTimes.com. The game may not be as sophisticated as IBM’s Watson on “Jeopardy” last month, but it’s much more accessible. And much more of a fun time-killer for your Monday back at work. | <urn:uuid:e8e9777e-14b3-4d7a-a629-9db8c4481353> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.beaumontenterprise.com/hottopics/2011/03/07/forget-watson-%E2%80%93-play-rock-paper-scissors-against-a-machine-nyt/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934196 | 241 | 1.71875 | 2 |
"...caught in the very act..."
"Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. In our Law Moses commanded
that such a woman must be stoned to death. Now, what do you say?" (John 8:4-5)
Who, me? Busted - caught in the act - gotcha! No mistake about this mess, Pete was the one guilty of shredding a piece of styrofoam in the middle of the floor. He stole it from the basement as I was unpacking a box and dropped a piece of styrofoam packing on the floor. It's actually a game he learned to play with me years ago when I was using the same styrofoam to build a model train layout in the basement. If I left a piece on the floor Pete would steal it. My part was to yell, "Hey, that's mine," which made him even more proud of himself as he scampered away with his prize. So, when I caught him this time, all I could do was say, "You win," pick up the pieces, and make a mental note to myself not to drop more styrofoam. As you can tell from the picture Pete has absolutely no remorse.
To catch someone in your life in the act of doing something hurtful to their own self or others is a difficult moment. It raises all sorts of challenging feelings such as fear, anger, sadness, betrayal, hurt, and more. Thoughts such as, "How could they do such a thing?" or "Surely I must be mistaken in what I saw or heard," cascade one on top of another. Sometimes the idea of confronting the one caught in the act is so daunting that we choose to ignore what we just observed or was made known to us. Maybe we're not sure we want to face the life changes that may occur as a result of facing the reality in front of us or maybe we're certain we'll be hurt more if we confront. Other times the anger and even rage that comes with the discovery can push us to the point of destroying relationship.
To confront sin is to build life, not destroy it. In the Gospel of John the leaders were trying to trap Jesus with their legal question and build a case for his destruction by bringing the adulterous woman to him. However, Jesus used the situation to make it clear to the leaders that God's purpose is to build, not destroy life by confronting the person caught in the act with the opportunity for change. Jesus told the woman that she was forgiven (not condemned) and should go and not sin anymore. God's forgiving, compassionate grace offers the sinner the opportunity to turn away from their hurtful actions, learn from their actions, and be healed. In other words, confronting sin can bring hope.
Too often times we can't see the hope so we're afraid to confront sin, especially our own sin. Sometimes we have to help others see the hurt they're causing when they can't or won't see it for themselves. Other times we need to catch our own selves in the act. In either case, there is hope. I pray that God will give me the courage to confront when necessary. How about you?
Blessings and Peace,
Pastor, Cross Lanes United Methodist Church
Cross Lanes, WV
PS: I had a major glitch in my address data base so some of you might receive this twice and some of you might receive this who asked to be removed from the mailing list. I'm working on the problem and should have it cleared up by next week. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Help save lives! For more information on my new book, "A Relentless Hope: Surviving the Storm of Teen Depression," visit www.survivingteendepression.com. | <urn:uuid:b1dafdd9-6c8d-493c-b0c6-5a00fefb0fee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/caught-act-144800151.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979068 | 792 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Giving the gift of living roses
(BPT) - Everyone loves to receive a bouquet of roses as a gift, but an even better gift is one that keeps on giving for years to come. Why not give a beautiful rose bush instead of a bouquet of flowers? Whether for birthdays, holidays, the birth of a baby, a house warming or even as a hostess gift, it's a wonderful show of appreciation and sentiment to share the beauty and fragrance of roses with loved ones. With the right selection and a few simple pointers, you can be sure those recipients will remember your special gift long after cut flowers would have perished.
Roses are excellent gifts that can deliver messages to recipients as well. There is a lot of significance behind the color and name of a rose to indicate love, friendship, passion or even innocence. Whether you give a cousin the same variety of rose that grew in Grandma's garden or select a rose named "Angel Face" for the birth of a baby, the sentiment behind the rose is often just as important as the gift itself.
Here are some pointers on how to give the gift of roses:
* Climbers, miniatures, groundcovers or shrubs? Whether you're giving a rose to be planted in the garden or one already potted in a beautiful container for the patio, remember to choose according to the recipient's outdoor space. Roses generally require full-sun exposure, or at least six to eight hours of direct sun per day. If the recipient has only a tiny patio or balcony for flowers, try a miniature variety in a lovely container. For those with ample sunlight and a bare fence or trellis, choose a climber. For a nice impact near the front door, select a shrub, and for a great way to fill in bare spots around taller sun-loving plants, try a groundcover variety. Although most roses will survive well in cold or warmer climates, always check the growing region for the varieties you're considering, just to make certain the plants will survive.
* Purple, orange, white, yellow, even blue or bi-color - roses aren't just red or pink anymore. Whatever your favorite color is, there is most likely a rose to match. They also come in a variety of sizes and shapes from hybrid tea roses to antique roses. Choose large roses that are great for cutting and bouquets or smaller, more open flowers that can cover a trellis or fence with a brilliant wave of color. Aromas vary too from spicy and sweet to fruity or even with a slight hint of chocolate. Walk around the nursery and experience all there is to offer in your region, then choose the one that seems to fit the person you have in mind. Also, don't be afraid to ask the experts at the nursery for suggestions.
* Type up some simple instructions to include when gifting a rose. Here are some basic tips for planting and growing roses:
- Keep in mind roses like full sun, although they will tolerate partial shade.
- Along with good sunlight, roses also like lots of water but, make certain the location or container has good drainage, to prevent the roots from sitting in standing water. To help prevent diseases, concentrate your watering to the base of the plant, to avoid getting the leaves wet.
- When planting in ground, use a good quality soil like Miracle-Gro Garden Soil for Roses
to give your plants a nutrient boost when they are planted in the garden or around the house. In containers, be sure to use a specialty potting mix that allows proper balance between drainage and water holding, such as Miracle-Gro Moisture Control Potting Mix.
- Roses can be susceptible to insect feeding. To keep those critters from devouring your beautiful plants, use Ortho Rose & Flower Insect Control Plus Miracle-Gro Plant Food Granules. This can be used immediately when planting, or for established plants, when pest damage is spotted on your roses. Repeat application every eight weeks during the growing season to help keep your roses insect free.
- To keep your roses blooming all summer long, deadhead wilted flowers above the first leaf, and trim back any dead branches. This will help air to circulate throughout the bush and prevent plant diseases. For northern climates, prune the rose bushes in the spring, after the threat of frost has passed.
- Many rose varieties will survive winter in the northern climates, but the roots and lower branches may need to be protected by building up a mound of soil or mulch around the plant to a depth of 8 to 12 inches. Additional protection can come from straw or dry leaves, as well as wrapping the plant in burlap.
Roses are beautiful in any setting. They can create elegant bouquets and centerpieces and, most of all, make memorable gifts. Share the gift of roses with friends, neighbors and loved ones by giving them one of these beautiful plants and some simple tips on how to get it started growing. Each summer when the roses bloom, they'll be a beautiful reminder of your sentiment, allowing your gift to be enjoyed for years to come. | <urn:uuid:947d8ca0-039a-4026-be1d-16d3e3e52d49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moberlymonitor.com/section/?template=araArchiveDetails&CategoryID=445&article=8061301422&archive=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936076 | 1,048 | 1.609375 | 2 |
There’s too much going around my brain right now…
New models for managing rights and copyright on digital materials: Reacting to the recent Mandelson madness. Don’t cut off our broadband, allow us to pay what’s fair for content, whilst watching or listening to it anywhere we want – after all we’ve paid for it, we deserve to be able to do at least that! However, the ‘industry’ doesn’t know how to do this because it limits its thinking to the outdated modes of rights management we have today.
Social R&D: The value of domain exploration i.e. companies and individuals following curiosity-based research with end consumers in the context of a specific domain or industry, to see what needs, and opportunities they can un-earth before then innovating around those areas; rather than focusing on trying to solve particular perceived ‘problems’.
Firms of endearment: Having re-watched a Lou Carbone talk at MIX09, I re-adjusted some of my investment strategies today. He cites “Firms of endearment” a book that asked people “what companies would you mourn the loss of?” and shows that the companies that topped this chart hugely outperform the rest of the marketplace. What if we only invested in companies that we love? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if the companies we hated shrivelled up and died a lot faster precisely because nobody loved them? Or those investment strategies actually influenced companies to change their ways to focus more on experience and getting us to love them.
Influencing Behaviour Change as a new discipline or area of study within the context of the industries I work in taking what has been learned in other areas and applying it to some of the challenges we face. Many of our society’s problems are due to fixed modes of behaviour. “If only people would… “ is a common cry levelled at problems as far ranging as climate change and anti-social behaviour. I’ve noticed a few things that give me some clues that potentially ‘community’ is quite a key influencing factor in behaviour change. However is anyone really focusing on behaviour change? Or are we split into two halves: Those who assume behaviour change won’t happen, and so change the environment or create solutions that don’t require people to change their behaviour (low carbon houses or low emission vehicles for example) – and those who assume you have to incentivise behaviour change, and limit themselves primarily to stick or carrot measures (charge people for carrier bags or pay them to recycle). Is there a trick we’re missing by not focusing at a more granular level on how people make decisions, and how over time we can influence behaviour change in a more sophisticated way in a number of areas that will make a difference to our society.
The question is… which shall I explore first?? | <urn:uuid:27288c42-28ae-44f7-938c-35ccec43cc7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://consultingblogs.emc.com/pauldawson/archive/2009/11/30/what-next.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954847 | 611 | 1.5 | 2 |
The Fringe Benefits Tax Assessment Act 1986 (“FBTAA”) provides for substantial concessions where an employer pays for various costs associated with relocating an employee. These expenses can be met directly by the employer or passed on to the employee as part of a salary sacrifice arrangement. These concessions are available only if an employee relocates solely to perform employment duties i.e. if it weren’t for the employment duties, the employee would have continued to live in his or her previous place of residence.
From the employer’s point of view:
- All the costs incurred are tax deductible as if they were paid as salary and wages.
- GST input credits are available where the employer is registered for GST and a tax invoice is evident.
- NO Fringe Benefits Tax is payable at all.
From the employee’s point of view:
- If the employee met relocation costs out of his own income then NO amount would be tax deductible and he would be taxed on his full salary package.
- By structuring his salary to include a sacrifice or reimbursement for relocation expenses he receives these amounts TAX FREE.
Taxpayer has been asked to relocate in order to take up a new position with a new employer. He estimates that the costs associated with the relocation to be $60,000. His employer has indicated that they are willing to package the relocation costs as part of his salary. They offer:
- To structure his salary to include an allowance of $60,000 or
- To reimburse the taxpayer for actual costs on the basis of documentary proof
If the Taxpayer takes the allowance:
The full amount of $60,000 will be taxable and the taxpayer will not be entitled to any deductions for the costs associated with relocation as these will be fundamentally private, capital or domestic in nature.
If the taxpayer chooses to be reimbursed for expenses up to $60,000:
The employer will be able to fully deduct the amount of the reimbursement.
No tax will be payable by the taxpayer and no Fringe Benefit Tax will be payable in relation to this amount.
Relocation benefits which the taxpayer’s employer can offer are as follows:
- Removal costs
- Costs relating to selling and buying dwellings
- Relocation transport
- Temporary accommodation and meals
- Connection of telephone, gas, and electricity
- Fringe Benefits
- Tax Treatment of Living Away From Home Allowance (LAFHA)
- Salary packaging
- Computing the Value of LAFHA (Living Away From Home Allowance)
- Testimonial – Tax Advice And Saving | <urn:uuid:19cbf192-031d-4eff-8aa8-857be31ea6f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smeba.com.au/relocation-benefits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955195 | 534 | 1.625 | 2 |
Think—what foods do you eat day in, and day out on a regular basis? Foods eaten daily can often cause chronic health problems. Would you believe that the majority of people have some hidden food sensitivities?
Is Gluten Fattening? Have you noticed all the “Gluten Free” items at the grocery store lately? Some stores have whole aisles dedicated to “gluten-free”. There’s even “gluten-free” beer! A few years ago, few people knew what “gluten-free” was; now it seems like the whole world is going gluten-free. What is gluten? Well, gluten is the [...] | <urn:uuid:bd1e6b13-9795-4d26-8ece-d7be64cf3ffb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.simplesmartnutrition.com/tag/celiac | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961975 | 145 | 1.554688 | 2 |
So far, so good.
I have studied hard, 2 hours aday for 4 days now. (I really hope I can keep my motivation up.)
usually I start with hiragana. I'll start learn katakana when i have memorised all hiragana that way that I don't need hiragana sheet's help when reading. I use about 15 mins top this at the start and the end of my studytime.
after I've done with hiragana I watch one episode of "Let's learn japanese basic 1" from youtube. I take some notes.
after that I read one chapter from "Genki 1" and "Takako Karppinen: Japanin kielen alkeet"
I'm not learning Kanjis yet and I don't really know when I should start with those.
that's pretty much it. usually it takes about 2 hours.
now I should do proper study plan that i could follow.
well then, cya. | <urn:uuid:8b88599f-20bb-4412-8ca4-46740d6e8ba4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thejapanesepage.com/node/752 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945366 | 215 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Official: Uganda to Pass Anti-Gay Bill this Year
KAMPALA, Uganda - Uganda’s anti-gay bill will be passed before the end of 2012 despite international criticism of the draft legislation, the speaker of the country’s parliament said Monday, insisting it is what most Ugandans want.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga told The Associated Press that the bill, which originally mandated death for some gay acts, will become law this year.
Ugandans "are demanding it," she said, reiterating a promise she made before a meeting on Friday of anti-gay activists who spoke of "the serious threat" posed by homosexuals to Uganda’s children. Some Christian clerics at the meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, asked the speaker to pass the law as "a Christmas gift."
"Speaker, we cannot sit back while such (a) destructive phenomenon is taking place in our nation," the activists said in a petition. "We therefore, as responsible citizens, feel duty-bound to bring this matter to your attention as the leader of Parliament ... so that lawmakers can do something to quickly address the deteriorating situation in our nation."
The anti-gay activists paraded in front of Kadaga, with parents and schoolchildren holding up signs saying homosexuality is "an abomination." The speaker then promised to consider the bill within two weeks, declaring that "the power is in our hands."
"Who are we not to do what they have told us? These people should not be begging us," Kadaga said of activists who want the bill to become law.
Uganda’s penal code criminalizes homosexuality, but in 2009 a lawmaker with the ruling party said a stronger law was needed to protect Uganda’s children from homosexuals. Parliamentarian David Bahati charged at the time that wealthy homosexuals from the West were "recruiting" poor children into gay lifestyles with promises of money and a better life. Bahati believes his bill is sufficiently popular among lawmakers to pass without difficulty.
Gay rights activists in Uganda, while opposing the bill, point out that it has helped their fight for equality by putting what used to be a taboo subject on the national agenda. Homosexuality is illegal in many African countries.
Pepe Julian Onziema, a prominent Ugandan gay activist, said the new push to pass the law was frustrating.
"It’s disappointing, but we are also going to seek a meeting with the speaker," Onziema said. But it is unlikely the speaker will agree to such a gathering, he said.
While the bill appears to be popular in Uganda, it has attracted widespread criticism abroad. President Barack Obama has described it as "odious," while some European countries have threatened to cut aid to Uganda if the bill becomes law. | <urn:uuid:42591372-c01b-4f08-940b-febc788d6a98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgesandiego.com/news/international/news/138893/official:_uganda_to_pass_anti-gay_bill_this_year__ | 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 | 0.970763 | 575 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Answers about Android
This may surprise some of you, but I'm not in charge of the BBC's Christmas schedule. I also have no editorial control over our output - even when it comes to technology stories - and I have no role in creating or maintaining the iPlayer and its various associated apps. But I still get asked about all these issues - and the one thing that comes up most frequently at the moment is the BBC's attitude to Android.
Why, when Android devices now have a much bigger share of the smartphone market than Apple, does the iPhone get BBC apps first? Why does the iPlayer run more smoothly on the iPhone and iPad, and when will Android users get the same ability to download as well as stream programmes? These and other questions fill my inbox and my Twitterstream.
But as I said, this is not my job, so I asked Daniel Danker, the BBC's head of iPlayer, apps and all that stuff, to explain. He started by outlining what looked like very ambitious plans to boost the BBC's Android capability, with a bigger team than that working on Apple devices.
"If you look at the amount of energy we spend on Apple, it pales in comparison to what we spend on Android. And that's right - we agree with the audience." But he then outlined the challenges involved:
RCJ: Why is there this gap between the BBC's offering for Apple and Android - I've heard talk that it's all about the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem?
DD: "It's not just fragmentation of the operating system - it is the sheer variety of devices. Before Ice Cream Sandwich (an early variant of the Android operating system) most Android devices lacked the ability to play high quality video. If you used the same technology as we've always used for iPhone, you'd get stuttering or poor image quality. So we're having to develop a variety of approaches for Android."
End Quote Daniel Danker
The number one device contacting us is still the Samsung Galaxy S2, which can't handle advanced video”
RCJ: Why don't you just forget the older devices and concentrate on new ones?
DD: "People write to us saying just that, why bother supporting older devices, why don't you just start with - and then they insert whichever model of phone they have. But more than a quarter of our requests to iPlayer come from devices running Gingerbread. And the number one device contacting us is still the Samsung Galaxy S2, which can't handle advanced video."
RCJ: Why do you bother with Flash or Air, and what's your strategy from now on?
DD: "Right now they provide the only means of playing video across the entire population of devices. We don't love the one-size-fits-all approach but we can't have an individual approach for each device, so we're going to find a middle ground.
"We're grouping devices by profile. We'll do advanced video for medium-sized devices with three- to five-inch screens, advanced video for larger devices like the Kindle Fire in a different way, and lower quality video for devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2 that aren't quite so capable of handling high-end video."
RCJ: But YouTube and Netflix seem to have cracked this - why can't you?
DD: "YouTube has lower expectations of quality, and they have no issues with content protection. Netflix has good quality but it builds the entire video player on phones - they have to reengineer for every device. That is costing a lot of money and as a public service broadcaster we don't have the resources to do that. People also say everybody else is doing it, but that's not true. Neither the ITV Player nor 4OD offers a full Android service."
[I thought Daniel was wrong about ITV - there is an app, but when I downloaded it onto a couple of devices, I found the experience very poor. And the reviews on the Google Play store are even worse than those for the BBC app.]
RCJ: Let's take a couple of examples of features which are available for Apple users - the iPlayer radio app and video downloads. Why are Android users waiting?
DD: "Believe it or not, we started work on the iPlayer radio app for Android on the same day as the one for the iPhone, but we're still resolving a number of issues. Background audio, for example. When you leave the app you want the Today programme to keep on running. That worked out of the box on Apple, but not on Android, and we're just getting there now.
"As for iPlayer video downloads, that's about sequencing. We didn't want to launch downloads while the video playback quality wasn't great. Now we've sorted that, downloads are around the corner."
RCJ: So what can you say about how quickly things will improve for the Android community?
DD: "By the end of 2013, it will be a distant memory of when Android was vastly different from iOS. We're moving very quickly now. We've just solved the experience on seven-inch tablets, we've upgraded for Jellybean 4.2. It will never be as easy to develop for Android as Apple because of the variety of devices, but we're not upset about that - it's where the audience is. Apple may punch above its weight in users accessing video and so on, but much of the Android audience are just the kind of people we want to reach, people who've never used their phones before in this way.
"And there are big advantages to the Android platform. Whenever we want to launch something new we just do it, without waiting for approval. And then there is multi-tasking, which you can't do on Apple. Once we solve the basics, there are a lot of things about the platform that will be extremely powerful."
So - some answers to a few of your questions. I'm sure the Android community will have plenty more. | <urn:uuid:58d53e96-047d-4ebc-9399-8a75f51fd76e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20754182 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962011 | 1,232 | 1.632813 | 2 |
New Review Tuesday: Election Special!
Jeremy beat me to the punch this morning by posting about one of my favorite election books of the season, Our White House. I've already posted reviews of the picture book candidate biographies, but I wanted to share another fun book that will take you from this very important day through the inauguration and beyond.
No matter who wins today, a new family will be setting up camp in the White House, taking their place in a long line of quirky parents, kids, and pets. First Kids: The True Stories of All the Presidents' Children is packed full of interesting facts about these presidential families, including:
- The Roosevelt family loved to eat scrambled eggs together.
- The Carter family used a secret acronym with one another, ILYTG, which means "I Love You the Goodest!"
- Chelsea Clinton was named for the Judy Collins song "Chelsea Morning"
Interestingly the author of First Kids is a kid himself, 13-year-old Noah McCullough, who's appeared on many national tv shows and has already thrown his hat in the ring for 2032.
This is a great book to have on hand for quick research for upper-elementary kids. It would be fun to share a few facts from it every morning until inauguration day. You could also use it as a model for different kinds of non-fiction writing, including bulleted lists and time lines.
Are you planning any kind of countdown until the next president is installed in office? And more importantly, did you vote? :) | <urn:uuid:4412cde1-ba60-4233-b60a-2055b6ac7d92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.scholastic.com/kid_lit/2008/11/new-review-tues.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967444 | 314 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Docket No. 634
Decided: Wednesday, March 5th, 1890
Opinion: 1 Wash. 189 (1890)
Court: Anders1 Court (1889-1892)
Note: We post only slip opinion(s) as published at the time of the decision. Please consult Washington Reports printed volumes for the opinion(s) in their final form. Undetermined votes indicate that the opinion(s) have not been evaluated yet.
TAYLOR v. OSBORN, 1 Wash. 189; 23 P. 858 (1890).
SUPREME COURT OF WASHINGTON
March 5, 1890, Decided Appeal from District Court, Walla Walla County.
Court: Judgment affirmed.
Counsel: A. E. Isham, for appellant. D. J. Crowley, for appellees.
Judge(s) SCOTT, J. DUNBAR, STILES and HOYT, JJ., concur. ANDERS, C.J., not sitting.
Opinion By: SCOTT The opinion of the court was delivered by SCOTT, J.--This appeal was taken under the act of 1883, and it appears that the statement of facts was settled without the notice to appellees required by section three of said act. Appellees were notified December 3, 1888, that appellant would apply on December 5, 1888, to have the statement of facts settled. The statute requires a ten days' notice. The statement was settled ex parte, no one having appeared for appellees. Objection is made in their brief to the consideration of the matters contained in the statement, for want of such notice, which objection we sustain.
There being nothing in the record upon which error can be based, the judgment of the court below is affirmed.
DUNBAR, STILES and HOYT, JJ., concur.
ANDERS, C.J., not sitting. | <urn:uuid:11d8012d-9eff-4b38-a1e8-026f3bca37d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://templeofjustice.org/cases/1890/1-wash-189/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94055 | 410 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Eight percent of teenagers already own an iPhone, according to investment bank Piper Jaffray, and 16 percent plan to buy one within the next six months. These numbers are both up from a year ago despite the current slowdown in consumer spending—in April of 2008, only six percent said they owned an iPhone and nine percent planned to buy one within six months.
Piper Jaffray released the numbers as part of its semi-annual "Taking Stock with Teens" survey, wherein it examined the buying habits of about 600 students in person as well as through online survey responses from an additional 7,500 students. In addition to the iPhone numbers, 86 percent of students who own an MP3 player said that theirs was an iPod—Piper Jaffray notes that this number is up from 84 percent last fall, though it's exactly the same as the 86 percent from last spring.
Students are using the iTunes Store to buy music more than they used to as well. According to Piper Jaffray's numbers, iTunes share rose to 97 percent from 93 percent in the latter half of 2008. This is all despite a "dramatic" 14 percent drop overall in teen spending. "The decrease in spending leads us to believe that the economy is forcing parents and teens to cut back on spending across the board," analyst Jeff Klinefelter said in a statement.
Still, these cutbacks apparently don't apply to Apple products as much as they do to things like Xboxes and a new pair of Nikes. Apple is preparing to announce its second fiscal quarter results on April 22, and preliminary numbers suggest that Apple will weather the economic storm better than some of its competitors. | <urn:uuid:3c9e8287-0dc3-42d1-a750-d9d81bc26442> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/04/survey-teen-iphone-ipod-ownership-up-despite-economy/ | 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 | 0.974338 | 342 | 1.78125 | 2 |
In preparation for reimbursement changes under the federal health reform law, California hospitals are reframing their financial models and seeking to treat fewer patients, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The federal government currently reimburses hospitals and physicians for treating Medicare and Medi-Cal beneficiaries based on how many services patients receive and how long patients are hospitalized. Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program.
However, the federal overhaul will align hospitals payments with patient outcomes. It also will penalize hospitals for preventable readmissions and hospital-acquired infections.
According to the Times, Medicare and Medi-Cal beneficiaries make up more than 50% of hospitals' gross revenues.
Changing the Hospital Finance Model
Michael Rembis, president and CEO of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, asked, "How can we change our mind-set from how many patients we have in the beds to how many patients we are keeping healthy and out of the hospital?" He noted, "We haven't figured out how to do that yet."
Industry officials said it is likely that more patients will be treated in clinics and physicians' offices than in hospitals and that hospital visits will be shorter.
The California Hospital Association said hospitals that fail to adapt to the new financial model might need to eliminate services or shut down.
Response to Changes
Anthony Wright -- executive director of Health Access -- said the current system is "inadvertently subsidizing bad care." He said he hopes the reform law's provisions lead to more coordination among hospitals and physicians.
Allen Miller -- a Los Angeles-based health care consultant -- said there still is uncertainty about whether hospitals will be able to reduce patient volumes because aging baby boomers might require more hospital stays in the coming years.
He said, "No matter how much we think we can decrease hospital admissions, we are still going to need the beds" (Gorman, Los Angeles Times, 3/5). | <urn:uuid:d14bf323-29d6-497c-b424-afc53d66a7e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2012/3/5/california-hospitals-seek-to-treat-fewer-patients-under-federal-overhaul.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942749 | 386 | 1.671875 | 2 |
A Commonsense Guide To ‘World Dominating’ Dividend Stocks
June 12, 2012 by Dan Ferris
As I’ve been expecting for years, the world is now flocking toward World Dominating stocks.
Right now, investors are fleeing bank stocks and mining stocks — the kind that tend to be very speculative. But almost every “World Dominating Dividend Grower” (WDDG) stock is holding up just fine these days. While the market is sinking, stocks like Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart are near yearly highs. I’m not surprised.
As I’ve been saying for years, these stocks are different from typical stocks. They are different from “the market.” WDDGs are vastly better.
If I could teach investors just one thing, it would be how to identify and value a World Dominating Dividend Grower business. It’s the single best way to get rich in stocks.
Let’s use Microsoft as a “case study.”
Microsoft is the World Dominator of personal computer software. Its Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office products enjoy enormous market shares of approximately 90 percent worldwide. So all over the world, whenever someone buys a PC and needs an operating system and office productivity software, he buys Microsoft nine times out of 10.
Nothing dominates its market the way Microsoft dominates PC software. Even Intel’s share of the global microprocessor market is “only” 80 percent.
In other words, it has an extraordinary brand, and it is No. 1 in its industry. Those are “on the surface” clues to finding these stocks. But we also need to look inside the company to find the financial clues of a WDDG business.
To say Microsoft has all the financial clues of a World Dominating Dividend Grower is the understatement of the year.
One of the hallmarks of a WDDG stock is consistently thick profit margins. This is the amount of money a company earns from each dollar of sales. A great business should have thick profit margins so it can pay you plenty of dividends, but that company should also have a sustainable long-term competitive advantage so it can consistently earn those thick margins.
Well, Microsoft doesn’t merely have consistently thick profit margins. It has the thickest margins of any business I know of, with gross margins (the margin earned before deducting the basic costs of doing business) consistently around 80 percent and net margins (the margin earned after deducting all expenses) consistently around 25 percent – after taxes.
That’s huge. Most businesses are ecstatic to earn net margins of 5 percent or 10 percent.
Another hallmark of a World Dominating Dividend Grower is huge free cash flow. Free cash flow is the final “cash in hand” number that a business owner has after deducting expenses. It’s a vital number for investors.
Microsoft gushes free cash flow like no other business. On sales of just over $73 billion, Microsoft generated just under $27.5 billion in free cash flow the past four quarters.
A third sign of a World Dominating Dividend Grower stock is a strong balance sheet. As shareholders of a business, we want to see lots of valuable assets and low debt. We want a strong balance sheet so we don’t have to worry about tough times causing a bankruptcy.
Microsoft’s balance sheet isn’t merely strong. It’s a financial fortress. The company has $59.5 billion in cash and short-term investments and less than $12 billion in debt. It could afford to pay off its debts nearly five times over. Microsoft has zero interest net expense because it earns more interest on its cash and investments than it pays on its debt. Sales could go to zero, and this company wouldn’t go bankrupt. It doesn’t get much safer than that.
Finally, for a company to qualify as a WDDG, we need to see a history of dividend growth. Microsoft is a relatively young dividend-payer. But what it lacks in history, it makes up for in growth.
The dividend has grown 150 percent since Microsoft initiated it in 2003. So the dividend has grown at about 10.9 percent per year for nine years. That number jumps to an even more impressive 12.4 percent if you look at the last five years alone. And it’s accelerating recently, with a 25 percent increase last fall.
Microsoft pays out less than 30 percent of its earnings per share. So there’s plenty of room for big dividend growth in the coming years. Right now, Microsoft yields 2.6 percent. Even if it merely maintains its growth of 12.4 percent per year, you’d be making 27 percent over your original cost in 20 years.
To sum up, there are obvious things to look for when you’re after the world’s safest, best dividend-paying stocks — the kind you can hold for decades and get rich. This includes a dominant brand and the top position in an industry.
But today’s essay shows you some vital “financial clues” for finding these stocks and why Microsoft is a great example.
P.S. In my latest issue of The 12% Letter (published a few days ago), I told readers about my two favorite WDDG buys right now. With a subscription to The 12% Letter, you can access this issue and my materials on how to find WDDG stocks. You’ll also find my proprietary list of these elite companies and the right price to pay. If you decide this information is not for you, we’ll refund 100 percent of your subscription. You can take us up on our offer, here, without watching a long promotional video. | <urn:uuid:117c3f4e-3774-4d23-a89c-3e16300fd05a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://personalliberty.com/2012/06/12/a-commonsense-guide-to-world-dominating-dividend-stocks/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=b19f116cf4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937001 | 1,216 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Objective Confirmed for UK’s Rotary Force
Britain’s Joint Helicopter Commander, Rear Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt, has found the formula to ensure force sustainability over the long term—all while continuing the fight in Afghanistan.
Helicopters were one element of the force structure where concerns applied, with force commanders on the ground not only lacked sufficient rotary support in terms of transport and resupply, but also in what fire support and ISTAR they could provide. It should be remembered that the UK’s first AW101 Merlin helicopters only deployed operationally to Iraq in 2005 with the brand new WAH Apache Longbows following them a year later into Afghanistan.
However, as in many conflicts, it is the military that carry the burden of adapting to the situation before them and, if they are fortunate, their government will recognise any weakness and try to rectify the shortfall.
Fast-forward to March 2010 and the office of Rear Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt, the commander of the UK’s Joint Helicopter Command (JHC), near Salisbury, Wiltshire. The Joint Helicopter Command was formed in 1999 to bring together under one command the battlefield helicopters of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force. But the force structure is changing—and for the better he says. “The new rotary strategy was endorsed just before Christmas and we are now in the implementation stage. It is a very exciting strategy which is exactly what we need to equip us for 2020 and beyond.”
The basic principle is that the UK’s helicopter force will eventually comprise only four types: “We have always said we need fewer types and fewer fleets within fleets. This strategy will leave JHC with Apache (WAH-64D), Wildcat (AW159), Chinook (CH-47) and Merlin (AW101). The mechanics of it will mean that Commando Helicopter Force (CHF) will take on the Merlin role in the littoral manoeuvre capability, the Merlin pilots and crew will become Chinook pilots and crew (the UK recently decided to buy 22 more Chinooks from Boeing), the Puma Life Extension program will happen turning 28 aircraft into Puma 2s (see sidebar page 28), and they will continue until 2022-2025 when they will be replaced by a medium multi-role helicopter (around 40 aircraft). What we are missing now is a life extension for the Sea King and a formal medium role helicopter. The challenge for JHC is making the plan work.” In all this Apache continues and Wildcat is procured.
In the short term 22 Lynx Mk9As are being up-engined to LHTEC T800s [same as the Wildcat] which will give it year-round hot and high capability that it did not have before. “We are sending aircraft out next month to do that and are also looking to fit it with a.50-caliber gun and try to offload some of the escort duties from the Apache” [through an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR)].
“My vision for JHC is fewer aircraft types that are far more agile and can swing from role to role without having to go through the machinations of role change or a different fit every time. So an aircraft flies from sea to land and fulfil the land role. It will ISTAR, datalink with UAVs and have a form of motion video with the ground force commander. It will really capture all the things we want to do but being driven by whatever requirement the ground commander has.”
As for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Johnstone-Burt says “I don’t see any UAVs coming into the JHC at the moment. They are looked after by the wider army but we keep a close eye on them. DAAvn (Director of Army Aviation) has had the release to service authority for UAVs for the army and because they are now within my HQ I now have a view. I do however think there will be lots more we will be able to do.”
|The UK recently ordered 22 additional CH-47s from Boeing as part of an effort to consolidate fleets to four types of helicopters. Photo by Patrick Allen|
From a strategic perspective, General McCrystal’s vision/doctrine is now completely joined up from Kabul right down to the tactical level in Helmand, says Johnstone-Burt. “Having recently been there, the whole philosophy of ‘courageous restraint’ is completely embedded now in our soldiers and throughout the command. The way that the Task Force Helmand Commander and the RC-South Commander are attuned is the best that I have seen in terms of the level of sophistication in understanding the tribal links and cultural complications.”
“We often talk of tipping points—but I do feel that we are at a window of opportunity for Afghanistan, and that we shouldn’t blink but press on and capitalize on the success we have already achieved, especially in Operation Moshtarak,” he added.
“I have served within JHC now for five years and I have to say that the helicopter force out there is the best I have ever seen. With the Prime Minister’s backing and encouragement, we have a density of aircraft that we have never had before and we are delivering in a way that we haven’t to date in a completely joined up fashion.”
Johnstone-Burt praised the way in which the Commander Joint Aviation Group, Col. Richard Leakey and his team had planned and executed the northern part of the Operation Mushtarak. This involved 1,200 troops being inserted within two hours using more than 40 helicopters, half of which were from the UK. This meant also taking command U.S. Marine Corps helicopters and Canadian helicopters in three different zones in that area. “It went smack on the minute in the early morning of Saturday, Feb. 13 and involved massive deconfliction planning in order to manage 11 assault waves of aircraft. It was a fantastic achievement. Again quite a seminal moment from a helicopter point of view. A complex UK planned and executed operation, in coalition as a combined force with the full cooperation of our allies—and all done on behalf of the RC South commander.
Rebalancing the Force
Marlin was deployed early into Afghanistan; in fact the turn-around from when the force exited Iraq was very rapid. “They achieved full operating capability (FOC) one month early. They have already exceeded their targeted flying hours so they are over-delivering. The importance here is that they have released Chinook for deliberate operations by taking over their role in sustainability operations,” says Johnstone-Burt. “Now we want the Lynx Mk9A to go out to offload the Apache so that can revert to mainly deliberate operations.”
|Johnstone-Burt says his goal is to sustain the current tempo of operations for the next five years and to be ready for future operations. UK MoD|
“Our dealings with the Pedros [U.S. Air Force Combat Search and Rescue teams flying UH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters] has totally complemented our Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) Chinooks. As we were co-located at Camp Bastion the two HQ teams discussed which aircraft should go on each emergency depending on the type of situation that was being faced. Their advantage is that they can get into smaller spaces than a Chinook with their onboard paramedic; get in and out fast. The MERT Chinook has a consultant trauma specialist onboard, plus a full medical team plus the protection team who can provide intrusive care in the bid to save lives.”
Vector Aerospace is a company that took over supporting many of the UK’s helicopters from the government-owned Defence Aviation and Repair Agency (DARA) in 2008. “Vector UK’s contribution [towards supporting the fight in Afghanistan] has been incredible,” states Johnstone-Burt. “For every contractor we send into theatre, we can save five uniformed personnel” [this due to the harmony scheme of rotating people through the war zone—one tour on, four tours at home—which is the official sustainable harmony rate]. “Vector with partner Boeing has given us 10 personnel out there so that saves me 50 engineers. The contractors are doing the most fantastic job in Kandahar maintaining the basic servicing for our Chinooks. AgustaWestland is also keen to help and I want to encourage that.”
Practice Makes Perfect
The JHC conducts foreign exercises in Norway (Exercise Clockwork), Kenya (Grand Prix, Morocco (Jebel Sahara) and Arizona (Crimson Eagle).
“Extreme training is as pertinent in Norway—the recirculation of snow creates a white out similar to a brown-out—as it is in Kenya. They are exactly the same principles as we experience in the desert. My overriding priority now is to do all that I can to get the rotary training—pre-deployment and environmental—as close to the army as possible. Where this is succeeding best is Kenya where we have increased the number of Grand Prix exercise from three or four to seven per year. I have around seven Puma aircraft out there permanently. Their job is purely to support the field army and to work on pre-deployment training.”
Johnstone-Burt says that this was a training ambition for many years but was unachievable due to the demands of servicing two theatres—Iraq and Afghanistan. “Pulling out of Iraq has provided a massive training dividend to the field army. Crimson Eagle in Arizona is also outstanding. It gives us hot and high conditions where we try and replicate the conditions in terms of severity and environment that we will come up against when deployed—and of course we can ‘live fire’ as well.”
“The only way we turned the Merlin force around so fast from Iraq to deploy to Afghanistan was by sending the lot to Arizona—full emersion training for the whole force. They were turned around in only a few months. We used four aircraft and we circled five flights through them. We talk about the rule of five—fighting by flight. There are five flights in every single force. The flight is balanced according to experience, seniority and capability.”
Rear Admiral Johnstone-Burt seems to have the force moving in the direction he has wanted since taking over command in 2008—and he now has the breaking space to do it. “Over the last two years that has been my overriding aim—to put the Joint Helicopter Command on a sustainable footing so that we can sustain the tempo of operations that we have now for the next five years at least. When Afghanistan finishes I must still be able to deliver on the next operation, wherever that may be in the world. I don’t want to burn the force, as our American friends would describe it.” | <urn:uuid:d72e99a8-9115-4352-af3f-8ebde39547ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aviationtoday.com/rw/military/vip-head-of-state/Objective-Confirmed-for-UKs-Rotary-Force_67217.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96597 | 2,311 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Lisa Jackson meets with environmental advocates in Fresno
For years citizens of California's central valley have been asking for help and Wednesday, if only for a few hours, one of the most influential people in the country listened. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson travelled to a church in Fresno to hear the concerns of the people of the valley and what she heard was troubling to say the least.
In Arvin, one in four children has asthma. In Kettleman City a birth defect cluster has terrified a small town. In Delano farm workers and local citizens have been exposed to dangerous pesticides. And throughout the valley huge swaths of land are out of compliance with federal air quality standards and entire towns have undrinkable water. These were just a few of the concerns raised by members of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition (CVAQ) at Wednesday's meeting.
Although the news in the valley is bad, Wednesday's meeting was a positive development. Nearly 10 years ago, affected citizens, concerned medical practitioners and environmental groups including Earthjustice got together to form CVAQ. Since then the coalition has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the area's environmental and health problems. The fact that the top environmental official in the land made a trip to listen to local residents is no small feat. Both the members of CVAQ as well as Administrator Jackson deserve kudos for this.
This, however, should only be the beginning of Administrator Jackson's work in the area. The people of the valley deserve the full attention of local, state and national environmental authorities. In the next blog post, Earthjustice Research and Policy Analyst Sarah Jackson will break down some of the specific demands that valley residents issued to Administrator Jackson yesterday. She'll also let you know what Earthjustice is doing about those demands.
When Sarah Jackson wasn't helping behind the scenes at Wednesday's event she was taking pictures of the action! Here is a set of our favorites for you to see and share.
Unfortunately at the last minute the press was not allowed into the event, however news organizations still covered Jackson's visit to Fresno as well as another visit with farmers in the area here are a few links to news stories
ABC News: EPA Administrator visits Valley, answers criticisms
Hanford Sentinel: Protestors Blast EPA Head
Associated Press: Hear of EPA met with protest in Central California
An Editorial Written by Lisa Jackson in The Fresno Bee
Fresno Bee: Federal EPA Administrator Tours Valley Farms | <urn:uuid:a55ef8aa-b700-4c17-a74f-390bf070b65e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://earthjustice.org/blog/2011-march/epa-administrator-visits-california-s-central-valley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958488 | 495 | 1.515625 | 2 |
I spoke to a group of assistant commissioners and deputy assistant commissioners in the Australian Tax Office yesterday on issues that might affect their future workforce strategy.
One of the issues I raised was the rise of social enterprise. I define this model as an organisation that has both a profit driven business model and a social mission.
In my work and interactions with the not for profit sector I am seeing a number of factors that are coming together to fuel what I see as the inexorable rise of the social enterprise model.
The first of these is that not for profit organisations are coming under increasing financial pressure as the global financial crisis grinds on. These pressures are coming from a number of directions:
- Corporate sponsorship is under increasing pressure as companies look to cut costs.
- Corporate volunteer programs are under pressure as employees are more concerned about keeping their jobs than contributing to the corporate social responsibility programs of their company.
- Philanthropic organisations are seeing their capital bases eroded at the same time as an increase in funding applications.
- Governments are seeking to reduce expenditures in all sorts of areas, either as austerity measures or for political messaging purposes.
As a result that has been a surge of interest from not for profit organisations looking for opportunities in social enterprise as a way to create a more stable funding base.
It is my very strong view that a well run social enterprise model has a competitive advantage over a commercial business operating in the same space. As a customer I will spend money at a social enterprise business over a commercial business but only if their product or service is equal or better to that of the commercial business. Sadly many of the social enterprises around the place (with some notable exceptions) are relying too much on people spending money with them because they are doing good things rather than being the best business in the sector or space.
Those that can match a great profit driven business model with a social mission can create a competitive advantage that is almost unassailable. This is because they have an advantage with both customers and their staff. If two products or services are of a similar quality and I can support my community by spending my money at the social enterprise that supplies them rather than a commercial business why wouldn’t I do that? If I want to live my life with purpose and making a contribution to my community and can be paid the same amount of money at a commercial business or social enterprise business which am I going to choose?
Which brings me to the bloodbath part of this story.
There are two parts to the bloodbath, one that is is chaotically destructive and the other one that will continue to underpin the rise. One is short term and painful and the other is permanent and constructive.
The chaotic part is that in my view a lot of not for profit organisations that are poorly equipped to enter the social enterprise are doing so because they are being driven by a financial crisis imperative rather than a strategic one. Running an excellent business model in a social enterprise or a commercial enterprise is hard and requires different skills than a not for profit organisation. This means there will be lots of serious failure in the space over the next five years. That will be difficult but what emerges will be stronger.
I believe I saw a component of the permanent and constructive model this week when I attended an evening of the LV Foundation as part of my involvement in Leadership Victoria. The Foundation hosted a presentation by Lance Fors the Chairman of Social Venture Partners International which is a group looking to support not for profit organisations and social enterprise by taking some of the lessons learnt in the start-up and venture capital world. They are doing so by providing grants, by providing loans, and by investing in social enterprises. On top of that they are also providing their expertise.
The part of Lance’s presentation that struck me as most important was his view about risk and that the sector was not taking enough risks and therefore not being innovative enough and that SVPI was looking to change that. His view was that if the sector was not failing enough then they were not pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved.
The “creative destruction” that occurs in the venture capital and start-up ecosystems is what has underpinned the amazing flowering of innovation we have seen in the technology sector in the last decade. The sort of model that SVPI uses and promotes has the potential to do the same in the social enterprise sector. I for one think that is fantastic and I have put my name down to be part of the group looking to be part of the model here in Melbourne.
If anyone else is interested then just tweet me : @futuristpaul and I will put you in touch with the organisers.
The social enterprise space is certainly one we will observing closely for signs of innovation and change. | <urn:uuid:660a4e36-6d1e-468d-9d70-5807044387f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://futuristpaul.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969447 | 968 | 1.59375 | 2 |
By Michael Kimmel, Courtesy of Just for Men
They’re younger and hungrier than you are and willing to accept lower pay and fewer responsibilities to start out. They’re today’s young entrants into the job market -- members of Generation Y. They’re eager to get a foot in the door.
And there you are, a decade older, a step or two slower on the basketball court, with a little less hair -- and gray at that! How can you compete with these young rising stars?
Don’t try to play one-on-one with them. Be their coach. Or maybe a player-coach. If you think your age is a liability, you need to turn yourself around. Your experience is an asset. You’ve got years of experience these young guys lack. Use it. And if you use it to help them, you’ll be indispensable. You’ll demonstrate that you have the experience employers need, the energy and relevance they want and the drive to keep the company moving toward success.
Know Your Competition
Good coaches know their players. Experts tell us that this next generation of workers has the following characteristics, more so than any generation of workers in history:
- more independent and demanding than previous generations, expecting more from their jobs than a paycheck
- likely to expect more freedom and autonomy
- more media-savvy
- more family-focused
- more self-centered
- less likely to be team players.
Think of it this way: Gen Y job entrants came of age in a baseball era where free agency dominates. They have far less loyalty to a particular team’s roster, because they know it will change every season. When they hear "Wait ’til next year!" they assume it means because their team will shop around for the best players for next season -- not because the same cast will be back for another run at the pennant. Articles in This Feature:
They’re less loyal to the company, and they’re far more likely to move or change jobs than older employees.
Stay in the Game
You need to leverage your hard-earned experience and encourage your managers, employers and supervisors to value it. You can enable them to see you as experienced and wise, not old and in the way.
It’s a matter of perception. You need to appear young-ish -- with an emphasis on the “ish.” Don’t suddenly layer on contemporary lingo or drop the names of rappers who drive you nuts when your kids play them in the house. Any good supervisor can smell out a poseur in a flash.
On the other hand, you have to know what they know -- and then some. Experience and team play are value-added elements. They enhance your other assets.
For example, you may need a crash course in contemporary gadgetry, but you have to know about twittering and other apps for phones and computers. On the other hand, it’s equally prudent not to be so down with the latest gizmo, since the more time you are tweeting your friends, the less time you have to devote to work. It is likely that most of your job requires more than 140 characters of text.
You need to look your age. You never want to look like those old men who dress punk or sk8r to seem hip. Dress well and appropriately.
If you’re going gray, leverage that too. While plenty of guys look good with their hair colored, one way to show some experience without looking over the hill is to leave some gray around the temples. A little gray makes you look distinguished and announces you are experienced.
In a corporate workplace composed of young free agents, the best position to play is the one they turn to: The coach. You prove yourself indispensable by nurturing and mentoring younger guys, not pretending to be one.
Every athlete faces the agony of retirement -- and most of them do it in their mid-20s. Transitioning to coaching is one of the best ways to stay in the game.
[Professor Michael Kimmel is a sociologist who is among the leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity in the world today and the author or editor of more than 20 volumes, including his latest, Guyland.] | <urn:uuid:0ba9b0b6-c888-4465-aaeb-897e33655d4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://career-advice.monster.com/job-search/getting-started/strategies-to-leverage-experience/article.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954089 | 890 | 1.664063 | 2 |
On the night he definitively vanquished his last opponent not named Ron Paul, Mitt Romney unveiled a general-election speech. He promised that “a better America begins tonight,” and focused on jobs, wages, and the cost of living in the context of the clash between President Obama’s vision of a government-centered society and his vision of an opportunity society. Crisp, pointed, and optimistic, it was Romney’s best speech of the campaign. We were especially glad to hear him call out the president’s reelection team for its obsession with tawdry distractions.
The Romney campaign has been adept at counter-punching against the nonsense lately. But to win a series of tactical victories in foolish controversies could still amount to a strategic loss. The Obama campaign cannot run on the president’s record, since his major legislative achievements are unpopular. It cannot run on the state of the country, which the public considers deeply unsatisfactory. It cannot win a choice-of-visions campaign because most people prefer a smaller government to a bigger one. We therefore expect repeated attempts to divert the public’s attention from the fundamental questions before it with the asinine and irrelevant: The war on women. How Romney transported his dog in 1983. His tax returns.
Keep reading this post . . .
Copyright © 2013 BernardGoldberg.com | <urn:uuid:52b172b7-6ed4-4314-b919-ce19de2a1ff8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/romney-must-rise-above/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965877 | 280 | 1.632813 | 2 |
If your denomination-affiliated congregation bought land, erected a church building, and maintained it for years, all with its own money, but has decided to withdraw from its denomination to join another or none, who owns the church property now?
It depends on which state and which denomination your church is in- even if your church's name is on the property title deed and everything is in order.
Some denominations have imposed a unilateral trust on the property of their member churches: If a congregation leaves, the property stays with the denomination.
Denominations like The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Presbyterian Church (USA) have been hauling an increasing number of dissident congregations into court. They are spending millions and going to the mat to protect their trust-clause franchises. TEC's Colorado diocese alone spent $2.9 million battling successfully for the property of just a single church in Colorado Springs, according to a diocesan report.
In California, your church likely would lose its property. In South Carolina, however, your church is safe. That's because the California Supreme Court in January and the South Carolina Supreme Court in September chose opposing methods for their respective lower courts to use in judging church property disputes. (Declared the South Carolina court: "It is an axiomatic principle of law that a person or entity must hold title to property in order to declare that it is held in trust for the benefit of another.")
The U.S. Supreme Court is partly to blame for the confusion. Traditionally, property matters are a state, not federal, legal matter. Many states historically allowed an exception to laws governing property. They deferred instead to rules set by certain "hierarchical" denominations in property issues of their member churches. As the 20th century deepened, scattered courts became more willing to listen to appeals of congregations deprived of their property and to apply "neutral principles" of state law in resolving disputes. In Jones v. Wolf in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court said courts were free to use "either approach: deference to the hierarchy" or neutral principles of law.
That led to results like these in California: An appeals court in Fresno in 2004, using neutral principles of corporate law, said a former United Methodist congregation could keep its property. It questioned the denomination's understanding of the trust clause, saying the law recognizes the title-deed owner of the property as the primary party in creation of a trust, and the owner has the right to revoke it. The decision was in line with a decades-long trend making California a "neutral principles" state. However, an appeals court in Orange County in an Episcopal case in 2007 overturned a lower court ruling based on that approach, saying that trial courts must defer to rules set by the denomination. It ordered St. James Anglican Church of fashionable Newport Beach to vacate the property it had owned for some 30 years.
St. James appealed to the California Supreme Court. That court last January issued a decision that confounded many legal experts. It declared California to be a neutral principles state in resolving church property disputes. But it deferred to TEC's hurriedly passed 1979 trust clause.
St. James persuaded the justices a day later to send the case back to the trial court to hear further evidence. But the church also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the California decision: Under the U.S. Constitution, can certain religious denominations disregard the normal rules of property ownership that apply to everyone else? Giving a preference to certain kinds of churches that claim to be hierarchical, that other churches and nonreligious associations are not entitled to, violates the establishment clause, St. James contended. It also cited religious-freedom concerns.
The high court on Oct. 5 denied the petition for review. Sooner or later, though, the court will have to address the equal-justice and other issues begging to be heard. And to remind the California Supremes that neutral principles is not a synonym for deference. | <urn:uuid:cd40e4b6-a2ac-4ee3-b899-942c869e9157> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldmag.com/2009/10/day_in_court | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964997 | 820 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A federal judge in Mississippi on Wednesday ordered an extension of his temporary order to allow the state's only abortion clinic to stay open.
The order will be in place until U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan can review newly drafted rules on how the Mississippi Department of Health will administer a new abortion law.
He then plans to rule on whether the temporary order will become permanent, or whether the clinic must shut its doors.
The law took effect July 1 and requires all abortion providers in Mississippi to be certified obstetrician/gynecologists with privileges at local hospitals. Doctors at Jackson Women's Health Organization, the only abortion provider in the state, come in from other states, and only one of its doctors is authorized to practice at a nearby hospital.
Supporters of the new law say it is intended to protect women from unscrupulous practitioners, but others say it's part of a move to outlaw abortions in the state. Even Republican Gov. Phil Bryant called it "the first step in a movement, I believe, to do what we campaigned on: to say that we're going to try to end abortion in Mississippi."
Since the law went into effect, the Jackson Women's Health Organization has remained open under Jordan's temporary order blocking enforcement of the law. The clinic is trying to comply with the law, according to owner Diane Derzis, but it has been hampered by red tape and the cumbersome application process to obtain hospital privileges.
Derzis said the clinic has applied for privileges at seven hospitals within a 30-mile radius. One, a Catholic hospital, has already told the clinic "not to bother," she said.
The clinic is seeking a permanent injunction allowing it to stay open while it fights the law, which Derzis and other opponents say violates Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that struck down many state laws that restricted abortions.
"It's unconstitutional, frankly," said Amelia McGowan, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is against the new law.
If Jordan decides not to make his temporary order permanent, the state can begin a 60- to 90-day administrative process to begin closing the clinic for noncompliance with the new state law.
Officials at the clinic, which has been in operation for eight years, say they would have to choose between being shut down or risking civil and criminal penalties by continuing operations during an appeals process.
"We've been able to be with women at a time in their lives where they are in crisis, when they need to have something done and need that support," Derzis said. "That's why it has to be available. It has to be."
Some backers of the bill say it is not an attempt to end abortion in Mississippi, but simply a way to protect women's health by ensuring physicians carry out abortions and follow the patients to a local hospital afterward.
"The governor has made it clear that he signed the legislation for the health and safety of women," said Steven Aden, a consulting attorney to the state. "So while he is pro-life, he also said that this is a health and safety provision. I don't see why that's hard to understand."
Despite some past minor citations, the Jackson Women's Health Organization has a very good record with the Mississippi Department of Health, an official there told CNN.
Mississippi is one of the toughest states for the abortion-rights movement. Its laws require a 24-hour waiting period and parental consent if the patient seeking an abortion is a minor. Seven other states require abortion providers to have hospital privileges, but no other state requires that an abortion provider be an OB/GYN, according to the Guttmacher Institute in Washington, a sexual and reproductive health organization.
"All of that is wrapped in that cloak of conservative religion," said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University.
"When you are in this state, you cannot separate an issue from religion," Wiseman said. "The normal rationale used in other states doesn't fly here. You'll find very few legislators -- regardless of whether they are white, black, Democrat or Republican -- who will say 'I'm pro-aborton."
Bryant signed the bill into law in April after the Republican-dominated legislature overwhelmingly passed it. Bryant said he signed the bill to support women's health, but he also says Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overturned. He has since filed a "friend of the court" brief in the case against the Jackson clinic.
Derzis said she believes that the real intent of the newly elected Republican majority was to end abortion in the state, not to improve women's health care.
"I love that it's white old men making those statements," she said. "This is not about safety. This is about politics, and politics do not need to be in our uterus." | <urn:uuid:1c67d841-d7b5-4df6-b6b9-7288863d84a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Judge-rules-on-only-Miss-abortion-clinic/-/1637132/15474350/-/bbgbye/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97152 | 1,004 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax
Motor Fuel Tax Report for the month of March 2005, including March 2004 and Fiscal Year to Date (2005)
In March 2005, motor fuel tax collections totaled approximately $141.9 million (after refunds). Total gallons of fuel taxed were approximately 559.2 million including 134.2 million of special fuels. Special fuels are diesel, kerosene, and propane.
Figures in this publication are from the Excise and Motor Fuel Tax Division of the Ohio Department of Taxation. | <urn:uuid:33791899-f099-4983-9412-0db1c4fc3ff0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tax.ohio.gov/tax_analysis/tax_data_series/motor_fuel/mv1/mv1m0305.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966583 | 105 | 1.515625 | 2 |
EN | FR
European Cities Monitor: Warsaw named as favoured city for expansion; London leads again
6 Oct, 2009, London
Warsaw, Poland has been named by the 20th annual European Cities Monitor as the city which can expect the biggest influx of companies in the next five years, replacing Moscow in popularity which has fallen to second place. 36 of Europe’s largest companies named Warsaw as the European city in which they intended to next expand, up from 28 in 2008. 35 companies named Moscow, down from 44 in 2008.
The findings, in Cushman & Wakefield’s influential survey of 500 of Europe’s largest companies, also names Birmingham, UK as the best performing city this year moving up seven places to be named as the 14th best European city for business. London is once again ranked the best business city in Europe, a position it has held every year since the survey started in 1990. Paris and Frankfurt are again ranked 2nd and 3rd.
European Cities Monitor is based on interviews with senior managers and board directors in charge of location for 500 of Europe’s largest companies. From this research it produces an overall ranking of which European city is considered by the business community to be ‘best for business’ and the ‘best city in which to locate a business today’. In addition to the overall ranking, 34 cities are ranked against a number of criteria such as quality of life, telecommunications, access to markets, availability and quality of staff, cost of office space and transport links.
In its 20th year, 2009’s European Cities Monitor features a special analysis of the performance of cities since 1990. All of the key central and eastern European cities have seen increases in their position, most buoyed by EU accession, with Prague and Warsaw the biggest risers to 21st and 23rd respectively moving up from their positions at the bottom of the ranking in 1990.
The Spanish cities of Barcelona and Madrid have also performed especially well with both ranking in the 2009 ranking at 4th and 6th respectively. In 1990 neither even made the top ten and were ranked at 11 and 17 respectively. Barcelona’s hosting of the 1992 Olympic Games boosted its position the following year when it rose three places and first entered the top ten. It has remained within the top ten ever since. Similarly, Manchester’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2002 saw it rise from 19th to 13th in 2003. It is 16th this year.
Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Mayor of Warsaw, said: “Warsaw is a financial and political centre of the country, which makes it a good and reliable partner in long-term investments. The rise in Cushman & Wakefield's ranking proves that the Polish capital is an investor-friendly city and has continued its dynamic growth. Warsaw appears resilient to the global crisis and successfully implements strategic investments, maintaining the investment budget at the record level.”
Richard Petersen, managing partner of Cushman & Wakefield in Poland, said: "Foreign investors' interest in Poland has increased steadily since the 1990s and was further stimulated by accession to the EU in 2004. Warsaw ranks high among European capitals in terms of cost of qualified staff, low cost and availability of office space and a positive business climate created by government. Throughout the recent market turmoil, Poland has maintained a positive GDP growth and forecasts indicate that this will continue into 2010. This in turn will provide favourable conditions for a rapid market recovery in the real estate sector during next year."
London is ranked the number one city in half of the 12 major rankings including access to markets, availability of qualified staff and international and internal transport links. It scores poorly, however, on the cost of staff, the cost of office space and levels of pollution.
James Young, City of London office head, Cushman & Wakefield, said: “Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers just over a year ago, London has been through a pretty turbulent time. This year’s survey, however, is evidence that it has not lost its position as Europe’s and probably the world’s leading business and financial centre. Major corporates clearly still recognise that its critical mass of talent, facilities and infrastructure combine to deliver a compelling location for business. Although office space remains relatively more expensive than other European capitals, costs have come down considerably this year and occupiers looking at locating here will find historically low rents which are likely to remain competitive until well in to 2010 at least. As the host for the 2012 Olympic Games it will also benefit from one of the largest domestic investments in infrastructure ever seen.”
Birmingham, UK is Europe’s best performing city moving to 14th in the overall ranking.
Scott Rutherford, head of Cushman & Wakefield Birmingham, said: “This year's results are evidence that Birmingham's profile on the European stage is higher than ever. The cumulative effect of years of high profile development including the iconic Bullring and now well publicised plans for a redeveloped New Street Station and world class library have surely now cemented our reputation as one of Europe's most forward thinking cities. Last year's advertising campaign targeting London and its millions of international visitors would appear to have given us a positive bounce in perception. We remain an attractively priced location for corporates and the decision of Deutsche Bank last year to base over 650 employees here has been backed by the news that AMEY plc has now chosen us as its international design hub.”
Councillor Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council, commented on the report’s findings: “Birmingham is investing heavily in its public infrastructure and for the benefits that this affords to the business community to be recognised not just here at home, but importantly amongst our peers across Europe, is extremely gratifying. The findings mirror the momentum and vision we have for the city and are the result of five years’ of hard work. For those already based in this great city there was no doubt as to its status and strengths, but to be recognised by others as the UK’s premier city outside the capital shows that Birmingham really does mean business.”
Barcelona and Madrid this year rank at 4th and 6th respectively despite, in 1990, ranking at only 11th and 17th.
Roger Cooke, head of Spain, Cushman & Wakefield, said: “The rise of both Spanish cities in this year's rankings show that their significant rise over the 20 years of the study remains sustainable. Both cities are broad based business, culture and leisure destinations which combine to make very modern, attractive and cosmopolitan international cities.”
Oriol Barrachina, partner and head of the Barcelona office, Cushman & Wakefield, said: "Barcelona is highly valued amongst business decision makers and its top five position has consolidated in recent years with high scores in almost all the important categories with exceptional scoring in the office availability and value for money fields. It also consistently ranks first in the quality of life category."
Elaine Rossall, head of business space research, Cushman & Wakefield, said: “While corporates have undoubtedly been reining in their operations in the current climate, the impact of being in the right location can make a huge difference to the success of an organisation and corporates have been considering their locations very seriously. While a number of cities stand out across Europe, particularly London, Paris and Frankfurt which score well across all categories, what is evident is that these cities are being challenged by a wide cross section of cities on individual location factors. For example, Berlin is seen to be a great city for internal transport and availability of office space, while Geneva scores strongly for its investment climate and quality of life. It is imperative that all cities promote themselves effectively, highlighting their perceived strengths, if they are to attract a major influx of corporates once the upturn in the European economy is in full swing."
European Cities Monitor also asked companies which were the key factors when deciding where to relocate their business. Easy access to markets, customers or clients came ahead of the availability of qualified staff as the single most important factor with telecommunications then ahead of national and international transport links.
Those surveyed also said that fears over the performance of the European economy followed by the availability of corporate finance were the two most important factors most likely to impact their business over the next ten years. The economic growth of Central and Eastern Europe is considered less of a factor this year as most of that region has been significantly affected by the global economic downturn. | <urn:uuid:e3db9f40-6251-414b-a7d4-540143ef713b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cushwake.com/cwglobal/jsp/newsDetail.jsp?Country=BCVA3&Language=EN&repId=c27300017p | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965088 | 1,761 | 1.585938 | 2 |
by Doris Adelberg
Reviewed by Chelsea M. (age 8)
Chelsea M. is a student in Alison and Lisa's' 3rd Grade Class
Lizzieís Twins is about a girl named Lizzie. She has a doll. She loves her doll. She plays with it, she sleeps with it, and takes baths with it. Then she loses her doll! She gets a new one but she doesnít like it as much as the old one. She wonít let the new doll use the old dollís things. What will happen?
This book is from when my mom was 4 years old. Itís old but itís still a really good book. The author made this story seem real. I think that kids can still relate to it because many people have lost things. This book has great illustrations! It is good for all ages. I think you would like it if you like short realistic fiction stories. | <urn:uuid:984c05a9-dd05-464e-90ba-ac6c47266ab9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spaghettibookclub.org/review.php?review_id=9966 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987116 | 194 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Who would have thought a product as innocuous as Tide laundry detergent would be so popular among the criminal element? But when police in suburban Washington raided the home of a suspected drug dealer last fall, they found nearly 20 large bottles of the liquid laundry detergent right next to all the cocaine. And it turns out that people were actually using the $20-plus bottles to pay for the illegal drugs…and the dealer was glad to take them as payment.
Enter the world of Organized Retail Crime (ORC), where one day the target is laundry detergent and the next day the target might be infant formula, and the next potentially razorblades. It’s enough to give today’s retail security and loss prevention professionals a migraine.
The media firestorm surrounding the “grime wave” of ORC and widespread Tide laundry detergent theft has all but run its course; however, retailers and loss prevention (LP) managers are far from washing their hands clean of the multi-billion dollar ORC problem. In its wake, the LP industry has been left to focus on what might be next in the way of targeted goods and ORC plots. Staying on top of these trends poses a great challenge to LP professionals.
What can be learned in the wake of the grime wave? What steps can retailers and LP managers take to respond to emerging threats, while at the same time putting preventive measures in place to deter thieves? Here are some suggestions that can help us learn from these experiences and respond more effectively.
Monitor Inventory Closely, and Share Trends
ORC is unpredictable by its very nature. While it is not necessarily possible to predict the next big target, retailers can observe high-level trends and monitor products that might be attractive to criminals. This may mean conducting spot checks of these items in the store to note if a particularly high volume seems to be moving from the shelves. It may mean running an extra weekly report on inventory and comparing it with sales to ensure targeted items are in fact being sold. A quick check can ensure that any major discrepancies are noticed and promptly investigated.
In some cases, retailers need to limit quantities of goods put on display, or move merchandise within the store to make it more risky for thieves to steal from a particularly high-traffic area.
General categories of items that are popular among ORC rings include high-priced brand-name items with strong demand that can be sold online, in pawn shops, in black market storefronts and in flea markets. These include over-the-counter (OTC) drug products, such as analgesics and cough and cold medications, razorblades, camera film, batteries, videos, DVDs, CDs, smoking cessation products and infant formula. High-end items including designer clothes, purses, furs and consumer electronics are also popular. Finally, products that are small even when packaged are especially susceptible, as thieves can fill a bag or cart with a single sweeping motion off the shelf.
Sharing trends and anomalies in inventory with law enforcement and other retailers can also help identify patterns in geographic regions, types of goods stolen, and even criminals’ preferred time of day to strike. The Law Enforcement Retail Partnership, or LERPNet, is available to participating retailers and law enforcement through a secure Internet portal. It was developed in partnership with the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and the National Retail Federation (NRF).
The “grime wave” has also shed light on a few strangely rudimentary, yet effective tactics employed within the organized retail crime rings. In some noted cases, criminals were filling grocery carts full of Tide and simply pushing the carts out of fire exits and making a quick getaway via a waiting car.
Another common method used by criminals has been to purchase an expensive item and place it in a car parked outside or give it to someone who leaves the premises. With receipt from the legitimate purchase in hand, the criminal re-enters the store, grabs the same item, and walks out. If questioned, they show the receipt and claim that the item was just purchased. | <urn:uuid:a9259406-f203-431a-b816-b6ac7906f8d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/10713236/organized-retail-crime | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950145 | 836 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The following are eight of the most important leadership principles I have learned as a senior leader over the past three decades. I have found that each of these leadership principles is vital to the success of any organization, whether it be faith-based or not.
1. They Continually Cast a Compelling Vision
The Bible teaches us that without a vision the people perish (Prov. 29). This means that people are like sheep and will scatter and/or lose focus if they are not continually motivated and guided as to the mission and purpose of the organization or church they belong to.
Every executive leader must be personally empowered and full of passion so he can continually remind the people of the vision and purpose of their existence. An organization without a compelling vision is going to lose momentum and membership. Leader without a compelling vision don’t know why they are leading, which will result in their organization experiencing a lack of cohesion and power.
2. They Set Practical Goals to Attain Their Vision
Having vision without practical goals to implement the vision is tantamount to merely having a dream that disappears once you wake up. Even if your vision was given to you supernaturally by the Lord, goals are necessary to take it from the mystical realm to the practical realm. For an effective goal I like using the acronym SAM. Each goal should be:
If a goal is too ambiguous then it is no good. For example, “This year our church will grow larger” is too ambiguous. If a goal is too lofty and not attainable then it is a pipe dream. For example, “This year our church will grow by 50 percent” when it has never grown more than 5 percent in the past 20 years. If a goal is not revisited to evaluate if you achieved the desired results, then it was not measured and is worthless.
Eventually, when the principles of SAM are not followed, the people in the organization become discouraged and believe that the vision of the leader is nothing more than rhetoric and good oratory, and they will cease following him or her.
3. They Build Strong, Competent Teams to Perpetuate the Vision
Every leader needs to process the vision and mission of the church with a competent team that will have ownership over its fulfillment. When leaders merely give out direction and orders to their team, then they are creating followers who can’t think for themselves. Thus, as the organization grows, the leader will have more and more burdens upon his shoulders, which will eventually become a bottleneck.
However, when leaders build a team around their strengths and/or weaknesses they will have people around them who will compensate for the gifts and abilities the leader doesn’t have. A leader doesn’t have to be the smartest or most capable person in the organization; leaders' greatest job is to surround themselves with the smartest and most capable people and get them to work together to accomplish the task before them.
For example, macro directive leaders need micro operational people around them, as well as team builders, to fulfill their vision. When macro leaders don’t have micro leaders then there aren’t proper systems or people in place to carry out their directives.
Finally, effective leaders are constantly encouraging and building the confidence of their team which counteracts all the negative things they either think about themselves or the negative information they are bombarded with via media and relationships. One of the greatest things an effective leader does is build faith, confidence and courage in their team so they come to the place where they believe they can achieve great things!
4. They Put First Things First
Effective leaders are continually grounding themselves in their core values of faith, family and personal renewal. Those who are not grounded will either burn out or disqualify themselves because they will eventually fail to have integrity either within themselves or in their families.
In regards to their organizations, effective leaders have learned to put their finances and time toward empowering the people with the most potential so they can bear the burden of the work and expand the capacity of the organization. They have also learned not to have transactional relationships that objectify people, so that people only feel valuable if they are contributing to the success related to fulfilling their goals. When executive leaders treat people with dignity and respect, they will get more output than if they merely use and abuse people.
5. They Constantly Recruit Emerging Leaders
The greatest baseball teams are the ones with the best farm systems that continually replenish the major league team with high-caliber players. Effective leaders are continually looking to recruit onto their team the best talent and most capable people who are also trustworthy.
One of the most important things I have done over the years is to have a primary leadership group that I meet with at least once or twice per month, and an emerging leaders group of newer people who have the potential to lead in the next generation.
Without doing this, an organization and/or leader will be stuck with people who have already flatlined and will limit the ceiling of the vision. When you continually empower the next generation of leaders then it is easier to replace the team members who move on to other organizations or who disqualify themselves from remaining on the team.
6. They Create a Culture of Accountability and Trust
There is an old saying: “People won’t do what you expect, they only do what you inspect.” This is true. Many leaders are shocked when they find that what they say and teach is not being practiced or followed by the top leaders on their team.
Ronald Reagan once said, in relation to how he dealt with the Soviet Union and their nuclear arms treaty with the USA: “Trust but verify.” I have learned that if you don’t hold people accountable they will lose focus and not follow through on their tasks because of the many distractions that come their way. It is also good to require regular reports from your staff so that you can gauge the amount of work and productivity for each person.
Just as important as accountability is to create an atmosphere of trust with your top team members so there is an ability to share weaknesses, temptations and even moral failure. A culture of trust will build greater capacity for love and teamwork, and will empower all to move mountains and achieve great things!
7. They Put the Mission of the Organization Before Their Own Personal Agenda
Many leaders who obtain power and affluence begin to think that the organization, ministry or church they founded exists merely to serve their own personal needs. When leaders put their own personal needs and agenda before the mission and vision of their organizations it creates a culture of self-centeredness, which will eventually backfire because it will spread to all the secondary leaders who will in turn poison the rest of the organization and its members. Self-focused entities do not have long shelf lives; if they do survive they will not be effective.
In regards to pastors, God says very harsh things to shepherds who merely feed themselves and do not minister to the flock of God (read Ezek. 34 and Jer. 23), who think the flock exists just to feed them.
8. They Continually Devise Strategies to Finance the Vision
As we read 2 Corinthians Chapters 8 and 9 we see that the apostle Paul devoted much of his time to fundraising for the vision of planting and establishing local churches.
It doesn’t matter how much of a great speaker you are, how great your team is, and how talented you are; if you are not effective at fundraising you will never be able to accomplish God-given goals and vision! Money and goals serve as the bridge between vision and reality.
Joseph Mattera has been in full-time ministry since 1980 and is currently the presiding bishop of Christ Covenant Coalition and Overseeing Bishop of Resurrection Church in New York, a multiethnic congregation of 40 nationalities that has successfully developed numerous leaders and holistic ministry in the New York region and beyond. Click here to visit his website. | <urn:uuid:602fa24a-73d6-498d-93cd-2c9283b03507> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ministrytodaymag.com/index.php/ministry-leadership/preaching/19768-8-power-principles-for-transformational-leadership?showall=1&limitstart= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966885 | 1,623 | 1.65625 | 2 |
COVINGTON -- Gas prices continue to rise nationwide, despite declining oil prices and demand, but the rate of increase is slowing, according to a spokeswoman with AAA Auto Club South.
The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.38, according to AAA. That's an increase of nearly 16 cents from a month ago and 27 cents from a year ago. In Georgia, the average price is $3.41 per gallon.
"(The increase) is not specific to one state. We're seeing that nationwide. It's pretty common that prices increase after the first of the year," usually because the market rallies with optimism that the economy will improve, said AAA spokeswoman Jessica Brady. Another factor driving up prices of late is the threat from Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to block oil shipments.
Prices are not rising with the rapidity they did at the first of the year, when they jumped as much as 10 to 15 cents in one week, Brady said. But retail prices are still increasing, though oil prices have dropped and demand is the lowest it's been in a decade.
"It's speculation, not the basic fundamentals of supply and demand," controlling prices at the pump, Brady said. "If that was the case, prices would be much lower. Demand is at a 10-year low. It's not having the effect it should on the market."
Speculation that Egypt would block the Suez Canal during the 2010 uprising drove up prices, though the canal never closed, she added.
"If things continue to escalate with Iran in the coming days, we could see it go up. There's a lot more going on than in the past years, more threats and concerns overseas regarding oil in terms of passageways for exports than in the past," she said.
Though some economists predict gas could rise to $5 a gallon by summer, Brady said it's best to budget for the worst but not worry too much, noting that a top Shell executive predicted prices of $5 to $6 a gallon by summer 2011 that never materialized.
"Plan ahead. Year over year, typically there are higher prices in the summertime. Budget so if they do go up, you're prepared, and if they don't, good," she said. | <urn:uuid:ac832176-fd1b-4e93-aed0-2b8e1579f2d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newtoncitizen.com/news/2012/jan/23/gas-prices-rise-despite-10-year-low-demand/?opinion | 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 | 0.973661 | 471 | 1.835938 | 2 |
DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- City leaders in Dayton say they want to speed up the number of vacant houses and buildings being demolished.
The Dayton Daily News (http://bit.ly/ThleHj ) reports that the city has demolished 1,100 abandoned buildings at a cost of nearly $10 million since 2009.
City officials say getting rid of the vacant buildings will stabilize property values, reduce crime, and improve the quality of life in neighborhoods.
One city commissioner says it's the top issue neighborhoods.
The city plans to spend more than $5 million to demolish 475 abandoned structures next year. The biggest challenge is finding enough qualified contractors to do the work.
Fire officials say removing the vacant buildings means fewer fires.
Information from: Dayton Daily News, http://www.daytondailynews.com | <urn:uuid:84b4a1fd-1a26-4ada-98c5-fbe0612a9417> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.the-press-news.com/ap%20state/2012/12/29/ohio-city-wants-to-demolish-more-houses-next-year | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945281 | 170 | 1.765625 | 2 |
I was introduced to his inventions in eighth grade. Weedsport Central Schools installed a computer lab filled with Apple IIc and Apple IIe machines. I’d used computers before, but nothing like these. They just made sense. They worked. They inspired me.
So many things Steve Jobs and Apple made inspired, enlightened and expanded my knowledge and imagination. To learn tonight that he has passed away feels like a punch to the gut. There’s emptiness. There probably shouldn’t be. But to think how much his vision and genius impacted my life — the lives of so many — that it’s hard to categorize my feelings.
I’m typing this on a Macbook. There’s another Macbook next to me on the coffee table, as well as an iPad and my iPhone. My iPhone — I had a dream I lost it, truly a nightmare because I felt so helpless. I use it to check my various social media communities, do email, surf the web, listen to music, send texts, keep time, light my way as a flashlight. About 10 feet away is my iPod for jogging. I don’t use a stereo; my music collection spins on iTunes. In my waking hours, I’m almost always in the same room with some Apple invention, or more than one.
As a society, we lionize celebrities, rock stars and pro athletes. Their accomplishments are comparatively minimal. Tweets about Justin Bieber? Fleeting and faddish. Media orgs treating Madonna’s appearance in the Super Bowl™ halftime show as breaking news? Ludicrous. News outlets acting like something a Kardashian does means anything? Ridiculous. Steve Jobs’ contributions are wider, deeper and longer-lasting than just about anyone in this era.
I literally can’t imagine a world without everything he and his team has created. A world without him, in some way. But now I have to. | <urn:uuid:b2bb6d51-8fb8-4edc-8d68-b52b72b358df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://insidetimshead.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948291 | 407 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Rapid growth in revenue and earnings may be top priorities in corporate boardrooms, but these priorities are not always best for shareholders. We are often tempted to invest large amounts in risky or even mature companies that are beating the drum for fast growth, but investors should check that a company's growth ambitions are realistic and sustainable.
Let's face it, it's hard not to be thrilled by the prospect of growth. We invest in growth stocks because we believe that these companies are able to take shareholder money and reinvest it for a return that is higher than what we can get elsewhere.
Besides, in traditional investing wisdom, growth in sales earnings and stock performance are inexorably linked. In his book "One Up on Wall Street," investment guru Peter Lynch preaches that stock prices follow corporate earnings over time. The idea has stuck because many investors look far and wide for the fastest-growing companies that will produce the greatest share-price appreciation.
Is Growth a Sure Thing?
That said, there is room to debate this rule of thumb. In a 2002 study of more than 2,000 public companies, California State University finance professor Cyrus Ramezani analyzed the relationship between growth and shareholder value. His surprising conclusion was that the companies with the fastest revenue growth (average annual sales growth of 167% over a 10-year period) showed, over the period studied, worse share price performance than slower growing firms (average growth of 26%). In other words, the hotshot companies could not maintain their growth rates, and their stocks suffered.
Fast growth looks good, but companies can get into trouble when they grow too fast. Are they able to keep pace with their expansion, fill orders, hire and train enough qualified employees? The rush to boost sales can leave growing companies with a deepening difficulty to obtain their cash needs from operations. Risky, fast-growing startups can burn money for years before generating a positive cash flow. The higher the rate of spending money for growth, the greater the company's odds of later being forced to seek more capital. When extra capital is not available, big trouble is brewing for these companies and their investors.
Companies often try increasingly big - and risky - deals to push up growth rates. Consider the serial acquirer WorldCom. In the 1990s, the company racked up growth rates of more than 20% by buying up little-known telecom companies. It later required larger and larger acquisitions to show impressive revenue percentages and earnings growth. In hopes of sustaining growth momentum, WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers agreed to pay a whopping $115 billion for Sprint Corp. However, federal regulators blocked the deal on antitrust grounds. WorldCom's prospects for growth collapsed, along with the company's value. The lesson here is that investors need to consider carefully the sustainability of deal-driven growth strategies.
Being Realistic About Growth
Eventually every fast-growth industry becomes a slow-growth industry. Some companies, however, still pursue expansion long after growth opportunities have dried up. When managers ignore the option of offering investors dividends and stubbornly continue to pour earnings into expansions that generate returns lower than those of the market, bad news is on the horizon for investors.
For example, take McDonald's - as it experienced its first-ever losses in 2003, and its share price neared a 10-year low, the company finally began to admit that it was no longer a growth stock. But for several years beforehand, McDonald's had shrugged off shrinking profits and analysts' arguments that the world's biggest fast-food chain had saturated its market. Unwilling to give up on growth, McDonald's accelerated its rate of restaurant openings and advertising spending. Expansion not only eroded profits but ate up a huge chunk of the company's cash flow, which could have gone to investors as large dividends.
CEOs and managers have a duty to put the brakes on growth when it is unsustainable or incapable of creating value. That can be tough since CEOs normally want to build empires rather than maintain them. At the same time, management compensation at many companies is tied to growth in revenue and earnings.
However, CEO pride doesn't explain everything: the investing system favors growth. Market analysts rate a stock according to its ability to expand; accelerating growth receives the highest rating. Furthermore, tax rules privilege growth since capital gains are taxed in a lower tax bracket while dividends face higher income-tax rates.
The Bottom Line
Justifications for fast growth can quickly pile up, even when it isn't the most prudent of priorities. Companies that pursue growth at the cost of sustaining themselves may do more harm than good. When evaluating companies with aggressive growth policies, investors need to determine carefully whether these policies have higher drawbacks than benefits.
More From Investopedia | <urn:uuid:63ce1b04-105d-4bf3-a72d-99c631bd651d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/growth-always-good-thing-211252495.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962991 | 956 | 1.679688 | 2 |
If anything linked the four pieces under his baton, it was their edginess and sense of other-worldliness.
Dark forces are clearly evident in Ravel’s La Valse. Composed shortly after the First World War, the ‘choreographic poem’ was originally intended as a homage to the lost world of Johann Strauss’s Vienna, but ended up as a macabre parody from a composer who had seen service in the conflict against France’s Austro-German enemies. Gergiev chose to emphasise the work’s burlesque rather than vengeful nature, cranking up the rhythmic and orchestral turbulence until the anarchic finale. But even here, he had time to pick out aspects of Ravel’s brilliant scoring, including a curiously Spanish flavour that seeped through the central section.
A sense of spatial and temporal uncertainty looms large in Gyrgy Ligeti’s Atmosphres. Composed in 1961, it dispenses with traditional rhythm, melody and harmony, and seeks to build up tonal ‘sculptures’ through varied chordal clusters and instrumental combinations. Not for nothing did Stanley Kubrick pinch bits of the score for his 2001: A Space Odyssey. In such an apparently formless piece, it was best to sit back and let Gergiev make sense of it all. This he did, with an astonishing degree of control over the apparently disparate forces around him.
Gergiev has become a staunch advocate of the music of Henri Dutilleux, airing several of his works over the last couple of seasons. As with Atmosphres, Mystre de L’instant (written in 1989) dispenses with melody, and explores shifting textures of sound across the ten short movements. Again, Gergiev was in full control of the large string orchestra, plus percussion and cimbalom, eliciting some extraordinary playing from the LSO members.
The whole of the second half was taken up with a brilliant account of Stravinsky’s ballet score Petrushka. Of his three pre-1914 ballets, Petrushka is the most difficult to bring off in the concert hall. It’s closeness to the ballet’s narrative means that listeners can sometimes feel lost if they are unfamiliar with the stage action. But Gergiev’s painterly conducting brought each scene to life, including the central two, which are possibly the least interesting musically. His teasing out of orchestral effects reminiscent at times of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and even Wagner were a further source of fascination. | <urn:uuid:54e31b21-647a-4a28-b2ec-e5d16d1ec80f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.musicomh.com/classical/reviews-classical/lsogergiev-barbican-hall-london-10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956534 | 552 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Immigration advocates march to support immigration reform
The recent deportation proceedings against Miami student Daniela Pelaez and her sister have sparked outrage in South Florida, with thousands taking to the streets last week to protest.
Speaking on the Spanish-language news show Al Punto on Sunday, Pelaez told reporters that her lawyer had obtained a deferred action – a step that effectively halts deportation proceedings against her, and grants her two years to adjust her residency status in immigration court.
Congressman David Rivera, R-Florida, who met with Pelaez on the heels of the Miami protest, announced Friday that he would file the Studying Towards Adjusted Residency Status Act, or S.T.A.R.S. Act, which would allow undocumented immigrant youth who meet certain criteria to adjust their residency status.
But according to DRM Capitol, an organization that supports the DREAM Act, Rivera’s S.T.A.R.S. Act “is far from the more comprehensive DREAM Act that many undocumented youth organizations are fighting for.”
“This proposal is an orchestrated attempt to appeal to the important Latino voting block that will be critical to the 2012 elections,” adds DRM Capitol.
In its March/April issue, Mother Jones published its Immigration Hardliner Family Tree, a chart showing the links between organizations that support self-deportation or attrition through enforcement immigration policies and several GOP politicians, including Florida congressman Allen West.
GOP presidential candidates have said they support controversial immigration enforcement laws that currently exist in Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. Those candidates have also voiced their opposition to the DREAM Act, which polls show the majority of Latino voter support.
The DREAM Act, first introduced in Congress ten years ago, would grant those who entered the U.S. illegally before the age of 16 conditional permanent resident status for a period of six years, after which they would be eligible to become legal permanent residents if they obtain at least an associate-level college degree or serve in the military for two years.
According to the Sacramento Bee, four undocumented youth are planning a walk “from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to push for a bill to give legal status to illegal immigrant college students.” They hope to reach Washington D.C. by Nov. 2.
This is the second time a group of DREAM Act eligible students will have walked to bring attention to the measure. From January through May 2010, four undocumented students from Miami walked from Miami to Washington D.C. to support the DREAM Act.
Last Thursday in Alabama, a host of labor, clergy, civil rights and immigration advocates marched to denounce the state’s controversial immigration enforcement state law.
That same day, according to the Immigration Policy Center, “the U.S Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit temporarily enjoined two more controversial provisions of Alabama’s extreme immigration law (HB 56), adding to the list of enjoined provisions.” | <urn:uuid:28873e12-6d52-47d4-960b-5b46c1f7b0ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://floridaindependent.com/72821/immigration-advocates-march-to-support-immigration-reform | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954596 | 609 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or so the saying goes. For some, when it comes to love and romance, archaic expressions can only be spread across an aching heart for so long before it crumbles. For others, those same expressions act as mild mood enhancers until they get to see their loved one again. Long distance love used to be commonplace; very rarely did two people live close enough to one another that they could take evening strolls around the pond while their chaperone watched. Not only was it more common, but it became romanticized with the emergence of films based on Jane Austen novels and WWII era films in which women and men poured their hearts onto paper and hoped for the day they’d see their love again.
Now it’s 2012 and my generation relies heavily on the conveniences of technology. Where would I be without my smart phone telling me when the next bus is coming or software like Skype or Google video chat? While I’m a bit old school and still write letters and thank you notes by hand, I am amazed at the clarity one can have when video chatting with someone across the globe.
Technology and romance are two things that historically haven’t been linked together that frequently.
However, how has the evolution of technology affected romance and relationships? Has it enhanced our abilities to remain in long distance relationships more sanely, or has it provided a false illusion of connection that wouldn’t exist in person?
Maintaining a healthy relationship can be time consuming, even when your partner lives in the same city. It takes time, funds, and energy to foster a budding romance or stoke the smoldering embers of a long term one. So if distance is an additional variable to your romantic equation, how does one factor it in?
Recently, I accidently interrupted my friend’s Skype date, on her i-phone. Now, since I’m currently stuck with a shitty Droid that I literally have to charge externally due to damage from frequent drops on the pavement, the whole concept of not having to use a laptop to Skype or ‘face-time,’ as Apple has dubbed it, blows my mind. I waved to him in the background and smiled shyly in my towel since I didn’t expect a French man to be in my friend’s bedroom. Forget having to schedule your Skype date with a factored in time difference, while rushing home from the bar in Spain because you forgot, now you can call from the bar! I’m sure your partner will appreciate your ability to multitask. Eat your heart out, Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax!
But what’s the downside of instant face-time with your partner in a different time zone? I’ve done a few long distance relationships in my time, and let me tell you, it was no cakewalk. Those who I know in long distance relationships all say the same thing: ‘I always told myself I’d never do long distance…until I met him/her.’ Ah yes, going back to the aforementioned game changer. The person who comes along and makes you break all your rules, including eating fried food, going running, and entering into a long distance love affair.
If you meet this person, prove to them how much you care by riding your motorcycle across the country, blasting Meatloaf all the way there, and arriving in tight pleather pants. It will beat a ‘poke’ on Facebook or a coffee date on Sykpe every time.
While the flowery expressions like ‘love doesn’t know its own depth until the hour of separation,’ that remind me of an extremely low budget outdoor Shakespeare camp I attended in middle school can be comforting, what else is going on? Have you ever entered into a long distance relationship a little too prematurely out of necessity or out of curiosity to see where it went? I’m no statistician, but I wonder what percentage of people in long distance relationships, who ultimately aren’t right for each other, stay together longer thanks to the aid of evolved technology. What happens when your law semester abroad ends and you return to your partner’s 3-D face you can touch, and it doesn’t feel the same? I don’t remember him having mutton chops.
I suppose like any big commitment, a gamble with your heart and time is involved. People get together and stay together happily for years in and out of long distance relationships. Likewise, people change, grow and evolve with the technology they’re using, potentially leading them down a different path, alone. This isn’t Jane Austen’s dating world anymore. While it would nice if every once in awhile someone picked me up on a horse, wrote me a love letter, and sported the latest top-hat in style, the reality is we live in an increasingly digital age and our conventions of love and relationships will evolve accordingly. | <urn:uuid:5acdf351-9905-44b6-a4d9-268cc30d566c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digboston.com/boston-lulz/2012/07/missadventurous-caught-in-a-skype-romance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947995 | 1,036 | 1.679688 | 2 |
- About Us
Of specific interest to systems administrators (the audience LISA seeks to attract) was that Tobias Oetiker and Dave Rand won the SAGE Outstanding Achievement award for their work on MRTG and RRDTool.
Following the awards, Doctorow took to the podium to talk about the Internet, our disappearing privacy, eroding rights, and what we can do about it. Doctorow is a compelling speaker, and most of what is covered in the LISA '06 talk can be found in the video of his keynote at ToorCon 8.
Afterward there was a question and answer session, which allowed the audience to dig a bit deeper into some of the main points of the talk, and it actually provided more readily useful information with regards to what actions can be taken by the community besides simply sending money to organizations such as the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and EFF.
For example, there is a mailing list run by the EFF which sends out announcements to subscribers when Congress decides to tack some bit of legislation onto a bill at the last moment that runs counter to the notion of digital rights. According to Doctorow, this list has been instrumental in creating what amounts to an impromptu phone campaign against the legislation. Scripts are also provided by the EFF to give users an idea of just what to say when they call.
After the keynote, it was off to the technical sessions, which covered everything you could possibly ask for, and then some. A series of papers about email were presented, which encompassed a thorough discussion about privileged messaging, the current state of email security, and a fascinating look at the forensic data gleaned from a distributed two-stage Web-based spam attack. I know several mail administrators that were at LISA this year, and not a single one of them missed these talks, and all of the admins I spoke to came away impressed.
Also during the morning sessions, Elizabeth Zwicky gave a very entertaining talk about how to teach problem solving to junior administrators and users. This talk was unique in that it intertwined concepts and statistics from the world of education with systems management and administration philosophies to help systems people understand how they can teach people, and what they can expect to accomplish based on the level of user they're dealing with.
Zwicky covered several interesting concepts. For example, Zwicky says that one of the single most important hurdles to teaching a person something is to instill in them a belief that they can, in fact, learn it. This was backed up by references to various studies to back up the claim, and the argument was very convincing.
After lunch, Tom Limoncelli of Google gave a talk about how things work at Google, and what he's learned after his first year there. The talk focused mainly on site reliability issues, failover, load balancing, how to choose the right method to route around issues, how Google distributes services, and some of the choices they've made to insure a good user experience.
Limoncelli is an excellent speaker; he's very personable, and covers concepts using the language of systems people. This would explain the sort of "second keynote" nature of this talk, in which there was scarcely an empty seat in the largest room in the house.
The Q&A session that followed was slightly less useful, since audience members, ever curious about the guts of Google, asked several questions which Limoncelli was unable to answer due to corporate policy. As always, Limoncelli invited people to ask questions offline at the end, and as usual, Limoncelli was nearly invisible in the crowd of attendees who took him up on the offer.
Thursday falls flat
After the exciting talks given on Wednesday, Thursday seemed to fall a little flat. I attended several talks, and spoke to a number of attendees, and was unable to find a highlight for the day. Unfortunately, the consensus among all the attendees I spoke to was that all of the talks on Thursday were lacking in some way.
A talk called "Everything You Know About Monitoring Is Wrong" failed to make it clear that this was, in fact, the case. The "Identity 2.0" talk I attended confused more than it conveyed, and the "QA and the System Administrator" session was only mildly interesting.
After Thursday's talks, the final night's events included the LISA reception party, which was a carnival-themed event that included a buffet dinner, carnival games, and a raffle in which the grand prize was the entire Monty Python collection on DVD. Following the LISA reception was the Google recruiting Birds of a Feather (BoF) session, where there was more beer, desserts, coffee, and another raffle in which the grand prize was a MacBook Pro. Google's BoF was well-attended -- indeed, I didn't speak to any attendees who weren't at Google's BoF Thursday night.
LISA '06 wraps up today, with more technical sessions and a closing session at 4:00 p.m. If you missed LISA '06, or just can't get enough LISA, there's plenty of time to sign up for next year's conference. LISA '07 will be held November 11 through 16 in Dallas, Texas. | <urn:uuid:4a24cb99-d1c5-440e-97da-800d9cd67156> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive09.linux.com/feature/58935 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977611 | 1,083 | 1.5 | 2 |
Third Legislative Assembly,
Delivered January 3, 1893,
CARTER PUBLISHING CO.
Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives:
l congratulate you that we meet under such favorable auspices. The condition of our affairs throughout the State is not only highly gratifying, but we feel justified in the hope that we have measurably passed that period of adversity which has been so generally the experience of the people of newly settled states.
SETTLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
Our settlement has not only been phenomenal, but we have come, almost in a day, to take our place as one of the great grain producers in the sisterhood of states. Our stock and mining interests are rapidly assuming vast proportions, and we gladly believe that the time is not far distant when South Dakota will occupy an enviable position for its productions, the virtue of its laws, and the character of its people.
Much of prosperity is often accredited, and of adversity charged to the party having control of the State. The eyes of the people are turned toward you in a very positive manner and they are anxiously hopeful that the trust and confidence they have reposed in you may be realized. They understand full well that it is not in the multitude of laws that their interests are best subserved, but they are expecting that your enactments shall be such as tend to their prosperity and that these laws when made, shall be faithfully administered. It is our duty to see that so far as lies in our power to prevent, they are not disappointed.
THE WORLD'S FAIR
Among the subjects to which your attention is respectfully invited, is the making of what in your wisdom you may deem a suitable appropriation for an exhibit of the resources of the State at the Columbian exposition at Chicago, during the present year, and to provide by law for its expenditure.
A number of our patriotic citizens, organizing themselves into a commission, have raised from among our people a considerable sum of money and have expended the same in erecting at Chicago what they have deemed a suitable building for the use of the State, and in gathering material for the exhibit. Neither the building nor the material for the exhibit is complete. You will be asked to reimburse these citizens for moneys already expended, and assume State control of this enterprise, making provision for the appointment of such number of our people for its management as in your judgment you may deem necessary.
OUR PUBLIC LANDS
A large amount of laud granted us by the government, for State and educational purposes, still remains unselected for want of means to defray the expense of its selection and certification. Wisdom would seem to indicate that these lands should be secured as speedily as possible before all our most valuable land is taken by settlers under our homestead law. An appropriation for this purpose will be asked by the State, and it is believed a reasonable amount should be granted.
In this connection, I desire to call your attention to an act of congress, giving to this state one section of land in the Sisseton military reservation with the Fort buildings to be used by us for militia purposes. The act mentioned declares that whenever it shall be used otherwise than as provided, or shall cease to be so used, it shall revert to the government. The wisdom of accepting it under these conditions is questionable. The expense which the state must incur in providing for a conservator for the property and the keeping of the buildings in repair, will greatly increase the cost of the maintenance of our militia, while at the same time we would be compelled to hold our annual musters at a point remote from railroads demanding expensive transport to and from the ground.
I would respectfully suggest that the attention of our senators and representatives in congress be called to this matter and that they be asked to secure, if in their· power, such change in the act as shall make it possible for us to take the property not as a donation for specific purposes, but as indemnity land.
REGARDING OIL INSPECTION
The revision of our oil inspection law is thought to be worthy of your careful consideration. The safety of our people and the preservation of their property would seem to demand that careful inspection shall be had, not only of illuminating oils but also of gasoline used within the state. It is believed that this may be accomplished by amendment of our present law, increasing both the duties and the compensation of the inspector, giving greater satisfaction and security to our people without any increase of their burden.
STEAM BOILER EXPLOSION
The frequency of explosions of steam boilers used in threshing, causing great loss of life, is an urgent appeal that something be done to insure greater safety in their use, and I earnestly urge upon you, if it shall be in your power, the enactment of a law to provide for the inspection of steam boilers, and the careful examination as to their competency of persons who may be employed as engineers.
DISCRIMINATING FREIGHT RATES
There is much complaint among our people of discriminating freight rates as charged by some of the railroads doing business in this State. I am not one of those who believe in indiscriminate war upon railroads. I have tried to fully recognize the fact, that without them the greater part of our State would be uninhabitable, except as a grazing country; that in many instances they have been the pioneers, and have been operated at a loss; that we are yet very anxious that more roads should be built, especially those which shall connect the eastern portion of the State with our rich mining region in the Black Hills; yet we know that without the people the roads would be valueless and they should not be permitted to become our masters.
The Republican state convention held at Madison passed unanimously a resolution asking that the board of railroad commissioners be hereafter made elective, with such increased powers, as shall make abuse of its privilege by any railroad in this state longer impossible. There are many of our citizens who honestly question the expediency of making these commissioners elective, on the ground that its effect may be to bring the railroads into our politics, and that a board appointed by the Governor is quite as likely to be efficient, as if selected by a convention. It was however in response to a popular demand that the resolution referred to was passed, and it is my duty to present this matter to you for your consideration. Meantime it is hoped that our present railroad board may be vested with such increased power as was contemplated by the resolution.
OUR PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS
The prosperity of our public institutions is something which our people very much desire. Although so young as a state, we point with pride to the provision which has been made for the education of our children, and the care of our unfortunates. These institutions cannot be maintained without money, and the people pay it willingly for such a purpose. Appropriations amounting in the aggregate to a considerable sum, will perhaps be asked for their support by those having them in immediate charge. While we ought to remember that their proper maintenance is imperative, yet I conjure you that you carefully examine all claims impartially, and never forget that a reckless use of the people's money is criminal.
THE SOLDIERS' HOME
An estimate of appropriations required for the maintenance of the soldiers' home, and for such repairs and improvements as seem necessary, is prepared by the board having this institution in charge, and will be presented to you for your consideration. It gives our people pleasure to know that its conduct has thus far been a marked success. The big-hearted man who has been the commandant since the establishment of the home, has made it in the highest sense what was contemplated in the law creating it. To him and to his noble wife the thanks of the people are freely given. It is hoped their successor will be equally worthy.
The provision of homes for old soldiers is in no sense regarded as a charity, but has been adopted by the government and several of the states as the most proper means to be employed for the discharge of some part of the obligation which the people feel to the men who have not only performed the highest duty known to an American citizen, but helped to save the government in doing it. It is believed you will make all necessary appropriation for the maintenance of this institution.
IMPROVE THE BALLOT
It is believed that our present ballot system is susceptible of improvement. Our experience has taught us that whatever may be done to simplify the ballot, and make it plain to those least able to understand it, ought to be. The free, untrammelled expression of the will of the voter, is the object sought to be obtained, and it is thought that this may better be accomplished, by so arranging the ballot that the names of the candidates for office of each party represented, should appear in separate columns, with such other changes from our present method, as your experience and wisdom may suggest.
ELECTION OF SUPREME AND CIRCUIT COURT JUDGES
Our constitution provides that "the judges of the supreme court, circuit courts, and county courts shall be chosen at the first election held under the provisions of this constitution, and thereafter as provided by law, and the legislature may provide for the election of such officers on a different day from that on which an election is held for any other purpose, and may for the purpose of making such provision, extend or abridge the term of office for any such judges then holding, but not in any case more than six months. The term of all judges of circuit courts, elected in the several judicial circuits, throughout the State, shall expire on the same day." There has as yet been no provision made by the legislature for the election of any of these officers other than the judges of county courts, and your attention is respectfully called to this subject. The terms of the supreme and circuit court judges now holding, will expire on the first day of January 1894, and it is important that you make provision for the election of· their successors.
THE REVENUE LAW
Section 98 of our present revenue law provides that "it shall be the duty of the treasurer, on and after the first day of July in each year, to immediately proceed to collect all delinquent personal taxes, and if such taxes are not paid on demand, he shall distrain sufficient goods and chattels belonging to the persons charged with such taxes, if found within the county, to pay the same with accrued penalty and interest, and all accruing costs." It will at once present itself to your minds, that this demand is to be made at a time of the year when very many of our people, whose taxes may be delinquent, are perhaps the least able to pay them. Our farming people, many of whom must depend upon the year's production for the discharge of all their obligations, have at this time in the year nothing to sell from which to obtain money, and they can ill afford the expense of distraint and sale. The absolute necessity that taxes must be paid with the greatest possible promptitude cannot be given too much emphasis. But it is suggested to you for your careful consideration, as to whether some change in time for their enforced collection may not properly be made.
If it shall be possible for you to perform the important duties demanding your attention and bring your session to a close before the expiration of the constitutional limit, it is respectfully suggested that such action would give great satisfaction throughout the State.
I have great confidence in your wisdom and in your desire to faithfully discharge the duties for which you have been chosen. Faithfulness and honesty are equally valuable in public as in private life and the man who thoroughly believes this and keeps it most clearly in view, is quite sure to receive the approval of his people.
It will be my duty to communicate to you from time to time such matters as shall seem to demand your attention, and I take great pleasure in hoping and believing that the people have entrusted the making of their laws to men who will prove themselves in every way worthy of the confidence of their constituents.
C. H. SHELDON
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SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 22, 2011—A new report shows Santa Clara University has one of the highest percentages of students studying abroad and international students among master’s institutions.
The Institute of International Education (IIE) Open Doors 2011 report, which is funded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, looked at 3,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. It ranked Santa Clara University No. 35 in total number of students on academic programs abroad, No. 5 in total number of students on “mid-length” (more than eight weeks) academic programs abroad, and No. 25 in enrolling the highest number of undergraduate and graduate international students in academic programs.
Approximately one-third of Santa Clara students study abroad in their undergraduate careers. Last academic year, 425 students went to 37 countries, such as Burkina Faso, El Salvador, and Thailand.
The U.S. saw a record number of international students (723,277) last academic year, with California remaining the leading host state with 96,535. Santa Clara University hosted 579 of those students, who hailed from 48 countries, including India, China, and South Korea.
The report also found that study abroad to China continues to increase in popularity, and India is gaining popularity as a study abroad choice. Almost 14,000 U.S. students received credit for study in China in 2009-10, and China remains the fifth most popular destination for U.S. students abroad, the only one of the top five host countries outside of Western Europe.
These strong increases have significant economic impact on the U.S., as international students contribute more than $21 billion to the U.S. economy, through their expenditures on tuition and living expenses, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Higher education is among the United States’ top service sector exports, as international students provide significant revenue not just to the host campuses but also to local economies of the host states for living expenses, including room and board, books and supplies, transportation, health insurance, and support for accompanying family members.
Together, the top three sending countries—China, India and South Korea—comprise nearly half (46 percent) of the total international enrollments in U.S. higher education. Canada, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and Japan each represent approximately three to four percent of the total international student population, with these top seven places of origin comprising about 60 percent of the total.
The top 10 most popular fields of study for international students in the U.S. in 2009-10 were Business and Management (22 percent), Engineering (19 percent), Mathematics and Computer Science (9 percent), Physical and Life Sciences (9 percent), Social Sciences (9 percent), Fine & Applied Arts (5 percent), Health Professions (5 percent), Intensive English Language (5 percent), Education (2 percent), Humanities (2 percent), and Agriculture (1 percent).
About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California’s Silicon Valley, offers its more than 8,800 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master’s and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master’s universities, California’s oldest operating highereducation institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.
About Open Doors
The Open Doors report is published by the Institute of International Education, the leading not-for-profit educational and cultural exchange organization in the United States. IIE has conducted an annual statistical survey of the international students in the United States since 1919, in partnership with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs since the early 1970s. The census is based on a survey of approximately 3,000 accredited U.S. institutions which host international students.Open Doors also reports on surveys on international scholars at U.S. universities; international students enrolled in pre-academic Intensive English Programs; and on U.S. students studying abroad (since 1985). A full press kit and further details on the Open Doors 2011 surveys and their findings can be accessed on the Open Doors website, and the full 120 page report can be ordered for $64.95 from IIE Books.
About Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State leads a wide range of academic, professional, and cultural exchanges that include approximately 40,000 participants annually, including the Fulbright Fellowships and Scholarships and the International Visitor Leadership Program, with the goal of increasing mutual understanding and respect between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. ECA sponsors the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarships for U.S. undergraduates with financial need, administered by IIE, and also manages the EducationUSA network of advising offices, providing information to students around the world who wish to study in the United States. For more information on the Department of State’s educational and cultural exchange activities, visit www.exchanges.state.gov.
Connie Kim Coutain | email@example.com | 408-554-5126 O | 408-829-4836 C | <urn:uuid:a9b060bd-5c71-4c49-83eb-3714e9952728> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scu.edu/r/news/releases/release/11588/Santa-Clara-University-Nationally-Ranked-in-Study-Abroad-and-International-Student-Enrollment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937217 | 1,132 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Pictures: Fireworks genius says £100,000 Jubilee display watched by more than 100 million people is his proudest moment
06 June 2012
The pyrotechnic genius behind the dazzling Diamond Jubilee fireworks finale at Buckingham Palace today said it was the proudest moment of his career.
Michael Lakin, 57, and his team of twelve technicians had just six weeks to put together the four-minute show which saw 4,000 fireworks shoot skyward at a rate of 20 a second.
The £100,000 display was described as the visual highlight of the weekend’s celebrations and was watched by a global audience of more than 100 million.
Mr Lakin, fireworks director at London-based Starlight Design - the company he set up 30 years ago after graduating in design from Cambridge - had the best view of all, perched up on the lighting platform just south of the Mall.
He described the nervous moment as his finger hovered over the mouse button at just before 11pm to trigger the pre-programmed display turning the London sky into a tapestry of fire.
He said: “It’s extremely nerve-wracking waiting for the first one to go off, because there are an awful lot of things that can go wrong.
“Your finger hovers over the mouse button to click ‘go’, then you have to wait about four seconds while the computer up on the palace roof engages the ignition.
“It came in about a second late so it missed the first cue but we managed to catch up with the music and from then on it was a question of keeping an eye on things.
“As soon as the first one fires you can relax a bit, but the whole display is programmed to run at a fraction of a second. The time between the triggers going off on the chase sequences across the Palace was less than a tenth of a second.”
The weekend washout posed a further technical headache for the team - who starting setting up the display last Monday - and had to keep it under plastic wrap until the rain eased off on Monday afternoon.
Mr Lakin, who lives in West Sussex, said: “We were lucky because there wasn’t too much wind, but there were a few moments when things were coming down quite close to the ground.”
His firm - which also designed firework displays for last year’s Royal Wedding and the Queen’s 80th birthday at Kew Palace - was called in to start work on the display just six weeks ago.
He said: “It was a great honour to be asked to do it and, in that time frame, it was certainly very exciting.
“It’s not the easiest site to deal with logistically, being in the centre of London, and of course if you’re going to put tons of fireworks on top of Buckingham Palace you have to make sure it’s safe.
“The fact it has been done before meant they were a little more relaxed about it, but the thought’s always there at the back of your mind - better not burn down the palace.”
After agreeing the musical programme with the BBC he set about designing a spectacular show with a diamond theme.
He said: “It was quite expensive because we were using a lot of single shot effects - the pink blinking diamonds had to be imported from Spain and some comets arrived in the nick of time from the US.”
As millions watched around the world, his wife Amanda and son Piers, 19, were in the audience below. His other two sons, Johnny, 22, and Hugo, 17, were part of the team on the ground making sure no-one got too close.
He said: “Without any doubt this is the most exciting event I’ve ever done and the one I was most excited to get. If I could have chosen between this and the Olympics I would have chosen this. Working for the Queen made it so memorable.
“I’ve yet to have a formal response from the Royal Family but I’ve had a lot of people getting in touch today to say it was the best thing they’d ever seen.”
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Nook is donating eReaders to volunteers at high-need schools and participating in exclusive events throughout the campaign.
Tell us how you plan to make today delicious and you could win a £50 M&S gift card.
Get the latest on The Standard's campaign to get London's children reading.
To commemorate its landmark birthday, 150 people have been selected to share their unique experiences. Read their stories here. | <urn:uuid:778ec47a-25f9-4ac8-a172-77d251f7ba55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/pictures-fireworks-genius-says-100000-jubilee-display-watched-by-more-than-100-million-people-is-his-proudest-moment-7819875.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967703 | 1,174 | 1.5 | 2 |
In part, I agree with D.W., prevention is greater than detection but only when it works. Once your machine is compromised, you'll kick yourself for not having better (or any!) detection mechanisms in place. In general, I try to split my focus on both, and at some points detection may get a little more attention.
Someone with your risk profile (small business owner with basic shared hosting provider etc), usually doesn't have the ability to spend the time, money and effort or make the required changes to fully invest in a security solution. I would recommend a 3 prong approach consisting of prevention, detection, and recovery.
Note, this is not an exhaustive discussion on each of these 'prongs', but rather are here to get your thinking juices going. I would love to hear what you decide to implement, along with anyone else's!
I won't spend to much time on prevention, there is just to much to cover. D.W. pointed out some starting points in his post, and there are a ton of resources online regarding secure coding. I suggest you start with the OWASP and Mozilla guides:
Some modern malware (and intruders) have the ability to root themselves so deeply into the innards of the victim OS that verifiable removal approches impossible. However, I would not suggest putting all your eggs in one basket e.g., only focusing on prevention. Focusing on only prevention leaves a lot of room post-compromise that could have been gathering artifacts and evidence.
Shared hosting environments are not always the best for their customizability in terms of what needs to happen for a security initiative, so it is very dependent on the provider. (see How to keep a shared web hosting server secure?)
Your incident was mostly likely part of a mass compromise, e.g., SQL injection of a site on your shared host that lead to OS compromise. That script then searches for *.php's to inject itself into. Once infected, the worm/attacker moves onto the next host(s). While this may not be exactly what happened, it's a common case, and demonstarts a common attack pattern that is hardly a sophisticated attack or an impossible task to detect and clean up.
Depending on what are able to deploy locally, your best bet maybe use a 3rd party service that looks for signs of infections, e.g.,
Another option is to use a simple script to compare checksums of all your files and send you an email when it's different. You could then use git hooks to update your script config with the current 'good' checksums. I've had good luck with simple scripts like this for other things as well, e.g., SSL cert checking, verification of headers, etc.
Now that you have a detection mechanism in place, what happens when you get that dreaded email at 3am? Having a clear process in place will greatly reduce downtime and grey hairs.
As you mentioned git in your question, I will assume you are a current user. There are a few good posts on how to use Git to manage a website. I would recommend using a process similar to one detailed in:
Remember, that is only your code, not necessarily all your data, e.g., databases and uploaded content. | <urn:uuid:c4d94947-c0eb-4bff-862f-5cf0ca78350d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11930/code-injection-detection-on-web-servers/11935 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936687 | 672 | 1.625 | 2 |
It’s a poorly-kept secret amongst those who follow me on Twitter that my taste in anime is often questionable. That being said, it’s probably not too much of a surprise that one of my favorite shows this season turned out to be Kono nakani hitori, imōtoga iru!, also known by its four-moraic abbreviation, Nakaimo.
More shocking, however, is the personal observation that the series seems to have a real appeal in its central mystery; love it or hate it, people keep watching, waiting to see if we are led closer to an answer. What Hiroki Azuma wrote in 2001 in Database Animals seems to hold true in 2012: anime fans are suckers for a good mystery.
So let’s dive into the question on everybody’s lips: just who is “imouto”?
Nakaimo, like many a traditional mystery, is an exercise in misdirection, starting from the title. “One of these girls is the sister,” it promises in familiar light-novelesque verbiage, while presenting us with the five main girls: this immediately marks them as the main suspects, and draws our attention away from other possible candidates.
Or maybe it’s a double bluff: as the series progresses, it has done well to gradually convince us that the main suspects couldn’t possibly be the sister. Consequently, we as viewers are naturally drawn toward the side characters, including the mysterious Ikusu Mizutani and the newly-introduced Yuzurina Hōshō.
It’s enough to make your head spin, isn’t it? How about this, then: using quantum mechanics as an analogous starting point, I posit that each possible candidate for sisterdom is both in a state of being “imouto” and not “imouto” (however, not in equal probabilistic distribution, unlike in the classic thought experiment of Schrödinger’s cat, which I’m sure this brings to mind).
What I’ve just described is quantum superpositioning: in this example, each heroine is both Shōgo’s sister and not his sister at the same time, a seeming paradox. But this only holds true for as long as there is no interaction with an observer. So what happens when the system is observed?
In quantum mechanics, what appears to occur is referred to as a wavefunction collapse: no longer in superposition, the system is reduced to only one of the single states. Whether this actually occurs or not is a matter of contention. One of the interpretations of quantum mechanics that rejects the wavefunction collapse is the many-worlds interpretation, which suggests that a system does not collapse into a singular state, but rather that reality itself branches out into all of the possible states at the moment of observation.
The implications of the many-worlds interpretation are at times radical, but it’s a concept far from foreign to the modern otaku; after all, this is the central idea behind what Azuma dubs “novel games,” but which are probably more familiar under the title of visual novels.
Novels with branched-path narratives were speculated upon as early as 1941, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that the experimental French literary group, Oulipo, actually produced such works, calling them “tree literature.” This break from the traditional linear narrative (the sole form of storytelling until then), coincides nicely with the popularization of many-worlds, which also took place in the 1960s.
It’s not too much of a stretch to think that otaku became so enamored with visual novels because they seemed to reflect a newfound complexity in the world, something not present in the traditional novel. But what happens when the branching narrative of a visual novel becomes adapted into the linear structure of an anime? What we’re left is something very typical of anime and light novels, which I call the singular narrative branch.
But first, let’s talk about some visual novel-to-anime adaptations that aren’t quite as “singular.” Without a doubt, the gold standard for multi-branched anime is the 2010 Yosuga no Sora. Throughout its 12 episodes, Yosuga presents not a single linear narrative, but rather four overlapping, yet distinct narratives emerging from no less than three branching points in true visual novel style.
Another notable example is Amagami SS. Much like Yosuga, the anime adaptation of the visual novel Amagami starts off with a common event―here, the protagonist being stood up on Christmas Eve―but this is the only shared point, and from here the anime explores six main relationships which can largely be treated as separate linear narratives.
Finally, there is the first season of Oreno imōtoga konnani kawaii wakega nai (although it’s originally a light novel series, not a visual novel). The anime is a mostly linear story, but near the end, it splits into the “Good End” and “True Route” branches. Most interestingly, the viewer is made aware of exactly where the two timelines split: a “decision point,” the most common way of displaying choices to the reader in visual novels, is displayed on-screen in the episode in an immediately recognizable homage.
Most visual novel adaptations, however, do not take such an innovative approach to storytelling. The standard fare goes something like this: a single route ending is animated (the “true” ending), but usually, events from the other story arcs are sprinkled throughout as a nod to the original. What results is a single story woven together from what was originally a much more complicated beast. And I think that best embodies what I earlier called the “singular narrative branch.”
In the traditional novel, key events have to occur to progress the plot logically; it couldn’t have happened any other way. A singular narrative branch is linear as well, but in contrast, both the producers and consumers of a narrative branch are aware that it is just one possible timeline of many; in other words, there are a number of possible key events that could have occurred instead of the one that happens to be shown.
This brings us back nicely to Nakaimo: far removed from the traditional mystery, Nakaimo is, at its core, a story where the culprit doesn’t matter, perhaps doesn’t even exist until the moment she does. The very suggestion that this is the case sounds ridiculous, but to the modern otaku, who thrives in the world of fiction, it is still in the realm of reason (or indeed, is perfectly natural).
So if the summer season ends without a definitive answer, despair not, fair reader, for it’s not one door which did not open, but many more doors which did not close. Talk about spooky! | <urn:uuid:a75845e0-1a89-491b-a365-afddf6baef78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://altairandvega.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/the-curious-case-of-schrodingers-imouto-quantum-interpretations-of-nakaimo-and-the-modern-otaku-narrative/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960024 | 1,474 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Because I'm cowardly that way.
So, two examples of the type - narrow tang, widening out an inch or so to maximum depth of blade, before tapering down again. Usually pretty short, always narrow. Usually 1/8in. or so, but the bottom one in this case is a bare 1/16in. That, my friends, is mega narrow for any chisel.
I've never thought of them as narrow bench chisels, simply because my old man has a 1/8in. chisel by Mr Marples and his boys, and it's nothing like that. I've always sorta assumed they're a variety of mortise chisel, possibly for some specific purpose (not a rare one, because they turn up frequently enough), but having found myself in possession of that ultra narrow one, I'm rather more uncertain of their use than before. Cursory inspection of Salaman and an old Marples catalogue has provided no enlightenment. I'm not saying the answer isn't out there, just that presently I don't have the spare brain power to go looking for it. So now is your opportunity to shine, gentle reader - what sayeth you? The comments box is open.
Meantime, I may have just succumbed to the joys of secondhand books via the interweb (again) and another volume of the Woodworker for my, um, collection. All being well, 1933 should this way come shortly. That'll keep me busy... | <urn:uuid:36fe70d2-dd9b-4a4f-b010-ecd46b337588> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cornishworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/10/chisel-by-any-name-would-cut-as-sweetly.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970862 | 305 | 1.539063 | 2 |
DENVER -- Colorado lawmaking is much less partisan than people might conclude when news accounts focus on disagreements between the Legislature's Democrats and Republicans, some of those lawmakers say.
Differences in political philosophies do show up in the debates and votes on some of the laws proposed in each year's session, said Senate President Brandon Shaffer, a Longmont Democrat.
He acknowledged that "every now and then, things flare up" -- especially when people get tired and tempers sometimes shorten during the final days of the four-month session, which this year must end on or before midnight Wednesday.
"But 90 percent of the things we do down here, we do in a bipartisan way," Shaffer said.
For the past two years, control of the Legislature has been divided. Democrats now fill 20 of the Senate's 35 seats, while Republicans occupy 33 of the House's 65 seats. Before any proposed law can make its way to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper's desk, its sponsors must collect support that crosses party lines.
Consensus does happen, though, Shaffer said.
He said a prime example came last month, when votes were tallied on a $19 billion state budget for fiscal 2012-13. After reviewing and modifying the appropriations bill introduced by the three Democratic and three Republican members of the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee, 94 of Colorado's 100 state lawmakers ultimately voted to approve it. Only one House Republican and five GOP senators voted against adopting it.
Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said this was the first time he'd voted for a budget bill in the 10 years he's served in the Colorado House and state Senate.
"The budget discussion, which is Job One for the Legislature, has become more measured and successful," Lundberg said. "I'm reasonably pleased with the sound fiscal management that I see here in this session."
The budget aside, many of this year's proposals for new state laws, as
Split control is better than being the minority party in both houses, several legislators emphasized.
"If the worst thing that happens is that fewer laws are created, that's a win for Colorado," said Rep. Don Beezley, R-Broomfield.
Rep. Glenn Vaad, R-Mead, said there's been a different dynamic to lawmaking after Republicans achieved majority status in the House in the 2010 elections -- even if Democrats continued to dominate the Senate.
"We were able to slow down legislation that wouldn't have been good for the people," he said.
Democratic Sen. Rollie Heath said it's important that his party retain its majority status in the Senate.
Heath, who's chairman of the Senate State Affairs Committee and a member of the Senate's Education and Appropriations committees, told Boulder-area constituents at a town hall meeting last weekend that "my ability to make a difference for you will go down" if Republicans capture control of the Senate.
Meanwhile, back in Denver, supporters of some of the pending legislative proposals made it a point that their bills had joint Democratic and Republican sponsorship.
For example, Reps. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, and Claire Levy, D-Boulder, paired up for a Wednesday House Education Committee hearing on their school-discipline bill, a measure that would remove many of the state's "zero-tolerance" mandates and give local school officials more discretion in deciding when and whether to suspend or expel students.
House Education Committee members voted unanimously Wednesday to send the Nikkel-Levy measure to the full House of Representatives.
"We really do work together more than the public is aware," Nikkel said after the committee hearing. "By reaching across the aisle and talking to each other, as it's done in business, we can accomplish a lot."
Also on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, and Mead Republican Vaad scored a 64-0 House vote to support the final versions of two measures they'd jointly sponsored to update Colorado's laws and state constitutional provisions about state government's personnel system.
That same day, Sens. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, and Pat Steadman, D-Denver, got a 27-8 vote of Senate approval for a bill that would direct the Colorado Criminal Justice Commission to review and recommend possible revisions of current drug sentencing laws. That advanced the bill to the House, where it also has bipartisan sponsorship -- Republican Beezley and Democrat Levy.
Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, has signed up to be a co-sponsor of that sentencing study bill.
Singer told constituents attending a Monday night town hall meeting in Longmont that lawmakers from rival political parties often "see things very differently" and "disagree very vocally" on some issues. But he said that they come together on others, like Mitchell's drug-sentencing measure.
Singer joked that when it comes to settling legislative disputes over public policy, "democracy is the best alternative to open warfare."
Legislators don't always vote in lockstep with the wishes of most of their fellow party members, and a single crossover vote can sometimes kill a bill or keep it alive.
This past week, for example, Nikkel's decision to vote for a civil unions bill -- a measure that would grant gay couples rights similar to marriage, including enhanced inheritance and parental rights -- allowed that bill to advance from the House Judiciary Committee to the House Finance Committee. Beezley then voted for the bill in the Finance Committee, advancing it to consideration by the House Appropriations Committee on Monday.
John Fryar can be reached at 303-684-5211 or firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:9905ea93-d678-4eda-90d7-7904c43f1498> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailycamera.com/television/ci_20557421/legislatures-not-perpetually-partisan-some-colorado-politicians-say | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963353 | 1,172 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Colorado Center Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge Project anticipated to begin construction in 2013 | Transportation
The Colorado Center Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge will provide greatly needed improved pedestrian and bicycle access over Interstate 25 in the vicinity of Colorado Boulevard and East Evans Avenue in Denver. The bridge, an arch‐type structure with access ramps on each end, will span I-25, landing at Cherry Street to the north and RTD’s Color ado Station (light rail transit) to the south.
The bridge, when completed in 2014, will increase multimodal connectivity between the Colorado Station, which boasts 5600 boardings and arrivals every day, and adjacent neighborhoods, the Denver bicycle route network, and employment and retail centers. User surveys show that 2% of RTD’s ridership is bike‐on‐transit and 43% of the riders walk to transit.
The need for pedestrians and bicyclists to safely and conveniently cross I‐25 and to access the Colorado Station has been identified in five different plans in the last 12 years. The bridge need was first identified in 1999 during the planning of the I-25 expansion and Southeast Corrido r LRT project known as T‐REX, and was confirmed as recently as 2008 in the Denver’s Strategic Transportation Plan, a plan that set a direction for Denver as a livable city with a multimodal transportation system. The tenets of this multimodal system, including dependable transit options, safe pedestrian linkages, a comprehensive bicycle system, and efficient and well‐maintained infrastructure are key elements of the Colorado Center Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge.
Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety
Currently, the opportunities for pedestrians and bicyclists to cross I‐25 are at Colorado Boulevard and Evans Avenue. Both of these roadways are considered major arterials with large volumes of automobile traffic travelling at relatively high speeds. Currently, in order to reach RTD’s Colorado Station, pedestrians and bicycles must cross arterial traffic at least five times at the Colorado Boulevard and I‐25 interchange or three times at Evans Avenue and the I‐25 interchange. Safety statistics confirm the need for a better pedestrian and bicyclist connection over I‐25 between Colorado Boulevard and Evans Avenue.
For the area that the bridge will service, there were a total of 2 8 accidents involving pedestrians and/or bicyclists – one of which resulted in the loss of a life - over the ten-year period from January 1, 2001 to January 1, 2011. This area includes the I-25 interchanges at Colorado Boulevard and at Evans Avenue and the service corridors of Colorado Boulevard and Evans Avenue. The service corridor includes the walking/biking routes that would connect the east side of I-25 with the west-side transit station. Along Colorado Boulevard, the service corridor is defined from Mexico Avenue to Buchtel Boulevard; along Evans Avenue, the service corridor is defined from Dahlia Street to Birch Street.
Based on the identified need, the City of Denver competed for and was awarded federal transportation funding through the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG). The total estimated project cost for the bridge, including design and construction, is $8 million. The overall project is funded with $4 million in City Capital Improvement Funds, and $4 million in federal Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) Funds.
With extensive public involvement over the past two years, the City’s project design team analyzed numerous location and design alternatives for the bridge. Options were evaluated with a variety of criteria, including visibility, access, usage, bridge span length, infrast ructure impacts, utility impacts, and right‐of‐way requirements. Public comment confirmed support for the bridge project itself and for the selected location. Other potential alignments failed to meet the goals for connectivity, not directly connecting to RTD’s Colorado Station, as well as had major utility conflicts. The selected location provides direct access to the station, other transportation facilities, and had limited utility conflicts.
Visually the bridge will be a steel structure similar to other pedestrian bridges along the I-25 corridor that were constructed as part of the T-REX project. The bridge is a single span arch/through truss that delivers a signature, high profile look and aesthetic appeal. The ramps are a combination of bridge spans and walls, allowing more light to come through the ramps and reduce the amount of vertical walls in residential areas. Where a wall structure is present, the design includes pre‐formed concrete, which will be a neutral brick design. Additionally, one percent of the overall project budget must be used on public art, which could be incorporated into the wall design.
Economic Development & Transit Oriented Development
By providing greatly needed connectivity to RT D’s Colorado Station, the Colorado Center Pedestrian / Bicycle Bridge is key to spurring a Transit Oriented Development (TOD): a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use community that encourages residents and workers to drive their cars less and ride transit more. TOD’s provide relief from completely automobile-dependent lifestyles and are attractive because they simplify life and allow people to experience a strong sense of community. TOD’s stimulate local economic development, generally increasing property values, reflecting the direct benefits to residents and businesses of having diverse transportation options. Most importantly, TOD’s provide people with options so they can choose where to live, work and play.
The Colorado Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge will be equipped with lighting and cameras for security purposes. The majority of the lighting on the bridge will be LED lights embedded into the railing which illuminate the bridge deck, stairs and ramps. This provides adequate lighting for the bridge users but does not give off ambient light onto vehicles travelling on I-25 or into the adjacent properties. At the end of the ramps, there will be overhead lights for enhanced safety and security at the transition points. Cameras will also be installed on the bridge.
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- Animal Law Center says Adams Co. deputy in wrong building killed dog | <urn:uuid:270f68af-8539-4906-8a99-3131eeeea1dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wheatridge.kdvr.com/news/transportation/119475-colorado-center-pedestrianbicycle-bridge-project-anticipated-begin-construction-2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941227 | 1,287 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Changing Music Education One Voice at a Time
Master in Education (M.Ed.) student Rebecca Fromherz is passionate about music, education, and opera. Through the M.Ed. special studies strand, Rebecca has been able to combine her talent as an accomplished international opera singer with her desire to provide a musical outlet for people of all ages and abilities.
Rebecca’s music background is extensive and impressive. She has been studying music for over 20 years, including formal education at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, a prestigious and selective undergraduate music program. She also studied under the tutelage of acclaimed opera singers in the USA and Europe, and went on to enjoy a successful professional opera career.
During her time as music student and performer, Rebecca learned the work of singing and how to sing, but not who she was as a singer. In Italian, the word “opera” means work. To Rebecca, singing is holistic and total person “heART” work, so before enrolling in Willamette’s M.Ed. program Rebecca shifted her focus from full-time professional vocalist to entrepreneur and founder of “Opera Organically”, a school for voice in Dallas, Oregon.
Founded by Rebecca’s drive to enhance the world of music education, and in response to the loss of music in Pk-12 schools, Opera Organically is meeting a need for her students. Rebecca’s professional music career and training add depth of knowledge to her practice, and according to Rebecca, “The M.Ed. at Willamette was a good fit because my desire to create something new was honored. Every idea has been affirmed. In Rebecca’s view, “Singing is an integral part of being human to some people”. Through her approach to music education, Rebecca offers a safe place for people of all ages to find themselves as singers, and is a resource to people who need to sing but can’t.
The M.Ed courses have offered pedagogical tools and the faculty have supported her vision of holistic music education. Student-centered learning is one of the primary philosophies of the M.Ed. program, and this resonates with Rebecca. In her opinion, the singer knows their voice and the teacher is only guide; student as teacher. “It has been fantastic to work with professors who transform my ideas as performer, into what my students need” said Rebecca.
In addition to honing pedagogical tools, she has also learned about learning theories and how they can apply to her unique approach to music education. Through Clinical Instructor Neil Liss’ class, she has learned that “creating a safe place is very related to John Dewey’s theory on art and experience and Nel Noddings Care Theory. These concepts are very relatable and it has been like coming home to learn about these philosophers”.
The M.Ed. program is also inquiry based. As a result, students develop an action research project that they work on throughout the program and weave into the coursework. Rebecca’s action research tracks how the safe place that she strives to create in her studio and the techniques that she is using, transforms the way her vocal students think about themselves and their voices. In addition, she is looking to see how singing connects the individuals in her study with one another.For Rebecca, Opera Organically is an attempt to change the world one voice at a time, and the M.Ed. program is helping to support and clarify her vision.
Becca Fromherz, M.Ed., '13, Opera Organically | <urn:uuid:b0b54139-5065-451a-905f-d836dcf98e0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.willamette.edu/gse/news/library/2012/Opera_Organically.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97391 | 754 | 1.757813 | 2 |
News from Public Affairs
Hidden Treasures: Photographers and the Lowell Thomas Papers at Marist Art Gallery
POUGHKEEPSIE – Famed newsman and broadcaster Lowell Thomas worked through movie newsreels, radio and television, books, and the lecture circuit, but most of his worldwide travels were captured in photographs, which make up one of the most accessible and timeless elements of the Lowell Thomas Papers at Marist College.
A new exhibition, "Hidden Treasures: Photographers and the Lowell Thomas Papers," includes more than 100 photographs – from Italy, Tibet, and North Africa, among many other locales – that reveal will go on display in the Art Gallery in the Steel Plant Studios. The exhibit features the work of Lowell Thomas and his son, Lowell Jr.; Frank R. Roberson, a prolific traveler and lecturer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and Harry Chase, a pioneering photographer, who famously shot Thomas with T.E. Lawrence.
"In addition to the valuable history of these exciting images, many of them show how concerned these photographers were with pictorial values," says Ed Smith, professor of art and director of the Marist College Art Gallery. "They are not only documents but distinctive works that can stand on their own artistic merits."
The exhibit is free and open to the public. It runs through March 2. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 12 noon to 5 p.m. | <urn:uuid:aed56184-70cc-42d7-a7de-57aed80ba639> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marist.edu/publicaffairs/hiddentreasures.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965458 | 292 | 1.796875 | 2 |
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3 posts tagged with economy by y2karl.
Displaying 1 through 3 of 3.
I.M.F. Report Says U.S. Deficits Threaten World Economy
With its rising budget deficit and ballooning trade imbalance, the United States is running up a foreign debt of such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund. Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world. The report warns that the United States' net financial obligations to the rest of the world could be equal to 40 percent of its total economy within a few years--"an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country," according to the fund, that could play havoc with the value of the dollar and international exchange rates.
From The Brookings Institute: Sustained Budget Deficits: Longer-Run U.S. Economic Performance and the Risk of Financial and Fiscal Disarray
(Full Report PDF
posted by y2karl
on Jan 8, 2004 -
The change in private employment, two years after recession began, for 1953 to Present.Details
: The jobless recovery continued in March 2003 as the nation's payrolls contracted by 108,000, according to report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). These losses are in addition to last month's payroll declines, which also were revised up to 357,000. Taken together, the economy has lost 465,000 jobs in the past two months. In the two years since the recession began in March 2001, total payrolls have fallen by 2.1 million and private sector payrolls are down by 2.6 million.The Jobless Recovery
. Low growth accompanies record trade deficit
Last month in Beijing, Robert Zoellick, President George W. Bush's international trade ambassador, had nothing but praise for China's growing trade surplus. Meanwhile in St. Louis in January, the president stumped for more tax cuts, standing before a facade of boxes with the words "Made in China" covered over in tape. 2001 Tax Cuts and the Proposed 2003 Cuts
Details: Discarding pretense of tax cut equity
Also: Economists Voice Opposition to Bush Tax Cuts
posted by y2karl
on Apr 16, 2003 - | <urn:uuid:82893429-0c2f-4cbc-8e76-475b25f9b904> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metafilter.com/tags/economy/11820 | 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 | 0.934603 | 535 | 1.59375 | 2 |
At a meeting in April of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, two warhorses of the green movement, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, released a statement entitled, “The Death of Environmentalism” — a dismal litany of the Bush administration’s murderously successful war on the environment that caused quite a stir among the tree-hugging set. While noting that established environmental organizations have become stunningly impotent in trying to slow down the neocon juggernaut, the report lacks any clear prescription for what to do about it.
That lack of a prescription is Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ point: We’ve lost, and we’re clueless.
In “The environment’s new bling,” a commentary published April 21 in The Boston Globe, Chip Giller, founder and editor of the online environmental magazine Grist.org, took note of the EGA confab and its desperately pessimistic focus. (Attention, streetspeak Luddites: “bling” is hip-hop slang for jewelry, and is included in the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Actually, the OED lists “bling-bling”; this was the term of choice as the etymological behemoth went to press, but it has since been truncated. You can’t expect a popular culture with the attention span of a fruitfly to hang onto two blings when one bling will do.)
Giller observed that in the current political climate, environmentalists are foolish to expect any kind of significant pole shift in their power (that is, the lack of it) inside the Beltway. He faulted the movement for preaching to “a middle-aged, upper-middle-class choir” rather than trying to broaden its base.
Giller then noted a phenomenon that remains substantially under the radar of mainstream environmentalists: the steady growth of a “green” ethic at the grass-roots level, which has little do with World Wildlife Fund bumper stickers and lots to do with subtle but broad-based changes in everyday behavior — in homes, neighborhoods and the marketplace.
Elaborating with several examples, he moves from “bling” to another word, which has been around for ages but is rapidly taking on new resonance: “sustainability,” which he defines as “the new self-reliance.”
How many people were throwing around the word “sustainability” even a couple of years ago?
Chelsea Green Publishing Co. — which has marched for years under the banner of “the politics and practice of sustainable living” — functions as an environmental ordnance depot: a repository of practical information on how everyday people can change their everyday behavior in everyday ways that have the power to transform the big picture even as the Sierra Club nobly scratches its head. From its massive backlist to several new cutting-edge titles, Chelsea Green has often been there, in the words of one Nathan Bedford Forrest, “fustest with the mostest.” (Hey, how often do environmental flacks get to quote a Confederate Civil War general?)
Expect still more in the months to come. The flagship, so to speak, of the next ambitious fleet of books is Limits to Growth, the 30th-anniversary update of a hefty broadside still considering one of the seminal manifestos of the sustainability movement.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus are right, but Giller is right, too. Forget about praying for epiphanies among the rapacious power elite; they are quite deliberately beyond our reach, and determined to remain so. You want a reality check? We’re talking about an administration that selected (and a Congress that confirmed) Alberto R. Gonzales as U.S. attorney general — a man who, in a 2002 memo to President Bush, described the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete.” His words, not mine.
So go ahead; keep badgering the White House with Environmental Defense Fund petition cards pleading for the imperiled survival of the Arctic National Widlife Refuge. Maybe those little postcards poke tiny demographic thorns in the side of somebody someplace inside the castle who deserves to be poked. But that’s not where salvation lies. It lies, as it always has, with the power of information and the willingness to engage.
Think about it: Isn’t it a good sign that the phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally” has developed enough traction to become a cliche? | <urn:uuid:16eb505d-cfb0-4e5a-a50b-ee06ea1cf9a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/environmentalism-lives-you-just-have-to-look-closely/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949657 | 955 | 1.789063 | 2 |
A Greek shipping industry magnate used a host of front companies and a fleet of crude-oil tankers flying Panamanian and Liberian flags to help Iran evade international oil sanctions, U.S. officials said Thursday.
Parallel statements by the State and Treasury departments accused Greek businessman Dimitris Cambis of channeling Iranian government funds through the front companies, including one called Jupiter Seaways, to purchase eight oil tankers used to sneak Iranian crude into the global market.
The Treasury Department, which imposed a set of sanctions focusing exclusively on Mr. Cambis‘ activities on Thursday, outlined an elaborate plot in which he used “ship-to-ship transfers” to disguise “the Iranian origin of oil transported” on the tankers.
“We are lifting the veil on an intricate Iranian scheme that was designed to evade international oil sanctions,” David S. Cohen, Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in announcing the sanctions, which authorize U.S. penalties against “U.S. persons” doing business with Mr. Cambis or his companies.
“We will continue to expose deceptive Iranian practices and to sanction those individuals and entities who participate in these schemes,” Mr. Cohen said.
The development marks the latest in what for more than a year has been an attempt by the Obama administration to lead — and subsequently enforce — a global embargo on Iranian crude oil.
The effort, which began in 2011 amid mounting international tension surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, has seen the Treasury and State departments level sanctions at companies from Hong Kong to Switzerland in an attempt to block the companies’ access to anyone doing business in U.S. financial markets.
While administration officials claim the effort has tremendously cut into Tehran’s ability to draw revenue from the Iranian oil industry, implementation of the sanctions has involved a delicate geopolitical dance between the White House and certain U.S. allies around the world, several of whom depend on Iranian oil to feed their own energy needs.
As a result, U.S. authorities have granted exemptions to the sanctions to nations seen to be making a concerted effort to ween themselves off the Iranian crude. The State Department, for instance, announced on Wednesday that it was renewing previous exemptions granted to Japan and some European Union nations.
The Treasury Department, meanwhile, said Thursday’s sanctions were being imposed on 14 “front companies” used by Mr. Cambis to “purchase oil tankers while disguising the fact that the tankers were being purchased on behalf of the National Iranian Tanker Company.”
“These front companies were used to obscure the fact that these vessels, which are capable of carrying roughly $200 million worth of oil per shipment, are the property of the Iranian government,” the department said in its statement.
The statement said one front company, Libra Shipping, conducted a series of “ship-to-ship transfers” of oil from the National Iranian Oil Co. in “an attempt to mask the fact that the true origin of the oil is from Iran, and to introduce it into the global market as if it were non-Iranian oil.”
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Guy Taylor rejoined The Washington Times in 2011 as the State Department correspondent.
As a freelance journalist, Taylor’s work was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Fund For Investigative Journalism, and his stories appeared in a variety publications, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to Salon, Reason, Prospect Magazine of London, the Daily Star of Beirut, the ...
'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
A mother of three and a passionate conservative, Shirley Husar changes the game.
Political satirist and Christian apologist Bob Siegel discusses religion and politics.
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal
Vietnam Memorial adds four names
Cinco de Mayo on the Mall | <urn:uuid:8e34d2f5-93f4-4196-aa07-0d1a969641f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/14/greek-shipping-magnate-named-scheme-evade-sanction/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954492 | 836 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The Registered Nursing program is fully accredited by the California Board of Registered
Nursing. It is a two semester program offered every year starting spring semester.Graduates
from accredited vocational nursing programs are eligible to apply.The LVN-RN program
is specifically designed to provide the LVN with an opportunity for career advancement
and prepares the LVN for the additional responsibilities required of the registered
The nursing program has been built upon the “ladder concept,” providing the opportunity
for upward mobility, while continuing to work in a fulfilling career. At the completion
of any step, you may continue or stop, go to work and return for more education later.
Physical exam, TB test, and CPR required for all programs. In addition, the clinical
agencies requires background checks and drug screening.
The Nursing program is separated into the three areas of education:
Why choose a career in nursing?
The demand for health care professionals is high in all areas. This need is projected
to increase for at least the next 30 years and has resulted in higher wages and more
diverse job opportunities. There is presently a major nursing shortage, and jobs are
plentiful in hospitals, clinics, physicians’ offices, research study programs, and
more. Specialties include obstetrics, surgery, pediatrics, orthopedics, intensive
care, and emergency room/trauma.
- Wages range from $9-$12/hr for a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). Certified Home
Health Aides have reported earnings of $12-$16/hr. Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
are offered for most post-CNA courses.
- An entry level wage for an LVN is approximately $16-$18 per hour. Jobs are plentiful
and may be found in acute hospitals, long term care facilities, physicians' offices,
home health care and clinics.
- An entry level wage for a Registered Nurse (RN) is approximately $28-33 per hour,
with veteran nurses earning $30 per hour and up.
How do I know if nursing is right for me?
To be a nurse you need to enjoy working with people. Good communication and critical
thinking skills are central to the nursing role. Nursing practice is based on scientific
principles and a solid knowledge base of anatomy and physiology is important. Math
skills are essential to safe medication administration. The ability to read and understand
scientific literature and communicate effectively in writing are the fundamentals
to success in nursing.
Gainful Employment Information
Health Sciences Department, Building M
Sandy Zepeda, Program Technician
805-922-6966 ext. 3384
Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
closed during the summer.
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"At Allan Hancock College, I have a clear path for where I want to go in terms of a career. The classes are really challenging and rewarding. The instructors are really open and willing to share their knowledge with you. They have so much experience to share with us, things that would take years to see in the field."
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Looking back on the Dublin EU summit protests - Mayday 2004
ireland / britain | anarchist movement | opinion / analysis Saturday May 14, 2005 00:11 by Dec McCarthy - WSM
A preview and longer version of the article in RBR9
Last year over the Mayday weekend the libertarian Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN) organised a series of anti-capitalist events during the summit that marked the Irish presidency of the EU. Thousands took to the streets, despite police intimidation and a massive media scare campaign, to take part in a weekend of demonstrations, street theatre, direct actions and street parties. It was the most successful Mayday demonstration in Ireland in decades and by far the most ambitious and exciting libertarian event that the country has ever seen. That libertarians could organise something on this scale would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago. One year on, Dec McCarthy a WSM and DGN member, takes a look at the events, how they were organised and asks what sort of lasting impact Mayday 2004 might have on Irish politics. This is part 1 of a 3 part article.
The ghost of mayday past
Compared to many other European countries Mayday demonstrations have always been small in Ireland-even in the 1980's when the Stalinist left was much more influential and the unions were much more powerful. By the mid 1990's, with the old left in complete disarray and the union bureaucrats more focussed on partnership with the state and the bosses rather than workers' rights, Mayday had become a fairly under whelming event. A typical Mayday march made for a fairly sorry sight -consisting of an ever dwindling bunch of left trade unionists, various Marxist sects peddling their dreary papers and a small group of anarchists hanging around at the back. The event would fizzle out after a dispiriting meander around the city centre and some speeches. As a commemoration ceremony of the historic battles and victories of the workers movement it was almost ok but only the truly deluded or dishonest participants of these marches could claim that these events were an expression of the power and potential of ordinary people to remake history.
A brief history of troublemaking
So given this dismal tradition why were the explicitly libertarian Mayday events in 2004, comparatively speaking, such a success? Of course there was the impetus of a major EU summit but to understand why anarchists were in a position to organise Mayday calls for a brief examination of the development of libertarian ideas and practices in Ireland over the past few years.
Obviously, part of the story is the general realignment of the radical left in the wake of the collapse of Stalinism and the subsequent growth in interest in the anarchist alternative. A lot of this interest can be attributed to the anarchist involvement in the burgeoning anti-capitalist movement. Like countless others across the world the Zapatista uprising and the massive protests against the institutions of global capitalism have inspired, bolstered and strongly influenced Irish anarchism. The central themes of the alternative globalisation movement echo and develop ideas that are central to, or complementary to those of anarchism; the practice of direct democracy, the use of direct action, a genuine internationalism, a distrust of politicians and wannabe politicians, and network building. Gradually, many of these ideas and practices have permeated beyond anarchism into broader activist circles and these ideas and the dynamism of anti-capitalism has drawn a swathe of new people into political agitation.
Dublin, Mayday 2004 was to a large extent the product of this movement with its new models of protest. It is no coincidence that a large number of the activists involved in organising Mayday have travelled abroad to various counter-summits, encuentros and conferences and taken part in the central debates and many of the struggles that have shaped the anarchist part of the alternative globalisation movement. In Dublin the enthusiasm and energy generated by these developments and the appearance of a new generation of libertarians was strengthened by the presence of a small but consistently hardworking group of anarchists active in various campaigns in the city for the past two decades.
Alphabet soup -GG, GNAW, DGN and the SWP
It was activists influenced by Zapatista solidarity work, radical ecology and anti-capitalism that organised the first Grassroots Gathering in 2001. This initiative was, in retrospect, one of the most important taken by Irish libertarians in the past few years. There had been some "anti-capitalist" umbrella groups in existence before this such as Globalise Resistance but they had been badly marred by the opportunism of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Since 2001 the Gathering has been held two or three times a year providing a discussion forum for libertarian activists who want to network and share experiences and analyses. These events have attracted hundreds of activists from various backgrounds and non-authoritarian political tendencies, has galvanised the libertarian left and played a very important role in spreading anarchist ideas and the emergence of new forms of protest. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that without the Gatherings it is unlikely that there would have been any large-scale anti-authoritarian protests.
The Gatherings do not function as decision-making bodies but they have given birth to a number of practical initiatives and activist groups. Probably the most significant of these activist groups was the Grassroots Network Against War (GNAW) who from 2002 on sought to create a libertarian pole of activity within the anti-war movement separate from the SWP dominated Irish Anti-War Movement who were, in practical terms, trying to ignore the US refuelling at Shannon and who opposed the use of direct action against the war. Simultaneously, a number of punks and anarchist squatters started to make an impact on anti-war events with Ireland's first black bloc actions. These activities met with varying levels of success but for the first time in radical politics in Ireland there was a well-publicised and clearly identifiable libertarian presence on the streets.
So between 2002 and 2004 it was becoming clear that a series of overlapping and interlinked groups and individuals largely within the orbit of the Grassroots could fruitfully work together on a range of issues. This fuelled a growing sense of confidence and ambition amongst libertarians and in July 2003 at a Gathering in Dublin plans were laid to organise a demonstration against the World Economic Forum meeting in Dublin in October. Grassroots activists in collaboration with the Irish Social Forum planned to disrupt the summit. When it was announced that the WEF meeting was cancelled the same activists who later established the Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN) started planning for Mayday.
24-hour party people-RTS and Indymedia
Before discussing the planning of Mayday in more detail it is worth mentioning two other important factors in the run up to the first of May 2004 - RTS and Indymedia especially as many of the people who ended up in DGN were or are also involved in RTS and/or Indymedia.
The first couple of RTS street parties in Dublin were fairly small affairs but over a couple years these events started to attract more people. In 2002 there was a Mayday RTS along the banks of the Liffey. Hundreds of people came to dance, chat and drink in the holiday sunshine. As the RTS was finishing the partygoers were viciously batonned off the street. The cops were quick to claim that these unprovoked assaults was their response to a completely fictional anti-capitalist Mayday riot akin, they said, to events in London the previous year. The media ran with this until Indymedia footage of the boys in blue in action radically changed the way the story was covered. In general the role of Indymedia Ireland in promoting non-authoritarian radical politics cannot be underestimated but the work done by Indymedia correspondents and editors at this time was invaluable both for vindicating the assaulted protestors and for raising the profile of libertarian dissent. Mayday 2002 put Indymedia and anti-capitalist protest on the front pages and the event remains firmly lodged in the minds of most Irish people as symptomatic of increasingly aggressive and untrustworthy policing policies and the emergence of a new type of protest.
The following year there was another well-attended Mayday RTS in the city centre that passed off without any police violence. This further established Mayday in the public mind as, at least partially, a day of libertarian protest and these chaotic, joyful and defiant street parties had a marked influence on the type and nature of events organised over the Mayday weekend in 2004.
Informal discussion of a Mayday protest against the EU began in mid 2003. At the Grassroots Gathering in Galway in November 2003 plans for Mayday were discussed in a more structured way. Although a lot of the important details remained vague working groups were set up that envisaged a Mayday closely modelled on previous international summit protests with the aim of either shutting down the bigwigs shindig -or at least disrupting it -and using this as an opportunity to put forward our vision of an alternative Europe.
The pace of activity picked up in the New Year as Ireland assumed the EU presidency. For the next five months there were regular meetings of the newly formed DGN to discuss what we wanted to do and to begin the practical organisational work for the protest. From quite early on in this process DGN decided that one of our most important priorities was to devise events and actions that would have popular appeal and allow for mass participation. (for more details on this see the section below entitled Learning from Mayday 2- anti-capitalism: where to now?). What emerged over the next couple of months was an ambitious four-day timetable of events that was themed as a "No Borders" weekend. The SWP led coalition "Another Europe is possible" also announced that it was going to hold some type of protest over the same weekend but based on our previous experience of SWP fronts we thought it wise to continue planning separately and discuss possible coordination in the future.
At these meetings considerable time and thought was given to how we might get our message across effectively to people outside of the small libertarian scene and the traditional left. Despite a fairly small group of activists and very limited resources it was decided to print fifty thousand leaflets explaining our opposition to the EU-one of the biggest print runs of any libertarian propaganda ever undertaken in Ireland. We wanted to ensure that we couldn't be easily marginalized and written off as cranks. This was of particular concern because historically the EU has enjoyed widespread popular support in Ireland as a cash cow for infrastructural projects and various subsidies and by parts of the left as a the harbinger of progressive social legislation. We also wanted to clearly distinguish ourselves from the rather unappealing coalition of nationalists, rabid pro-lifers, racists and other loons who have traditionally opposed the project of European integration in Ireland. So in the final version of the leaflet we were careful to stress that we did not oppose the entry of new states into the EU per se but that we objected to the neoliberal policies of an EU run by bosses and multinationals that was intent on the privatisation of public services and tightening border controls. DGN was conscious that lefty whingeing and outrage on its own doesn't often inspire people so the leaflet also tied to outline a positive and constructive alternative to the bosses' Europe. When the leaflets were finally printed up we started distributing them in the city centre and in housing estates around Dublin and to a lesser extent in other Irish cities. In addition, thousands of flyers, stickers and posters were printed up and plastered all over the city.
As part of the effort to go beyond the "usual suspects" activists tried to make contact with refugee groups, the anti bin-tax campaign that was opposing the imposition of neoliberal service taxes and other campaigns and groups. An international call out to libertarians was also sent out. By February it was clear that a number of English groups were going to respond to the call the most organised of which was the WOMBLES who held several meetings in London in preparation for Mayday and travelled over for the Grassroots Gathering in Cork in early March in order to network with Irish activists.
Don't believe the hype- mayday and media
By February we had already garnered some sensationalist and deeply dishonest coverage of our plans but I don't think any of us could have predicted the extent of the eventual media scare campaign. Over the next two months there were a blizzard of articles in which the word violence was to appear with ever increasing frequency and less and less meaning or context in newspapers and in TV and radio studios. This non-issue was seized upon by every hack with a laptop-who knocked out one or another version of the standard article about the threat of violent and mindless anarchists arriving to sack the city and Dubliners were duly promised everything from a twenty thousand strong anarchist army to gas attacks.
To counter this smear campaign DGN created a group of media spokespeople. Their unstinting and consistently intelligent efforts to take the media on at their own game and get our message to the general public enjoyed a good measure of success. Closer to Mayday the work of the media group pushed some reporters to question some of the more ludicrous stories being circulated. Their work was complemented and strengthened by the efforts of Indymedia Ireland in the months before Mayday. In the week before the protests Ireland's first Indymedia centre was opened up in Dublin's inner city providing alternative media, including the DGN media group, an all important base and a platform to work from. It is likely that these media activists prevented the wholesale criminalisation of the Mayday protests. Also, rather paradoxically, the coverage generated interest in Mayday- giving us the sense that we were at the centre of something important and exciting.
Nonetheless, the issue of violence was the only thing consistently discussed in the mainstream media and to an extent we ended up being shaped by the lurid fantasies of journalists; fantasies that had no bearing on our politics or our plans. The media group fought and won a battle for DGN but inevitably the nature and the form of the battle was determined by the mainstream media. In the media hall of mirrors all the focus remained almost exclusively on the potential for violence during the protests rather than on the effects of neoliberalism and in the end, I believe, that we began to internalise and, at least in part, respond to this media driven agenda
Enter the cop mob
The media frenzy could be more properly called the media/police scare campaign. In the run up to Mayday the police mounted an unprecedented security operation and a media offensive of their own and their efforts played a massive role in determining what happened over Mayday. There was talk of mass arrests, holding centres and specially trained riot squads. A well-known Garda representative opined that the police should have guns to confront the protestors. In the couple weeks before Mayday things became really ridiculous with the police regularly harassing activists for simply distributing leaflets or fly posting as well as mounting an intensive surveillance operation of DGN activists. In the couple of days before Mayday three thousand cops were drafted into the city and Irish troops were deployed and billeted near Farmleigh house where the EU leaders would be banqueting on May the first. The police's new anti-riot toys - water cannon borrowed from the PSNI- were trundled in front of the media who reported the whole farce in the tone of breathless excitement along with interviews of senior police officers who stated in an august and serious manner that they were now ready to defend the great and good against a horde of international anarchists. More seriously for the protest organisers though was the discovery and closing by the cops of the planned accommodation/convergence centre in a recently squatted derelict house. Worse still, three English anarchists were arrested nearby and held in custody on trespass charges. The cops then further upped the ante by raiding the flats of two Irish anarchists. This carnival of reaction provided even further testament, for anyone who needed it, to the boundless vanity of Irish politicians, the craven servility of most of the media and the ability of senior police to talk unmitigated shite.
The arrests and the loss of the convergence centre was to bedevil us over the following days with many of the international anarchists far from impressed with the set up or DGN's tactical choices. In turn, the attitude and approach of some of the visitors didn't exactly enamour some of the internationals to DGNers. (These conflicts over tactics, infrastructure and approach bring into sharp focus some of the more important issues thrown up during Mayday and this is discussed more fully in the box below Learning from Mayday 1)
Here comes the weekend
The weekend began with a small demonstration in support of the English arrestees in custody at Mountjoy jail. Because of the massive police operation and the media hype there was considerable trepidation amongst DGN activists about how many people might have been scared off from joining the protest. The first billed event - the Critical Mass- put those fears to rest as 600 people turned up on a Friday evening to an event that usually attracts about a fifth of that number and thankfully despite the tension the prevailing atmosphere was festive, defiant and empowering.
Early the next day a worryingly small group, even given the tardiness of most Irish anarchists, witnessed a series of street theatre pieces against Fortress Europe. The police on the other hand had no problem getting up early and police lines and crowd control barriers were in place all over the city while vans full of riot police criss-crossed the city and a surveillance helicopter followed us overhead. On top of this, the cops had, without warning, imposed a de facto ban on the planned Saturday evening protest by declaring our long publicised meeting point for the Bring the Noise march a no go area. All the same the mood and numbers picked up as we finished our No Borders protest and we gathered to "Reclaim the City".
Take over the city
Reclaiming the city consisted of a circuitous, RTS style wander around the city centre. This meandering carnival briefly halted as activists dropped about the housing crisis from the roof of a recently evicted squat. This was followed by a mass break in into a privately owned park in one of the posher areas of the city centre. Thousands of picnicking anarchists enjoyed the sun, chatted, listened to live music and old 38s on a wind-up gramophone -temporarily returning the beautifully appointed Fitzwilliam Park to the commons. Then we crossed the city to blockade a Top Oil petrol station as this company has been helping refuel US planes on their way to Iraq. As this had been a regular target of Irish anarchists over the previous year the cops had pre-empted us and when we arrived solid lines of police were guarding the forecourt resulting in a far more effective and hassle free shut down that we could have hoped for.
Bring the noise
As we made our way to the hastily chosen alternative meeting up point for the "Bring the Noise" march it was clear, despite our worst fears, that a sense of momentum and excitement had built up over the previous week and the day was going to be a success. All along Dublin's main street the cops were guarding the banks and the crappy fast-food outlets but in the middle there was a crowd of thousands. People continued to flock towards the march including people from the "Another Europe is Possible" rally that had finished some time earlier and the impromptu speeches began. As the crowd of about 3000 moved off the chants and shouts grew to a crescendo and as we passed through the inner city the protest swelled to about 4000-5000 people. The sense of resolve, spontaneous revolt and joy was infectious and to music, foghorns, whistles and roars we marched for over an hour towards the banquet centre.
Many of us were surprised that the march got as far as it did but as we came within half a kilometre of Farmleigh house at the Ashtown roundabout we saw the police lines. We came to a halt eighty metres in front of the cops and water cannons. The end of the march was announced and the largely masked up "pushing bloc" came forward with arms linked and approached the police lines accompanied by a sizeable number of protestors from the DGN march and the odd pisshead. After some pushing and the throwing of a few fairly ineffective missiles like half empty cans and plastic bottles, the riot police replaced the uniformed Gardai and there were a number of baton charges. At this point one uniformed policewoman was taken to hospital with a superficial head injury. The pushing bloc was broken up and there were a number of scuffles.
Then came the moment the hacks, the senior cops and perhaps even a few of protestors had been waiting for- the water cannon were deployed. After spraying the protestors there were some more scuffles. This prompted an ill advised sit down protest by a handful of people and some wonderfully surreal antics involving dancing protestors and a large bearded man scooping some of the water being sprayed by the water cannon and throwing it back at the tender. The police, not known for enjoying gentle mockery, moved forward at this point and they began to aggressively push the protestors back down the road. After the fracas at the Ashtown Gate the police had broken an arm, sprained an ankle, cracked several heads and inflicted numerous other minor injuries and arrested 28 people. This was the "Mayday riot" that was on all the front pages the next day and although we spent four days on Dublin streets engaged in various forms of protest none of this existed as far as the media were concerned. There had been a "riot" in which the only serious injuries were sustained by demonstrators.
No borders-no protestors
Early the next day a couple dozen people made there way out to an accommodation centre for asylum seekers outside of Dublin as a small gesture of solidarity. In order to discourage people from applying for asylum the government had recently devised a "direct provision" policy. In real terms this has meant shipping people out to various parts of Ireland without any consultation, providing them with often substandard accommodation and their meals and providing them with the princely sum of 19 euro a week for subsistence. The place we went to is called Mosney. It is an old holiday village with chalets still decked out in various pastel colours of holiday jollity. People can come and go but because of its location the people there do not enjoy easy access to social services or their broader communities. The solidarity action was intended to break down this imposed isolation and make a broader point about the way EU border controls are used to maintain global inequality and privilege. In the end due to bad planning and overwork it was nothing so grand. Instead there was a good humoured, low-key picnic that we invited the residents of Mosney to join. Many of the residents were away that Sunday but nonetheless a few people did come out to talk with us. Complaints from Mosney management combined with the arrival of uniformed police and Special Branch understandably began to make the residents nervous so we decided to leave early.
Party for your right to fight
Monday began with another solidarity demo for the arrestees which was followed by the last Mayday event -a city centre RTS. After some huffing and puffing by the Gardai around one of the sound systems the party kicked off and the paranoia, stress and tension were danced away in a celebration of freedom and resistance.
Aftermath- Protest and criminalisation
Of the twenty-eight people arrested after the disturbances at Ashtown Gate twelve were held in custody without bail after a special sitting of the courts. Just as with the English anarchists charged with trespass in the run up to Mayday the courts acted with perhaps unprecedented severity treating very minor charges with great seriousness. Many of the Mayday cases are still waiting to be heard but it has become clear from some of the cases that have come before the courts that the judiciary and the cops are continuing to deal with Mayday defendants with great zeal and unusual severity. The intention behind this is twofold- it retrospectively justifies the absurdly large police mobilisation on Mayday and it sends out a message to anyone thinking of questioning the status quo in the future. The charges against the English anarchists were summarily dismissed when six months later in October the court finally heard their case. The judge really had no option but to do this as the police case against them was almost amusingly shoddy. Nonetheless, the state got their pound of flesh; due to their punitive bail conditions they had to put their lives on hold for nearly six months living away from home separated from friends, family and comrades.
The criminalisation of protest is a European wide phenomenon and intimidation of this sort is to be expected even in response to mildly confrontational protest like Mayday. Nevertheless, such consequences demand a sober and dry-eyed assessment of what was really achieved by Mayday.
So was it worth it?
In the immediate aftermath most of the 60 or so people in DGN who had a hand in organising Mayday felt exhausted but exhilarated that we had pulled off such an ambitious programme of events with little more than enthusiasm, hard work and a couple of thousand euro. As far as we were concerned our protest had overshadowed the banquet of the vain and the self-important men that rule us and shown that resistance was possible. More importantly, we felt that we had made a mark on Irish political life on our own terms and through vibrant and imaginative forms of protest communicated libertarian ideas to hundreds of thousands of people for the first time.
A year on do these claims stand up to critical scrutiny? In general I think they do but with some qualifications. After all we knew from the outset that our protests could do little to disturb the powerful and their neoliberal project -scarcely enough to cause a little bit of indigestion at the banquet. Any possibility of really disrupting the summit evaporated in the weeks beforehand when the extent of the state's security became clear and we could guess the likely number of protestors and it was unlikely that we could do much except temporarily question their legitimacy. This was confirmed at the end of 2004 in the round up of the news highlights of the year our protest had been forgotten and the focus had returned to accession and the celebratory dinner.
Nevertheless, the fact remains, as I said in the introduction, the protests reinvigorated Mayday and were a milestone in libertarian activity in Ireland. It is also undoubtedly true that through Indymedia, DGN leaflets and the media group's work innumerable people were exposed to anarchist ideas for the first time and Mayday has led to a partial shift in the public perception of anarchism, from an obscure and pointlessly nihilistic philosophy to an active and combative movement for social change. It is also worth reiterating that one of the real strengths of Mayday was that the public heard arguments against the European superstate on the basis of a positive vision of the future rather the worship of an idealised and romanticised past. These achievements are even more impressive if one takes into considers the fact that unlike many other European countries "civil society" in Ireland, as represented by NGO's, the trade union movement, community workers and the like has yet to be genuinely mobilised by the demands of the alternative globalisation movement. It goes without saying that without this sort of support it is more difficult, in terms of infrastructure and resources, to mount a weekend of protests.
It is impossible at this point to measure the long-term impact of the protests but it is clear that the experience of Mayday has consolidated the small but significant gains made by libertarians in Ireland over the past decade. Mayday has bound the small anti-authoritarian community more closely together and confirmed that we can work together collectively and have an impact. This sense of hope and confidence is reflected in a range of ongoing activities-work on social centre, preparations for the G8 summit in Scotland, an anarchist bookshop, benefits, meetings and various political campaigns and also in the fact that anarchist groups such as WSM have seen a surge in membership.
I think the other most immediate gain is that Mayday (and the activity of GNAW that preceded it) put anti-authoritarian ideas at heart of anti-capitalist activity in Ireland and created space for new forms of struggle. Of particular importance is the emphasis on non-hierarchical organisation, direct action and support for a diversity of tactics amongst anti-capitalists. On a more subjective and ephemeral level the distinctive atmosphere of Mayday is also worth mentioning because Mayday was more than anything an empowering and defiant carnival and that may be one of it's most enduring contributions to protest culture in Ireland. All of this doesn't really mean that much in the short term as anti-capitalism is a very small tendency on the left in Ireland. But f these ideas are to thrive we will need a genuine diversity of tactics -something that was impossible until we loosened the cold and rigid grasp of Trotskyism on the political expression of dissent. This opens up the possibility that with continued hard work we can begin to influence major political campaigns and social movements ensuring that direct democracy and direct action remain become an integral part of protest in Ireland.
Towards a conclusion-Mayday in context
Mayday was imagined and planned in a similar way to hundreds of other anti-capitalist events around the world and this links DGN to a global movement for radical change. But what does that mean in an Irish context? Anti-capitalism as a set of hopes, values, ideas and practices has been successful in creating a space for anarchism but nonetheless, as I have said, at the moment Irish anti-capitalism remains marginal; a movement in embryo that has only the shallowest of roots in workplace and community struggles. Mayday 2004 was bigger than we expected but it was not the expression of a mass movement of any sort. For instance it was noticeable that over the weekend that we failed to attract any Irish workers threatened by neoliberal policies. They may well have been there at the march but they were not there in an organised fashion. In contrast, at the anti-G8 protests at Genoa part of the Irish contingent was a group of bus drivers against privatisation with their own banner. It is a small and telling detail that these workers or others in a similar situation didn't do the same in Dublin. Similarly, the weekend didn't include any action in support of the non-payment of waste charges introduced as part of the neoliberal agenda of privatising public services. This was discussed and several attempts were made to see this happen but because libertarians were a minority within a campaign dominated at a central committee level by Trotskyists these attempts came to nought. Finally, our No Borders weekend was not backed or attended by any organised immigrant groups. Clearly we have we are currently far from being a "movement of movements". To change this and create broader networks will need patient, assiduous campaigning and increased levels of organisation on the libertarian left. It will, I believe, also demand greater ambition and much more sophisticated strategic thinking on our part which of course is easy to call for but much more difficult to put into practice.
So Mayday was a whispered threat, a promise to the future, a party for the sake of a party, an example of direct democracy in action but in the end only a very small beginning….
About these articles
These articles are greatly extended versions of an article to be published in Red & Black Revolution No 9. There are 3 articles in this set (as well as two further ones on the media published in RBR8 and half a dozen news reports published by the WSM at the time. Together this comprise some 30,000 words on the events of that weekend.
back on the Dublin EU summit protests - Mayday 2004
Thu 23 May, 19:33
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Robert Samuelson argues that they will. Samuelson apparently believes that people's standard of living is determined only by their tax bill. According to Samuelson's world view, Bill Gates is much worse off than the typical middle class family because he pays so much more in taxes.
Of course in real world land, well-being is determined by after-tax income. The greater sum that Bill Gates pays in taxes is trivial compared to his enormous income.
The same story applies for the millennials. The projections from the Congressional Budget Office, the Fed and all other standard sources show that before-tax compensation will rise on average at the rate of about 1.4 percent a year. This means that after 20 years their compensation will be more than 30 percent higher than what workers get today. This means that even if they pay substantially higher taxes than workers today, they will still have substantially higher living standards.
The retirement of the baby boomers is likely to help millennials. It will reduce the supply of labor -- creating opening higher up on career ladders -- thereby allowing millennials to get better jobs with higher pay.
The real threat to millennial living standards are:
1) inequality -- the continuation of the recent trend where more money goes to the top of the income distribution;
2) a broken health care system -- protectionists in control of policy want workers to give all their money to insurers, drug companies, medical supply companies and highly paid specialists;
3) ecological problems -- if the people in Bangladesh can make our children pay for the damage we have done to their land and lives through global warming, then our kids may be in trouble;
4) incompetent economic policy -- if geniuses like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke continue to control economic policy, then they may be able to create poverty even in a world of enormous potential affluence.
These factors rarely get mentioned in Samuelson's account.
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(If there's one thing we know about comment trolls, it's that they're lazy) | <urn:uuid:4d8cc0dc-dbea-45d2-89b6-baaf70ce6d9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prospect.org/article/will-millennials-suffer-because-retirements-create-job-openings-them | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942239 | 419 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) / Comedy-Drama
MPAA Rated: PG for mild sensuality
Running Time: 97 min.
Cast: Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, Frances O'Conner, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson
Director: Oliver Parker
Screenplay: Oliver Parker (based on the play by Oscar Wilde)
Oscar Wilde's classic farce has seen its share of incarnations in film adaptations over the years, and this one is as good as any. Films based on classic plays, such as those by Shakespeare, are always a bit hard to review, as you end up having to judge how well the film captures the essence of the play into another medium, and not whether or not the writing is good since, of course, the writing is as good as can be. Oliver Parker's (An Ideal Husband, Othello) vision of Wilde takes a bit of artistic license in its alterations of the play, mostly adding a few sight gags, and almost all of them contribute to making the film better. Unlike many other play adaptations, this one doesn't feel the least bit stagy, not too far removed from the sort of movies Merchant Ivory excels at. Lush cinematography, beautiful costumes, and a cast of excellent actors bring Wilde's play to life, making this a pleasant diversion for even those unfamiliar with the original work.
The "Earnest" (or Ernest) alluded to in the title is a complete fabrication, used by man of the country, Jack Worthing (Firth, Londinium), as an excuse to go to the city to see his misbehaving brother. Once he is in the city, he becomes Ernest himself, using the alias to become someone he isn't used to being, allowing him the freedom to do as he pleases. Jack (as Ernest) is in love with Gwendolen (O'Connor, AI), but her mother, Lady Bracknell (Dench, The World is Not Enough), disapproves of Jack, mostly because he doesn't know who his birth parents are, being abandoned in a handbag at a railway station as a baby. He was adopted into a rich estate, which he now controls, along with a ward, Cecily (Witherspoon, Legally Blonde), just turning eighteen and betrothed to the fictitious Ernest, through a series of correspondence letters. Jack's best friend Algy (Everett, My Best Friend's Wedding) decides to visit his estate, pretending to be Ernest, and tries to get Cecily into an affair with him. Gwendolen also decides to pay a visit, and with two Ernests running around, and neither of them true, it's a difficult chore for the two conniving men to keep their stories straight.
There's a lot of been-there-done-that involved with any oft-told tale, so the freshness factor isn't altogether high. Also, some of the purists out there may not care for Wilde's play being interpolated as much as Parker does, as he is liberal in his alterations of the play for purposes of better cinematic appeal, adding a bit of slapstick to the witticisms. However, most viewers probably won't mind, as Wilde's amazing gift for humor is still prevalent at the core, and this is as likeable a cast of actors as one could hope for in a well-crafted farce.
Even if you're so familiar with the play as to be bored having to watch it again, the costumes and lush locales are almost enough to make the film enjoyable just from an eye-candy standpoint. If you haven't seen the play in a while, or are completely unfamiliar, The Importance of Being Earnest gets a solid recommendation for good tongue-in-cheek comedy from the old school.
©2002 Vince Leo | <urn:uuid:e59c8e04-d85c-4c06-9dd7-16bfc9bff37e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://qwipster.net/ernest.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972377 | 802 | 1.5625 | 2 |
George Gershwin Portrait & Letters, ca. 1935
Appraised Value: $7,000 - $7,200
IMAGE: 1 of 6
Appraisal Video: (2:41)
Books & Manuscripts
Senior Vice President & Senior Specialist, Rare Books and Manuscripts
APPRAISER: You have some very interesting documents. They document a rather unusual relationship between the great composer George Gershwin and Jane, your mother.
APPRAISER: How did they meet?
GUEST: They met on a cruise on the Volendam in 1932.
APPRAISER: And they found each other quite interesting. A real friendship seems to have developed. And one of the indications or results of that is his portrait drawing showing your mother. You see examples from time to time, mostly of friends and acquaintances. He enjoyed doing portraits. And attached with it we have a small photo that shows your mother Jane and George Gershwin standing side by side. We have some other documents that are part of the story, including this letter, which has, unfortunately, a little section cut out. We're not sure why.
GUEST: Don't know why.
APPRAISER: Maybe to hide a postscript or something. But it's an interesting letter. It says, "You were very sweet to write me a letter of congratulations on the opening of Porgy and Bess." Porgy and Bess, of course, being his best-known musical composition.
APPRAISER: Really a masterpiece. And here's the signature, just "George," with a big flourish. Then there's another letter, handwritten this time, rather than typed, where he says, "I shall try my best to get you two tickets for the opening, but on account of a thousand requests, I can't promise them." And this is the signature page from that letter. And you can see what an attractive signature Gershwin had. And the sad thing is, George Gershwin did not live long after their friendship developed.
GUEST: No, not at all.
APPRAISER: And it's sort of rounded out by this rather sad printed notification. The drawing of your mother, probably done on shipboard, I would price at $2,500 for auction purposes. The letter with an unfortunate clip, a bit lower, say $1,500, because it mentions Porgy and Bess.
APPRAISER: This handwritten letter, I would value that at about $2,500. And the sad condolence card, maybe $500 to $700. So all in all, a nice little grouping.
GUEST: Thank you.
APPRAISER: You're welcome.
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PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. | <urn:uuid:f19c5b4b-b40b-4914-9943-91285a0f20a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/201103A50.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953096 | 674 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Government lurches into actionBy Matt Carter, Wednesday, September 19, 2007.
More than a year after the housing market started showing weakness, several months after mortgage lenders started going belly up, and a few weeks after the resulting credit crunch started looking like a threat to the world's financial markets and the global economy, the wheels of government are slowly grinding into action.
The Fed cut the federal funds rate for the first time in four years Tuesday -- going the extra mile with a 50-basis-point reduction -- and the House passed an FHA modernization bill. The House passed a similar bill last year that got stalled in the Senate, and there's a chance similar problems could crop up this year. A Senate committee today kicked out its own FHA reform bill that's not as radical as the House version (which would get rid of down payment requirements and boost FHA loan limits in high cost areas to nearly $730,000). The Senate bill would lower down payment requirements from 3 percent to 1.5 percent instead of eliminating them, and boost the FHA limit in high cost areas from $362,000 to $417,000.
Although the Bush administration has made the FHA the centerpiece of its plans to provide relief to troubled borrowers, federal regulators who oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac today cut the GSEs some slack to buy up more mortgages on the secondary market. The move by OFHEO didn't go as far as Fannie, Freddie and some Democrats have proposed, but was an interesting development, given how hard the administration has dug its heels in on the issue. The $417,000 conforming loan limit is likely to stay in place, however, unless Congress takes action.
There's some debate over whether cutting the federal funds rate will help channel money back into mortgage lending, and free market types aren't thrilled about unleashing FHA, Fannie and Freddie. But even for those who view such actions as the right approach, there's always the fear that they've come too late.
Robert Shiller, the Yale professor who helped develop the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, told members of Congress today that home prices have already fallen 6.5 percent, and are headed down another 7 percent to 13 percent by next August.
"I am worried that the collapse of home prices might turn out to be the most severe since
the Great Depression," he said. "It is difficult to predict the depth, duration and all of the
consequences of such a decline operating in a much more complex modern economy."
Programs like the Bush administration's FHASecure seem to be focused on homeowners with some equity, and won't stem the rising tide of defaults, Schiller said. He expects the Fed will take "aggressive action," which would mitigate the severity of the recession he expects to see. "But if home price deflation persists or intensifies, (the Fed) may discover that the Achille’s Heel of this resilient economy is the evaporation of confidence that can accompany the end of boom psychology," he warns.
All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law. | <urn:uuid:a894abf1-707e-412a-9633-3b3c265288ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lowes.inman.com/blog/2007/09/3/government-lurches-action | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961778 | 675 | 1.59375 | 2 |
MADISON, Wis. (WHBL) - If the governor has his way, up to nine more Wisconsin school districts, including Sheboygan, could have low-income students going to private schools at taxpayers’ expense. Republican Scott Walker gave details of his school voucher plans to the Associated Press yesterday, before he planned to make a full public announcement today. Under the governor’s proposed budget, the voucher program would be allowed in districts with over four-thousand students. And at least two buildings in those districts must have grades of “D” or “F” in the state report cards that began last year. For years, the voucher program operated only in Milwaukee. Two years ago, it expanded to the Milwaukee County suburbs and Racine. Now, under Walker’s plan, the Green Bay and Madison districts could qualify – along with Fond du Lac, Beloit, Kenosha, Sheboygan, Superior, West-Allis-West Milwaukee, and Waukesha. Not all of Walker’s fellow Republicans in the Legislature support such an expansion. Senate President Mike Ellis of Neenah says it’s wrong for an entire school district to qualify for private school vouchers if it has just a couple of failing schools. He said it’s possible that students from non-failing schools could take slots intended for low-income youngsters. And both Ellis and G-O-P Senate Education chair Luther Olsen said they would oppose any expansion, unless residents in the affected districts agree to it in a referendum. Many in the public schools say the voucher program takes away too many students and their state aid – while Republicans say it gives poor children a better chance to succeed in life. | <urn:uuid:ec1a2762-51e0-4f23-a923-704e16b863d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://b93radio.com/news/articles/2013/feb/18/sheboygan-could-be-eligible-for-voucher-schools/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967542 | 355 | 1.554688 | 2 |
If the goal is specifically to make the financial markets work better, the Obama administration’s plan to address banks’ toxic assets won’t work, says Dr. Richard Grant, professor of finance at Lipscomb University.
Grant says the program will succeed only in transferring wealth from taxpayers to the politically favored. He adds,
As the Treasury secretary takes on his new role as wet nurse to the financial industry, we should be under no illusion as to who is really being milked.”
Finance professor James W. Wansley of the University of Tennessee, however, says the plan might just work, if the government can convince private investors to participate and if the right prices can be found.
The two weigh in on Sunday’s upcoming editorial page in The Tennessean. The Tennessean‘s editorial board says the plan is a forward step. | <urn:uuid:9c15d2bf-b157-4887-a120-342a0015976f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.tennessean.com/politics/2009/two-takes-on-toxic-assets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940903 | 183 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Busted: Mr. Pfeiffer and the White House blog
Shortly after 9/11, President George W. Bush received from Prime Minister Tony Blair a bust of Winston Churchill as an expression of British-American solidarity. Bush gave it pride of place in the Oval Office.
In my Friday column about Mitt Romney’s trip abroad and U.S. foreign policy [“Why he’s going where he’s going,” op-ed], I wrote that Barack Obama “started his Presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office.”
Within hours, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer had created something of a bonfire. Citing my statement, he posted a furious blog on the White House Web site, saying, “normally, we wouldn’t address a rumor that’s so patently false, but just this morning the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer repeated this ridiculous claim in his column . . . This is 100% false. The bust [is] still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room.”
Except that it isn’t. As the British Embassy said in a statement issued just a few hours later, “the bust now resides in the British ambassador’s residence in Washington D.C.”
As the British Embassy explained in 2009, the bust “was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new President has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned.”
At which point, one would expect Pfeiffer to say: Sorry, I made a mistake. End of story.
But Pfeiffer had an additional problem. In his original post, he had provided photographic proof of his claim that the Oval Office Churchill had never been returned, indeed had never left the White House at all, but had simply been moved from the Oval Office to the residence.
“Here’s a picture of the President showing off the Churchill bust to Prime Minister Cameron when he visited the White House residence in 2010,” he wrote. “Hopefully this clears things up a bit and prevents folks from making this ridiculous claim again.”
Except that the photo does nothing of the sort. The Churchill sculpture shown in the photograph is a different copy — given to President Lyndon Johnson, kept in the White House collection for half a century and displayed in the White House residence. The Oval Office Churchill — the one in question, the one Pfeiffer says never left the White House — did leave the White House, was returned to the British government, and sits proudly at this very moment in the British ambassador’s residence.
Was that little photographic switcheroo an honest mistake on Pfeiffer’s part? Or was it deliberate deception? I have no idea. But in either case, the effect was to deceive Pfeiffer’s readers into believing that my assertion about the removal of the Oval Office Churchill was “patently false . . . ridiculous . . . 100% false.”
The decent thing to do, therefore, would be to acknowledge the (inadvertent?) deception and apologize for it. He could send the retraction to Mediaite, the nonpartisan media Web site run by Dan Abrams, whose report on this contretemps was headlined: “British Embassy Confirms Krauthammer Right, White House Wrong: Churchill Bust Returned in 2009.”
Or he could send it to New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, who at first repeated Pfeiffer’s denunciation of the Churchill bust “falsehood,” and then later honorably corrected himself, admitting that “I got some facts wrong, because I made the mistake of relying on a White House blog post by the communications director Dan Pfeiffer.” Rosenthal then chided Pfeiffer for posting “a weaselly follow-up comment” after the facts became clear that “fails to acknowledge that his post the previous day was false.”
In my view, this whole affair was completely unnecessary. Pfeiffer devoted an entire post (with accompanying photography) on the White House Blog to a single sentence in a larger argument about foreign policy, and blew it up into an indignant defense of truth itself and a handy club with which to discredit the credibility of a persistent critic of his boss. (After all, why now? Why this column? Since the return of the Oval Office Churchill in 2009, that fact had been asserted in at least half a dozen major news outlets, including Newsweek, CBS News, ABC News, the Telegraph and The Washington Post.)
So I suggest Mr. Pfeiffer bring this to a short, painless and honorable conclusion: a simple admission that he got it wrong and that my assertion was correct. An apology would be nice, but given this White House’s arm’s-length relationship with truth — and given Ryan Zimmerman’s hot hitting — I reckon the Nationals will win the World Series before I receive Pfeiffer’s mea culpa.
Read more from Opinions: Charles Krauthammer: Why he’s going where he’s going Dana Milbank: The politics of horse ballet Rachel Manteuffel: Krauthammer in two media | <urn:uuid:b8fbd85f-ec84-4885-8be7-a768dc93fe98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-busted-mr-pfeiffer-and-the-white-house-blog/2012/07/29/gJQA8M46IX_print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962728 | 1,156 | 1.5 | 2 |
What happened to the idea of “innocent until proven guilty”?
In the Feb. 28 letter “Use different gun tactic,” we see, yet again, another example of the glittering irrational logic of the liberal mind.
David Kerr, Democratic committeeman, of Lancaster Township, proposes the following:
“Rather than banning certain weapons, my suggestion is to draft legislation listing only those types of weapons that would be allowed.”
So, the assumption is that anybody buying a gun that he doesn’t like will, sometime in the future, be guilty of misusing that weapon.
The fact that so many people reading that letter did not see it as a blatant attack against liberty and the rights of law-abiding citizens is a sad reminder of how far citizens of this nation have moved away from the understanding of what personal individual freedom means — and what the limited role of government is supposed to be.
The solution is to enforce the existing laws, and maybe add some tougher ones. Here are my thoughts:
Whenever someone is found guilty of committing a crime with a firearm, no matter what kind, there should be a mandatory sentence with no leniency.
Commit a crime with a gun, without shooting it, you get 10 years. You shoot and wound or kill someone, you get the death penalty. | <urn:uuid:3a31fa6e-56f2-4204-ba1a-eed21c9156b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.butlereagle.com/article/20130305/EDITORIAL02/130309883/0/tepages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948603 | 277 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Looking to start a raised bed garden with a lot of space? This three level rectangle recycled raised bed planter
is the right choice for you!Made from recycled plastic
, this elevated planter boxes is durable
and will not rot out due to changing weather conditions. It's also made without the use of any dangerous chemicals! Given these two attributes, it's easy to say that this is an eco-friendly addition to your garden!Measuring 4' x 8' x 18"
, this garden planter allows you to have additional soil depth to make sure your roots get the most out of strong, healthy topsoil. If your deeper ground soil gets rocky or isn't as fertile, this will aid in healthier plants with deeper root structures. Therefore, this raised bed is an ideal choice for flowers, vegetables, and fruits. It can also be adjusted into a variety of heights and shapes.
If you're looking into using it for other options, it can also be used as a sandbox, or as garden ties.Estimated Soil Usage:
43.2 cubic feet, 1.6 cubic yards or 4400 pounds.
This planter cannot only add a new look, feel, and dimension to your lawn, it is also easy to assemble with a Phillips screwdriver, measuring tape and a hammer or mallet.
We have a wide variety of raised bed gardening kits available. Be sure to check out our entire selection of Raised Garden Beds | <urn:uuid:1312fee5-e6ba-4e72-8e37-9103c514da67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cleanairgardening.com/three-level-recycled-plastic-raised-bed-4x8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943284 | 299 | 1.601563 | 2 |
A 90-year-old York woman was honored recently for standing up for her community.
Special recognition and praise were given to Winnona Smith of York. She received statewide honors for her long service as a York activist.
"They all know me, nosy old Betty," Smith said.
For more than two decades, York neighborhoods have been hearing from Smith.
"Pershing Avenue, all the alleys, if we saw something that wasn't right, they got tickets," Smith said of her efforts to fight blight.
Smith said it was not a solid way to make friends.
She said she was surprised when she received notification that she was being honored.
"This was a total shock," Smith said.
For her service, Smith received plaques, signed certificates and a trip to the state Capitol with York Mayor Kim Bracey and state Rep. Eugene Depasquale.
"To receive these at 90, that is a blessing," Smith said.
Smith was named the governor's Citizen Crime Prevention Volunteer of the Year.
The honor moved her family to tears. | <urn:uuid:43823f05-35c6-4fca-bbb1-7c404335d3e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgal.com/news/susquehanna-valley/york-adams/Woman-90-honored-for-fighting-crime/-/9704248/15486530/-/wjvhc/-/index.html?absolute=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992227 | 223 | 1.53125 | 2 |
It slices, it dices, and it will even work as a dessert spread, but when you strip away all the hype, the amazing whizz-bang features, and the other hullabaloo that surrounds the iPhone, the device is, at heart, simply a wireless phone. So while you may delight in flicking through photos and music collections, zooming in on the Eiffel Tower in Google Maps, or watching ridiculous videos on You Tube, most people will eventually settle down and use the iPhone's telephone features most frequently. For these consumers, I've got some good news: The iPhone is a tremendous, world-class phone.
Most of the time that you're using the iPhone as a phone, you'll be using a built-in application that's called, logically enough, Phone. I'll focus on this Phone application in this part of the review, but also touch on related functionality such as contacts synching, international calling, and various phone-related Settings, all of which directly impact the overall phone experience on the device.
Everything but the kitchen sync
In the first part of this review, I discussed how terrible iPhone synchronization is, and I stand by that assertion: Today, over a month after Apple first started selling the iPhone, synchronization between this trendy and trendsetting device and your PC-based data is appallingly bad, especially for the Windows users who constitute the vast majority of the iPhone user base. Refer back to that part of the review if you're not familiar with the issues I raised. They're very real and very problematic.
For phone usage, of course, the big sync concern is synchronization. On Windows Vista, Apple only supports a very small selection of contacts sources for this synchronization. These sources include:
Yahoo! Address Book. Users of Yahoo! Mail, which for some strange reason is the only first-class email experience offered on the iPhone, can sync indirectly between their Yahoo!-based contacts list and the iPhone. (I say "indirectly" because you cannot do this wirelessly from the device; Yahoo! Address Book sync occurs via the iTunes-based PC on which you sync with the iPhone.) There is one limitation to Yahoo!-based contacts synchronization, however: Though the iPhone supports a photo associated with each contact, this information is not transmitted to Yahoo! Address Book as it is to the following two options because Yahoo! does not support this functionality.
Windows Contacts. In Windows Vista, Windows Contacts is the new version of what used to be called Windows Address Book (WAB). Windows Contacts has been thoroughly updated over its predecessor, is based on new Windows shell functionality, and uses a new data format, the .contact file, for storing individual contacts. (In WAB, all contacts were stored in a single file, yup, called a .wab file; if you're using XP instead of Vista, iPhone does support WAB as well.) Windows Contacts is, well, part of Vista, and it's not very interesting, though third party applications are welcome to use its contacts database if they'd like. To date, none have, to my knowledge. But if you use do Windows Mail (and really, God help you if that's the case), then this is where your contacts are managed.
Outlook. As with the iPod, the iPhone supports synching contacts with Outlook, Microsoft's premier personal information management (PIM) and email solution. As I documented in part one of this review, the iPhone's support for Outlook is lackluster, though my problems in that regard mostly involve issues with Outlook's calendaring support. If you're just synching between Outlook's Contacts module and iPhone, all should be well.
Notice any limitations here? First and most obviously, Yahoo! is the only Web-based email/contacts store supported: If you use Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, or any other Web-based email service, you cannot sync between contacts stored there and the iPhone. This is a glaring functional lapse that the early Mac-using iPhone reviewers neatly skipped over as they stumbled all over themselves trying to complement think of new superlatives. Heck, Apple doesn't even offer a way to export contacts from these locations in order to get them into the iPhone.
But it doesn't end there. The iPhone also doesn't sync contacts with a number of other popular applications and services, including Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora, ACT, Palm Desktop, Facebook, and so on. If you happen to use one of the few supported sync partners, you're in luck. If you don't, you're screwed, and even more so when you realize that because Apple won't allow third party developers to extend the iPhone's capabilities in any way, there's no way that anyone outside Apple can ever add this support. So you're left simply praying that Apple will eventually choose to provide synchronization capabilities for the contacts manager you use. Or, you could be pragmatic and just switch services. Or, you could open a free Yahoo! account, sync whatever you use to Yahoo! with the company's free Yahoo! AutoSync (assuming they're compatible), and get your contacts on that phone. Hey, simplicity is the Apple way, right?
If you are using one of the three officially supported sync points for contacts under Windows, you're all set: I've tested all three, and all appear to work nearly identically (with the caveat that Yahoo! Address Book will not sync contact photos). You can even assign photos to contacts from within iPhone, and they'll sync back to your PC-based contacts application, which is a nice touch. And once you've gotten your contacts onto your iPhone, you might actually want to start calling people and receiving calls. This, again, is where iPhone truly shines.
While I can point to many iPhone features and wonder aloud whether the Apple engineers responsible for this feature have ever even used a smart phone--they seemed to have thrown out as many good ideas as they have invented innovative new ones--the device's phone functionality does not suffer similarly. Instead, with Phone, the iPhone's telephone application, it appears that Apple has completely rethought the way that cell phones can operate, and instead of throwing out good ideas, it has only added brilliant, almost strikingly obvious improvements. The iPhone is a first-class telephone, and is easily the nicest cellular phone I've ever used.
As noted previously, you generally access the iPhone's phone functionality via the Phone application, which is represented by a green Phone button in the home row of icons along the bottom of the Home screen, to the left of Mail, Safari, and iPod. Naturally, you don't always have to go there manually, as this is a phone, after all. If you receive a call, for example, the iPhone jumps immediately into phone mode via the Call Screen, so you can answer the call even if the device was sleeping and is locked. Or you'll be prompted to interrupt whatever else you may be doing, whether it's listening to music, viewing the Weather applet, or browsing the Web. On the iPhone, telephone calls are job one. That's exactly the way it should be.
When you do manually navigate into the Phone application, you'll see a number of selections, most of which are list-based, which let you navigate through most-often-used contacts (Favorites), most-recently-accessed contacts and phone numbers (whether sent or received, or even missed; this is called Recents), your full contacts list (Contacts), a virtual phone keypad for making manual phone calls (Keypad), and visual voicemail, Apple's innovative approach to answering machine software (Voicemail). Let's take a quick look at each of these modules:
Favorites. Initially empty by default, this is a list of your "favorite" contact phone numbers, or more likely, a list of the phone numbers you call most often. This is handy because it lets you bypass less efficient (i.e. longer) contacts list (like Contacts or the oddly named Recents) and access an artificially shortened list of exact phone numbers you want. On my Favorites list, I've added a number of friends (often two each, one for home or work and mobile) and my wife (two; one for home, one for work). When you click an entry in the list, the phone dials the associated number immediately.
To add a phone number to your Favorites list, navigate through the Contacts list (described below), open an individual contact, and scroll to the bottom. There, you'll see an option titled "Add to Favorites." When you click that, a sub-screen will slide up with a list of the possible phone numbers to add (work, home, mobile, etc.). Click one of those to add the number to the list. Nice!
Recents. This option displays one of two lists, either a list of all the most recent calls you've made, received, and missed (sorted in chronological order from recent to past), or a list of just the missed calls (sorted identically). Missed calls are always colored red (in both lists) so they stand out. If you click on an entry in either list, you'll dial the associated number. Or, you can click on the small chevron to the right side of each entry to see more information. If the number is in your Contacts list, you'll see the contact associated with that number. Some numbers in these lists won't be in your Contacts, of course. In such cases, clicking that chevron will just display a contact card with the number, the date and time of the call, and buttons for Call, Text Message, Create New Contact, and Add to Existing Contact. These are all very logical and thoughtful.
Contacts. Here, you will see your full list of synchronized contacts, sorted alphabetically. Because the list can be quite long and extend well below the logical bottom of the iPhone screen, Apple has provided an elegant and obvious solution for moving down the list quickly: Along the right side of the screen is a list of characters from A to Z and then #, which you tap to move in large chunks. The characters are absolutely tiny, but it works fine, even with my large fingers. And of course you can always scroll through the list manually if you'd prefer.
To add a new contact manually, click the "+" button at the top right of the Contacts list. There is room for first and last names, a photo, various phone numbers and ring tones, email address, a URL, addresses, and even a custom field for other information. While I feel that most iPhone users will typically start off with a big list of PC-based contacts, many will likely start adding contacts directly through the device itself thanks to its relatively friendly ability to do so.
You can also edit existing contacts by opening them on the iPhone and then tapping the Edit button, found in the upper right of the screen. This provides you with a screen very similar to that in the New Contacts screen, except that each existing item has a red "-" icon next to it for deletion and each potential new item (Add new Phone, Assign Ringtone, etc.) has a green "+". You can also delete contacts via this page, using the large and prominent red "Delete" button down at the bottom.
Most everything in Contacts works as you'd expect. You can tap any phone number on a contacts screen to dial that number, for example, or tap any email address to send a new email. Tap an address and Google Maps jumps to life. (You can't, however, tap a hyperlink in the Note field to launch the Safari browser. Inconsistencies like this are mind-boggling.)
Keypad. While most smart phone users will typically almost never dial a phone manually, sometimes you just don't have a choice. In this instance, the iPhone offers a dramatically better solution than the tiny alpha-numeric keyboards found on many smart phones: Rather force you to tap out the number on the tiny subset of the full keyboard that includes numbers, as I must do on my Motorola Q, the iPhone offers a Keypad module in the Phone application that presents a full-screen virtual number pad with all ten numbers, * and # keys, a prominent green Call button, and buttons for adding a contact and deleting the previous key press. This screen is so disarmingly simple and so obviously better than what's offered on smart phones with full keypads that it's almost hilarious, especially when you hear the faux phone sounds it makes as you tap away. This is a great example of where the iPhone's virtual keyboard functionality just works.
Fun tip: If you type in a number that already exists in your Contacts list, the iPhone will note that by displaying the contact name and location (home, work, mobile, and so on) under the number. That way, you won't inadvertently re-add existing numbers to your contacts list. Nice!
Voicemail. The iPhone's "visual voicemail" is often heralded as one of the device's truly innovative features, and I have to agree with that one, though like most of what's great about the iPhone, it's so silly obvious you have to wonder why no one else thought of it first. Rather than force iPhone users to navigate through the same stupid voice-based mailboxes that other phones must use (was "9" delete or archive?), Apple has instead provided a truly visual view of available voicemails. Each voicemail is displayed on its own line, in chronological order, and each provides the name of the caller when available and the date called. At the bottom of the screen is a playback slider, a Call Back button, and a Delete button. At the top, a handy Speaker button lets you toggle between speakerphone and normal playback.
To play a voice mail, simply tap it in the list. Here, you see the first voicemail innovation: You aren't forced to listen to voicemail in order but can instead skip through the list and choose to listen to the voicemails in the order you choose. As the message plays, the playback slider updates to note your progress through the message, and you can jump ahead or back by clicking the slider at any point. This is the second innovation: Arbitrary message playback.
The Call Back and Delete buttons represent the third innovation: Rather than forcing you to remember arbitrary menu commands, you simply click the choice you want. It's obvious, simple, and intuitive. Oh, and its visual, just as its name suggests.
Finally, you can also record your voicemail greeting with the iPhone, directly from this UI, without again having to navigate some lame phone company voice menu. Halleluiah.
The Call screen
It gets better. When you're actually in a phone call, the iPhone display switches to a special screen, which I think of as the Call screen. It's a thing of beauty: Along the top, you'll see the name of the person to whom you're talking and, if available, the photo you've associated with their contacts entry. Below that is a timer providing you with an up-to-date view of the length of the call. Below that, in the center of the display, is a small six-button virtual keypad with large buttons, one each for Mute, Keypad, Speaker, Add Call, Hold, and Contacts; below that is a large red End Call button. Here's what the six buttons do:
Mute. This mutes the current call.
Keypad. This changes the display to the iPhone's virtual keypad, as described in the previous section.
Speaker. This places the iPhone into speakerphone mode, so you can communicate without holding the device against your face or with the bundled headset.
Add Call. This lets you add another caller to the current call, providing you with instant conference call capabilities. Has it ever been this easy?
Hold. Place the current call on hold, minus the elevator music. Which, frankly, would be hilarious.
Contacts. Allows you to access your full Contacts list.
In use, the iPhone is a wonderful phone not just because of the aforementioned functionality, but because you can mix and match what you're doing. For example, let's say you're in a call and you want to look something up. Simply take the phone down from your ear (if you're using it without the bundled headset) and tap the Speaker button to put the device into speakerphone mode. Then, tap the Home key and navigate into the iPhone application you want. All the while, your phone call continues and you're able to get other things done. If you receive a new call while on a call, you can add them into the current conversation, put the current call on hold and answer it, or choose to ignore it. And I particularly like the way the iPhone senses that you're moving the phone down from your face, thanks to its built-in accelerometer, and lights up the Call screen so you can see what options are available. It's just a nice touch.
Using the iPhone outside the United States
Currently, the iPhone is only available in the United States, but that will eventually change. If you are a US-based iPhone user and are travelling internationally, note that you will need to call AT&T customer support hotline and enable international dialing support. If you don't do so before you leave for your trip, you won't be able to use the phone overseas.
As it turns out, I'm in France as I write this and I've been using the iPhone here pretty regularly, and so far so good, though I've read some horror stories about the charges AT&T has levied on some unexpected travelers. Here's what I've found out.
Setting up international roaming involves calling a toll-free number, wading through AT&T's annoying but typical automated phone system and, if you called on a weekend like I did, waiting to do it all again on Monday. When I did get on the line with a human being, I was impressed with her professionalism and thoroughness. She described the three possible options, once the phone was configured for international roaming (note that if you don't make this call before you leave, you can't make it work until after that trip):
1. Roam internationally. Calls made overseas will cost $1.29 a minute, and you'll be charged 2 cents per KB for data usage. (Add that up: It can get ugly very quickly.) Text messages are 50 cents per message sent. Received text messages are free.
2. Join the AT&T World Traveler plan for $5.99 a month. The nice thing about this plan is that you can enable it and disable it whenever you want, so I enabled it for August and will turn it off when I get back. Calls made internationally cost 99 cents a minute, but you'll still be charged 2 cents per KB for data usage. Text message prices are the same as above as well.
3. AT&T also offers a plan for $29 a month that essentially gives you unlimited international voice calls and a decent amount of data usage per month. The problem is that you can't opt out of it for under a year, so if you sign up, you have to pay for 12 months worth, or a total of about $360.
Side note: What I wasn't impressed by, at least not in a positive way, was how AT&T verified that it was me calling. They asked me four (very) personal questions, many of which I found quite shocking. For example, the first question was, "Which one of the following three companies were you previously employed by?" She then read off a list of banks, one of which I worked at over 15 years ago. The second question regarded addresses I'd lived at (from the Phoenix area, about 15 years ago). Then another one about previous jobs (from about 12 years ago). The last one was, "Which of the following mortgage companies have you done business with?" Yikes. Privacy advocates should have a field day with this one.
As far as the roaming options went, I ended up going with the second one for what I assume are obvious reasons. I've been trying to stay off of EDGE while in France (via Bouygues Telecom in the Paris area) because of the expense, and I've disabled a few things that might trigger network access repeatedly, like email. But I'm guessing we're going to have a healthy bill when we return. I wish there was some way to accurately measure the cost of this along the way. (See the section on Settings below to understand why this is not the case.)
I will say this: For a few years now, we've had a cell phone that we use specifically for Europe, and it's got an unlocked SIM card. That phone has worked much more poorly than has the iPhone this first week overseas, and since the phone call costs are basically identical, we've pretty much just switched to using the iPhone for calls here. Actually, it's nice having two phones, since there are days when my wife and kids will stay in the city when I return to the home we're staying at to work.
In addition to the various user interfaces that pop-up when you're making a phone call, managing contacts, or performing other phone-related tasks, the iPhone provides a number of configurable options inside the Settings application. Unfortunately, these options are in a number of different places.
Usage. From this screen, you can access information about the amount of active usage and standby time the phone has recorded since the last full charge, the call time you've spent in the "current period" and "lifetime" of the device since the last full charge, and the amount of EDGE network data you've sent and received since the last full charge. In case it's not obvious, this information is reset every single time you completely charge the device and is thus almost completely useless. What it should really do is measure this information during an entire billing period so you can see how your usage is mapping to the voice and data plans you've subscribed to. Obviously.
Carrier. The Carrier option displays information about the wireless carrier to which you're connected. In the US, this will typically be AT&T EDGE, but there are other compatible possibilities (with associated roaming charges), especially outside the US. (See the previous section for more information about international roaming.) Typically, you will set this to Automatic and let the iPhone pick the best choice.
Phone. Here, you'll see a number of options related to the Phone application. (It's also a good place to see your own phone number, though this is also provided at the top of the full Contacts list.) The International Assist option determines whether the iPhone automatically adds the correct prefix (001) to US numbers dialed from other countries. You can determine how contacts are sorted. There are call related options like Call Forwarding, Call Waiting, Show My Caller ID, and TTY. You can change your voicemail password here, set up a PIN (personal information number) for your SIM, and access a list of phone number shortcuts for such things as checking your bill balance, getting directory assistance, and so on. In the latter list, AT&T will often SMS you the answer, which is kind of funny.
Sounds. Here, you configure whether the vibrate function is on as well as which sounds are used for such phone-related global options as ringtone and new voicemail. You can't easily configure these sounds on a contact-by-contact basis, though it is possible. To do so, open up the contact for which you'd like to make a custom ringtone, tap the Edit button, tap Assign Ringtone, and pick a ringtone. Note that these ringtone assignments are per-contact, not per-ringtone. And while Apple's built-in sound effects are excellent, there aren't many of them, and you can't download, purchase, or import others. You also can't take sound clips from songs in your music library and use them as ringtones, which is particularly surprising.
Overall, the iPhone is a tremendous phone. I guess it should be for $500 to $600 plus the monthly fees, but so many of today's smart phones seem to screw up the most basic phone functionality, so there's an argument to be made here about getting what you paid for. While frilly, demo-friendly iPhone features like screen squeezing and scrolling will continue to get the most attention, I think it makes more sense to focus more on what you'll actually do with the thing. And since this is basically just a phone--albeit a gorgeous full-featured smart phone--it makes sense to weight its phone functionality a bit higher than some of the less important stuff. If the iPhone were only a phone, it would be a slam dunk. (Unlike, say, the war in Iraq.) In this area, Apple has really done a commendable job. The ramifications of its work here will be felt throughout the smart phone industry for years to come. So even if you don't get an iPhone, you may eventually benefit from these advances.
Next up, we'll take a look at the iPhone's built-in applications. Some are excellent, some are simply horrible, but most are at least quite interesting. | <urn:uuid:5078d96b-30c8-4234-a0b5-27c1cb52ab92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://winsupersite.com/product-review/apple-iphone-review-part-3-phone | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949419 | 5,260 | 1.5 | 2 |
Ari Ashe, wtop.com
WASHINGTON - A proposed parking plan for the District could mean more residents forced to park on the streets, making it even more difficult for visitors to find parking.
The D.C. Office of Planning recommends eliminating a complicated formula used to calculate the minimum number of parking spaces required at new buildings in the District, and it's drawing concerns.
The office of planning says the formula for parking spots isn't necessary, but critics worry the new rules make D.C. less attractive to visitors from the suburbs.
"People can choose to go to restaurants in Tysons, or choose to go to restaurants in Bethesda. It's not as though they have to come downtown," says Lon Anderson, managing director of public and government affairs at AAA Mid-Atlantic.
Parking minimums are determined using a complex equation that tells developers the minimum amount of spaces that a new building must contain, based on how many occupants there will be.
Anderson says eliminating those requirements altogether will push more D.C. residents to park on the street, which will make it more difficult for visitors from the suburbs to find spaces.
D.C. resident Sue Hemberger agrees, saying it's already hard enough to get her friends from the suburbs to deal with the parking headaches.
"If you want to have a play date with kids on the weekend, you better make sure it doesn't last longer than two hours because everyone will get ticketed," she says.
The office of planning counters that parking minimums are a relic of the past and it must look for a 21st century policy.
"We have Bikeshare, Über, CarToGo, all within the last five years. The landscape for transportation innovation is unlimited," says Office of Planning Director Harriet Tregoning.
When you add ZipCar and Metro, Tregoning points out that parking policies must take into account all different modes of travel into the District.
She adds that eliminating parking minimums will have virtually no short-term effects and wouldn't jeopardize short-term parking for people visiting popular attractions like D.C. museums.
Anderson says D.C. is launching a war on cars. Tregoning calls the claim hyperbole and completely unfounded.
© 2013 WTOP. All Rights Reserved.
Clothes have a starring role at the Cannes Film Festival. (Photos)
A study has a gloomy forecast for U.S. amphibians.
Cockroaches are so adaptive, their brains may reject some foods.
A fallen officer's daughter gets a swarm of support. (Photos) | <urn:uuid:08c50bf0-aae1-47fe-9c27-2cff27390df3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtop.com/109/3237148/DC-aims-to-eliminate-parking-minimums?nid=1229 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953943 | 535 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Symphony Consulting, a business unit of Chicago-based SymphonyIRI Group Inc., has completed an initial analysis of shopper behavior since Jan. 1 when the payroll tax increased. The analysis focuses on the impact of the payroll tax increase on food and beverage consumption, including its impact on key dimensions, such as the type of stores shopped, type of brands bought (store brands versus national brands), and the effect on various segments and categories.
“To date, shifts in shopper behavior are subtle, but patterns are emerging that deserve close and ongoing scrutiny,” said Managing Director of Symphony Consulting Krishnakumar (KK) S. Davey in a statement. “Our initial analysis offers highly current data on shopper behavior that will form the basis for ongoing research into the impact of the payroll tax increase.”
Comparing dollar sales growth in food and beverages during the first four weeks of 2013 to growth during the last four weeks of 2012 reveals little change in shopper behavior, the market research firm reports. Sales growth remained constant at 2.1 percent during this timeframe, and food inflation growth decreased to 1 percent from 1.4 percent, it states. However, in the last week of the month, discretionary categories across all outlets experienced some softness. SymphonyIRI defined each growth statistic as performance in the given period as compared with the same period one year ago. Private label dollar sales increased slightly during the first four weeks of 2013 compared with the last four weeks of 2012, to 2 percent from 1 percent, picking up the pace in the last week of the month, the analysis shows.
Symphony Consulting’s granular analysis reveals evidence of softness in shopper purchases along some key dimensions. Dollar sales growth for all channels remained constant at 2.1 percent during the first four weeks of 2013 and the last four weeks of 2012; however, dollar sales growth at mass merchandisers decreased to 3.3 percent from 5.3 percent during this timeframe, SymphonyIRI says. This information suggests that dollar stores have picked up some business from mass merchandisers. Club store dollar sales growth also registered a similar decline, it adds.
Changes in behavior by income group indicate a slowdown for a subset of the population, according to the analysis. The growth rate among middle-income shoppers decreased slightly (40 basis points), the market research firm reports. There was no significant change among high-income shoppers. Contradicting expectations, dollar sales growth among low-income shoppers increased, albeit by a small percentage (50 basis points), it states. This could be attributed to increased in-home consumption versus dining out, it notes.
Dollar sales growth of several categories exhibited declines, including snacks (down 230 basis points) and beverages, such as coffee and tea (down 2 to 110 basis points), the analysis shows. Cooking ingredients and beverages such as juices and drinks, on the other hand, showed growth. Despite across-the-board over-performance during the first four weeks of 2013, discretionary categories lagged total food and beverage in the last week of January 2013, with dollar sales growth of 1.9 percent compared with 2.5 percent for the category as a whole in the same period, the market research firm reports. This could be due to the end-of-month effect when households optimize their grocery spending as a result of shrinking wallets, it adds.
“We expect payroll tax increases will impact non-CPG spending (such as gas, clothes, entertainment) potentially more than CPG spending,” Davey said in a statement. “However, out-of-home consumption will likely drop, and specifically out-of-home breakfast categories will be negatively impacted. Consumers usually eliminate the out-of-home breakfast meal first when they cut spending. Economic growth is expected to be stagnant due to tax increases and continued high unemployment. Moreover, the recent significant spike in gas prices is going to further squeeze the consumer’s wallet. Some stores, convenience stores in particular, are very sensitive to gas price increases.
“Our data focuses on the $35 billion food and beverage segment of CPG,” Davey continued. “It is clear it will take time for shopper behavior to more comprehensively reflect the impact of the payroll tax increase. After all, most consumers have received only one paycheck during the time of this analysis. It is possible that the dollar sales declines we observed toward the end of January will continue, and Symphony Consulting will update its analysis continuously to provide quantitative, statistically significant information on shoppers’ reactions to this tax increase.” | <urn:uuid:94818aff-87e2-4ae2-860c-b659a77ee5bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bevindustry.com/articles/print/86133-symphonyiri-finds-payroll-tax-increase-causing-shifts-in-cpg-shopping-behavior | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951198 | 943 | 1.523438 | 2 |
As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it.
Robert Burton (1577 - 1640)
Source: Anatomy of Melancholy
Contributed by: Zaady
Machiavel says virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.
Make a virtue of necessity.
The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.
I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.
Women wear the breeches.
From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword (Hinc quam sit calamus sævior ense patet.)
A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.
I would help others, out of a fellow-feeling.
Our wrangling lawyers . . . are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, - some of them in hell.
Copyright © 2013 Gaiam, Inc. | <urn:uuid:7d4b9479-d057-4f21-af1d-8166ae44332c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/robert-burton?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964744 | 251 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A rousing pep rally was held Friday, January 16 at Morgan High School for the purpose of arousing the student’s interest for the game. The cheer leaders were dressed as cowboys for part of the yells and for the others they represented “Morgan’s Good Peas.” The rally stimulated the students as shown by their enthusiastic cheering at the game.
Last Friday evening about ten thirty, when en route from Salt Lake City by automobile, J.H. Roberts, manager for the Weber Coal Company of this city had a most harassing experience. At the mouth of Parley’s Canyon two men stepped in front of his car brandishing a revolver and flashlight. With the increasing number of holdups and robberies all over the country it was naturally Mr. Roberts first thought that it was a holdup and he stepped on the gas in an effort to get away. The holdups shot once as the car sped past and then jumped into their close awaiting automobile to give chase. Mr. Roberts soon discovered it was hopeless and dangerous to try and escape by running away from them on the slippery roads so he came to a halt near the Mountain Dell reservoir. Much was his surprise when the supposed bandits turned out to be merely deputy sheriffs who were on the lookout for four of the convicts who had that day escaped from the Salt Lake City Jail. | <urn:uuid:2eccb15b-5079-4c16-bb2e-9f02067f7948> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://morgannewspaper.com/topics/MorganValleyMemories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984545 | 278 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Litigation & Dispute Resolution
(Page 3 of 4)
If the parties involved have a special legal relationship with each other, the law relaxes certain of the demanding requirements of alleging the fraud. For example, partners or co-owners of a business owe heightened, strict duties to each other -- what one famous judge has called "the punctilio of an honor" -- also known as "fiduciary" duties. There are many special legal relationships that serve to dispense with certain elements of the fraud-- officers of a company owe the shareholders special duties, agents owe special duties to the "principal" or person for whom they work and so on. When these special relationships exist, it is not necessary to allege or prove that the fraudulent party actually knew that the information was false -- this is called "constructive fraud." Also, in such circumstances, fraud can be established even if material information is simply concealed rather than affirmatively misrepresented.
In addition to the specificity required in the complaint alleging fraud, when it comes to actually proving the fraud with evidence, the law imposes a higher standard than in other civil cases. Ordinarily in civil cases, a party asserting a claim must convince a trier of fact -- whether judge or jury -- that it is more probable than not that its claim is valid. So a party can prevail if it proves the likelihood of its case by a margin of 51% to 49%. With fraud, however, the standard of proof is higher -- what the law calls "clear and convincing evidence." This is generally more than 51% but less than the standard in the criminal law -- "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
So, the law provides a host of effective remedies for someone who has been defrauded, but claims of fraud are given greater scrutiny before they can prevail. As in many aspects of the law, the most powerful remedies are available to those who protect themselves and act wisely and prudently.
Kevin Schlosser is a Member and the Chair of the firm’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution Department. An experienced civil litigator, Mr. Schlosser has engineered the legal strategy for a broad range of cases and arbitrations, including complex commercial disputes, business torts, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, professional liability and malpractice claims, construction law, real estate and commercial landlord-tenant disputes, corporate and partnership disputes, ERISA, health law and the prosecution and defense of other tort-related claims. | <urn:uuid:60d15ef1-f33c-4266-a64c-777dbfaebd56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://liherald.com/malverne/stories/Litigation-Dispute-Resolution,44998?page=3&content_source= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938973 | 511 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In this section you can find out about the wages and conditions that apply to your work. Awards contain conditions fought for and won by workers through their union. Always insist on your award conditions being respected. The Award provides a safety net of minimum wages and conditions for workers including the award hourly rate and information pertaining to annual leave, sick leave, long service leave etc.
Collective agreements (EBAs) can build on the Award to provide improvements in wages and conditions, but they can also be used by employers to remove important conditions! It is essential that you seek advice and representation from the CFMEU when an agreement is being negotiated - only the union can achieve the best outcome.
Remember that the only way to get improvements on the job is to remain an active, financial member of your union. | <urn:uuid:c1f2a8be-75df-45ae-a87d-84421e8d5515> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cqld.na.net.au/index.php/about-work | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96354 | 161 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Lewisville Leader > News
Lewisville ISD scholarship opportunities available
By Rep. Tan Parker, Guest columnist
As we approach the end of the year, I find myself looking forward to what this new year could bring for my family and children.
For families of high school graduating seniors, this season brings an additional sense of anticipation and excitement at what the future may hold. High school graduation marks a time when young men and women are able to truly spread their wings as young adults for the first time and begin discovering who they are, and what they want to make of their life. As a society, I believe that we have the responsibility to work toward making every opportunity available to our students so that they are free to pursue whatever their future dreams and aspirations may be. One of the most important opportunities that I believe all students should have access to, if they so desire, is the chance to pursue higher education following a high school degree. In helping to make college a tangible reality for Lewisville students, I am pleased to bring to your attention the Lewisville ISD Education Foundation Scholarships available for graduating Lewisville ISD students.
The Lewisville ISD Education Foundation Scholarships are awarded to graduating seniors to help them in their continued educational journey. Over 1,700 scholarships have been awarded to date, amounting to an impressive $1,302,915 awarded to deserving students. For this school year, over 100 different scholarships are available for Lewisville ISD graduating seniors with a wide range of qualifications. Criteria for each individual scholarship is established by donors, and can include qualifications such as financial need, academic achievement, student leadership, or even just being an older brother. Although there are many specific scholarships available, the good news is that there is only one application to complete. The application and a list of qualifications needed to be eligible for consideration can be found at the Lewisville ISD Education Foundation website - www.lisdef.com/html/scholarships.php/. The deadline for completing and submitting the application is Jan. 28.
I urge parents and students to consider this exceptional opportunity. As the importance of higher education increases, I believe we have a responsibility to give each and every child the ability to continue their education if they so desire. According to a policy report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, college costs are one of the primary reasons students choose not to enroll in a college, and a recent Gallop Poll found that 58 percent of Americans cited costs as a reason they were unlikely to, or not at all likely to pursue a college degree. While college costs and the availability of aid can clearly be significant barriers to pursuing higher education, it is my hope that programs such as the Lewisville Education Foundation can help to make the dream of attending a college or university a reality for our youth.
As always, it is an honor to serve you in the Texas House of Representatives, and I welcome your feedback on this and any other critical state issues. If you would like to share a thought with me, please feel free to contact me at my Capitol office at 512-463-0688 or by e-mail at email@example.com.
Copyright © 2013 - Star Local News | <urn:uuid:cf278aa8-6ceb-410a-85b0-3d524dfc2d7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.planostar.com/articles/2013/01/11/lewisville_leader/news/8820.prt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962606 | 655 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Let's make a step forward from the basic considerations we laid down about any word from God, a couple of posts ago. I'll take this as established:
- There is no such thing as a word from God that is erroneous. If a word affirms error, it is not God who is speaking (Num. 23:19; Jn. 17:17; Tit. 1:2; Heb. 6: 18).
- There is no such thing as a word from God that is not absolutely morally-binding (Deut. 18:19; Jn. 15:22). This absolute obligation is all-encompassing: if God tells us to act or refrain from acting, we must comply; if God tells us to think or believe, we must agree. I sin equally if I fail to love my wife (Eph. 5:25), and if I fail to refrain from committing adultery (Rom. 13:9) — but I also sin if I do not believe that Christ is God (Jn. 1:1) and that He became flesh (v. 14).
But I'd like to stir your pure minds to thought in another direction. Take a hypothetical — oh boy, I wish it were hypothetical. But let's put it as one.
Now here are my questions, and I really would urge you to think hard about this. Picture me looking you straight in the eye, requiring that you lock gazes with me as I say very intently: it is failure to think through the implications of such claims that accounts for a great deal of sloppiness and error in the professing church today.
- What absolute and immediate obligation does that put on every person who hears that assertion?
- What must the consequences be for church discipline? | <urn:uuid:19016c36-28cb-4f86-8d73-a16568554b82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2012/02/about-any-claim-of-word-from-god.html?showComment=1328811550153 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966732 | 365 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Most Popular in:
Packaging—More Than Aesthetics
By: Elizabeth Abrams
Posted: November 9, 2009, from the November 2009 issue of GCI Magazine.
page 4 of 5
Find someone who understands the beauty industry. These products must remain fresh to retain quality and consumer confidence, so a provider with an efficient stock rotation program is essential. Also look for Web-based visibility programs that allow manufacturers to monitor inventory levels and “best buy” dates. What about value-added services such as kitting, cross-docking and repackaging for seasonal sales?
In regard to transportation costs and as evident with volatile fuel prices, products must travel the least miles possible to be cost-efficient. For smaller brands, utilizing consolidation programs is the most efficient way to level the playing field. These programs—offered by companies such as CaseStack, Hanson Logistics and Millard—combine various products headed to the same retailer on one purchase order, shortening delivery times and reducing costs and damages. Consolidation programs are sustainable by design; they reduce the frequency of less-than-truckload (LTL) orders and that reduces carbon emissions.
For suppliers, the conservation is most evident in transportation costs. These programs turn the rule “reducing logistics costs requires reducing service” upside down. And by throwing old paradigms out the window and working directly with retailers, there are methods to reduce costs by 20–40%—while also increasing on-time deliveries and taking millions of pounds of greenhouse gasses out of the equations. This can all add up to improved sales, as well.
ABS, which participates in a consolidation program to Wal-Mart, has been able to keep costs down because orders that once went LTL are now delivered on full trucks. The savings translates into more than one cent per unit, or 34 cents per case. The company’s shipping costs dropped by 42% as part of the program, and in 2008, ABS expanded with European demand. Their on-times have improved by 20% and their participation has resulted in the elimination of 1.2 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.
The reduction of gases, alone, is often worth the change in shipping. Consider, green beauty products are preferred by 50% of consumers, but 76% of those consider it unacceptable to pay more for sustainable goods, according to the 2009 Global Green Consumer Survey. It is more important than ever to back up sustainability claims with reduced waste, and hence, reduce cost. Sustainable inherently implies cost-neutral, and one of the easiest ways to both improve a product’s appeal to the eco-conscious consumer and reduce its price is by reformulating packaging. | <urn:uuid:12e3b8f5-e0ca-4154-bd51-9551b8d9a68a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gcimagazine.com/business/manufacturing/supplychain/69588742.html?page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950808 | 553 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Richard Brodsky, whom the Times-Union has suggested may be “the most hated man in Yankee Stadium” for his battles against the subsidies the club received to build their new stadium, paused today to remember the memory of George Steinbrenner, his one-time antagonist:
The political differences that we had are real. I don’t think the government should have put $4 billion into Yankee Stadium. That doesn’t mean that you don’t respect the passing of a man and admire the accomplishments he had. He lived in interesting, up and down kind of life. He had high moments and low moments but so do we all. His passing is a moment for sadness and reflection and for admiration for his accomplishments, but it doesn’t change my view of the public policy questions.
Follow David Freedlander via RSS. | <urn:uuid:667ed817-c874-4b47-82bd-48c9238c1207> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://observer.com/2010/07/brodsky-pauses-for-the-boss-sort-of/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973879 | 176 | 1.546875 | 2 |
REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES PARTICIPATE IN A
DEBATE SPONSORED BY MSNBC, SIMI VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
MAY 3, 2007
SPEAKERS: SEN. SAM BROWNBACK, R-KAN.
REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, R-CALIF.
FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.
REP. TOM TANCREDO, R-COLO.
FORMER MAYOR RUDOLPH W. GIULIANI, R-NEW YORK CITY
REP. RON PAUL, R-TEXAS
FORMER GOV. JAMES S. GILMORE III, R-VA.
FORMER GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE, R-ARK.
MODERATOR: In the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, just 22 percent believe this country is on the right track.
Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan's morning in America?
GIULIANI: We get back to it with optimism. The same situation that I faced in New York City; when I became mayor of New York City, 65, 70 percent thought New York City was going on the wrong track.
And what I did was, I set policies and programs of growth, of moving people toward prosperity, security, safety.
And what we can borrow from Ronald Reagan, since we are in his library, is that great sense of optimism that he had. He led by building on the strengths of America, not running America down.
And we're a country that people love to come to, they want to come to this country with a shining city on the hill. So we should solve our immigration issue, including illegal immigration, from our strengths, not our weaknesses.
We're a country that has the greatest health care system in the world. It's flawed, it needs to be fixed, but we should fix it from our strengths. We shouldn't turn it into socialized medicine.
Those are the things that Ronald Reagan taught us: You lead from optimism.
GIULIANI: You will lead from hope, and we should never retreat in the face of terrorism. Terrible mistake.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, most of the public pessimism today has to do with Iraq. What would you need, as commander in chief, to win the war in Iraq?
MCCAIN: I would need the support of the American people. I would need to be able to show them some success in Iraq, both on the battlefield as well as with the Maliki government. We have a new general; we have a new strategy. That strategy can succeed.
The young men and women who are serving are the best of America.
I believe that if we bring about stability in the neighborhoods in Iraq and have the Maliki government govern, you are going to succeed.
My friends, when the majority leader of the United States Senate says we've lost the war, the men and women that are serving in Iraq reject that notion.
And, if we lost, then who win? Did Al Qaida win? When on the floor of the House of Representatives they cheer -- they cheer -- when they pass a withdrawal motion that is a certain date for surrender, what were they cheering?
MCCAIN: Surrender? Defeat?
We must win in Iraq. If we withdraw, there will be chaos; there will be genocide; and they will follow us home.
MATTHEWS: Do you need anything, beyond what the president has now, to win the war?
MCCAIN: Now I think it's on the right track. The war was terribly mismanaged. The war was terribly mismanaged and we now have to fix a lot of the mistakes that were made. Books have been written.
But we have a new strategy and a new general. And these young men and women are committed to winning.
MATTHEWS: Governor Thompson, if you're commander in chief and you want to win this war in Iraq, what do you need to do to win it?
THOMPSON: First, you have to support the troops. There's an undying bond in America that, any time an American soldier is in harm's way, we have to protect him.
Beyond that, there are three things that I have laid out. Number one, I believe the al-Maliki government should be required to vote as to whether or not they want America in their country.
If they vote yes, it gives us a legitimacy for being there. If they vote no, we should get out.
THOMPSON: Secondly, there are 18 territories in Iraq, just like we have 50 states in America. I would require those territories to elect governments, just like we do in our states.
And if you do so, the Shiites will elect Shiites. Sunnis will elect Sunnis. Kurds will elect Kurds. And you won't have this internecine civil war.
Third, I would split the oil reserves: one-third to the federal government, one-third to the state governments and one-third to every man, woman and child. If every man, woman and child is getting part of the oil proceeds, they're going to have a vested interest in their country.
They will be purchasing goods. They will be investing in small businesses. And they will be building the country on democratic grounds in Iraq.
MODERATOR: Congressman Hunter?
HUNTER: Yeah, very briefly, Chris, the key to winning in Iraq is standing up the Iraqi military. There are 129 battalions in the Iraqi army. We need to make sure that every one of those battalions moves into an operational setting, gets a three- or four-month military operation in a contentious zone.
At that point, they can move into the combat field.
HUNTER: They can start displacing American units. And America's heavy combat units can rotate out. That's the right way to leave Iraq.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, in that same NBC-Wall Street Journal poll that Chris mentioned, 55 percent of Americans say victory is just not possible in Iraq. They've made up their minds on this war.
Why shouldn't they have a president who will listen?
ROMNEY: Well, if you wanted to have a president that just followed the polls, all we need to do is plug in our TVs and have them run the country. But that's not what America wants. It's not what America needs. We need leadership that's strong and that shows America what we can do to lead the world.
Ronald Reagan was a president of strength. His philosophy was a philosophy of strength: a strong military, a strong economy and strong families.
With regards to Iraq, there are a lot of people that say, let's just get out. I want to get our troops home as soon as I possibly can. But, at the same time, I recognize we don't want to bring them out in such a precipitous way that we cause a circumstance that would require us to come back.
ROMNEY: Because if we leave in the wrong way, the Iranians could grab the Shia south, or Al Qaida could play a dominant role among the Sunnis, or you could have the border with Turkey destabilized by the Kurds -- and, as a result, you could have regional conflict develop.
But with that occurring, you could have our neighbors get involved, our friends get involved around Iraq, and we could have to come back again.
That's why it's so essential for us at this critical time to support the al-Maliki effort to bring strength and stability to Baghdad, to Al Anbar. Hopefully they're good signs that we're going to see increasing, and we'll be able to bring our troops home safely.
MODERATOR: Time, Governor.
Let me to go to Senator Brownback with the next question. Recent polls in the Islamic world reveal a sea of hostility toward the United States, feeding what General Petraeus calls the central front of Al Qaida in Iraq.
How do we win this war if every dead terrorist is so easily replaced?
BROWNBACK: I think we win the war by standing up for our values and working with those who will work with us.
BROWNBACK: I think you have to remember that while we're in a war on terrorism, there are a number of people that are with us, that work with us around the world, and also in the Islamic world. We're partnering with a number of moderate Muslim regimes.
And that's something I think we need to convey into the Muslim world as well, that these are groups -- the Al Qaida group, the militant Islamic fascists -- they're trying to unseat moderate Muslim regimes.
And I think we need to engage those regimes -- regimes in Pakistan, regimes in Egypt -- as long as we also confront those regimes, like in Iran, that are the lead -- Iran is the lead sponsor of terrorism around the world. And we've got to be very confrontational and very aggressive there.
So it's to engage those that'll work with us, contain and confront those that won't, and convey that to the Muslim world.
MODERATOR: How do you deal with the problem revealed in a recent Zogby poll that in countries that are mentioned you mentioned, like Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, another Islamic country, 10, 12 percent of the people support us, the rest are angry at us? Doesn't that create a sea of recruitment opportunity for our enemy?
MODERATOR: And I'm just asking: Do we have to reduce that temperature of hatred before we win the war, or simply continue to fight the terrorists?
BROWNBACK: Well, I think we have to do both, Chris. I mean, you have to engage in those countries. We have to engage in Jordan, and I think we need to engage with all the tools of state that we have:
economic tools, along with foreign relations, diplomatic and military tools as well.
But at the same time, when we do that, you've got to confront.
You've got to confront those that are coming after us. And they've been doing this for over a decade -- coming at us -- from before 9/11.
We cannot be weak on this whatsoever.
MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, I'd like to get your views about how you balance loyalty and accountability. Would you have fired Don Rumsfeld before last November?
HUCKABEE: I think I would've done that before the election. I certainly wouldn't have said that we are not going to do it and then, right after the election, done so. But that's the president's call.
Clearly there was a real error in judgment, and that primarily had to do with listening to a lot of folks who were civilians in suits and silk ties and not listening enough to the generals with mud and blood on their boots and medals on their chest.
HUCKABEE: Those generals told us, early on, it would take 300,000 troops to successfully go in and stabilize Iraq. Instead we gave them a limited number of troops and a budget and said, you have to do it with this.
I think that's something, now, we understand was a mistake. But rather than simply walking away and leaving the Middle East in a complete disastrous chaos that will spread to the region and to the rest of the world, it's important that we finish the job, that we do it right, rather than have to go back and some day do it over.
MODERATOR: Why don't we start with Governor Gilmore there, and ask you a general question, as people who are political and know the mood of the country, starting with you -- you've been a military man.
You were in Army intelligence.
But on this general question, the Rumsfeld removal was perhaps timed to the election. Do you think a general shake-up in this administration's Cabinet, right now, would be good for the administration?
GILMORE: I think there have been a lot of changes in the administration over the last number of years.
GILMORE: We've seen those changes.
But the fundamental point that we have to remember is this has been coming on for quite a long time. Decades this has been coming on. And I think we got distracted at the end of the Cold War, when we were thinking about the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, thanks to the president in whose name this library is named. And, instead, we didn't pay attention sufficiently to the entire Middle East.
And I see this Iraq problem as part of an entire Middle East issue, and it's sort of a fundamental problem that we're going to have an honest conversation with the American people about. We're going to have to engage in the Middle East, and we're going to have to do it for an extended and a long period of time.
It isn't just an Iraq issue. This is an issue of the challenges that we're facing between the Palestinians and the Israelis, the challenge between Sunnis and Shiites -- the problem with people on the street not even agreeing with their own regimes.
There is a great deal that has to be done, and the president is going to have to bring the American people forward into a major commitment in many areas -- one is foreign policy -- and there will have to be a new commitment to the Middle East.
MODERATOR: Congressman Paul, you voted against the war. Why are all your fellow Republicans up here wrong?
PAUL: That's a very good question. And you might ask the question, why are 70 percent of the American people now wanting us out of there, and why did the Republicans do so poorly last year?
So I would suggest that we should look at foreign policy. I'm suggesting very strongly that we should have a foreign policy of non- intervention, the traditional American foreign policy and the Republican foreign policy.
Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam.
How did we win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don't police the world.
That's conservative, it's Republican, it's pro-American -- it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution.
PAUL: I tried very hard to solve this problem before we went to war by saying, "Declare war if you want to go to war. Go to war, fight it and win it, but don't get into it for political reasons or to enforce U.N. resolutions or pretend the Iraqis were a national threat to us.
MODERATOR: It's time.
This is a question for Senator McCain. It's along those lines of intervention. Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson said that Iran has already committed acts of war. Do you agree?
And, secondly, as part of that, what's your tripwire for a U.S.
strike in Iran?
MCCAIN: Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. We all know that.
Iran continues their efforts to build nuclear weapons. Iran is now exporting lethal IEDs and jihadists and suicide bombers into Iraq, killing American soldiers.
The Iranians encouraged Hezbollah to attack Israel from Lebanon recent. Iran poses one of the greatest threats to the security of the world, and in the Middle East.
MCCAIN: I believe the Iranians have got -- we have got to bring greater pressures, diplomatic, economic, political, join with our European allies who still fear greatly the effort of the cutoff of oil from -- into Europe.
We have to work together. If the Russians and the Chinese are not helpful to us, then we had better figure out a way to put additional pressures, encouraging democracy and freedom without Iraq, which is a very cultured -- within Iran, which is a very cultured society.
At the end of the day we cannot allow Iran...
MCCAIN: ... to acquire nuclear weapons.
MODERATOR: Let me follow up a little bit, Senator.
MODERATOR: What is your trip wire? Is it the building of a nuclear weapon? The threat to use a weapon once built? A delivery system? Is it preemptive or preventive?
MCCAIN: My greatest fear is the Iranians acquire a nuclear weapon and give it to a terrorist organization.
MCCAIN: And there is a real threat of them doing that.
The trip wire is that if they acquire these weapons -- and our intelligence tells us that this is a real threat to the state of Israel, to other states in the region.
But I want to emphasize, Chris, there's lots of additional efforts that can be made and must be made before we consider that option. There's lots of things we can do.
That is the, ultimately, final option. And I don't think we can exercise it at this time.
Congressman Tancredo, along those lines, imagine you're president of the United States and this is a likely or possible scenario, certainly plausible: You get a call from the prime minister of Israel
-- who's now Ehud Olmert -- saying Israel is about to strike Iran's nuclear sites and he wants U.S. help.
What do you say?
TANCREDO: I say that, look, when we -- if you look at this issue and stand back for just a second and say, there are two kinds of Irans that we are going to have to deal with here: one headed by a gentleman who believes that he is going to be responsible for the coming of the 12th imam and a guy with a bomb, that should put us in the position of saying that anything we can do to stop that is imperative.
TANCREDO: And if Israel is put in that position, and we need to be involved in order to protect both ourselves and the Israelis, then of course we respond in the appropriate fashion.
MODERATOR: If the prime minister asks you for help, you say you will say yes?
TANCREDO: Well, there are conditions, of course, under which we would say yes. But I'm telling you that if they are -- if there is a threat to the existence of Israel, which is, by the way, I think a potential threat to the existence of the United States, then you have to come to that -- the aid of Israel.
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani, on that point?
GIULIANI: It really depends on what our intelligence says. I mean, the reality is, the use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. It would be very provocative. The only thing worse would be Iran being a nuclear power.
It's the worst nightmare of the Cold War; isn't it? The nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational person, an irrational force.
Ahmadinejad is clearly irrational.
GIULIANI: He has to understand it's not an option; he cannot have nuclear weapons. And he has to look at an American president and he has to see Ronald Reagan. Remember, they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and in two minutes, they released the hostages.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
MODERATOR: Governor Gilmore of Virginia, when speaking about Osama bin Laden last week, Governor Romney said, quote, "It's not worth moving heaven and Earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."
Senator McCain called that naive.
GILMORE: You know, I think -- well, I think we do have to do everything that we can do to get this guy, and the reason is because he is a symbol to the people who believe, as a matter of faith, that they have a right and a duty to destroy Americans and Western civilization.
The bigger, however, issue, is this: The Americans have to lead against the sea of hostility that was referred to earlier.
This is a serious challenge.
GILMORE: We can't allow a situation where everyone, all the way from Morocco, all the way through the Middle East, all the way to the Philippines, believes that the United States does not have their best interests at heart.
During the Cold War -- and I served as...
MODERATOR: If I would, is President Bush partly responsible for that, in your view?
GILMORE: This is what I think we have to do: What I think we have to do is to use all of our abilities, diplomatic and economic and military, above all things, put ourselves on the moral high ground, and let people across the world know that we are in the same shoes that we were in during the Cold War.
During the Cold War, we represented the aspirations of people everywhere in the world in good faith. And that now must be our policy, so that we in fact do deny those kinds of people and resources to the people who we can't deal with diplomatically. And that, of course, is the Al Qaida type of fundamentalists.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, respond to the mentioned reference to you...
ROMNEY: Well, of course, we get...
MODERATOR: ... by Senator McCain.
ROMNEY: Thank you. Of course we get Osama bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America.
MODERATOR: Can we move heaven and earth to do it?
ROMNEY: We'll move everything to get him. But I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person -- Osama bin Laden -- because after we get him, there's going to be another and another.
ROMNEY: This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.
They ultimately want to bring down the United States of America.
This is a global effort we're going to have to lead to overcome this jihadist effort. It's more than Osama bin Laden.
But he is going to pay, and he will die.
MODERATOR: OK. Thank you, Governor.
We now go to our interactive round of questions that were submitted and voted on by the users of Political.com.
Jim VandeHei will read these questions to the candidates now, who will have 30 seconds to respond. And if a rebuttal is necessary, that will also be 30 seconds.
MODERATOR: Thanks, Chris.
Senator McCain, Sara from Arlington, Virginia, wants to know if you would be comfortable with Tom Tancredo, a stanch opponent of illegal immigration, as head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
MCCAIN: In a word, no.
On the subject of Osama bin Laden, he's responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans. He's now orchestrating other attacks on the United States of America. We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will capture him. We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell.
MODERATOR: OK. Let me ask you a question regarding immigration.
One of our prized guests here today, Governor Schwarzenegger -- looking this man in the eye, answer this question -- I'm going to go down the line, starting with Governor Romney.
Should we change our Constitution, which we believe is divinely inspired...
... to allow men like Mel Martinez, the chairman of your party, born in Cuba, great patriot, the senator from Florida, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to stand here some night?
ROMNEY: Never given that a lot of thought, but with Arnold sitting there, I'll give it some thought, but probably not.
MODERATOR: Yes or no?
(UNKNOWN): I love the Governator, but...
MODERATOR: We got two noes.
(UNKNOWN): I think there are other ideas that we should...
MODERATOR: Governor Gilmore. Two noes. We're moving here.
GILMORE: No, I don't intend to want to amend this Constitution in a variety of different ways, and this would be not a good start to do it that way.
MODERATOR: So that's a no. Three noes in a row.
HUCKABEE: After I've served eight years as president, I'd be happy to change the Constitution for Governor Schwarzenegger.
MODERATOR: Three to one.
HUNTER: We haven't seen his endorsement yet, Chris.
MODERATOR: OK. Three to one to no-show?
HUNTER: That's a no.
MODERATOR: OK. Four noes to one.
MODERATOR: Five to one.
MCCAIN: Depends on whether he endorses me or not.
He and I have many similar attributes, so I have to seriously consider it.
MODERATOR: OK. We've got an overwhelming vote against you, Governor, in your own house.
PAUL (?): I'm a no, because I am a strong supporter of the original intent.
MODERATOR: Oh, God.
OK, Mayor Giuliani?
GIULIANI: When he called me up to endorse him, he got me on the phone, he said, "Will you endorse me?", and I was too afraid to say no.
Congressman Tancredo -- is it no or yes?
GIULIANI: I would say yes.
TANCREDO: Intimidating as he might be, I'm saying no.
MODERATOR: OK. We've got two yeses here.
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani, Bradley Winters of New York would like to know if there's anything you learned or regret during your time as mayor in your dealings with the African-American community?
GIULIANI: There's a great deal that I learned and a great deal that I regret during the time I was mayor, and a great deal I was very, very satisfied with. I tried very, very hard to treat everyone in New York City the same. We reduced crime by 67 percent. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of that would have been in the poorer neighborhoods of New York City, not necessarily the African-American community but a lot of the communities of New York City.
And I worked very, very hard to try to move hundreds of thousands of people out of welfare.
GIULIANI: We actually followed Tommy Thompson's program, and we had the most successful welfare-to-work program in the country. We moved 660,000 people off welfare. And I think one of the reasons that crime is still down in New York today...
MODERATOR: That's the time, Mayor.
GIULIANI: Thank you.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, Daniel Duchovnik (ph) from Walnut Creek, California, wants to know: What do you dislike most about America?
ROMNEY: Gosh. I love America. I'm afraid I'm going to be at a loss for words because America for me is not just our rolling mountains and hills and streams and great cities. It's the American people.
And the American people are the greatest people in the world.
What makes America the greatest nation in the world is the heart of the American people: hardworking, innovative, risk-taking, God- loving, family-oriented American people.
It's that optimism we thank Ronald Reagan for. Thank you, Mrs.
Reagan, for opening up this place in his memory for us. It is that optimism about this great people that makes this the greatest nation on earth.
MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, this question comes from Curtis Waldman (ph) from Boca Raton, Florida.
MODERATOR: Thousands of reputable scientists have concluded with almost certainly that human activity is responsible for the warming of the Earth. Do you believe global warming exists?
HUCKABEE: The most important thing about global warming is this.
Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.
It's the old boy scout rule of the campsite: You leave the campsite in better shape than you found it.
I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this Earth, be good caretakers of the natural resources that don't belong to us, we just get to use them. We have no right to abuse them.
MODERATOR: Congressman Tancredo, David Diamond (ph) from Memphis writes in, "Do you have a plan to solve the shortage of organs donated for transplant?"
TANCREDO: Well, I don't believe that the government of the United -- that the president of the United States should be putting forth a plan to do such a thing.
TANCREDO: The reality is that technology and the advancement of technology in a variety of areas is going at a pace where I believe we can look forward to cures -- we can look forward to a variety of things that will allow us to cure diseases that today we do not have cures for.
But the idea that I think is inherent in this question, that somehow we should be growing these things, somehow we should be cloning people for the purpose of using these kinds of their attributes...
MODERATOR: That's time, Congressman.
TANCREDO: ... is ridiculous. I absolutely would not support it.
MODERATOR: Congressman Hunter, Maggie from Highland Park, Illinois, wants to know if you consider yourself a compassionate conservative, like President Bush.
HUNTER: Answer: Yes. And let me take the rest of my time on Iran. You know, right now, right now, Iran is moving equipment into Iraq that is being used to kill Americans. Iran has crossed the line, and the United States has absolute license at this point to take whatever actions are necessary to stop those deadly instruments from being moved across the line, being used in explosives, roadside bombs, inside Iraq.
And lastly, you know, we don't -- we should not get to the edge of the cliff on this enrichment of uranium.
HUNTER: And plutonium to be used for a nuclear weapon in Iran -- the United States needs to move very quickly...
MODERATOR: Thank you, Congressman. That's time.
HUNTER: The United States needs to move very quickly.
MODERATOR: Congressman Paul, Pete from Rochester Hills, Michigan wants to ask you this. If you were president, would you work to phase out the IRS?
MODERATOR: That's what they call a softball.
PAUL: And you can only do that if you change our ideas about what the role of government ought to be.
If you think that government has to take care of us, from cradle to grave, and if you think our government should police the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a foreign policy that we cannot manage, you can't (ph) get rid of the IRS; but, if you want to lower taxes and if you want the government to quit printing the money to come up with shortfall and cause all the inflation, you have to change policy.
We now go to the next segment. We're going to talk about values.
Let's go down the line on this just like they did with the Democrats last week on some of these trickier calls, but they do have clear answers.
Starting with you, Governor, would the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed be a good day for America.
BROWNBACK (?): It would be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom.
GILMORE (?): Yes, it was wrongly decided.
HUCKABEE (?): Most certainly.
HUNTER (?): Yes.
MODERATOR: A repeal.
GIULIANI: It would be OK.
MODERATOR: OK to repeal?
GIULIANI: It would be OK to repeal. It would be also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent and I think a judge has to make that decision.
MODERATOR: Would it be OK if they didn't repeal it?
GIULIANI: I think the court has to make that decision and then the country can deal with it. We're a federalist system of government and states can make their own decisions.
TANCREDO (?): After 40 million dead because we have aborted them in this country, I would say that that would be the greatest day in this country's history when that, in fact, is overturned.
MODERATOR: We're looking for nuance here. Governor Gilmore, you have said in the past that you believe in the first eight to 12 weeks of pregnancy that the woman should have the right to have an abortion.
Do you still want to stick with that exception?
GILMORE: I do, Chris. My views on this, my beliefs on this are a matter of conviction. And they've always been the same, and they've never changed, the entire time that I've been in public life.
However, my record as governor of Virginia, I think, has been one that the pro-life community, of which I'm a part, would be very proud:
passing a 24-hour waiting period, passing informed consent, passing parental notification, signing the partial-birth abortion law in Virginia.
So I think the record is there. But my views -- my views are strongly and fundamentally believed and been held that way.
MODERATOR: Governor Thompson, do you have any nuance on this?
Or are you just happy with the repeal of Roe v. Wade?
THOMPSON: I believe it should be left up to the states. That was what was originally implied, and the Constitution was changed when the Supreme Court made the decision.
I, like a lot of people up here, have made a record of pro-life for a long time, signing the partial-birth abortion, pre-notification for parents and so on.
THOMPSON: I think it's an important imperative that states have the responsibility for making these laws.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, in recent months, you've said you were, quote, "always for life," but we've also heard you say you were once, quote, "effectively pro-choice." Which is it?
ROMNEY: Well, I've always been personally pro-life, but for me, it was a great question about whether or not government should intrude in that decision. And when I ran for office, I said I'd protect the law as it was, which is effectively a pro-choice position.
About two years ago, when we were studying cloning in our state, I said, look, we have gone too far. It's a "brave new world"
mentality that Roe v. Wade has given us, and I changed my mind.
I took the same course that Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and Henry Hyde took, and I said I was wrong and changed my mind and said I'm pro-life. And I'm proud of that, and I won't apologize to anybody for becoming pro-life.
MODERATOR: Governor, with respect, some people are going to see those changes of mind as awfully politically convenient.
ROMNEY: You know, I told you that I'd studied at great length this issue. When I ran, I -- for the very first time, I told you that I was personally pro-life but that I would protect a woman's right to choose as the law existed.
ROMNEY: And that stayed the same until two years ago, as I indicated.
And at that time, as a result of the debate we had, the conclusion I reached was that we had gone too far, that cloning and that creating new embryos was wrong, and that we should, therefore, allow our state to become a pro-life state.
I believe states should have the right to make this decision, and that's a position I indicated in an op-ed in the Boston Globe two years ago.
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback, this is an important issue for you.
BROWNBACK: It is.
MODERATOR: Could you support a nominee of your party who is not pro-life?
BROWNBACK: I could, because I believe in the Ronald Reagan principle, that somebody that's with you 80 percent of the time is not your enemy, that's your friend and that's your ally. And this is a big coalition party. And it's a coalition party that's governed for a number of years in this country.
BROWNBACK: And it governs because it governs with a coalition of economic and social conservatives, and people that want to be strong for the United States.
But I want to emphasize, I believe life is one of the central issues of our day, and I believe that every human life at every phase is unique, is beautiful, is a child of a loving God, period.
MODERATOR: That's the time.
Let me go back to Governor -- Mayor Giuliani, because I want to give you a chance on this.
You became very well known for standing up against the use of public funds for what many people considered indecent exhibits at the Brooklyn museum and places like that.
Why do you support the use of public funds for abortion?
GIULIANI: I don't. I support the Hyde amendment. I hate abortion. I wish people didn't have abortions.
MODERATOR: So you're not for funding at all?
GIULIANI: I believe that the Hyde amendment should remain the law. States should make their decision. Some states decide to do it.
Most states decide not to do it. And I think that's the appropriate way to have this decided.
MODERATOR: Should New York, when you were mayor of New York, should they have been paying for -- the state should have been paying for...
GIULIANI: That's a decision New York made a long time ago.
GIULIANI: And New York...
MODERATOR: And where were you on that?
GIULIANI: I supported it in New York, but I think, in other places, people can come to a different decision.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
Let me go to Senator McCain. We're in the house of Ronald Reagan. Every cab driver in America knew what Ronald Reagan stood
for: defeat communism abroad; reduce big government at home.
Can you, Senator McCain, restore that kind of unity of purpose?
MCCAIN: I know that I can. I want to be president of the United States to defeat our enemies and to work with our allies. I want to lead this nation.
I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I'm the most prepared. I'm prepared to take on the greatest challenge of our time, and that's the specter and threat of radical Islamic extremism, which threatens our very values and our very life.
I know how the world works. I know the good and evil in it.
I've seen it. I know how the military works. I know what the military should do, and what it shouldn't do. And I know what it can do.
I know how to make Congress work, work for you and not for their re-election.
MCCAIN: My friends, we face enormous challenges, whether it be a burgeoning deficit, out-of-control spending, a need for energy independence. And we need, most of all, to restore faith in our government and confidence in the leadership.
My friends, I don't want to be president of a failed nation. I don't want to be president of a sad nation or one that thinks our best years are behind us.
I want to be president of a proud, powerful...
MODERATOR: OK, we have...
MCCAIN: ... great, bountiful nation. And, as president, I intend to lead it.
MODERATOR: Senator, two or three gentlemen have asked to respond to that. First Congressman Hunter, and then Governor Huckabee, and then Senator -- those three. Say just quick, each.
HUNTER: Chris, thanks very much.
John's not the only guy with a defense background. I've been chairman of the Armed Services Committee for the last four years.
I've helped to rebuild national defense.
We have worked hard to make sure that our people have enough pay, that they've got the ammunition, that they've got the equipment, while at the same time looking over the horizon to look at the new threat of an emerging China and an Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons and a Korea that already has some and is moving to get the means for delivery.
HUNTER: So a strong national defense, the trademark of Ronald Reagan is what I would pursue.
MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, the question is: How do you unify the country the way Reagan did, a good portion of the country?
HUCKABEE: I think it's important to remember that what Ronald Reagan did was to give us a vision for this country, a morning in America, a city on a hill. We were reminded that we are a great nation not because government is great; we're a great nation because people are great.
Chris, I want to go back, though, to say why we're a great nation. We are a culture of life. We celebrate, we elevate life.
And let me just say, when hikers on Mt. Hood get lost, we move heaven and Earth to go find them. When coal miners in West Virginia are trapped in a mine, we go after them because we celebrate life.
This life issue is not insignificant. It's not small. It separates us from the Islamic fascists who would strap a bomb to the belly of their child and blow them up. We don't do that in this country.
MODERATOR: OK, let me go to -- Dr. Paul, how do you reconcile this moral, moral leadership kind of role of conservatism with the very libertarian strain of conservatism -- the Barry Goldwater conservatism that you represent? How do you put together what he just said with what you believe in a unified national purpose?
PAUL: Well, you do it by understanding of what the goal of government ought to be. If the goal of government is to be the policeman of the world, you lose liberty. And if the goal is to promote liberty, you can unify all segments. The freedom message brings us together; it doesn't divide us.
I believe that when we overdo our military aggressiveness, it actually weakens our national defense. I mean, we stood up to the Soviets. They had 40,000 nuclear weapons. Now we're fretting day in and day and night about third-world countries that have no army, navy or air force, and we're getting ready to go to war.
But the principle, the moral principle, is that of defending liberty and minimizing the scope of government.
MODERATOR: I'm sorry, we have to go on. We have to go on.
MODERATOR: Governor Thompson, same theme. If a private employer finds homosexuality immoral, should he be allowed to fire a gay worker?
THOMPSON: I think that is left up to the individual business. I really sincerely believe that that is an issue that business people have got to make their own determination as to whether or not they should be.
MODERATOR: OK. So the answer's yes.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, what do you say to Roman Catholic bishops who would deny Communion to elected officials who support abortion rights?
ROMNEY: I don't say anything to Roman Catholic bishops. They can do whatever the heck they want.
ROMNEY: Roman Catholic bishops are in a private institution, a religion. And they can do whatever they want in a religion. America doesn't...
MODERATOR: Do you see that as interference in public life?
ROMNEY: Well, I can't imagine a government telling a church who can have Communion in their church. We have a separation of church and state. It's served us well in this country.
This is a nation, after all, that wants a leader that's a person of faith, but we don't choose our leader based on which church they go to.
ROMNEY: This is a nation which also comes together -- we unite over faith and over the right of people to worship as they choose.
The people we're fighting, they're the ones who divide over faith and decide matters of this nature in the public forum.
This is a place where we celebrate different religions and different faiths.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Governor.
Governor Huckabee, you've criticized Governor Romney for saying his faith wouldn't get in the way of his public life, his governing.
Are you going to back that up tonight?
HUCKABEE: I've never criticized Governor Romney for that.
HUCKABEE: I said, in general -- and I would say this tonight to any of us -- when a person says, "My faith doesn't affect my decision- making," I would say that the person is saying their faith is not significant to impact their decision process.
I tell people up front, "My faith does affect my decision process." It explains me. No apology for that. My faith says, "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you..."
MODERATOR: But you answered a question that George Stephanopoulos of ABC about this governor, one of your rivals, and you answered it in this way: "I'm not as troubled by a person who has a different faith. I'm troubled by a person who tells me their faith doesn't influence their decisions."
MODERATOR: That's in direct response to George Stephanopoulos on February 11th of this year. Why are you changing that point of view now?
HUCKABEE: Well, I didn't know I was changing the point of view.
MODERATOR: No, you're changing your quote.
HUCKABEE: I'm saying that of anyone, whether it's Governor Romney or Governor Gilmore...
MODERATOR: Well, you answered in direct response to Governor Romney and his Mormonism. Why are you pulling back now?
HUCKABEE: I don't mean to be pulling back. I want to state very
clearly: A person's faith shouldn't qualify or disqualify for public office. It shouldn't do that.
But we ought to be honest and open about it. And I think it does help explain who we are, what our value systems are, what makes us tick, and what our processors are.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, do you accept the fact that he wasn't talking about you?
ROMNEY: I didn't hear it.
I didn't hear it on George Stephanopoulos. But I can tell you
this: Of course everyone who's a person of faith has values that are deeply held in their heart, and they include the value of the relationship they have with their spouse and their children, the value that they place with their country and with their community.
ROMNEY: That's what makes America such a powerful land. Look at us. We're a land that's the envy of the entire world. We are the hope of the world, not because of our hearts.
And that comes from being a people of faith, but not people of a particular church or a particular synagogue. Rather, the great values we share are American values.
BROWNBACK: This is a key point, I think. And I think it's a key point for the country. Because we've had 40 or 50 years, now, of trying to run faith out of the public square.
And we're a nation of faith. As my colleague, Senator Lieberman, a Jew, says, America is a faith-based experiment as a country. We should celebrate and invite faith.
And our motto is, "In God we trust." This isn't something that divides. This is something that pulls together and lifts us up. And it's key, and it's important. We shouldn't be trying to run it out of the public square. We should invite it in and celebrate it.
MODERATOR: OK, thank you. Thank you, Senator.
MODERATOR: Gentleman, let's talk a bit about the future of your party.
MODERATOR: Congressman Hunter, Governor Schwarzenegger, who is here tonight, has won the state twice by downplaying partisanship and taking centrist positions on the environment, immigration, abortion.
Is that the way to win for Republicans?
HUNTER: You know, it's a way to win, but we need to win the right way. And about 100 miles south of here, in my town of San Diego, we build the border fence. When we built that fence, we had a border out of control, and we built that fence. And it's a double fence. It's not that little scraggly fence you see on CNN with everybody getting over it.
We had massive murders on the border, massive illegal immigration, massive importation of drugs. I built that border fence.
We brought down the smuggling of people and narcotics by more than 90 percent.
I think there's an implication in your immigration statement that the Hispanic community of California wants to have a secure border, and I wrote that law that extends the San Diego fence for 854 miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that the president signed in October.
One way to bring down crime in the state of California and every state in the union is to have an enforceable border.
HUNTER: That means let's build that border fence. When people want to come into this country, let's ask them to knock on the front door.
MODERATOR: Governor Gilmore, you know Karl Rove and you've worked with Karl Rove. Is Karl Rove your friend?
MODERATOR: Do you want to keep him in the White House if you get elected president -- the president's chief political operative?
GILMORE: You know, at the end of the day, the responsibility for this government and for its policies rests with the president of the United States. And the president is able to choose the people that he wants to choose in order to implement his policy. The president has chosen Karl Rove.
MODERATOR: But you, as commander in chief and chief executive, would you employ Karl Rove?
GILMORE: It isn't a matter of Karl Rove. What's important to this nation is not Karl Rove.
What's important to this nation and to this party is the acquisition of the philosophy and values that we are as Republicans.
There is a time now for us to reach out and to say that we're spending too much money in government, that it's taking too much of the resources of this nation, that we have got to do something about government spending, create more jobs and a higher revenue and a better opportunity, and thereby to cut taxes for regular people.
GILMORE: I did that as governor.
I'm a consistent conservative that keeps his word and does what he says that he's going to do.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you, Governor.
Congressman Tancredo, that Karl Rove question, do you have an interest in answering that one?
TANCREDO: Yeah. Karl Rove would certainly not be in the White House that I inhabited. We have had our differences for quite some time, specifically on the issue of immigration and my criticism thereof.
And as a matter of fact, this is as close as I've ever been to Air Force One.
MODERATOR: Well, by the way, this isn't still the Air Force One.
TANCREDO: To the replica...
TANCREDO: ... of Air Force One. Exactly.
MODERATOR: All right. Mayor Giuliani, I have to ask you the next question. Has the increased influence of Christian conservatives in your party been good for it?
GIULIANI: Sure. The increased influence of large numbers of people are always good for us. I'd like to go back to the earlier question that you asked because I think it really is important that we, you know, define the Republican Party to fit today.
Neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice. That's just a fallacy that we sometimes fall into. If we're going to win, and we're going to govern after we win, we have to reach out, bring in Democrats, bring in independents.
GIULIANI: I ran a city that was five-to-one Democratic, and I was able to -- according to George Will, I ran the most conservative government in the last 50 years in New York City...
GIULIANI: ... reduced crime, reduced welfare, balanced the budget, lowered taxes 23 times.
MODERATOR: Mr. Mayor, it's time.
GIULIANI: And I had 45 Democrats and I think six Republicans.
Governor Thompson, same question. Well, actually, you could respond to just about anything at this point.
THOMPSON: Well, Chris, then I will.
I'm the reliable conservative. I vetoed 1,900 things. I reduced taxes by $16.5 billion.
I'm from Wisconsin, a blue state, and I won four consecutive times. I still have a very high popularity appeal.
And I'm the one that started welfare reform, reduced the welfare caseload in the United States and the state of Wisconsin by 93 percent.
THOMPSON: And I believe that kind of a record will attract Democrats and independents, if you stand up and start talking on principles and ideas.
Where I think the Republican Party lost its way is we went to Washington to change Washington -- Washington changed us. We forget to be coming up with new ideas, big ideas like Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan had an optimism and a belief that America could be stronger and better tomorrow than it is today, and he instilled that and inculcated that in every American. That's what we have to do as a party again.
MODERATOR: Thanks, Governor.
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback: Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, Duke Cunningham in prison for bribes. Just last month, FBI raids of two Republican members of Congress.
What's with your party and all this corruption?
BROWNBACK: And there are also Democrat members that there was cash found in refrigerators or deep freezes.
I think you have to look at the overall situation and system and say this people were wrong and they should go to jail, and they are going to jail.
BROWNBACK: And they would go to jail under my administration.
But I think you also have to back up and ask, we, as a society, what we can do to bring stronger families and build a stronger culture as well. We need to have laws to enforce these systems and, we, as leaders need to live by those laws as well.
But we need to back up as a society. We need to rebuild the family structure in this country. We've got 36 percent of our children born out of wedlock. We've got a culture that's got things like what Don Imus said going on not only on the radio, now it's in records that are being marketing to teenagers with million dollar ad budgets using the same words that he was fired for.
I mean, what I would hope to do is to lead by example, lead ethically, lead in rebuilding the family and in renewing the culture.
MODERATOR: Congressman Tancredo, you want to respond to that question that John put about these serious problems of ethics violations?
TANCREDO: Yes, well, they are not unique to the Republican Party. These are failures by individuals and it's important to understand that, and they should, of course, be dealt with.
TANCREDO: Let me also, please, if I -- because I've had enough opportunity -- I shouldn't say enough, but certainly an opportunity to address some of these other issues, especially with regard to whether or not it has to be a centrist who wins the presidency of the United States.
Look, we're standing in a place dedicated to a man who we would not call a centrist, who was able to win this state. He was also able to win the presidency, twice. Why? Because he believed in principles, he articulated them, and he put them into effect. He had heart. We know it. We saw it. The American people saw it, and they respected that.
I believe it's not necessarily whether you're a centrist or not.
MODERATOR: It's time now.
TANCREDO: I believe it's whether or not you believe in your heart in the things that you say, and I do.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, when you announced last week, you took a couple of shots at incompetence in government. You talked about you wouldn't put up with having police and fire radios on different frequencies.
MODERATOR: And I somehow got the idea you were talking about New York City.
MCCAIN: No, I was talking about the fact that the special interests have kept the spectrum, which the American people are supposed to have and our first responders are supposed to have -- we gave the broadcasters high definition television.
In return, they were supposed to give a spectrum that was going to be reserved for the first responders.
Again, the special interest influence prevailed over the public's interest.
On the issue of why we lost the election in 2006, it's because we did lose our way. We began to value principle (ph) over power, and spending got out of control. Spending lurched completely out of control.
Ronald Reagan used to say, we spend money like a drunken sailor.
I never knew a sailor, drunk or sober, with the imagination of the Congress.
And by the way, I received an e-mail recently from a guy who said, "As a former drunken sailor, I resent being compared to members of Congress."
MODERATOR: It's time now for another round of interactive questions. We're going to go to Jim VandeHei right now.
MCCAIN: Can I -- I thought I had a yellow -- I thought I had a yellow light there.
MODERATOR: It's red now.
MODERATOR: I'm sorry.
MCCAIN: I'm sorry. The first pork-barrel bill that crosses my desk, I'm going to veto it and make the authors of those pork-barrel items famous all over America. We're going to stop it.
MODERATOR: Sorry, Senator.
MODERATOR: This is actually a great follow to that, Senator McCain. Chris Harris from Manhattan, Kansas, is very concerned about the budget and about deficits. He wants to know, what specific programs would you cut if you were president?
MCCAIN: Line-item veto is the best tool. President Reagan sought it, and we need it very badly.
There are a whole variety of programs that need to be cut, and I would start in cleaning up defense acquisition. The cost overruns associated with the purchase of our weapons systems is completely out of control. There's a $160 million combat ship that is now $400 million.
We've got to get that under control first. Let's stop the pork- barrel spending; then we'll go at programs.
Each one of them must justify their existence every year. They will lay out their goals, and then they will have to meet those goals, or they will go out of business.
MODERATOR: Thank you, sir.
Governor Huckabee, a Politico.com reader wants a letter grade.
He wants to know, A through F, how would you rate the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war?
HUCKABEE: I think it's too early to give them the grade. You don't give a student a grade in the middle of the exam. We're still in the middle of the exam. Let's wait and see how it turns out, then we can give the president a grade.
MODERATOR: But a teacher will usually give you a heads-up, maybe midway through that semester.
HUCKABEE: My teachers never did. I don't know where you went to school, but in Arkansas...
... we didn't get a grade until it was over, and usually we didn't want to take it home.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, you said that being a pro-life president entails more than just appointing strict constructionist judges. A Politico.com reader wants to know what you meant by that and whether that was directed specifically at Mayor Giuliani.
MODERATOR: It's directed at anybody who's not pro-life. And I have had the opportunity of serving as a governor and finding that while the courts were making decisions that affected abortion, it's really upon the legislature and the governor to have an impact as well.
ROMNEY: And so you can fight, for instance, to make sure that partial-birth abortion is made illegal. You can fight to have information given to women who are thinking about having an abortion.
You can fight to make sure that there's opportunities for people to express their views on this topic openly and near abortion clinics.
You can fight for the opportunity to go out and campaign for the rights of those who care about this issue to be heard before Election Day, and the McCain-Feingold law prevents that from happening.
MODERATOR: It's time, Governor.
Let me ask Mayor Giuliani, do you want to respond to this?
Because it seems like across the room here, this strong, unrelenting
-- with the exception of Governor Gilmore, an unrelenting pro-life position. You seem to have a nuanced position on this. Many people think you're pro-choice. Could you define it in a couple of seconds?
GIULIANI: Sure. This is a very, very difficult issue of conscience for many, many people. In my case, I hate abortion. I would encourage someone to not take that option. When I was mayor of New York City, I encouraged adoptions. Adoptions went up 65, 70 percent. Abortions went down 16 percent.
GIULIANI: But ultimately, since it is an issue of conscience, I would respect a woman's right to make a different choice.
I support the ban on partial-birth abortion. I support the Hyde amendment. But ultimately, I think when you come down to that choice, you have to respect a woman's right to make that choice differently than my conscience.
And I'd like to respond on spending...
MODERATOR: OK, later. We'll have to kill you now because it's a red light.
MODERATOR: Governor Thompson, is racism still a problem in our society, and can a president do anything about it?
THOMPSON: A president can do a lot of things. A president can set a vision that's going to abrogate as much as possible racism in our society. A president has got to be able to get out and speak and be able to unite.
And the great thing about Ronald Reagan was, he was a uniter, and that's exactly what I tried to do as governor of the state of Wisconsin. I tried to bring people together. And if you do that, you can reduce and abrogate racism to a very great degree, and the president of the United States has got to be the number one person in doing that.
MODERATOR: Congressman Tancredo, David Kim from here in California wants to know: Beside yourself, who do you think should be the Republican nominee for president of the United States, and why?
TANCREDO: Well, of course, if I thought there should be another one, I wouldn't be here. I think that I serve the purpose, and I think we -- good men all here. Don't get me wrong.
But I am telling you this. There are issues that I believe have not been addressed tonight, not in full, and I believe that they do separate us. And I certainly believe the issue of immigration and immigration reform and what's going to happen to this country unless we deal with this forthrightly -- no more platitudes, no more obfuscating with using words like, well, I am not for amnesty, but I am for letting them stay.
That kind of stuff has got to be taken away from the political debate, as far as I'm concerned, so people can understand exactly who is where on this incredibly important issue.
TANCREDO: And when they see that, I think, frankly, I'm the candidate.
MODERATOR: OK. Time.
Anyone have a follow-up with that? Anyone disagree with the strong anti-illegal-immigration position, take a strong view?
MCCAIN: Well, I'm happy to say that we've been working very hard for a couple of months with Democrats and Republicans, led by the president and his Cabinet, to come up with a comprehensive solution and resolution of this terrible problem.
One thing we would all agree on, the status quo is not acceptable. We have to secure our borders. But we also need a temporary worker program, and we have to dispose of the issue of 12 million people who are in this country illegally.
This issue is an important and compelling one, and it begins with national security. But we also need to address it comprehensively.
And I'm proud to work with the president of the United States...
MCCAIN: ... on this issue.
MODERATOR: Time. I've got to go to Jim VandeHei.
MODERATOR: Congressman Hunter, Kay Thomas from Honolulu, Hawaii, wants to know if you watched Al Gore's environmental documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
HUNTER: No, I didn't watch it. But, you know, I think that global warming and the need to be energy-independent gives us a great opportunity.
HUNTER: I think we should bring together all of our colleges, our universities, the private sector, government laboratories, and undertake what, for this next generation, will be a great opportunity and a great challenge to remove energy dependence on the Middle East and, at the same time, help the climate.
I think we can do that. We need to take taxes down to zero for the alternative energy sources. We need to make sure that all the licensing from our laboratories that goes to the private sector goes to the American manufacturing sector for these energy systems.
MODERATOR: Congressman, that's time.
MODERATOR: That's time.
HUNTER: I think we can do it.
MODERATOR: Congressman Paul, Bob Hussay (ph) from Minnesota writes that perhaps the most important skill a good president must have is the ability to make good, sound decisions, often in a crisis situation.
Please cite an example when you had to make a decision in crisis.
PAUL: I wonder if he's referring to a political decision like running for office, or something like that.
I guess, in medicine, I made a lot of critical decisions.
PAUL: I mean, you're called upon all the time to make critical, life-saving decisions. But I can't think of any one particular event where I made a critical decision that affected a lot of other people.
But I think all our decisions we make in politics are critical.
My major decision, political decision, which was a constitutional decision, was to urge for (inaudible) years that this country not go to war in Iraq.
MODERATOR: Dr. Paul, that's -- again, is there another question for Jim?
MODERATOR: Governor Gilmore, this question comes from Malika
(ph) in Washington, D.C.: "Women are the fastest growing prison population. Most are mothers who are non-violent, first-time offenders. What will you do to address the issue of mothers behind bars and the children left behind?
GILMORE: You know, when I was governor of Virginia, I had to deal with a great number of these issues, and I think that we have to insist upon the obedience to the law.
GILMORE: And that means that we have to let the courts and the juries make decisions based upon all of those matters. When I was prosecutor -- I was an elected prosecutor -- I had to address these issues all the time. And the fact is, that we just simply have to have the law apply in an appropriate way.
I would like to answer that question about decision-making. I was governor of the state of Virginia during the 9/11 attack, and I had to act immediately in order to address these issues. And I was also chairman of a national commission on terrorism that addressed these issues as well.
MODERATOR: We have to go down the line again. It's always fun to ask these questions down the line. We have Mr. Reagan here. The camera will not focus on her, but I will tell you, it will now focus on you.
Mrs. Reagan wants to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Will that progress under your administration, Governor?
ROMNEY: It certainly will. Altered nuclear transfer, I think, is perhaps the best source...
MODERATOR: Embryonic. Embryonic.
ROMNEY: Altered nuclear transfer creates embryo-like cells that can be used for stem cell research. In my view, that's the most promising source. I have a deep concern about curing disease.
ROMNEY: I have a wife that has a serious disease that could be affected by stem cell research and others. But I will not -- I will not create new embryos through cloning or through embryo farming, because that will be creating life for the purpose of destroying it.
MODERATOR: And you won't take any from these fertility clinics to use either?
ROMNEY: I'm happy to allow that to -- or I shouldn't say happy.
It's fine for that to be allowed, to be legal. I won't use our government funds for that. Instead, I want our governments to be used on Dr. Hurlbut's method, which is altered nuclear transfer.
MODERATOR: The same question, embryonic stem cell research with federal funds, sir.
BROWNBACK: It will not, with all due respect to Mrs. Reagan and her desires here. I've studied this matter a great deal. We are curing and healing people with adult stem cells.
BROWNBACK: It is not necessary to kill a human life for us to heal people. And we're doing it with adult stem cell work, and it's getting done.
MODERATOR: OK. I'm going to have to go yes or no.
Governor Gilmore, for embryonic stem cell federal funding or not?
GILMORE: We can't create people in order to experiment with people.
MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee?
HUCKABEE: I would concur. I don't think it's right to create a life to end a life. That's not a good health decision.
HUNTER: No. I'd like to show Mrs. Reagan the alternatives, which are adult stem cells.
MODERATOR: Governor Thompson.
THOMPSON: There's so much research going on, Chris, you cannot answer that question yes or no. There's research currently going on right now at the Weissman Center (ph) in Madison, Wisconsin, that's going to allow for adult stem cells to become pluripotent, which will have the same characteristics of embryonic stem cells, so you do not have to kill an embryo.
MODERATOR: Senator, embryonic stem cell federal funding.
MCCAIN: I want to thank Mrs. Reagan for the many kindnesses extended to me many -- and my fellow prisoners of war many years ago when we came home to this wonderful state.
I believe that we need to fund this. This is a tough issue for those of us in the pro-life community. I would remind you that these stem cells are either going to be discarded or perpetually frozen.
We need to do what we can to relieve human suffering. It's a tough issue. I support federal funding.
MODERATOR: That's a yes. Dr. Paul, yes or no on federal funding?
PAUL: Programs like this are not authorized under the Constitution.
PAUL: The trouble with issues like this is, in Washington we either prohibit it or subsidize it. And the market should deal with it, and the states should deal with it.
MODERATOR: OK. That's a no.
GIULIANI: As long as we're not creating life in order to destroy it, as long as we're not having human cloning, and we limit it to that, and there is plenty of opportunity to then use federal funds in those situations where you have limitations.
So I would support it with those limitations, like Senator Coleman's bill in Congress.
MODERATOR: Mr. Tancredo?
TANCREDO: There are billions of dollars going into this research right now. It does not require me taking money from federal -- from taxpayers in the United States to fund it...
MODERATOR: OK. Thank you.
TANCREDO: ... because it is morally, I think, reprehensible in certain ways.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, a year ago, it seemed that you couldn't wait to tell the world about your health-care experiment in Massachusetts. Since then, it's been criticized by conservatives as something Hillary Clinton could've devised. You hardly mention it on your Web site. What's changed?
ROMNEY: I love it. It's a fabulous program.
I'm delighted with the fact that we, in our state, worked together across the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, to find a way to get health care for all of our citizens that's affordable and that's portable.
ROMNEY: Now, I know there's some people that don't like it, but when it came time to vote, you know, we won 198-2. The Heritage Foundation worked on it with us. We had people on both sides of the aisle.
Now, I know there's some people who wonder about it. Senator Kennedy, at the signing of the bill -- we were all there together -- he said, "You know, if you've got Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy agreeing to the same bill, it means one thing. One of us didn't read it."
But I helped write it and I knew it well, and this is a country that can get all of our people insured with not a government takeover, without Hillary care, without socialized medicine. Instead, get the market to do its job. Let me people have health care that they can afford. Get the market to do its job. Let people have the opportunity to choose policies in the private sector.
We didn't expand government programs. We didn't raise taxes.
There was no government takeover. The market can work to solve our health care needs, and that's the great, exciting news. And 27 other states are working on health care reform right now. It's a great program, a great opportunity for the entire country.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, some of your colleagues have been hit pretty hard on flip-flops, but you now support extending President Bush's tax cuts.
But you originally voted against them. That makes no sense.
MCCAIN: Because in the proposal that I had, there were significant tax cuts. And the thing that bothered me was that there was no provision to start addressing Social Security or a contingency.
We had a contingency called the Iraq war. And we had no restrain on spending. And spending got completely out of control.
Yes, these tax cuts needs to be made permanent. Otherwise they will have the effect of a tax increase. But spending is destroying the future of this country. And we've got to get it under control.
And as I started to say before, the first pork barrel earmark bill that crosses my desk as president of the United States, I'm going to veto it and I'm going to make the authors of it famous.
MODERATOR: OK. Let's start with an enjoyable down-the-line, OK?
I want each candidate to mention a tax you'd like to cut, in addition to the Bush tax cuts, keeping them in effect.
ROMNEY: I like middle-income Americans to be able to save their money and not have to pay any tax at all on interests, dividends or capital gains. And by the way, we're all talking about...
MODERATOR: A zero rate on capital.
ROMNEY: A zero rate on capital gains for middle-income Americans. And by the way, we're all talking about how anxious we are to veto overspending. I was a governor. I've done it hundreds of times. I can't wait to get my hands on Washington's budget.
BROWNBACK: I'd put forward an alternative flat tax and allow people to choose between the current tax code system, which doesn't work, which I'll be taking behind the barn and killing with a dull ax, and an alternate flat tax and let them choose.
MODERATOR: Governor Gilmore, tax you'd like to cut?
GILMORE: You know, Chris, I've been a governor of Virginia. I ran on a tax cut proposal, and I ran on eliminating the car tax in Virginia. I received terrific opposition to doing that. I kept my word, kept my promise, and we eliminated that car tax. Now, the question is, who is actually going to do what they say they're going to do? Where have you been is where you're going to go, and I have actually lived up to my word.
And the answer is, the alternative minimum tax, which is continuing to drive people in the middle class into higher and higher tax brackets (ph).
MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee.
HUCKABEE: Well, I cut taxes 94 times as governor, but I realize tinkering with it doesn't work.
HUCKABEE: I'd overhaul it. I would work for the fair tax, which meets the four criteria: flatter, fairer, finite, family friendly.
We'd get rid of the IRS. We're get rid of all capital gains, income, corporate. And we'd have a consumption tax.
The fair tax proposal, I believe, offers the best opportunity for all levels of Americans.
MODERATOR: Congressman, your turn.
HUNTER: Absolutely. Chris, you know, right now our manufacturers are getting killed. We're seeing manufacturing move offshore because a dumb trade deal that we signed with the rest of the world allows all of our exports to be taxed twice while their exports to us are not taxed at all.
The only way that we can even come close to leveling that playing field is to eliminate manufacturing taxes. So eliminate all taxes on Americans who will stay in the United States and make products and hire American workers.
THOMPSON: Thank you very much.
I'm excited about this question because I was governor of Wisconsin and vetoed 1,900 items -- 1,900 times -- reduced taxes $16.4 billion.
THOMPSON: I think the biggest problem we've got in America is the alternative minimum tax that's bringing more middle-income people in. Let's put it in -- let's have the people have a flat tax and have the option of paying whichever is least.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain?
MCCAIN: I'd give the president of the United States the line- item veto on these bills as well as spending bills.
The alternative minimum tax is obviously eating Americans alive, and it's got to be repealed.
Another one -- another one I think is important is a $3,000 tax credit for people to be able to purchase health insurance. So low- income Americans will have access to health care, which is an amazing and difficult problem today.
And a simpler, flatter, fair tax so that Americans don't have to spend $140 billion, as they just did last April, to prepare their tax returns.
PAUL: Well, in my first week, I already got rid of the income tax.
PAUL: In my second week, I would get rid of the inflation tax.
It's a tax that nobody talks about.
We live way beyond our means, with a foreign policy we can't afford, and an entitlement system that we have encouraged. We print money for it. The value of the money goes down, and poor people pay higher prices.
That is a tax. That's a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to Wall Street. Wall Street's doing quite well, but the inflation tax is eating away at the middle class of this country. We need to get rid of the inflation tax with sound money.
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani?
GIULIANI: We have to adjust the AMT. That has to be reduced.
We have to get rid of the death tax, which is going to go to zero in 2010, which is going to create an incentive -- I can't imagine what kind of an incentive it's going to create.
It's going to go to zero in 2010. And then in 2011, it's going to go to 55 percent. And we have to make sure that the tax cuts that went into effect, that that level remains. Otherwise, we're going to have one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2011.
GIULIANI: And I would look to try to regularize the rates and look for some marginal reduction, even beyond what we're doing right now.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
TANCREDO: For all the reasons mentioned by some of my colleagues, I absolutely support the fair tax. It has to be accompanied, however, with the repeal of the 16th Amendment or we'd end up with a consumption tax and and an income tax.
And all this talk about vetoing spending bills and how that's going to solve our problem -- let me tell you, my friends, you can veto all the spending bills you want. You will not touch the deficit until you actually deal with the structural problem in mandatory spending.
That's where all the money is. You can veto every one of the bills that come to you as discretionary funding, including the military, if you want.
MODERATOR: That's time.
TANCREDO: It is, in fact, mandatory spending that has to be dealt with, or forget the idea of deficit spending.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, you said you plan to appoint a Democrat to a major candidate post. Tell us some of the Democrats you've got in mind.
We will give you bonus points if you give us a name other than Senator Lieberman.
MCCAIN: I was going to say, the first three are Joe Lieberman and Joe Lieberman and Joe Lieberman.
MODERATOR: Keep going. Keep going. There must be some others.
MCCAIN: There are others who are qualified. There are many Americans who are Independents, who are Democrats, who are Republicans
-- whatever they are -- who are highly qualified.
And I'll tell you what, I'd go to corporate America, I'd go to Silicon Valley and I'd say to John Chambers, who's a billionaire, "You've made your money. Now come. Come and serve. Come and serve this country."
I wouldn't care if these people with this great expertise, this great talent that have made America the leader of the world economically and innovation, I'd go to these people and I'd say, "Now come and serve your country."
And my first priority would be their talents and what they can contribute rather than what their party identification is.
We need to come together more. I know how to reach across the aisle to the Democrats and they know how to reach across the aisle to me.
MCCAIN: I've been doing it for a long, long time.
MODERATOR: Time for our final interactive segment of the program, in the debate. Jim VandeHei.
MODERATOR: Congressman Hunter, Ryan from Los Angeles wants you to name one thing that the federal government does really well, and one thing that it does poorly.
HUNTER: Yes. Really well: Precision munitions on Mr. Zarqawi's safe house.
Really poorly: Secure the border. Right now, the border is 2,000 miles of a very porous area where hundreds of thousands of people come across on an annual basis, and where last year we had 155,000 folks who came across from Mexico who were from other countries in the world. Some from communist China, some from Iran, some from Korea. We have to secure the border. That's the biggest failure of the federal government.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, this comes from a Politico.com reader and was among the top vote getters in our early rounds. They want a yes or a no. Do you believe in evolution?
MODERATOR: I'm curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree, believe in evolution?
MCCAIN: May I just add to that?
MCCAIN: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, Robert Deitrich (ph) from Towson, Maryland, wants to know, which Cabinet official would be at the top of the list of those you'd like to carry into your administration if you're elected?
ROMNEY: Well, my guess is it will be an entirely new team. My experience is you want to build a group of people who are excited about the prospects for the future.
And, for me, what I want to do is see that we strengthen our military, we strengthen our economy, and we strengthen the American family.
I think that's the heart of the Republican Party: the American family. The American family is seeing an explosion in out-of-wedlock births. We've got great single moms doing their very best. But we have to encourage moms and dads, because the best work, the most critical work for the future of America is the work that goes on within the four walls of the American home. We've got to help the American family and get more marriages before babies.
MODERATOR: That's time.
Mayor Giuliani, this question comes from Eric Taylor from California. He wants to know, what is the difference between a Sunni and a Shia Muslim?
GIULIANI: The difference is the descendant of Mohammed. The Sunnis believe that Mohammed -- the caliphate should be selected, and the Shiites believe that it should be by descent. And then of course there was a slaughter of Shiites in the early part of the history of Islam, and it has infected a lot of the history of Islam, which is really very unfortunate.
MODERATOR: Governor Gilmore, a Politico.com reader says you claim to be the only real conservative in this race. They want you to explain why none of the other candidates deserves the label themselves as the true conservative.
GILMORE: No, I have not tried to say I'm the only real conservative in the race, but I have tried to say that I am a consistent conservative and someone that you can count on, something that isn't going to say one thing one year and another thing another year and flip and flop and change around.
I'm a person who ran as a conservative.
GILMORE: I governed as a conservative. I was a alternate delegate for Ronald Reagan to the Kansas City convention back in 1976.
So I have been consistent all throughout. And I'm someone that people can count on as a conservative.
MODERATOR: Congressman Paul, Carrie from Connecticut asks: Do you trust the mainstream media?
PAUL: Some of them.
But I trust the Internet a lot more, and I trust the freedom of expression. And that's why we should never interfere with the Internet. That's why I've never voted to regulate the Internet. Even when there's the temptation to put bad things on the Internet, regulation of bad and good on the Internet should be done differently.
But, no, there's every reason to believe that we have enough freedom in this country to have freedom of expression. And that's what is important. And whether or not we trust the mainstream or not, I think you pick and choose. There are some friends, and some aren't so friendly.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Doctor.
MODERATOR: That's time.
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback, a reader wants to know if your personal religious beliefs influence your foreign policy thinking.
BROWNBACK: I think personal beliefs of everybody shape everybody. I think we all have values.
BROWNBACK: And that is taken in and that's taken forward. I've served on the International Relations Committee. I have worked on these issues. I've carried bills concerning Sudan. I've carried bills concerning Congo. I've carried bills concerning North Korea and Iran and Iraq.
I wouldn't say it dominates it, but I would say it influences it as it does for everybody. And I've got a consistent record here of an aggressive, clear, compassionate foreign policy that I think is key.
It's going to be key for a future president.
MODERATOR: That's the time.
BROWNBACK: And my presidency will have a very strong, aggressive foreign policy.
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani, Jesse from Madison wants to know:
"What do you consider to be your most significant weakness as a candidate for the president of the United States?"
GIULIANI: The fact that they're not all endorsing me.
I don't know. I mean, I think my strengths outweigh my weaknesses. I have plenty of weaknesses and I kind of work on them, but I think that I'm a person who's an optimist. I try to look at the half-full glass rather than a half-empty glass.
GIULIANI: The only way I could turn around a city like New York, that was considered the crime capital of America and turn it into the safest large city in America, is to kind of inculcate some of that Ronald Reagan optimism and look to try to create results that people thought were impossible, and we did.
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback, do you find any faults in Mayor Giuliani?
I saw you looking attentively, waiting for him to say something.
BROWNBACK: No, I don't. And I think the crowd will see and I think the audience will see as well that's watching this, these are a set of quality candidates. And that's why I love about this, is we've got a chance to debate ideas.
And we win as a party when we run on ideas, big ideas and principles. And you're seeing these articulated here, and that's why we're going to win in 2008. It's going to be on principles and ideas and big ideas, how we lead.
MODERATOR: Thank you.
MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, this question comes from a reader in New York: "In light of the scandals plaguing the current administration and its allies, involving corruption and cronyism, which mistakes have you learned not to repeat?"
HUCKABEE: The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we're not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas, jobs that are lost by American workers, many in their 50s who, for 20 and 30 years, have worked to make a company rich, and then watch as a CEO takes a $100 million bonus to jettison those American jobs somewhere else. And the worker not only loses his job, but he loses his pension.
That's criminal. It's wrong. And if Republicans don't stop it, we don't deserve to win in 2008.
MODERATOR: Congressman Tancredo, this reader requests a yes or no answer: "Will you work to protect women's rights, as in fair wages and reproductive choice?"
TANCREDO: I will work to protect women's rights.
The reproductive choice part of that, if I heard you correctly, is a reference to abortion. The right to kill another person is not a right that I would agree with and support.
MODERATOR: Governor Thompson, Joanie from California wants to know how many American soldiers have lost their lives in the Iraq war, and how many have been injured, to date?
THOMPSON: There's been over 3,000 that have been lost and several thousand that have been injured. And the truth of the matter is, is that we have to do everything we possibly can to give our troops the necessary dollars, the resources, the weaponry and the armed forces, in order to be able to protect themselves.
It's a bond that every American has with our armed forces. Any time an American soldier's in harm's way, we have to do everything, as our country, to protect them.
MODERATOR: We're at the last round. It's going to be 30-second responses. I want to start with Mayor Giuliani.
Something you've come out for, I believe -- I want you to explain it and defend it: a national tamper-proof ID card.
GIULIANI: I think that's critical to having immigration security. Every single person in this country who comes in from a foreign country should be identified, should be in a database. It should be a tamper-proof card.
GIULIANI: I probably have the most experience in dealing with security. I had to take a city that had an outlandish amount of crime and reduce it.
So the very, very best way to sensibly create security is to have a tamper-proof card, a database, and then kind of back up from that -- well, how do we get there? That would allow for a fence, a technological fence, border patrol, having people come forward.
People who are paying taxes or who want to pay taxes...
MODERATOR: That's the time.
GIULIANI: ... God bless them. Let them pay taxes.
MODERATOR: Governor Romney, I think -- are you with him on that, a tamper-proof ID card?
ROMNEY: Absolutely. I had the occasion, as you know, following the great disaster on 9/11, to help organize the Olympic Winter Games, bring people from all over the world together in Salt Lake City, organize the first national special security event following that tragedy, and brought together law enforcement from all over the country, coordinated them in a way that we could communicate with each other.
There's no question as we deal with the issue of immigration, having a national special card that indicates a person's name, date, birth date, biographic information, and an indication of their work status will allow us to know who's here legally, who's not, who can work and who cannot.
MODERATOR: Is someone against this on libertarian grounds, the idea of a national ID card?
BROWNBACK: I don't think this is the way to go, and I don't think we need to go this way. And I've been serving on the Judiciary Committee and working on these immigration issues.
What we need to do is secure the border with a fence, and then interior-wise, we need to make sure that that Social Security number means something. We already have a Social Security number.
MODERATOR: How's that different from a national ID card if it works?
BROWNBACK: Because we don't need a new system, and we don't need a new ID.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, Senator McCain, are you for a national, tamper-proof ID card?
MCCAIN: That's one of the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. And absolutely, if someone wants to work, they have to have a document that's tamper-proof. And any employer who employs someone else with any other document like a bogus Social Security card or birth certificate should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
MODERATOR: Dr. Paul.
PAUL: I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about.
PAUL: The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card.
MODERATOR: Mr. Tancredo, do you agree with the need for a national tamper-proof ID card?
TANCREDO: We do not need a national -- I do not think we need a national ID card, much for the reasons that Dr. Paul said. We absolutely need a verifiable Social Security card. They are two separate things. I believe that we can accomplish the former without jeopardizing individuals liberties...
MODERATOR: But you say legally you have to be who you say you are?
TANCREDO: Pardon me?
MODERATOR: You have to be the person on that card.
TANCREDO: That is absolutely what I'm saying. It's got to be verifiable, absolutely.
MODERATOR: OK, let me go to a question that's more ephemeral and it is passing and it will decided in the next several months. We'll go down the line again. This isn't as much fun as cutting taxes. Do you think Scooter Libby should be pardoned.
ROMNEY: I don't think somebody who is running for president, let alone someone who is president, should make that decision until the judicial process is complete. I can tell you that I think it was outrageous for the prosecutor, knowing that Scooter Libby was not the source of the leak, to go ahead and begin interviewing him, gathering information, setting up a case against him.
ROMNEY: I think it was prosecutorial indiscretion.
And by the way, the national ID card -- that's for aliens, not for citizens.
MODERATOR: Oh, you don't want a national ID card, Governor?
ROMNEY: No, it's for those that come here outside the country.
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani, you want it for everyone, right?
GIULIANI: No, no, I'm talking about it for people who come into the United States, foreigners, people who come in as immigrants into the United States.
MODERATOR: OK, that will be tested...
GIULIANI: The only way in which you know who they are.
MODERATOR: That will be interesting how that's tested.
Let me got to senator. Do you think Scooter Libby should be...
(UNKNOWN): Let the legal process move forward, and I'd leave that up to President Bush. And I think he could go either way on that.
MODERATOR: The judge is going to rule on that case next month and decide whether he will be in prison during his appeal. Would you let it go, let him be imprisoned?
(UNKNOWN): At this point in time, I would leave that up to the president, if at the end of the term, he decides to let him out.
MODERATOR: You don't encourage him to repeal, to...
(UNKNOWN): I would see willingness to go either way on that, because the underlying facts of this case are ones where there was not a law that was violated. So what they're saying is: OK, you didn't remember right, and that's what you're being prosecuted, and that was what you were guilty for. And, my goodness...
MODERATOR: Two noes. Two no pardons so far.
GILMORE: First, Chris, I think that, like...
MODERATOR: Not yet.
GILMORE: Not yet. Like others, I think that we have to deal with these papers, with respect to illegal immigrants, not with respect to all Americans. We should not have a national ID card. We should have that more diffused across the states.
With respect to Scooter Libby, I actually was an elected prosecutor. I handled many cases myself, and I also managed many other cases. The law has to apply within the discretion of the prosecutor.
Now, if the president is going to exercise -- which I have, by the way, done myself, as a chief executive -- pardons or clemency, in this particular case, as high-profile as it is, you have to go to the American people and make your case as to why that kind of discretion ought to be applied. And if he can't make that case, then he shouldn't do it.
MODERATOR: So we don't want another Marc Rich.
GILMORE: No, that's right.
MODERATOR: Does anybody want to -- I want to save time here.
Does any gentleman want to raise his hand and say, "Pardon him"?
TANCREDO: Yes. Yes.
MODERATOR: OK, Congressman Tancredo wants to pardon him.
TANCREDO (?): I'd say pardon him. But right after or before you pardon him, Ramos and Compean -- two people who are presently serving prison time for actually doing their job on the border...
MODERATOR: OK. Dr. Paul, do you want to pardon them?
PAUL: No. He doesn't need a pardon. But he doesn't need it because he was instrumental in the misinformation that led the Congress and the people to support a war that we didn't need to be in.
MODERATOR: OK. Let me ask you a question which has grabbed a lot of Americans personally, the Terri Schiavo case.
Again, it was a question whether the United States, the U.S.
Congress should have intervened and passed a law to advise the appellate court whether to act or not in this case -- the district court, it was.
Terri Schiavo: Should Congress have acted or let the family make the decision, the husband?
ROMNEY: I think we should generally make the family make a decision of this nature.
MODERATOR: The husband should have decided?
ROMNEY: Generally, we should make that decision. In the case here, the courts decided what they thought was the right thing to do.
And then I think Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature did the right thing by saying, we've got a concern. They looked over the shoulder of the court. But I think the decision of Congress to get involved was a mistake.
ROMNEY: I think the Congress's job is to make sure that laws are respecting the sanctity of life. But to actually adjudicate a case like this, better done at the state level by the governor...
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback, should Congress...
ROMNEY: ...the legislature and the court.
MODERATOR: ... have gotten involved in a personal case?
BROWNBACK: Yes, it should have. And it gave her the right, and the family the right to take that appeal to the court. That's what the Congress did.
And her life is sacred. Even if it's in that difficult moment that she's in at that point in time, that life is sacred, and we should stand for life in all its circumstances.
MODERATOR: Senator McCain, was Congress right in intervening in that case?
MCCAIN: It was a very difficult issue. All of us were deeply moved by the pictures and the depiction of this terrible, tragic case.
In retrospect, we should have taken some more time, looked at it more carefully, and probably we acted too hastily.
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani, was that a good thing for Congress to do to get involved that weekend?
GIULIANI: The family was in dispute. That's what we have courts for. And the better place to decide that in a much more -- I think in a much fairer and even in a deeper way is in front of a court.
MODERATOR: I want to ask you a question almost as much fun...
MODERATOR: I want to get to the next question. I'm sorry, because you can expand on your thought as part of this answer.
I asked about raising taxes. It was almost like the Reagan round here. Everybody wanted to do that. I'm sure he was listening to that good thought.
But let me ask you about something else that might be a negative in the upcoming campaign. Seriously.
Would it be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?
ROMNEY: You have got to be kidding.
MODERATOR: No, I'm not.
His wife's running, haven't you heard?
ROMNEY: The only thing I can think of that'd be as bad as that would be to have the gang of three running the war on terror: Pelosi, Reid and Hillary Clinton.
So I have to be honest with you, I think it'd be an awful thing for a lot of reasons.
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback?
BROWNBACK: I think it'd be bad because it would mean that Hillary Clinton would be elected, not because of who she is, but because of the policies that she stands for of raising taxes, of not standing up for life, for marriage. I mean, those are what would be bad for the country.
MODERATOR: Governor, Bill Clinton back in the White House?
GILMORE: You know, no, because that would mean that Hillary Clinton would be president of the United States, and where you have been is where you're going to go.
And Hillary Clinton tried to socialize medicine in this country
-- a very bad idea. You need to keep that in the private sector. And yet she said in this debate...
MODERATOR: Well, we have a razorback ready to talk to you, the razorback from Arkansas.
Should the Clintons come back to the White House, especially big Bill?
HUCKABEE: No one on this stage probably knows Hillary Clinton better than I do...
(UNKNOWN): Oh, my.
HUCKABEE: ... and I will tell you that it's probably not a good idea to put either of them back in the White House.
Congressman, Bill Clinton back home?
HUNTER: You know, Bill Clinton cut the U.S. Army by almost 50 percent. In this war against terror, he's the wrong guy to have in there.
And incidentally, on the Schiavo case, you know, Ronald Reagan said, on the question of life, "When there's a question, err on the side of life." I think Congress did the right thing.
MODERATOR: Governor, should Bill Clinton be back in the White House? Is it good for America? I mean, it is a possibility here.
THOMPSON: A bad possibility. No national I.D. And the Terri Schiavo case should be left up to the states. And Bill Clinton should not be in the White House.
THOMPSON: And we certainly should not elect any Democrat to the White House. One of us here should be the next president.
MODERATOR: Good clean-up, good clean-up hitting there.
MCCAIN: No, because it obviously would mean that Senator Clinton is the president of the United States, and we don't want that.
Most importantly, it would mean that the appointment of Supreme Court justices and other judges would be -- take a very sharp turn to the left.
One of our greatest problems in America today is justices that legislate from the bench, activist judges.
I'm proud that we have Justice Alito and Roberts on the United States Supreme Court. I'm very proud to have played a very small role in making that happen.
PAUL: I am known for sticking to principle and not flip- flopping. I voted to impeach him, so...
MODERATOR: Mayor Giuliani?
GIULIANI: It would mean that we were back on defense against terrorism, given Senator Clinton's recent positions.
GIULIANI: And the reality is, in the 1990s, we were on defense in dealing with Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.
When you had this debate last week and all the Democrats were up here, I never remember the words "Islamic fundamentalist terrorism"
being spoken by any of them. And I heard it a lot tonight.
MODERATOR: Mr. Tancredo, last thought?
TANCREDO: I know that he is presently measuring the drapes over in the Oval Office...
... but, no, it's a lousy idea.
MODERATOR: You really think he's measuring the drapes, huh?
Let me start with a question. In all seriousness, if you want to pass, please pass it. We don't have much time.
Every president, if you look back to Ike, was elected to fill the problem of the previous president. We are, of course, correcting all the time in this country; it's how democracy works.
How will you be different, in any way, from President George W.
ROMNEY: I think we're each our own person. We have our own values.
I respect the president's character, his passion, his love for this country. I believe everything he does in this war against terror flows from a desire to protect the American people and to make our future secure.
But I will go to work not only to win the war on terror as it relates to Iraq and Afghanistan, but on a global basis, not only with a strong military -- we need at least 100,000 more troops, more military spending.
ROMNEY: But at the same time, we have to strengthen our economy and make sure that somebody who has been in the private sector all his life can protect American jobs.
And finally, strengthen the American family. That's what we've got to do.
MODERATOR: OK. I've got to go to Senator McCain.
MCCAIN: I would not have mismanaged the war. It was badly mismanaged for four years. Now we have a new strategy that I think and pray every night will succeed.
And I would have vetoed spending bill after spending bill after pork-barrel project after pork-barrel project, in the tradition of President Reagan.
MODERATOR: Mr. Gilmore?
GILMORE: You know, Chris, this campaign is about the national security of the United States. And there are at least four things that need to be done.
We need to be vigorous on the war on terror, and we need to draw other people across the world to us as we address it.
Homeland security has got to become an entire effort of an entire community of the United States. And we have not yet achieved that.
We have to move. I'm sorry.
GILMORE: And we have to energy independence.
MODERATOR: I want to give everybody a shot.
Mr. Huckabee, Governor?
HUCKABEE: I want to make sure that we went to a place where the states had more power and not centralized in the federal government.
HUCKABEE: That's been a mistake of this administration, I think an honest and sincere one, but a huge mistake.
And instead, we need to honor the Tenth Amendment, we need to remember that we are a nation of strong states and weak federal government, not strong federal centralized government and weak states.
MODERATOR: Congressman Hunter?
HUNTER: You know, we won World War II, World War I and the Cold War with a major industrial base. We're losing our industrial base through bad trade policy right now. China is cheating on trade.
I would enforce trade laws. That's something that the president is not doing.
MODERATOR: Senator Brownback?
BROWNBACK: I'd push more a political solution along with a military solution in Iraq, and here I would push a three-state, one- country solution in Iraq, with a Kurdish state, a Sunni state, a Shia state, with Baghdad as the federal city.
I think we've got to push a political solution, along with the military, to get to a stable situation in Iraq, which is our key political issue of the day.
MODERATOR: Mr. Tancredo.
TANCREDO: The president has done many good things, and I'm proud of him for -- he's a good man, but I'm telling you, on a number of issues, especially No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription bill, these things -- these things were overarching and overreaching for the federal government.
TANCREDO: Also in terms of Iraq, it is time. You know, Benjamin Franklin said in 1727 -- 1787 that he wanted to...
MODERATOR: Governor? Out of time. Governor Thompson then.
TANCREDO: Could I please...
MODERATOR: Governor Thompson please?
THOMPSON: Many different areas. One, I would transform the health care system, a lot different than the president's talking about. I would set up a peaceful way to settle the situation in Iraq by allowing the Iraqis to elect their own leaders in the states and being able to split the oil revenues. I would set up medical diplomacy as well as educational diplomacy in order to expand our foreign relations.
MODERATOR: Mr. Giuliani?
GIULIANI: I think we should remind ourselves, because I remember it every day, that on September 11th, 2001, we thought we were going to be attacked many, many times between then and now.
We haven't been. I believe we had a president who made the right decision at the right time on September 20th, 2001, to put us on offense against terrorists. I think history will remember him for that. And I think we as Republicans should remind people of that.
MODERATOR: Dr. Paul?
PAUL: I certainly would continue on my earlier theme that foreign policy needs to be changed -- Mr. Republican, Robert Taft, we have a statue of him in Washington.
PAUL: He advocated the same foreign policy that I advocate.
I would work very hard to protect the privacy of American citizens, being very, very cautious about warrantless searches. And I would guarantee that I would never abuse habeas corpus.
MODERATOR: This is hardly the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, or even the beginning of the end. But it is, to quote Winston Churchill, "at least the end of the beginning."
This debate airs again tonight on MSNBC at 11 Eastern time. And in just a moment, I'll join Keith Olbermann on MSNBC for a complete debate analysis and coverage as the campaign heads to the spin room.
I want to thank everyone here. | <urn:uuid:8640c712-34b3-484f-8b1f-80079e126799> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18488970/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971677 | 24,348 | 1.53125 | 2 |
This article can also be found in the Premium Editorial Download "Storage magazine: Adding low-cost tiers to conserve storage costs."
Download it now to read this article plus other related content.
|Pros and cons of end-user file recovery|
End-user file recovery is the byproduct of storage snapshot capabilities combined with low-cost ATA disk. In a typical scenario, the storage group schedules automatic, point-in-time snapshots every few hours or every day and stores them on online or nearline secondary storage. If end users need to recover a particular file, they can navigate across the network and pull it from the most recent snapshot. The storage administrator initiates the snapshots and the user never encounters the snapshot software. Then, the user accesses the file to be recovered by finding and opening it as usual, from the folder or directory designated for snapshots.
Users doing it for themselves
"This is a huge issue. End users screw up files all the time," says Randy Kerns, senior partner, the Evaluator Group, Greenwood Village, CO. And when that happens, it's usually the storage administrator's job to restore files quickly so the worker can get back to the task in question. With end-user file recovery, users retrieve the file themselves; IT doesn't need to get involved at all, which is definitely a benefit.
Without end-user file recovery, the worker would request the file from the storage administrator, who would have to retrieve it. Depending on how many workers there are and how often they need to restore files, this could be nothing more than a bothersome distraction, or it could become a significant drain on the administrator's time.
The problem, in fact, may be much larger than storage managers suspect, based on requests they receive to restore files. As far as the storage group is concerned, "over half [of] the end-user needs may never surface," says Kerns. This is because the typical process to get a file restored involves chasing down the appropriate IT person and bugging him to do it quickly, an unpleasant process for all involved. "If IT makes the process [of restoring a file] painful enough, the users will do their own workarounds," Kerns adds, a situation IT generally wants to avoid. Such workarounds might entail users keeping their own backup copies on floppies.
The major determining factor in the adoption of end- user file recovery is IT overload. "Whether this takes off in a company depends on IT's ability to service users and its need to offload some of the workload," says Jamie Gruener, senior analyst, Yankee Group in Boston. End-user file recovery will be embraced the most at companies where IT is struggling to meet service demands.
Right now, end-user file recovery is at the earliest stages of adoption. What may speed adoption is pressure from compliance initiatives. "Companies are letting users define what files must be kept for compliance," Gruener adds. The next logical step after that is to let users recover those files directly.
This was first published in August 2004 | <urn:uuid:9bebc477-8880-4a0f-9cca-7cc6dbd198ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/magazineContent/End-user-file-recovery-bonus-or-bust?pageNo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953261 | 630 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Our friends over at the The Mid Mountains Community Gardens in Lawson are running series of workshops to help get local people growing their own food, and just in time for Spring!
They are looking for people who are interested in learning more about gardening to participate in a volunteering program. and they have recently received a Federal Government grant to run a training program for local people, particularly disadvantaged and isolated people, in volunteering at the gardens.
There will be 4 Saturday workshops starting on the 18th August, and participants will be supervised/mentored in the following areas:
- Volunteering and working in a community group
- Garden tool selection, use and maintenance
- Planting seeds and seedlings, plant care
- Compost making
- Garden bed construction
They’re are looking for people who are interested in learning these skills and fit the following criteria:
Under 18 to be accompanied by responsible adult
Disadvantaged or isolated (all backgrounds and abilities are welcome, however, the garden has some steep and uneven slopes. Appropriate support would be needed for those who would require it.
To encourage involvement, they’ll also be laying on transport to get participants from the Mid Mountains to the Mid Mountains Community Gardens.
The course runs over four Saturday workshops
Dates: August 18th, 25th, September 1st and 8th.
Time: 9am to 12 noon
Location: “Kihilla” 5 – 17 Queens Rd, Lawson
For further details, contact the Mid Mountains Neighbourhood Centre on (02) 4759 2592, or the Mid Mountains Community Garden phone 0468 332 592. | <urn:uuid:1658ba88-8272-462e-9d9f-a1171931b6cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bluemountainscommunitygardens.org/2012/08/09/free-gardening-course-at-mid-mountains-community-gardens/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950028 | 335 | 1.625 | 2 |
Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic
by Anthony Gregory
by Anthony Gregory
Ten years ago, on April 19, 1995, the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history on American soil occurred when an explosion brought down the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and snuffed out the lives of 168 individuals, including nineteen children.
After the initial shock, the political implications began to surface. Clinton implicitly blamed the attack on right-wing talk radio and its "purveyors of hate and division," and many left-liberal pundits echoed the same line. Reactionary anti-Clintonism — opposition to the gun grabbing, the social engineering, and the taxing and spending of the Clinton regime — was the root cause of the Oklahoma massacre, we were told. The more libertarian and less establishment wing of the conservative movement was the culprit.
Either forgotten or distorted at the time was the connection between Oklahoma and Waco. Exactly two years before the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI put the finishing touches on the federal government's fifty-one-day standoff with the Branch Davidians, finalizing the embarrassing chapter in federal law enforcement by sending a tank through the home of David Koresh and his followers, injecting the building with poisonous CS gas, launching incendiary devices at the building and shooting with machineguns those who attempted to escape the inferno. About eighty civilians, including about twenty children, died at Waco, and Timothy McVeigh referred to the attack at Oklahoma City as payback for what the federal government did two years earlier.
Those who pointed this out in the days after Oklahoma were walking on eggshells. The left-liberal establishment, along with most of the Republican politicians, did not want to think of Oklahoma as somewhat explainable — even if in no way excusable — in the context of the criminal acts of the U.S. government. To say that State violence paved the way to terrorist violence was condemned as making excuses for the latter. Even worse, to focus too much on the federal government's atrocity at Waco, or even its run-of-the-mill bureaucratic despotism in general, became seen as somehow aiding the enemies of American civilization and even encouraging mass murders like Tim McVeigh.
After Oklahoma, Congress engaged in some "hearings" on Waco, and discovered, predictably, that the U.S. government had done nothing seriously wrong. The Republican Congress, the conservative establishment, and most of the conservative movement came to validate the Clinton line on Waco, epitomized by his flippant statement the day after the massacre of the Branch Davidians: "I do not think the United States government is responsible for the fact that a bunch of religious fanatics decided to kill themselves."
In response to Oklahoma, the Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The police state began to grow, with the continuing façade of Clintonian domestic social engineering and the soft socialism of the Democratic Party. Clinton, who said shortly after Oklahoma that "[t]here's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country," continued to intimidate many conservatives into turning away from fundamental criticism of the modern State and its grandest horrors. But many conservatives continued to hate the government and love their country. Many refused to swallow the new convention that topics such as Waco were now off limits, and that to oppose the federal government, even after Oklahoma, was to tacitly side with such terrorists as Timothy McVeigh.
In 1997, even John Ashcroft responded to a proposed Internet surveillance bill by saying, "The administration's interest in all e-mail is a wholly unhealthy precedent, especially given this administration's track record on FBI files and IRS snooping. Every medium by which people communicate can be subject to exploitation by those with illegal intentions. Nevertheless, this is no reason to hand Big Brother the keys to unlock our e-mail diaries, open our ATM records, read our medical records, or translate our international communications." As bad as the Republicans were, they seemed much less willing than the Democrats to turn a tragedy such as Oklahoma into an occasion to build a Total State.
On September 11, 2001, the largest terrorist attack on American soil, the hijacking of four planes and the destruction of the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, and more than three-thousand American lives, far exceeded in bloodshed, property damage and government reaction what had happened about six and half years earlier in Oklahoma.
But this time, the Republicans were in power.
"You are either with us or you are with the terrorists," uttered by the Republican president, became the new slogan for most of the conservative movement. Concerned and thoughtful Americans, libertarians, liberals and even some conservatives, pointed out that 9/11 occurred as a result of decades of inexcusable U.S. foreign policy — atrocities such as the First Gulf War, the sanctions in Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of children, the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, the propping up of anti-democratic tyrants in the Middle East and the military support of Israel — and these concerned and thoughtful Americans were accused of aiding the enemy, defending the terrorist attacks, siding against America. As Bush rammed the PATRIOT Act through Congress, erecting the surveillance state that conservatives rightfully feared Clinton wanted to implement throughout the 1990s but never had the political capital to do so, many conservatives this time went along with the federal power grab, agreeing with the new post-9/11 John Ashcroft that "those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty… only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."
In the years since 9/11, the mainstream conservative movement has not relented much in its hostility toward dissent on foreign policy and national security issues. Many conservatives today don't want to listen to explanations of anti-American terrorist attacks as a symptom of an aggressive U.S foreign policy. To discuss hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi babies is seen as totally inappropriate and tactless, perhaps even seditious, when contemplating 9/11 and how best to respond to it. And to oppose the next war advertised as one in defense of the U.S. is also taboo. Indeed, to oppose U.S. foreign policy is to oppose the country. As President Bush might say, if he were as eloquent as Bill Clinton, "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."
Nowadays it is mostly the left that stands up against federal usurpations of police power, new surveillance mechanisms, the burgeoning police state and the harassment of anti-government dissidents. Today it is the left that cries out the distinctions between patriotism and nationalism, explanations for terrorism and excuses for it. Today it is the left that the establishment generally agrees helps to give aid and comfort to the enemy.
Conservatives don't talk that much about Waco anymore. April 19 is more remembered by most Americans for what happened in Oklahoma ten years ago — the anti-government act of mass murder — than what happened twelve years ago, the government's act of mass murder. Indeed, the new conservative line on Oklahoma is about as pro-government as it gets, blaming the atrocity on Saddam Hussein and somehow using the event that shielded Clinton from conservative criticism to justify Bush's War on Terror!
Some conservatives still condemn Waco all the while cheering on Iraq, where Waco has been happening every day since the invasion. Liberals, on the other hand, don't seem to fully appreciate that they are in a similar position that conservatives were in after Oklahoma. Much of the reason might be partisan politics — Waco and Oklahoma happened under Clinton while the two Iraq wars and 9/11 happened under Bushes. Perhaps it reflects the conservative inclination to defend foreign intervention and reject criticisms of it, and the liberal inclination to defend domestic intervention.
However, the question becomes blurred when we look more closely at the events. McVeigh was a soldier of the U.S. State, who had gone to the First Gulf War under the command of a Republican administration. Although many conservatives, even ones horrified by Waco and not intimidated completely by Oklahoma, probably never cared to admit it, the effect of the first Bush's war on McVeigh was instrumental. He saw himself as at war with the federal government, and thought of his innocent victims as "collateral damage." It was not just the State violence of Clinton's Waco, but also of Bush's Desert Storm, that created McVeigh. The right never fully came to terms with this, and most of the left never fully realized it.
The bipartisan support for police-state responses to Oklahoma and 9/11 also blurs the issue. So too does the bipartisan support and whitewashing of most federal atrocities, whether in the Middle East or on American soil, demonstrate that this is not a Republican vs. Democratic issue, at least not as far as the establishment is concerned. After all, it was during the first Bush regime that the Waco siege was initially planned and the Ruby Ridge massacre was conducted, and it was Clinton's Madeline Albright that called hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children a price well "worth it" to put pressure on former U.S. ally Saddam Hussein.
The American police state and warfare state often draw criticism predominantly from either the left or right, depending on the partisan flavor of the regime. During Waco, although some bold leftists saw through the federal lies, there was silence among mainstream liberals, who didn't want to agree with the right-wing "extremists" that Clinton had done something so awful. In thinking of Iraq today, even conservatives who should know better, and realize on some level that this in not in any way a proper response to 9/11 — that indeed this is the kind of intervention that led to 9/11 — are reticent to agree with the "extremist" far left on American foreign policy.
The left and right disagree on many issues, but such crucial ones such as aggressive war and the dangerous federal police state have drawn similar criticisms from people on both sides, often at different times. For liberty to triumph, the more libertarian wings of both left and right need to see their common goals, see through the partisan smokescreens, and recognize, at all times, that opposition to and fundamental criticism of the State do not necessarily imply hatred of America or solidarity with its most murderous enemies.
To defend Americans from anti-U.S. terrorism, a necessary element is reducing State terrorism, greatly scaling back the power and size of the U.S. government, and revoking its license to kill and get away with it. Conservatives today might be able to wrap themselves in the flag and condemn dissidents as traitors, but before they know it, another Clinton might come to power and they'll be the ones again accused of assisting the enemy by opposing the State. They might come, once again, to see the difference between love of country and love of the government, only it might be too late to bask in the distinction, thanks to the anti-dissident political atmosphere they are helping right now to create. Today's leftists, it is to be hoped, will remember the feeling of being branded a traitor, should a Democrat be in power during the next national crisis or war.
Remember Waco and the Iraqi sanctions, remember Oklahoma and 9/11. To forget any of the major episodes of U.S. terrorism and anti-U.S. terrorism, to brush their relationships with one another aside and condemn those who invoke them, will not help in protecting America, much less in restoring and preserving its freedoms.
April 19, 2005
Anthony Gregory [send him mail] is a writer and musician who lives in Berkeley, California. He is a research assistant at the Independent Institute. See his webpage for more articles and personal information.
Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com | <urn:uuid:b0186f70-35a8-4521-818c-43c883cab350> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory71.html | 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 | 0.967605 | 2,485 | 1.5 | 2 |
Copyright 2005 Joel Vance
If you want to get that amazing new job, you are first going to have to learn the answers to common job interview questions. The majority of the interview questions that you have thrown at you will be typical interview fare, but a company may decide to throw you a curve ball in the form of a crazy job interview question. This is starting to happen more and more, it is becoming quite a trend actually, so you need to take some time to learn what these interview questions might be so that you can answer them quickly and in a manner that leads to you getting the job.
There is a method to an employer's madness when they use an 'out of the ordinary' job interview question - and that's to get you thinking fast. In most cases the employer is testing you to see if you can think on your feet or if you are creative enough to work well in this job position. If the interviewer doesn't think you have what it takes because of your answers to the job interview questions, then you will not get the position.
Before you go into any job interview try to keep an open mind. Prep your imagination a bit to get it flowing freely just in case you get some of these crazy job interview questions asked of you. You can't afford to freeze up during an interview; because if you do, it is all over. So go in prepared, or at least as prepared as you can be.
Here are a few of the strange and yet rather common job interview questions that you may run across:
Q) If you were an animal what kind of animal would you choose to be?
Choose an animal that is efficient at everything that it does and one that is often very busy.
Q) What kind of fruit would you be?
You should choose a fruit that tastes good in a fruit salad along with many other fruits. This can be used to show that you are a team player who works well with others all of the time.
Q) What would be the very first thing that you would do if you won the lottery?
This is a gauge of your priorities. Whatever you do don't say you would quit your job.
Think about the answers to these sorts of job interview questions before you go into the interview. This way even if these particular interview questions don't get asked you will still have an idea of the types of answers that you should be giving.
Article Source: http://www.bharatbhasha.net
Article Url: http://www.bharatbhasha.net/careers.php/34375
Article Added on Tuesday, January 3, 2006
|Careers >> Top 50 Articles on Careers|
|Category - >| | <urn:uuid:48306515-2a62-45fc-bc60-f33955abe354> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bharatbhasha.net/careers.php/34375 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972452 | 558 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Do you think that having a coin sized magnet, which is not moving, will/can burn out cicuitery?
I was trying to do a vibrations measurement using an accelerometer sensor which has a small magnet incorporated in order to achieve a better fix on ferrous materials. I do know that it has MAJOR effect on the magnetometer but that was not of essence.
I made 3-4 small flights of a few seconds (~10) to get a feel of the copter then unplugged the lipo and went to make my measurement set-up at my laptop. When i connected the lipo a 'usual' spark was seen at the leads and the motors stared singing and I could not arm. I tried a reset/reflash firmware but it did not help.
I saw via the mission planer that no radio signal were detected.
After seeing that the radio inputs are all 0 I tried to connect to the 328p but I it cannot read it using avr studio. I think it's safe to assume it's fried as RC signal can be read with voltmeter at it's output.
I later found out that the Xbee module is also fried.
Can 328p be replaced or do I need to buy a new APM?
Can all of this happen because of the magnet? All my sensors are working fine (accel,gyro,magneto) and those should have failed first as they were closer and all imo. Also, as metioned, i did a few flights without any problems.
Can it be the spark that i saw when connecting the lipos?
I have also put some Leds on the wings and controled them using the relay and it was the first time i was fling with them on but I took care not to have any deisoleted wiring. I don't think that could have caused it, but it's worth mentioning.
It would be nice to know what happened so it will not be done again.
Any suggestions on finding the problem are welcome.
Because of the magnet? No.
Because of shorts caused by sticking a big metal probe to a bare PC, yes.
[Post edited by moderators for civility]
I don't understand what you mean by sticking a metal probe to a bare PC.
As you can see there is no physical contact between the sensor(the thing with the green cable) and any board (or anything for that matter besides the plastic frame).
Please detail and thanks,
I remember checking the Vin and had 4.2V. I'll check the GND now.
Thanks for the reply, Levi
The mods misspelled "PCB" and edited my post to remove my suggestion that you read some basic information on electronics, such as proper handling and esd precautions.
It is highly uncivil to censor someone by removing good and proper advice.
First of all, you misspelled PCB and not the moderator, thus the confusion in my first reply.
I have also found your comment acidic and unhelpful.
I have made it quite clear that there was no contact between any of the PCBs and the sensor, re-asserting your opinion that they did touch is of no use to my problem.
If you would have wanted to help than you would have mentioned something specific, reading 'some' books is not what i consider to the point of this thread.
Keep smiling, Levi
You've got a completely dry joint on the 328P debug/programming port.
Top-left of the photo, top left pin (VCC). It doesn't make contact with the PCB at all.
That might be why you can't connect to the 328P.
Looking at the rest of the pin headers in shot, quite a few of them look like they might also be partly dry (it's hard to tell from a photo).
Indeed you are right Richard! The ring connector of the PCB had broken and fallen off on that side, however the actual connection to the 328P is on the other side. I have made sure that it is connected there.
I have also used the multimeter so make sure that each of the 6 SPI pins are connected to the microcontroler, that is for all of the 6 pins I get a 'beep' (meaning ~0 resistance) on the uC pins.
In order to make sure that my programmer is working ok and the avr studio software is set up correctly I connected to the 2560 and was able to read it.
I then reconnected to the 328 SPI and got confirmed again that it is not working, unable to read device signature.
I saw that the 328p is similar(same) to the Atmega48pa microcontroler, which I happen to have one of.
The issue is that it's PDIP configuration. Has anybody tried to replace it a 328p TQFP with a 48pa-pu PDIP? Can anyone give some guidance on how to make the soldering if it is possible to use?
Also please state your input on the issue of the possibility of a magnet doing damage (in the situation mentioned in my first post) even if you don't can't help awanser to the questions above . The other students with whom I work on the project seem convinced for whatever reason that it was the magnet that made this mess. (and not the relay or something else) I would like my name cleared if it isn't my mistake after all.
Thank you and have a nice evening,
If the outer metal ring of the magnet hasn't shortened some pins....the magnet is NOT guilty!
The solder spot marked with circle is not guilty too as it is over the GND. More, the solder mask protects the traces from such disaster.
So....think carefully what have you done step by step and place your memories here... ;-)
The magnet couldn't do anything to your electronics. The amount of voltage and current induced by a nearly motionless magnetic field is infinitesimal.
The calculations are all to be found in a physics 1 or 2 textbook. If you want proof I'd just shove those calculations in their face and let them struggle to come up with the numbers.
Lenz's law: The EMF induced in an electric circuit always acts in such a direction that the current it drives around the circuit opposes the change in magnetic flux which produces the EMF.
That said, I think you probably shorted something out by sticking a big metal probe to a bare, powered up PCB.
The magnet almost certainly is not responsible.
It's a shame you didn't take a photo of the damage to the PCB before your fix.
Was it bent away from the PCB substrate and discoloured? (eg Green/blue)
If so, then it was a pretty big overcurrent.
I think the damage was caused by the LEDs that were added.
- My guess is that they were wired to return their current through the APM ground, instead of using the relay as a dry-contact as it is intended.
I can always remove the solder if we think that that could shed some light on the problem.
At this point I will get a new 328p, replace it, and see what we got.
I'll get back then if no other suggestions are mentioned here.
***NOT RELATED TO PROBLEM, CAN BE SKIPPED***
Regarding the closure part, I thought/knew that it's no way that the magnet caused this. I just got pushed into believing that.
THIS is the part I hate the most, when someone makes me doubt things I know and thus myself. It's one of the worst thing someone can do to me.
Thank you all for your inputs, Levi | <urn:uuid:54b3eb41-dc22-4591-8187-507577dae4f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/circuitry-328p-fried-due-to-magnet?page=1&commentId=705844%3AComment%3A882001&x=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973425 | 1,611 | 1.835938 | 2 |
1. Adopted Revisions to 19 TAC Chapter 101, Assessment, Subchapter BB, Commissioner's Rules Concerning the Student Success Initiative
Effective Date: April 19, 2010.
Revised 19 TAC Chapter 101, Assessment, Subchapter BB, Commissioner's Rules Concerning the Student Success Initiative, was filed as adopted with the Texas Register under the commissioner's rulemaking authority on March 30, 2010.
The adopted revisions remove Grade 3 reading as a Student Success Initiative (SSI) requirement and establish new accelerated instruction requirements for students failing any Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills assessment in Grades 3-8. Both the SSI modification and the accelerated instruction requirements will be implemented beginning with the 2009-2010 school year. The revisions were adopted with a technical edit from what was published as proposed.
Staff Contact: Questions about this item should be directed to Student Assessment at (512) 463-9536.
For additional information, email firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:050ffd97-bfef-43c3-8758-2b9c9a176d0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=2147493570 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930127 | 203 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Cambridge Postgraduates in Entrepreneurial Challenge - (1996 competition)
A team of postgraduate researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge has won the first New Entrepreneurs Prize for their business plan for Vivo, a start-up biotech company manufacturing a new sensor for monitoring blood glucose levels. "It was hectic but definitely worthwhile" was the verdict of Julie Tucker, Managing Director of Vivo.
The scheme was devised to give postgraduate researchers an insight into the many different facets of commercialising the results of science and of establishing a science-based company. Five teams participated in the four day event, held at the University of Nottingham, in April. After a short intensive course in business plan preparation and with business, financial and commercial experts on hand to advise throughout the event, the five teams prepared and presented their plans to a panel of judges from the academic, business, finance and public sectors. Competition was intense, with some teams working through most of the last night to finalise their presentations.
The winning Cambridge team were Julie Tucker, Roger Millington, Alistair Hindle, Donna Freeman and Matthew Steinberg. Runners-up from the University of Nottingham were Zina Affas, Tamsin Ford, Deepen Shah, Adrian Taylor and Kevin Francis who chose as their product a new system for rapid detection of bacterial contamination.
The judges were impressed with the quality of the business plans, both in terms of style and substance. "I was impressed by the very high quality of the people and the presentations and their grasp of the commercial imperatives in starting new companies" said Dr Brian Richards CBE, Executive Chairman of Peptide Therapeutics, and chairman of the judging panel. He was also impressed with the variety and the originality of the bases of the proposed companies.
But there is more to the New Entrepreneurs Prize than simply winning or losing the competition. "We certainly came away knowing a lot more about the mechanisms of setting up a company" said Julie Tucker. The judges too were very positive about the scheme. "If I had had the opportunity of attending such a course before attempting to set up a new company, I would have found it invaluable" said Dr Richards.
The BBSRC gratefully acknowledges the sponsorship of prizes by Price Waterhouse and additional support from Coopers & Lybrand.
- Past Competitions - > next (1997) | <urn:uuid:31d826bd-e4fb-49b4-9b80-204e7594b710> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biotechnologyyes.co.uk/1996competition.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973241 | 491 | 1.5 | 2 |
Words from the Bible that will bring peace. Prayer for peace and Bible verses to use when you need peace. Learn how to find peace of mind.
Ryan finds peace
Ryan believed the Bible when it said Jesus died on the cross and took away the punishment for his sins. However, he began to lose his peace and doubt a few months later when the feelings of excitement from his spiritual freedom had worn off. To overcome his doubt Ryan read verses from hew Bible that reminded him that he was still a child of God and the peace he first experienced returned.
“I tell you the truth, whoever hears what I say and believes in the One who sent me has eternal life. That person will not be judged guilty but has already left death and entered life.” John 5:24
Would you like to experience God’s peace and know for sure that all you have done wrong has been forgiven? Why not watch the movie that shares how you can find God’s peace?
Sarah Wanted Peace Of Mind
“Do not worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks. And God’s peace, which is so great we cannot understand it, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
Sarah worried about many things. She worried whether the traffic would be heavy and make her late for work, or whether she would be able to make a sale, or if her boss would be unhappy with her work, or if she would find the right man to marry. And so the list went on.
Prayer for Peace
“Thank you, Lord Jesus, for giving me your peace. I give all my anxieties and concerns to you (be specific) because I know that you will care for me.Thank you for blessing me today as I choose to think on things that are positive and pure. In Your Name I ask it. Amen “
Use the Word of God to resist Satan
Satan wants to rob you of your peace. The Bible says in James 4:7: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
How do you do this? The same way as Jesus did, by declaring what the Word of God says.
I am cleansed from all sin by the Blood of Jesus. (1 John 1:7)
I am brought near to God by the Blood of Jesus. (Ephesians 2:13)
I am justified by the Blood of Jesus. (Romans 5:8-9)
I have redemption through the Blood of Jesus. (Ephesians 1:7)
I am sanctified through the Blood of Jesus. (Hebrews 13:12)
I have peace with God through the Blood of Jesus. (Colossians 1:20)
I am in covenant relationship with God through the Blood of Jesus. (Mark 14:24)
I am purchased by the Blood of Jesus. (Acts 20:28)
The Blood of Jesus cleanses my conscience. (Hebrews 9:14)
I have confidence to come into the presence of God by the Blood of Jesus. (Hebrews 10:19-22)
The Blood of Jesus Christ is precious to me. (1 Peter 1:19)
Testify to what the Blood has accomplished for you, then you can declare :- “Satan has no place in me, no power over me, through the Blood of Jesus, I am an overcomer!”
Words from the Bible that will bring peace. Prayer for peace and Bible verses to use when you need peace. Did you find peace of mind? | <urn:uuid:b003473a-b194-4424-823d-942aca373875> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ydyc.org/prayer-for-peace/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968039 | 767 | 1.554688 | 2 |
RuneQuest – Sixth Edition of the Iconic Roleplaying Game. Created in 1978 by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney and friends, RuneQuest is the classic roleplaying game of fantastic adventure with heroes and magic. Now in a brand new edition, RuneQuest is updated and expanded by Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker. Everything you need for fabulous roleplaying adventure is contained in a single volume that has been designed to support any genre of fantasy. The game retains all the key concepts and hallmarks of its earlier versions, but requires no familiarity with the previous editions.
In RuneQuest your characters are defined by their culture, career, community, background, comrades, skills, magic and cults. Progression is through skill advancement – not levels or similarly abstract concepts. As your characters adventure and quest, their capabilities improve and their relationships deepen and strengthen. Players and Games Masters have complete flexibility over what can be achieved, and the way characters develop is entirely dependent on choices players make, depending on their characters’ aspirations and motivations. Games Masters receive a huge amount of support through the RuneQuest rules. All the concepts and game mechanics are explained clearly with options and considerations explored and presented for ease of use. You need only this rulebook for many years of exciting and imaginative play.
RuneQuest contains everything needed for play:
• Character Creation – building your character through the familiar characteristics, through developing culture and community relationships, choosing a career, and gaining basic equipment according to social class.
• Skills – What they do, how they work, and how to handle many different circumstances (degrees of difficulty, critical and fumbled rolls, opposed skills, group skills, and so on).
• Economics and Equipment – Arms and armour, tools, clothing, accommodation... everything your character needs as he or she begins on their life of adventure.
• Combat – RuneQuest’s combat system is unique, dynamic and geared towards adventurous realism. Gaining success over an opponent generates Special Effects that can rapidly turn the course of a fight. Copious advice is presented on balancing combat skills and styles, through to handling rabble and underlings.
• Magic – No less than five very different forms of magic are presented and explored, with complete lists of spells and effects. How magic is defined and used in different fantasy settings and campaign worlds is examined in detail. The Runes, what the represent and how they work, is clearly presented.
• Cults and Brotherhoods – Religious, magical and secular organisations, as well as other kinds of societies are detailed the Cults and Brotherhoods rules. Cults have been an important and traditional part of RuneQuest, and they are covered in significant detail along with templates for many different kinds of cult, order, school and so on for Games Masters and Players to build upon for their own campaigns.
• Creatures - Over 50 creatures are fully detailed, including several non-human player character races. This chapter also offers complete guidance on how to use creatures effectively in RuneQuest games, and notes on how to design your own.
• Games Mastery – Copious notes, thoughts and guidance on how to Games Master RuneQuest games. Areas for consideration are summarised, options explored, and different ways of using the rules offered. An invaluable chapter for new and old RuneQuest Games Masters alike…
• Anathaym’s Saga – Numerous examples of play and how the rules are used are provided through Anathaym’s Saga. Follow Anathaym, her sister Kara, Mju the Mystic and Kratos the Sorcerer as the RuneQuest rules are illustrated and explained.
By Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash. 456 pages. Published by The Design Mechanism July 2012. | <urn:uuid:b3f88caa-5ee4-4609-832c-d7109f85a7ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://basicroleplaying.com/runequest/runequest-6th-edition-2927/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94051 | 758 | 1.679688 | 2 |
[Deathpenalty]death penalty news----worldwide
rhalperi at mail.smu.edu
Sat Dec 4 11:52:28 CST 2004
China 'Carried Out Nearly 90 Per Cent of World's Executions'
China carried out nearly 90 per cent of the worlds executions last year,
putting at least 5,000 people to death, according to an activist group
campaigning to end capital punishment.
China is one of 60 countries that still have the death penalty, the
Rome-based group Hands Off Cain said in a report yesterday. It said other
governments carried out more than 500 executions.
Chinas government relies heavily on the death penalty in effort to
reassure the public that it is taking action against corruption and rising
crime. People are executed for crimes ranging from murder and rape to tax
fraud, petty theft and other non-violent offences.
The figure given by Hands Off Cain for Chinas executions is higher than
those reported by other human rights groups.
Amnesty International said in April that China put 726 people to death
last year - nearly 2/3 of all executions reported.
But it said that figure was based on incomplete official information and
the true number was believed to be much higher.
Iran had the 2nd-highest number of known executions worldwide in 2003 with
154, according to Hands Off Cain. It said that as a proportion of its
smaller population, the Islamic Republic "applies capital punishment just
as much as China."
Iraq executed at least 113 people before former President Saddam Husseins
government was toppled on April 9, 2003, the group said. The death penalty
was suspended during the U.S. administration but has been restored by the
interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Vietnam executed at least 69 people, while the United States put to death
65 people and Saudi Arabia carried out 52 executions, according to Hands
Chinas Foreign Ministry said earlier this year that the country lacked
"conditions to abolish the death penalty." It insisted that Chinese courts
were "prudent in the use" of executions.
China has tried in recent years to improve professional standards in its
courts. But activists complain that penalties are not applied consistently
and that in the midst of anti-crime campaigns, prisoners often can be
sentenced to death for offences that were not capital crimes at the time
they were committed.
Under Chinese law, death sentences are automatically sent for appeal,
though reversals are rare. Chinese executioners use both gun shots and
lethal injection. The courts have reportedly executed prisoners for
offences committed when they were as young as 16.
(source: The Scotsman)
Ghana, 9 Others drop death penalty since 2003 start
A total of 134 countries have given up capital punishment, 10 more than
had done so at the start of 2003, a campaigner against capital punishment
Since the start of 2003, Ghana, Benin, Malawi and Morocco had in effect
abolished the practice by not executing anyone for at least 10 years while
Kazakhstan and Tajikistan had put in place a legal moratorium on the
practice, it said.
Another 4 countries -- Bhutan, Samoa, Bosnia and Armenia -- either
abolished the death penalty or tightened an existing partial ban since the
start of last year, the group reported at a presentation at U.N.
Of the total, 81 have abolished the death penalty completely, 14 have
abolished it for ordinary crimes, one -- Russia -- has pledged to abolish
it, and 6 are observing moratoriums, the Rome-based organization Hands Off
Another 32 countries allow capital punishment but have in effect abolished
it by not carrying out an execution for at least the past 10 years, the
In all, 62 countries retain the death penalty and in 2003 put to death at
least 5,523 individuals, the group said.
One country alone, China, executed at least 5,000 people last year while
Iran put to death at least 154 and Iraq had executed at least 113 people
by April 9, 2003, when the U.S.-led occupation suspended the death
penalty, it said.
More information about the DeathPenalty | <urn:uuid:b1bc254b-9561-40dd-9987-589f2aae3eae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lists.washlaw.edu/pipermail/deathpenalty/2004-December/001469.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952372 | 888 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Since opening in Brooklyn a few years ago, Mast Brothers Chocolate has been making a big name for itself. Founding brothers, Rick and Michael Mast, create flavorful bean-to-bar chocolate with imagination and enthusiasm at every step. They import some of the finest single origin cacao from around the world. Recently, they realized a long-held dream of importing some of their beans by sailboat, direct from the Dominican Republic to New York.
Each step of their process is an exercise in meticulous care. This care is possible because they do everything by hand and in small batches. Once finished, each bar is hand-wrapped in thick paper with striking prints, each designed by a family member or friend. However, the resulting chocolate bars are more than just a tasty treat in snappy packaging; they’re steeped in both the craft and art of chocolate making.
When I had an excuse to take a trip to NYC, I made sure to visit the Brooklyn chocolatiers to take a tour of their “factory”. To accommodate the growth of their business, they recently moved into a larger space, which still keeps them comfortably in the scale of craft chocolatiers. On a sunny Friday afternoon, when production had mostly slowed down for the day, the office manager, Stephanie, took me on a tour of the space and talked me through each step of the chocolate making process.
The process starts thousands of miles away in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Madagascar where cacao beans are carefully grown, harvested and fermented. Upon reaching Mast Brothers, the large sacks of cacao beans go through a rigorous process of tasting and experimenting to figure out a recipe to best showcase the flavor profiles of each region’s cacao. Then, the production process begins: careful sorting, gentle roasting, winnowing, stone grinding, aging and tempering:
First, the cacao beans are sifted to remove any pebbles or debris.
Next, they are moved to roasting pans where they are hand sorted to remove shells or damaged beans.
The beans are then oven roasted, an attention to detail which is rare for chocolatiers. Most commercial roasting is done in large, mechanized roasters.
Then, the roasted cacao beans are winnowed in a machine that was custom-made for the Mast Brothers. The machine carefully grinds the beans and separates the cocoa nibs from the shell. Using an innovative design, a vacuum sucks up the shells while the heavier nibs fall to the bottom.
After winnowing, the nibs are stone ground to create thick paste. During this process cane sugar is added. The amount of sugar added determines the chocolate bar’s percentage – for example, if you see a bar with 70% cacao, it will have approximately 30% sugar.
The ground chocolate is then aged for a minimum of 30 days, a step that not all chocolate makers take. This is done to allow the chocolate to rest, which develops the flavors, and helps the chocolatiers to manage their inventory so they can make chocolate to order. After aging, the chocolate is tempered to stabilize the final product.
Gini Bell is a cheesemonger and the chocolate buyer at Formaggio Kitchen South End. | <urn:uuid:e4bf95af-0555-4841-8931-b1b7793f82d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.formaggiokitchen.com/2011/10/28/bean-to-bar-in-brooklyn-mast-brothers-chocolate/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=4e28c04ab9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945129 | 674 | 1.71875 | 2 |
I think as with everything, you should take that information with a bit of caution. In the health field there are many claims that certain food, drinks, herbal remedies,etc. offer a cure to cancer. However, they are not conclusive or let`s say they`re open up to error.
Continue to eat your fruits, vegetables and eat as healthy as possible while participating in the various screenings that detects cancer in the early stages.
We are planning a conference that will address the medical breakthroughs and how it is delivered through the media. I can`t tell you how many medical cure/claims for cure have at some point had to be recanted. Cancer genes are not always consistent they may take on rare forms, etc. Continue to enjoy your Mexican food but by no way trust that it will prevent breast cancer....
Here`s to good food, good drinks and great health!
Take each day, mold it and make it yours....... | <urn:uuid:e6f88963-b7f2-43e0-a9ca-0e7b1a55e24f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.startupnation.com/Mexican-food-helps-prevent-breast-cancer/topic/1/ | 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 | 0.961401 | 195 | 1.796875 | 2 |
I wish that we could spend more time trying to prosecute the felons that have dumped cats at various locations throughout Blanco County rather than pursing the charitable acts of persons who have been feeding and caring for these victims of human irresponsibility. Animal abuse is a felony in the state of Texas and the dumping of animals is surely animal abuse.
Spaying and neutering of cats has been proven to improve the lives of stray and feral cats, but we need to do more.
Why is it that Blanco County has no animal control officer and no animal shelter? Our nearest animal shelters are all out-of-county, in Austin, San Antonio, San Marcos, Fredericksburg, Marble Falls, and Leander. Why hasn’t our county done anything for animal welfare? We are spending our tax dollars on accommodations for city and county offices… and nothing, zero dollars, for animal welfare. This shows a blatant disregard for the Texas State Law on animal abuse and a complete lack of responsibility in caring for our beloved companion animals. We need to do better.
How about donating one of the abandoned county or city buildings to the Blanco County Cat Coalition and hiring one of them to run an animal shelter? It would be a tremendous step in the right direction.
Johnson City, TX | <urn:uuid:283aed6c-6b48-4444-aec8-bc9665b0ecb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blanconews.com/news/33509/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939213 | 264 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Caroline, the American Girl doll with ties to Sackets Harbor, hit the social scene this month in New York City.
She was escorted by a contingent of north country officials representing historical sites associated with Caroline.
Caroline Abbott, launched this fall, is the 13th heroine to join American Girls family of historical characters growing up in important times of this countrys past. American Girl describes Caroline as an independent and adventurous 9-year-old girl whose story is set near Lake Ontario during the War of 1812.
More than 21 million American Girl dolls have been sold through the companys catalog, retail stores and website since 1986.
Caroline comes with a storyline: She loves sailing with her father, but when hes captured, she must help keep the familys shipyard running. When she sees a chance to rescue her father, Caroline discovers that she must use her mind and heart to guide her decisions.
Re-enactors with ties to the Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site and Fort La Presentation in Ogdensburg were featured guests Nov. 16 at the Midtown-Manhattan American Girl doll store, 609 Fifth Ave. at 49th Street.
The female re-enactors dressed in 1812-period attire and interacted with more than 100 girls and their families attending an evening dedicated to Caroline.
The re-enactors and representatives from the 1000 Islands International Tourism Council spent more than five hours socializing with families attending the events 1812-themed workshops, scavenger hunt and dinner. More than 75 1812-style canvas bags containing tourism brochures and information on the Thousand Islands, Sackets Harbor, Ogdensburg and New York state were distributed.
Were fortunate that American Girl is highlighting the War of 1812 with the Caroline doll, Gary S. DeYoung, council tourism director said in a press release, Having a few hours to promote Sackets Harbor, Ogdensburg and the Thousand Islands among people with a unique connection Caroline to the area was a great opportunity for us to do some promotion in the large New York City market.
Regional tourism promoters are planning Caroline-related events next summer to coincide with commemorations of the Battle of Sackets Harbor and Battle of Ogdensburg.
Caroline comes with accessories and a six-book series. | <urn:uuid:b49f67b4-8c43-4dcf-a79e-0fc04eebb539> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ogd.com/article/20121123/CURR04/711239975/1024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944001 | 472 | 1.796875 | 2 |
|View single post by Albert Sailhorst|
|Posted: Fri Jan 11th, 2008 12:28 pm||
|Thanks Dixie Girl and Cleburne Fan!
I've checked the OR's, "Googled" it, etc.....I even contacted the Park Ranger at Ft. Pillow, tried to find anything in "Battles and Leaders" series, looked it up in the book "River Run Red" (an excellent book about Ft. Pillow) and can't find anything.
My conclusions are:
A) It was a minor skirmish, not worthy of mention in any of my sources
B) Due to the passage of time (over 50 years) my Dad's memory is mistaken (he is even starting to question it himself, in regards to where the bullets came from), and those bullets were found at the Ft. Pillow battle sight.
I appreciate everyone's help! | <urn:uuid:3fbf6393-b62b-4729-8758-bec4dc7efb06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://civilwarinteractive.com/forums/view_post.php?post_id=10503 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95905 | 191 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Mini-Me: Myths of US Government Shattered – JFK Assassination by USG Cabal Set to Unravel Along with 9/11 Related Lies and Cover-Ups
Jacob G. Hornberger
Future of Freedom Foundation
Recently by Jacob G. Hornberger: The Kennedy Assassination
In early 1976 the National Enquirer published a story that shocked the elite political class in Washington, D.C. The story disclosed that a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was a divorced spouse of a high CIA official named Cord Meyer, had been engaged in a two-year sexual affair with President John F. Kennedy. By the time the article was published, JFK had been assassinated, and Mary Pinchot Meyer herself was dead, a victim of a murder that took place in Washington on October 12, 1964.<
The murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer is the subject of a fascinating and gripping new book by Peter Janney, who was childhood friends with Mary Meyer’s three sons and whose father himself was a high CIA official. Janney’s father and mother socialized in the 1950s with the Meyers and other high-level CIA officials.
Janney’s book, Mary’s Mosaic, is one of those books that you just can’t put down once you start reading it. It has everything a reader could ever want in a work of nonfiction – politics, love, sex, war, intrigue, history, culture, murder, spies, racism, and perhaps the biggest criminal trial in the history of our nation’s capital.
Just past noon on the day of the murder, Mary Meyer was on her daily walk on the C&O Canal Trail near the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. Someone grabbed her and shot a .38-caliber bullet into the left side of her head. Meyer continued struggling despite the almost certainly fatal wound, so the murderer shot her again, this time downward through her right shoulder. The second bullet struck directly into her heart, killing her instantly.
A 21-year-old black man named Raymond Crump Jr., who lived in one of the poorest sections of D.C., was arrested near the site of the crime and charged with the murder. Crump denied committing the crime.
There were two eyewitnesses, neither of whom, however, personally identified Crump. One witness, Henry Wiggins Jr., said that he saw a black man standing over the body and that the man wore a beige jacket, a dark cap, dark pants, and dark shoes. Another witness, William L. Mitchell, said that prior to the murder, he had been jogging on the trail when he saw a black man dressed in the same manner following Meyer a short time before she was killed.
When Crump was arrested, he was wearing dark pants and dark shoes. Police later found his beige jacket and dark cap in the water near the trail.
It certainly did not look good for Ray Crump, as he himself said to the police. Nonetheless, he steadfastly denied having anything to do with the murder.
Crump’s family retained one of D.C.’s most renowned and respected attorneys, an African American woman named Dovey Johnson Roundtree, who was around 50 years old at the time. She met with Crump and became absolutely convinced of his innocence. She agreed to take the case for a fee of one dollar.
When the case came to trial, the prosecution, which was led by one of the Justice Department’s top prosecutors, called 27 witnesses and introduced more than 50 exhibits. Dovey Roundtree presented 3 character witnesses and then rested her case, without calling Ray Crump to the stand.
The jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
As Janney documents slowly and meticulously, the case against Ray Crump had all the makings of a good frame, but not a perfect one. For example, the two eyewitnesses had stated that the black man they saw was about 5 inches taller than Ray Crump and about 40 pounds heavier. Moreover, there wasn’t a drop of blood on Ray Crump’s clothing. Furthermore, there wasn’t a bit of Crump’s hair, blood, or bodily fluids on the clothing or body of Mary Meyer. Despite an extensive search of the area, including a draining of the nearby canal and a search of the Potomac, the police never found a gun.
After 35 years of researching and investigating the case, Janney pins the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer on the Central Intelligence Agency. What would have been the CIA’s motive? To silence an independent-minded woman who apparently did not accept the official lone-nut explanation for the assassination of John F. Kennedy – and who had apparently concluded instead that Kennedy was the victim of a high-level conspiracy involving officials of the CIA.
Immediately after Kennedy’s assassination, Meyer telephoned famed LSD guru Timothy Leary, with whom she had consulted regarding the use of LSD, not only for herself but also for unidentified important men in Washington to whom she wanted to expose the drug. Highly emotional, she exclaimed to Leary, “They couldn’t control him anymore. He was changing too fast. They’ve covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m afraid. Be careful.”
Meyer was referring to the dramatic shift that took place within President Kennedy after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seminal event that had brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. As James W. Douglass carefully documents in his book JFK and the Unspeakable, a book that Janney mentions with favor, Kennedy was seared by that experience, especially given that his own children might well have been killed in the nuclear holocaust.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy began moving America in a dramatically different direction; he intended to end the Cold War through personal negotiations with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who desired to do the same thing. The idea was that the United States and the Soviet Union would peacefully coexist, much as communist China and the United States do today. Kennedy’s dramatic shift was exemplified by his “Peace Speech” at American University, a speech that Soviet officials permitted to be broadcast all across the Soviet Union. That was followed by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which in turn was followed by an executive order signed by Kennedy that began the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam.
Perhaps most significant, however, were Kennedy’s secret personal communications with Khrushchev and Kennedy’s secret personal outreach to Cuban president Fidel Castro, with the aim of ending the Cold War and normalizing relations with Cuba. Those personal communications were kept secret from the American people, but, more significantly, Kennedy also tried to keep them secret from the U.S. military and the CIA.
Why would the president do that?
Because by that time, Kennedy had lost confidence in both the Pentagon and the CIA. He didn’t trust them, and he had no confidence in their counsel or judgment. He believed that they would do whatever was necessary to obstruct his attempts to end the Cold War and normalize relations with Cuba – which of course could have spelled the end of the U.S. national-security state, including both the enormous military-industrial complex and the CIA. Don’t forget, after all, that after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs and after Kennedy had fired CIA director Alan Dulles and two other high CIA officials, he had also promised to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
Janney’s book places Meyer’s murder within the context of the Kennedy murder, which had taken place 11 months before, in November 1963. The book brilliantly weaves the two cases into an easily readable, easily understandable analysis.
In Janney’s book, there are two revelations about Mary Meyer’s murder that I found especially disturbing:
1. The eyewitness who claimed to be jogging on the trail when he saw a black man following Mary Meyer does not seem to be who he claimed to be.
The man told the police that his name was William L. Mitchell and that he was a U.S. Army 2nd lieutenant who was stationed at the Pentagon.
Janney relates that according to a contemporaneous “news clip” in the Washington Star, by the time the trial began, Mitchell was no longer in the military and instead was now serving as a math instructor at Georgetown University.
Janney’s investigation revealed, however, that Georgetown had no record of Mitchell’s having taught there. His investigation also revealed that the CIA oftentimes used Georgetown University as a cover for its agents.
Janney investigated the personal address that Mitchell gave both to the police and at trial. It turns out that the building served as a CIA “safe house.” What was Mitchell, who supposedly was a U.S. Army lieutenant and then a Georgetown math instructor, doing living in a CIA “safe house”?
Janney was never able to locate Mitchell. You would think that a man who had testified in one of the most important murder cases in D.C. history would have surfaced, from time to time, to talk about his role in the case. Or that friends or relatives of his would have popped up and said that he had told them about his role in the trial.
Nope. It’s as if William L. Mitchell just disappeared off the face of the earth – well, except for some circumstantial evidence that Janney uncovered indicating that Mitchell was actually an agent of the CIA.<
For example, in 1993 an author named Leo Damore, who had written a book entitled Senatorial Privilege about the Ted Kennedy/Chappaquiddick episode, was conducting his own investigation into Mary Pinchot Meyer’s murder, with the aim of writing a book on the case. Damore ended up committing suicide before finishing his book. But in the process of his investigation, he telephoned his lawyer, a former federal judge named Jimmy Smith, telling Smith that after a long, unsuccessful attempt to locate Mitchell, Damore had finally received a telephone call from a man identifying himself as Mitchell. According to Smith’s written notes of the conversation, a copy of which are at the back of Janney’s book, the man purporting to be Mitchell admitted to having murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer as part of a CIA plot to silence her.
In 1998, an author named Nina Burleigh wrote her own book about Meyer’s murder, entitled A Very Private Woman, in which she concluded that Crump really had committed the murder despite his acquittal.
Just recently, Burleigh published a critical review of Janney’s book at The Daily Beast, in which she acknowledges the likelihood that given the large amount of evidence that has been uncovered over the past decade, the CIA did, in fact, play a role in the assassination of President Kennedy.
In her review, however, Burleigh ridiculed the notion that the CIA would use its assassin in the Meyer case to also serve as a witness to the murder. It’s a fair enough critique, especially given that the information is hearsay on hearsay and Damore isn’t alive to relate the details of his purported telephone conversation with Mitchell or to provide a tape recording of the exchange.
But what I found fascinating is that Burleigh failed to confront the other half of the problem: even if Mitchell wasn’t the assassin, there is still the problem of his possibly having been a fake witness who provided manufactured and perjured testimony in a federal criminal proceeding.
I couldn’t understand how Burleigh could fail to see how important that point is. I figured I’d go take a look at her book. Imagine my surprise when a search for “Mitchell” in the Kindle edition turned up no results. I asked myself, How is that possible? How could this author totally fail to mention the name of one of the two eyewitnesses in the case?
So, I decided to read through her book to see if I could come up with an answer. It turns out that she describes Mitchell simply as a “jogger” (without mentioning his name) who said that he had seen a black man following Meyer and described the clothing the man was wearing. What is bizarre is that while she did point out, repeatedly, the name of the other eyewitness – Henry Wiggins Jr. – not once does she mention the name of the “jogger.” The omission is conspicuous and almost comical, given sentences such as this: “Wiggins and the jogger both guessed the presumed killer’s height at five foot eight” and “The shoes gave Crump the extra inches of height to make him the size described by Wiggins and the jogger.”
Why this strange treatment of one of the two important eye witnesses in the case? Only Burleigh can answer that one. But given her extensive investigation of the case, I wish she would have included in her critique of Janney’s book a detailed account of the efforts, if any, she made to locate “the jogger” and the fruits, if any, of those efforts. Perhaps The Daily Beast would be willing to commission Burleigh to write a supplemental article to that effect.
We should keep in mind that a criminal-justice system depends on the integrity of the process. If one side or the other feels free to use fake witnesses and perjured testimony with impunity, knowing that no one within the government will ever investigate or prosecute it, then the entire criminal-justice system becomes worthless or, even worse, tyrannical.
Prior to the publication of his book at the beginning of April, Janney issued a press release in which he stated that he planned to mail a request to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to reopen the investigation into the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer based on the evidence that Janney uncovered as part of his research for the book.
He need not bother. In 1973, nine years after the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, 31-year-old American journalist Charles Horman was murdered in Chile during the U.S.-supported coup that brought military strongman Augusto Pinochet into power. Twenty-six years later – 1999 – U.S. officials released a State Department memorandum confessing the CIA’s participation in Horman’s murder. The CIA’s motive? Apparently to silence Horman, who intended to publicly disclose the role of the U.S. military and the CIA in the Chilean coup. Despite the official acknowledgment by the State Department of CIA complicity in the murder of this young American, not one single subpoena has ever been issued by the Justice Department or Congress seeking to find out who the CIA agents who murdered Horman were, why they murdered him, and whether they did so on orders from above.
How much trouble would it be for the Justice Department to issue subpoenas to the Pentagon and the CIA for all records relating to William L. Mitchell, including military and CIA service records and last known addresses? Or a subpoena for records relating to the CIA “safe house” in which Mitchell resided? Or a subpoena for records pertaining to the CIA’s use of Georgetown University as a cover for CIA agents? Or a subpoena to Georgetown University for records relating to William L. Mitchell and records relating to the CIA’s use of Georgetown University as a cover for CIA agents?
No trouble at all. But the chances of it occurring are nil.
2. The second especially disturbing part of Janney’s book relates to Mary Pinchot Meyer’s diary. On either the night of Meyer’s murder or the following morning, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, burglarized Meyer’s home and art studio and stole her personal diary, which very likely contained detailed descriptions about her affair with President Kennedy. It also might have contained her suspicions that Kennedy had been the victim of a high-level assassination plot orchestrated by the CIA. Angleton took the diary with the aim of destroying it, but it’s still not certain what exactly he did with it.
Angleton later claimed that his actions were done at the request of Meyer’s close friend, Anne Truitt, whom Meyer had supposedly entrusted with the diary in the event anything happened to her. But Truitt had no legal authority to authorize Angleton or anyone else to break into Meyer’s house or studio and take possession of any of her personal belongings.
Unless the diary ever shows up, no one will ever know whether Kennedy and Meyer discussed the transformation that Kennedy was undergoing after the Cuban Missile Crisis. But one thing is for sure: given Meyer’s deep devotion to peace, which stretched all the way back to her college days, she and Kennedy were certainly on the same wavelength after the crisis. Moreover, given Meyer’s fearful statement to Timothy Leary immediately after the assassination, as detailed above, there is little doubt as to what Meyer was thinking with respect to who had killed JFK and why.
Angleton also arguably committed obstruction of justice by failing to turn Mary Meyer’s diary over to the police, the prosecutor, and the defense in Ray Crump’s case. After all, even if the diary didn’t point in the direction of the CIA as having orchestrated the assassination of John Kennedy, at the very least it had to have described the sexual affair between Meyer and the president. The police and the defense were both entitled to that information, if for no other reason than to investigate whether Meyer had been killed by someone who didn’t want the affair to be disclosed to the public. The fact that Angleton failed to disclose the diary’s existence to the judge, the prosecutor, and the defendant in a criminal proceeding in which a man was being prosecuted for a death-penalty offense speaks volumes.
One of the eerie aspects of this case is that prior to her murder, Meyer told friends that there was evidence that someone had been breaking into and entering her house. Now, one might say that the CIA is too competent to leave that type of evidence when it breaks into someone’s home. I agree. But the evidence might well have been meant to serve as a CIA calling card containing the following message to Mary Pinchot Meyer: “We are watching you, and we know what you are doing. If you know what’s good for you, cease and desist and keep your mouth shut.”
But Mary Pinchot Meyer wasn’t that kind of woman. She was independent minded, strong willed, and outspoken. In fact, when she attended CIA parties with her husband, Cord Meyer, she was known to make negative wisecracks about the agency. One of the other CIA wives commented that Mary just didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.
If the CIA did, in fact, orchestrate the assassination of John F. Kennedy – and, as Nina Burleigh observes, the overwhelming weight of the circumstantial evidence certainly points in that direction – Mary Pinchot Meyer, given her relationship to the CIA, her close contacts within the Kennedy administration, and her penchant for being outspoken, could have proven to be a very dangerous adversary.
In his introduction to Mary’s Mosaic, Janney places the murders of John Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer in a larger context:
The tapestry of President Kennedy’s killing is enormous; the tapestry of Mary Meyer’s, much smaller. And yet they are connected, one to another, in ways that became increasingly apparent to me as I dug ever more deeply into her relationship with Jack Kennedy and the circumstances surrounding her demise. To understand the complex weave of elements that led to her death is to understand, in a deeper way, one of the most abominable, despicable events of our country’s history.
Therein lies the cancerous tumor upon the soul of America. The CIA’s inception and entrance into the American landscape fundamentally altered not only the functioning of our government, but the entire character of American life. The CIA’s reign during the Cold War era has contaminated the pursuit of historical truth. While the dismantling of America’s republic didn’t begin in Dallas in 1963, that day surely marked an unprecedented acceleration of the erosion of constitutional democracy. America has never recovered. Today in 2012, the ongoing disintegration of our country is ultimately about the corruption of our government, a government that has consistently and intentionally misrepresented and lied about what really took place in Dallas in 1963, as it did about the escalation of the Vietnam War that followed, and which it presently continues to do about so many things.
Once revered as a refuge from tyranny, America has become a sponsor and patron of tyrants. Like Rome before it, America is – in its own way – burning. Indeed, the Roman goddess Libertas, her embodiment the Statue of Liberty, still stands at the entrance of New York harbor to welcome all newcomers. Her iconic torch of freedom ablaze, her tabula ansata specifically memorializing the rule of law and the American Declaration of Independence, the chains of tyranny are broken at her feet. She wears ‘peace’ sandals – not war boots. While her presence should be an inescapable reminder that we are all “immigrants,” her torch reminds us that the core principles for which she stands require truth telling by each and every one of us. As long as any vestige of our democracy remains, each of us has a solemn duty to defend it, putting our personal and family loyalties aside. “Patriotism” – real patriotism – has a most important venue, and it’s not always about putting on a uniform to fight some senseless, insane war in order to sustain the meaningless myths about “freedom” or “America’s greatness.” There is a higher loyalty that real patriotism demands and encompasses, and that loyalty is to the pursuit of truth, no matter how painful or uncomfortable the journey.
Buy Peter Janney’s book Mary’s Mosaic. But be sure to set aside a couple of days for reading it, because once you start, you won’t be able to put the book down.
Phi Beta Iota: The only major mistake we detect in the story is the confusion of CIA as an institution with the cabal that is a parasite within CIA. Any Director of CIA with the brains and the balls to get to the bottom of this could do so within 180 days. Any President with the balls and the brains to demand full public disclosure could get it within 360 days — evidently the success enjoyed by the cabal in murdering JFK (along with MLK, Bobby Kennedy, and hundreds of other lesser figures over time including US Senators) so impressed every President thereafter–the ones that were not oblivious to history–that we have had neutered theatrical presidents in the USA since then. What most impresses us about this story is Mary’s observation that JFK grew fast in office, and that he had to keep his direct contacts with with Khruschev secret from US intelligence and military “leaders.” Kruschev had precisely the same problem and was in all probability a far better leader of Russia than was painted by CIA the institution betrayed from within as it was by the CIA/MCIC complex led by Lockheed, Israel, and Citi-Bank (prime holder of the gold from the Philippines). When read with former Congressional staffer and Andy Card relative Susan Lindaeur’s Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq (CreateSpace, 2010), one “brackets” the matter. Read the various reviews by Robert Steele on JFK and MLK in the intelligence reviews list, and the matter fleshes out nicely. The US Government is 80% good people trapped in a bad system, and 20% very evil people committing treason as a matter of daily routine. We are in a battle for the soul of the Republic. This web site does what it can in that battle because “The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.”
Substantially updated 11 August 2011
A fraction–the most relevant, from Intelligence (Government/Secret) (333). Adds DHS and NGA. Integrates all reviews on intelligence since original list created in 2008. Adds new sections on JFK Assassination, Fabrication of the Cold War Threat, and Secrecy as Pathology. Brings in anthropological intelligence books. Does not include Information Operations, Information Society, or
- Intelligence (Collective & Quantum) (100)
- Intelligence (Commercial) (78)
- Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial) (19)
- Intelligence (Public) (226)
- Intelligence (Wealth of Networks) (63)
Added 14 April 2012:
Phi Beta Iota: Robert Morrow is a classic representation of mixed truths. Absent a proper deep investigation that cross-walks everything, there is no way of knowing if he is part of the controlled propaganda team, a lunatic with a good story, or an honest bystander that screws up a lot.
Morrow says that Caro can’t believe LBJ would be involved in the JFK assassination. So naturally Morrow thinks Caro gets a lot of things wrong, despite the high praise most people give Caro as a biographer.
A negative bash of Morrow: First Hand Knowledge: A Review by Ulric Shannon | <urn:uuid:c049f896-2232-4065-b38f-c2d379fcece4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phibetaiota.net/2012/04/mini-me-the-myths-of-the-us-government-unravel-jfk-assassination-by-usg-cabel-set-to-unravel-along-with-911-related-lies-and-cover-ups/ | 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 | 0.971243 | 5,342 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Join the pro-life march Friday in Washington
On Jan. 25, 2013, a spectacular event takes place in Washington, D.C. Throughout the streets, thousands of people of all ages march in protest of the laws that make abortion legal. For 40 years, this march has occurred each and every year for Pro-Life citizens to make their voices heard. More and more people arrive to participate with each passing year. The number of marchers in 1974 was 20,000 compared to 200,000 in 2007. It is truly awe-inspiring to see so many people who feel just as strongly about the same things you do.
The 40th Annual March for Life will begin at 1:30 p.m. The march will travel up Constitution Avenue and stop at the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill. This is an eye-opening event with a wonderful cause! I implore anyone who is Pro-Life to consider attending and to make their voices heard. We can make a difference and this is the place to start. If you are interested, more details can be found on www.marchforlife.org. | <urn:uuid:cca98968-51c6-471c-991d-e30ee16731c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://citizensvoice.com/opinion/letters/join-the-pro-life-march-friday-in-washington-1.1432988 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960834 | 228 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Washington: Following is the full text of the remarks made by US President Barack Obama on the October Jobs Report in which he mentions about his India visit:
Good morning, everybody. We are in the middle of a tough fight to get our economy growing faster, so that businesses across our country can open and expand, so that people can find good jobs, and so that we can repair the terrible damage that was done by the worst recession in our lifetimes. Today we received some encouraging news. Based on today's jobs report, we've now seen private-sector job growth for 10 straight months. That means that since January, the private sector has added 1.1 million jobs.
Let me repeat, over the course of the last several months, we've seen over a million jobs added to the American economy. In October, the private sector has added 159,000 jobs. And we learned that businesses added more than 100,000 jobs in both August and September as well.
So we have now seen four months of private-sector job growth above 100,000 [jobs], which is the first time we have seen this kind of increase in over four years.
Now, that is not good enough. The unemployment rate is still unacceptably high and we have got a lot of work to do. This recession caused a great deal of hardship and it put millions of people out of work.
So in order to repair this damage, in order to create the jobs to meet the large need, we need to accelerate our economic growth so that we are producing jobs at a faster pace.
Because the fact is an encouraging jobs report does not make a difference if you are still one of the millions of people who are looking for work. And I won't be satisfied until everybody who is looking for a job can find one.
So we have got to keep fighting for every job, for every new business, for every opportunity to get this economy moving.
And just as we passed a small business jobs bill based on ideas from both parties and the private sector, I am open to any idea, any proposal, any way we can get the economy growing faster so that people who need work can find it faster.
This includes tax breaks for small businesses, like deferring taxes on new equipment, so that they've got an incentive to expand and hire, as well as tax cuts to make it cheaper for entrepreneurs to start companies.
This includes building new infrastructure, from high-speed trains to high-speed Internet, so that our economy can run faster and smarter. It includes promoting research and innovation, and creating incentives in growth sectors like the clean energy economy.
And it certainly includes keeping tax rates low for middle-class families and extending unemployment benefits to help those hardest hit by the downturn while generating more demand in the economy.
It's also absolutely clear that one of the keys to creating jobs is to open markets to American goods made by American workers. Our prosperity depends not just on consuming things, but also on being the maker of things.
In fact, for every $1 billion we increase in exports, thousands of jobs are supported here at home. And that is why I've set a goal of doubling America's exports over the next five years.
And that's why on the trip that I am about to take, I am going to be talking about opening up additional markets in places like India, so that American businesses can sell more products abroad in order to create more jobs here at home.
And this is a reminder as well that the most important competition we face in this new century will not be between Democrats and Republicans. It is the competition with countries around the world to lead the global economy.
And our success or failure in this race will depend on whether we can come together as a nation. Our future depends on putting politics aside to solve problems, to worry about the next generation instead of the next election.
We cannot spend the next two years mired in gridlock. Other countries, like China, aren't standing still. So we can't stand still either. We've got to move forward. I'm confident that if we can do that, if we can work together, then this country will not only recover, but it will prosper. And I am looking very much forward to helping to pry some markets open, help American businesses, and put people back to work here at home during the course of this trip.
Thank you very much.
Story first published:
November 05, 2010 21:56 IST | <urn:uuid:c8ae9fe9-d34a-458e-9ba4-0636dda27f2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/full-text-of-obama-s-statement-in-which-he-mentions-about-his-india-visit-64603 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968472 | 920 | 1.5625 | 2 |
It's Report Card Day For Florida Schools
Last week, Hillsborough County School Superintendent MaryEllen Elia was invited to be part of the governor's news conference this morning, where he will announce school grades for this year.
Elia is bringing along Alexander Elementary Principal Manuel Duran.
ELIA: Alexander Elementary consistently over the life of the FCAT and the grading system in Florida has made gains, and we believe that they will be an 'A' school this year.
In 1999, Alexander was a 'D' school and struggling with a large number of students with other languages.
ELIA: We have a dual language program there and many of the students have participated in the dual language program. We think that has been a contributor to their success.
Elia says overall, the district has made significant gains. Last year, three elementary schools were graded as failing by the state. But it's expected this year those grades will have improved.
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