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E is for eclectic. Yep, that's right - eclectic. A couple days ago I started thinking about the post for this week and continuing with the ABC theme, something that starts with E. For some odd reason I couldn't think of anything. I tried thinking of books or authors that started with E and started perusing my bookshelves. No help. Dictionary - uh uh. Last night however, after being woken up in the middle of the night by the cats to be let out, the e words starting flowing. That's generally when I do my best brainstorming. In fact, a wide range of things popped into my head. Edwardian, ethereal, earnest, educational, entertaining, endangered, experiment, echo. The diversity of subjects reminded me of my reading lately which has been very eclectic - moving from reading a historical fiction to a romance to a murder mystery to fantasy.
What ideas came to mind from these words?
Edwardian - great idea for reading books from the Edwardian era which are the early 1900's from 1901 to 1910. Authors I found from that era are H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence and Sir Author Conan Doyle.
Ethereal - angels which of course lead to thinking about some interesting books about the supernatural such Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick or Fallen by Lauren Kate.
Earnest - the one and only Ernest "papa" Hemingway.
Educational - on my mind since I've been looking at 5th grade curriculum, plus trying to decide if going to take Nobel Literature or Short Stories for my next class.
Entertaining - Books about entertainment or books that are entertaining. You choose. Amazon has an interesting list of the top 10 of the 100 most entertaining books of 2009. I've recently discovered China Meiville and his The City and The City. Speculative fiction. Now that's a whole other subject in itself.
Endangered - endangered species, words or minds. See where that leads you.
Experiment - science experiments with kids - so much fun which leads us to one of our faithful followers Kids Who Think. Check them out.
Echo - I think the only reason this one popped up was because we were reading "The Story of Echo the Bat" from Nasa. Very cute story.
Interestingly enough, the book I will be reading this week starts with e. This week I'm starting Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, book 1 in his Wheel of Time series. Back in the 90's when the series started, I read the first three and then moved on to something else. I was reminded of the series when Robert Jordan died and then again when The Gathering Storm, the 12 book in the series was released. His wife and publisher chose Brandon Sanderson to finish the series Jordan had started. Then Heather challenged me in a Dare Challenge to read Eye of the World among other things. Will I read the whole series? Don't know - will make up my mind once finish reading Eye of the World.
So, my challenge for you this week. Find something that starts with E - a book, an author, an idea, a theory, read about it and then tell us all about it.
In order that everyone may know what book you are reviewing this week, please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link.
Your Name field: Your name (name of the book)
Your URL field: Link to your specific post.
Please note: keep in mind that we have all ages involved in the challenge, so please keep your reviews clean. If I come across any link that is not appropriate (vulgar language, x-rated, that type of thing) it will be deleted. | <urn:uuid:f93b0624-8b05-4384-80fc-ba93aff9b64f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.read52booksin52weeks.com/2010_01_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951409 | 769 | 1.820313 | 2 |
WWU Adds Horse Stalls to Accommodate Growing Equestrian Program
|8/9/2004||Mary Ann Beahon|
|FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE||(573) 592-1127|
More than 20 students were placed on the waiting list for admission to WWU’s world-renowned equestrian studies program this summer, making the expansion necessary.
“To accommodate these students, more spaces in the riding classes needed to be created,” Laura Ward, chair of the equestrian studies division, said. “These spaces cannot occur without the addition of more horses, and more horses could not be accommodated without the construction of additional stalls.”
To meet the need, the university has contracted with HLW Builders to construct 14 stalls (each 12-foot by 12-foot) and a tack room as additions to the dressage barn. As a result, all freshmen should be able to have an applied riding class, Ward said.
In 1972, William Woods University was the first school in the country to offer a bachelor’s degree in equestrian science. The university has a reputation for providing one of the finest equestrian studies programs in the country—filling a national, regional and local demand for graduates holding a four-year equestrian science degree.
This demand is heightened by a thriving equine industry that contributes about $112 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product each year.
The university’s equestrian facilities encompass a city block, with 128 large box stalls in four stables, two heated indoor arenas, a lighted outdoor ring and a 40-acre cross-country riding course.
The equestrian studies program is the most popular at William Woods, with an average of 102 students majoring in equestrian science and 14 students majoring in equine administration each year for the past 10 years. The placement rate for WWU equestrian graduates is nearly 100 percent.
The equestrian science major is demanding, requiring more than 50 credits; all but three of these are acquired in the university’s equestrian facilities. More than 200 students enroll each semester in riding classes in the four seats of dressage, hunter/jumper, saddle seat and western.
“Consequently, our equestrian facilities are used seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. to support student learning,” Ward said.
“By adding 14 additional stalls to our existing barn facilities, William Woods will be able to increase our enrollment in the equestrian studies program,” she said. “The additional horses will allow us to continue to supply top quality graduates from our program—graduates who are sought after by the equine industry.” | <urn:uuid:8dabb2d9-b23c-46fb-8148-95113bf9f995> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://williamwoods.edu/news/detail.asp?ID=600 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932177 | 583 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Came across this great new green initiative on Twitter feeds.
Ecocho uses Google and Yahoo search engines but by conducting the search from their home page you help them raise money to plant trees.
I dislike the concept of off-setting (I think it makes people lazy about reducing carbon) but planting trees in conjunction with reduced carbon consumption is a very good idea - so get searching, and then make sure you turn your PC off at night!!
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Posted by @EmVicW at 10:53 am | <urn:uuid:de917418-2ee3-4b83-a556-1c0a7fc24f30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thoughts-on-everything.blogspot.com/2008/04/green-searching.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953954 | 111 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Would somelike to inform the WHO/UN that the UK already has in Law the Equility Act, Disability Discimation Act,. the Race Act etc………which is meant to protect and support those against discrimiation, though it may not be perfect in the UK, WHO/UN should focus on those countries worse than the UK or seek to persue the Law as it stands in the UK to better the provision and support in which the Law provides!
How can WHO/UN and others say people have problems accessing services in the UK when in London 23 Hosipials provide HIv services, the UK spend £750m just on HIV. £250m in London alone, can someone people advise these people of the facts and realities before their negative comments are expressed without facts!
“Gay and bisexual men are almost 20 times more likely to have HIV than the general population.”
Ooh you can’t say that on here! Hush your mouth!!!!!!
of the 92K 40% are Women and Children 60% are Men, facts first before you bitch!
of a population of 62m in the UK, only 92,000 are known to be HIV +
the LBGT popluation in London is meant to be 2.5m of 7.5million people, equate that
I’m not really sure what you guys are trying to say here. Around 35,000 gay and bisexual men in the UK have HIV. I’m not sure how many gay and bisexual men there are in the UK but I expect its about 1 million. Therefore the percentage of gay and bisexual men with HIV is about 3.5%. But if my estimation of gay and bisexual men is overstated and there are about 500,000 of us then that would put the percentage of us with HIV at around 7%.
Totally agree with this.
So much more needs to be done to bring those with HIV to the forefront and on medication Without being discriminated or stigmatised.
Well I’m not surprised its 20 times more likely in gay men. The disease was created to wipe us out.
There is no evidence to support this long held conspiracy theory
Its as viable a theory as Lord Lucan kidnapping Shergar | <urn:uuid:d531e5db-2053-49c3-8461-6bcdfd72a918> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/06/21/world-health-organization-calls-for-anti-discrimination-laws-to-tackle-hiv/comments/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965003 | 460 | 1.757813 | 2 |
ATLANTIC CITY (CBS) - New Jersey officials are warning consumers, including victims of Sandy, to be on the lookout for home improvement and charity scams.
“Our immediate priority today is our work at the state and local levels to ensure the safety of New Jerseyans in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,” Governor Christie said.
“However, we know from past experience that fly-by-night contractors who are incompetent, dishonest, or both, will descend upon the storm-affected areas in the coming days and weeks, seeking to capitalize on those whose homes have been damaged or destroyed. Consumers must be extremely wary and do their due diligence before they hire anyone, sign any contract, or pay any money for home repair,” said Christie.
The Division of Consumer affairs offers tips for consumers on “How to Avoid Disaster-Related Scams” in English at http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/disaster/floodtipsflyer_1.pdf
and Spanish at http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/disaster/floodtipsflyerSP_1.pdf | <urn:uuid:203731f7-4473-4951-a955-294520872028> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/11/01/nj-officials-warn-consumers-of-scams-after-hurricane-sandy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930487 | 235 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Deadly blaze leads to fire prevention drive
PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A blaze that killed a father and four children in eastern Kentucky has led to a renewed focus on fire prevention.
Pike County Firefighters Association President Randy Courtney told the Appalachian News-Express that nine of the 26 fire departments in the county met recently in an effort to form a group dedicated to fire prevention. In addition, fire departments across the county are handing out free smoke alarms to area residents thanks to a donation from Kidde Fire Safety. Courtney says local businesses have pledged money to purchase more when those run out.
The efforts stem from the Jan. 6 blaze in Jonancy that killed a father and four small children and severely injured their mother.
Fire officials say the home did not have a smoke detector.
Information from: Appalachian News-Express, http://www.news-expressky.com | <urn:uuid:412387f5-4cd3-4ce6-9c22-ac3a6766f56e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/briefs/x1770725979/Deadly-blaze-leads-to-fire-prevention-drive | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941783 | 182 | 1.796875 | 2 |
DOD fields handheld device to foil IEDs
Technology used to detect illicit cell phones in prisons makes its way to the battlefield
- By Paul Richfield
- Jan 19, 2011
A relatively new weapon in the counter-improvised explosive device fight is a handheld device designed to detect illicit cellular telephones inside correctional facilities.
Known as the Wolfhound, the unit has a range of about 50 feet. Typical use is inside buildings or in built-up areas. A sensor in the $1,800 unit scans cell phone frequencies and points the operator in the direction of the phone emitting the signal. Scott Schober, president and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics, the New Jersey company that builds the Wolfhound, said its core technology evolved from test equipment that the company developed for the cell phone industry during the 1980s.
“One of the offshoots was for government customers — again and again, they requested something that could find cell phones in areas where they’re not permitted,” he said. “So we worked to develop the first product in December , with a built-in detection and direction-finding unit, but no jammer, because that’s against [Federal Communications Commission] regulations. Most jammers are sloppy and cause havoc with radio communications. We’ve taken the passive approach so we don’t have to worry about disrupting 911 emergency calls or other public safety communications. The other strong argument we bring up: Finding the cell phone allows you to confiscate the phone and do forensics on it and use it as evidence.”
The company has sold “hundreds, not quite a thousand” Wolfhounds to U.S. military agencies that are already clamoring for additional features, said Carmine Carerra, Berkeley Varitronics’ sales manager. “They want a cell phone detector module they can put into other systems, video, the ability to detect other [noncell phone] radio frequencies, logging, Internet recording — it’s mind-boggling,” he said.
“Our next secret weapon will be a more comprehensive version, the Wolfhound Pro," Carerra said. "It will have improved sensitivity, selectivity and filtering. It will discriminate better with specific band detection, with more user feedback. Maybe we’ll have the ability to log with a time stamp. The [Defense Department] wants to be able to sense the placing of an improvised explosive device as it’s going down. There is no competing system that we know of — we have a nice niche market here.”
Paul Richfield is a contributing writer for Defense Systems magazine. | <urn:uuid:2070932f-4bbf-4664-9c10-f3d5b7d0ce85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2011/01/24/C4ISR-1-Sidebar-Handheld-device-helps-foil-IEDs.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940666 | 552 | 1.726563 | 2 |
It is with great excitement that we share the wonderful news about our ever-expanding family of high-fidelity simulators. Thanks to some capital funding, the Clinical Simulation Program was able to acquire three Gaumard simulators: Advanced Airway Hal, Susie and Newborn Hal. This new equipment will allow our labs to serve more students and faculty, and brings diversity to simulation scenarios.
The Susie simulator is our first female high fidelity simulator. No more unconvincing, broad shouldered “lady” in lab: we now have a real fake woman. Major features that Susie brings to the table are: interchangeable breasts with a variety of tumors and growths; multiple palpable pulses, auscultation sounds and reactive eyes.
Advanced Airway Hal is our first non-white simulator; it is so great to see simulator manufacturers helping educators to bring ethnic and cultural components to simulation. In addition, Hal has a greater level of control with his airway and lungs: he has adjustable inspiratory and expiratory times, as well as a greater range of lung compliance. Soon to be tested will be his drug recognition system: here’s hoping it works flawlessly and allow learners to get rapid feedback on their treatment.
And, of course, the baby. Newborn Hal is a perfect little bundle of cuteness, if you think robots are cute. As a smaller and wireless baby simulator, he adds realism to scenarios: mommy and daddy can hold and care for him, along with student learners. He has a replaceable umbilical that can be cut, pulses (umbilical, brachial, fontanael) and chest rise. By far the coolest feature, though, is his muscle tone: his arms will move, go limp or spasm. It is pretty wild to hold a robot baby that cries and wiggles in your arms.
With all these new members to our family, we want to invite you all to a Baby Shower:
Hope everyone has a great start to the spring semester. | <urn:uuid:47ea7321-830d-4d7c-acf8-98bbf52aff4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.une.edu/simlab/2012/01/19/new-year-new-faces/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94999 | 422 | 1.789063 | 2 |
July 2, 2007
Ad Campaign Aims to Prevent Home Foreclosures
NeighborWorks® America and the Ad Council announced on June 25 a new public awareness campaign aimed at preventing foreclosures by urging homeowners in financial trouble to call a hotline at 888-995-HOPE. The Homeowner's HOPE hotline, provided by the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, is the cornerstone of a foreclosure prevention effort involving many of the country's largest mortgage market companies. The television and radio public service announcements are expected to begin airing in early July; print and Internet-targeted spots will follow. "We're currently hearing from more than 500 callers each day," said Homeownership Preservation Foundation President and Executive Director Colleen Hernandez. The public service announcements and more information about the campaign are available on the campaign's Web site. The NeighborWorks network is made up of more than 235 community development organizations working in 4,400 urban, suburban and rural communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. | <urn:uuid:e3de3662-a88b-4d17-95d4-32a40c124764> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chicagofed.org/webpages/utilities/about_us/supervision_and_regulation/news_releases/2007/2007_7_2_news_archives.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957092 | 206 | 1.5 | 2 |
The following article, circulated as an email by Guantánamo lawyer David Remes this morning, apparently caught a number of people off-guard, and David has subsequently found himself taken to task for circulating it. In contrast, I thought it was a perfect April Fools’ Day joke, and neatly encapsulated, as satire should, every failure of the Obama administration to repudiate the crimes committed by the Bush administration in the “War on Terror,” and to hold accountable those who authorized and implemented the use of torture. As a result, I’m happy to reproduce it below.
Victory at last!
A satirical article by David Remes
President Obama announced early this morning that the United States has entered into a series of bilateral accords that will permit the repatriation or resettlement of almost all remaining Guantánamo detainees within the next 60 days. Only detainees slated for prosecution in federal civilian court will continue to be held.
The accords will also cover detainees held by the United States, or by other countries by agreement with the United States. “We will no longer countenance proxy detentions,” a senior Administration official said in an interview.
Mr. Obama stated: “Detention without trial cannot be squared with the core principles of justice on which this nation was founded. It’s time to end this shameful policy once and for all.” The president stated that he would work with Congress to repeal the Military Commissions Act of 2009, passed last year by Congress, and close what he called “loopholes” in anti-torture laws.
In a related development, Attorney General Eric H. Holder also announced early this morning that he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the roles senior Bush Administration officials may have played in authorizing or approving interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment under international law.
Mr. Holder stated: “We will not rest until every Bush Administration official implicated in such crimes is held fully accountable for their crimes. If the special prosecutor determines that any Bush Administration official played any role in these crimes, that official will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and we will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law.”
Human rights groups hailed the announcements. In a joint statement, they said: “We supported President Obama because he pledged to end the horrific policies of his predecessor. He has now made good on his promises.”
Former senior Bush Administration officials declined to comment, but Elizabeth Cheney, whose father is Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, stated, “President Obama should go back to Kenya, and the rest should go straight to hell.”
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.
[...] Victory at last! by Guantanamo lawyer David Remes Tagged as: lawyer david, loopholes Leave a comment Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) ( subscribe to comments on this post ) [...]
Investigative journalist, author, filmmaker, photographer and Guantanamo expert
Email Andy Worthington
Please support Andy Worthington, independent journalist: | <urn:uuid:10cb0b8a-5d2e-4d24-90ef-9112de84f62c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/04/01/victory-at-last-by-guantanamo-lawyer-david-remes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950975 | 790 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Is Office 2013's single PC licence "unfair" to customers?
By Stewart Mitchell
Posted on 18 Feb 2013 at 13:35
Microsoft sparked howls of protest when it confirmed Office 2013 licences were locked to a single PC for life, but some experts believe the company is making the right choice as it moves towards a subscription model.
Microsoft has confirmed that retail copies of the productivity software will be tied to the first computer on which they are installed, meaning consumers would have to buy another copy of the software if they upgraded their PCs, or if their computer died.
At the same time, Microsoft is pushing its Office 365 subscription that can be used on five machines.
ReviewOffice 2013 review
The company is using the strict user licensing agreement to push customers towards that subscription model for its software – but it met with anger, with many complaining Microsoft should have made the terms clearer.
"However wonderful the new features in Office 2013, the new retail licence agreement is about as fair as an early 2000’s Tour de France," said Simon Hurst, IT faculty vice chairman of ICAEW, in a blog post for the accountancy industry body.
"Microsoft might want to move its customers away from the perpetual to the rental option, but there must be better ways to do so than to sneak in punitive licence terms."
He pointed out that the move means anyone whose computer dies would have to buy the software again, likening the situation to music companies wanting users to buy songs again if they bought a new MP3 player.
"The Office 2013 software is licensed to one computer for the life of that computer and is non-transferable," Microsoft said in a statement sent to PC Pro. "If customers want to use Office applications across multiple devices, Office 365 Home Premium works across up to five devices (Windows tablets, PCs or Macs) and can be transferred across devices."
However, there's confusion over the details of the changes, with Microsoft also claiming that: "Office 2013 has the same licensing provisions around transferability as the equivalent Office 2010 software."
Company "has right" to make changes
While some users reacted angrily to the tight controls, licence management company License Dashboard noted that Microsoft has every right to change its policies.
There's a case to be argued that Microsoft should have been more transparent, but it knew it would get flak for it
"If I'm Microsoft, I'm thinking: 'I have a business model and I am trying to transition that model away from perpetual licensing onto a hosted service with a subscription model – how am I going to do that?'" said Matt Fisher, sales and marketing director for License Dashboard.
"One way is to make it less attractive for the consumers to stick with what Microsoft views as an outdated business model," he told PC Pro. "There's been a lot of criticism, but on this occasion my sympathy lies with Microsoft. It is designed to make profits and can change licences as it sees fit."
However, Fisher was less impressed by the way Microsoft has handled the clampdown, which he said lacked clarity.
"There's a case to be argued that Microsoft should have been more transparent, but it knew it would get flak for it – a lot of licence experts should have spotted this sooner, as well," he said.
Personally I'm reasonably sanguine about 'renting' Office 2013/4/5 etc. for £80 p.a. That's less than £7pcm and worth every penny.
Bung-in my cloud-hosted Exchange (£3pcm) and 'Office' on my WP8 and I've got a very powerful set of productivity tools. I've got access to key documents almost anywhere where there's an Internet connection.
I can see that many people simply want access to 'Office' and so for them the rental model probably sucks, as they'll want to be using 2013 when I'm pushing up daisies!
The real bummer is the stuff about only one install during the lifetime of the software, which is downright stupid & unreasonable.
By wittgenfrog on 18 Feb 2013
For our family getting the 5 machine rental license represents good value for money, getting the latest version of the software. I would understand someone who doesn't have other family members who might just have a PC and a laptop the numbers don't stack up so well.
By revsorg on 18 Feb 2013
The paragraph should probably read:
The company is using the strict user licensing agreement to push customers towards alternatives for its software
Was considering getting the student version of 2013 for £43. If the same licensing applies I'll stick with libreoffice.
By JamesD29 on 18 Feb 2013
Then the public should vote
If we don't like it then everytime we buy a new computer then we should insist on Office 2010.
If the manufacturers have too many complaints then they will have to stop supplying 2013.
Vote with your feet
By therebbe on 18 Feb 2013
I can see why Microsoft want to do this and why it's a better deal for them but the honest consumer obviously loses out and what annoys me is that pirates will have this cracked and activated in no time and loaded on as many PCs as they like while the rest of us who pay for Office get a raw deal.
Thankfully as a mature student I will be able to get 365 or 2013 for about £40 so it's not so much of a problem for me personally but for regular consumers the new license set up works only in Microsoft's favour.
I'm quite happy with Windows 8 and like the Surface Pro but I seem to be in a minority. Moves like this make me think more and more people will start to use iWork or free office alternatives moving forward. Coupled with the general negativity towards 8 I can only see Microsoft losing market share in the future, I mean outside of most businesses who really needs Windows and Office?
By Deano on 18 Feb 2013
Pushing us away
The main thing is that Microsoft are in the process of pushing their customers away. As more people pick up tablets, and cannot just get Office, they are finding that the cheaper options available are just fine. Why pay monthly when for the one month's payment you can buy an editor that does what you need? Or use a free one on the web?
The longer Microsoft wait in putting Office "natively" on the iPad and Android, the more people will be liberated from it.
By MJ2010 on 18 Feb 2013
Isn’t this simply illegal? I remember Oracle not that long ago was told that their attempt to stop people re-selling used software is illegal in the EU. I’m not law expert, but to me it looks like MS is trying to go even further than Oracle...
By aa111 on 18 Feb 2013
Price rise anyone???
Hmmm, can anyone hear the companies with plenty of retail Office 2010 copies rushing to their pricing sticker gun and cranking the price up, in anticipation of the stampede of companies and individuals saying "stuff that for a game" and rushing out to buy remaining 2010 copies?
If your PC dies, does that mean you can send Microsoft the repair bill, claiming that the only reason you got it repaired was so that you wouldn't loose your office 2013 install?
By mrmiley on 18 Feb 2013
I appreciate preventing people from installing on multiple computers - but it does seem unfair if your hard disk fails you need to buy all your software over again!
Personally I'm not keen on renting. I have my own car, TV, video etc.
So don't want to rent software. When you own software you can choose to upgrade - with rental you are paying for upgrades whether you want them or not.
However I can see from the comments I'm alone in not wanting to rent software. I imagine its the way of the future.
By cyberindie on 18 Feb 2013
You can't milk the cash-cow and eat it!
Either office is £20 and single use "disposable" install or it's premium price and a product you can re-install.
Trying to have it both ways will just push the majority of users into using pirated copies or older versions.
This is almost as stupid as taking away the START menu to make people buy touch-screens. Oh, no - that was Microsoft too.
By cheysuli on 18 Feb 2013
capricious = illegal?
I'd be surprised if it were legal due to its capricious nature. The duration of the licence is a lottery and so inherently unfair.
By martindaler on 18 Feb 2013
Microsoft penning its own irrelevance
I consider myself a typical home user of office software. I cannot think of a single thing that I do regularly, that I could not also have done in Office '97.
Renting software only makes sense if you are someone who always upgrades to the latest version. As I mentioned above though, in my case and I would assume in many cases, always upgrading is a pointless exercise.
Therefore if such licensing models are foisted upon me, I shall simply find alternatives with more grace and less bloat, such as Apple's Pages, which more than meet my humble needs.
By SirRoderickSpode on 18 Feb 2013
It's already established that it's OK for Microsoft to sell a single-computer non-transferable licence for Office. That's what OEM and keycard licences were in the earlier versions of Office.
Does it seem fair that the change hasn't been very well publicised? Of course it doesn't. Will Microsoft get away with this? Of course it will.
Will you have to buy a new copy of Office if your hard drive dies? I would guess (and it is a guess) not. If this works the same way as the original Windows Activation then you will be able to change some of the components of the PC without buying new software.
Just remember that when you insure your computer hardware you'll need to add in the cost of non-transferable software licences to the sum insured.
By TBennett on 18 Feb 2013
Who will buy?
I work for a massive international company and most users are still on Office 2003!
It will be a hard sell for MS to push their new rental policy and may well speed up their demise!
By bernardm3 on 18 Feb 2013
Welcome Back Office 2000, XP 2003 and maybe 2007 and 2010
The only reason I am using anything later than 2003 is due to the issue over passwords in Outlook. However I still have install media for all my back copies of Office and they all offer a superior performance they are 'Free' compared to the later versions with their 'tied up in knots' ribbons. I can see that some industrially active types may well want the latests and most expensive. My pension has less desire to dash out of sight, so I can write the increasingly less frequent letter - if it is to a bank they probably lose the letter anyway (like the outfit in Leeds). As for Windows 8, no comment and less use fr that!
By Jonesr18 on 18 Feb 2013
This is obviously very rational of Microsoft from a business perspective, but it is also likely that they are vacating the market for casual use completely. Only businesses will need to fork out for Office in a few year's time, and by then even fewer of us will be using Windows. This is no way to grow a business, that's for sure.
By c6ten on 18 Feb 2013
Will the old phone loophole still work?
In the past the oem one unit limit has always been fixed by using the phone activation method (at least it worked for me with w8 and media centre).
Still, to restrict like this is a terrible practice for legitimate consumers who have to endure it, there is a difference between the right to do so and not annoying customers to the point of them looking at the competition e.g. libreoffice.
By tech3475 on 18 Feb 2013
Windows 9 to follow the same licensing model?
"Microsoft has confirmed that retail copies of the Windows 9 OS software will be tied to the first computer on which they are installed, meaning consumers would have to buy another copy of the software if they upgraded their PCs, or if their computer died."
By E_Karim on 18 Feb 2013
Fat Lazy Cat
Up until now, Microsoft has at least had to innovate occasionally to make any new money off Office.
If they get this to stick, they end up in not only a near monopoly position, but also with a cash cow they can keep squeezing without putting any effort in.
At least with something like anti-virus software, you can understand the main part of the cost is continuous, in providing signature updates.
With something like Office, the main on-going cost is fixing the bugs and security holes that they put in it in the first place by not doing the job properly.
By Penfolduk01 on 18 Feb 2013
Good point. Yet another example of a company pushing users towards piracy.
By Tom85 on 18 Feb 2013
How does this affect VDIs?
reading your article really struck a chord with me. One of the companies I've talked to recently had a particular problem around this issue. The company wanted to to start a virtual desktop infrastructure project but were effectively prevented by Microsoft from starting it because of the issue of licenses. The company wanted to install a handful of a particular MS software product but so far, have been unable to solve an obstacle raised by Microsoft. Microsoft's point is that with hot swappable desks in a VDI, there was nothing to stop the company from reallocating the virtual desktops to different machines and so be able to run as many instances of their product as the company liked.
It may be that Microsoft has a solution for this but when I last spoke to the company trying to get their VDI project off the ground, they hadn't been able to get an answer from their Microsoft reseller as to a solution that would satisfy Microsoft. While enterprise license pricing can work where enough workers are using an application (like MS Office), the same enterprise pricing is too high where only a few licenses are needed for a a particular Microsoft product. With so many companies moving to a VDI wondered if you know what Microsoft's response to this would be?
By simontompkins on 18 Feb 2013
What about HUP versions of office?
Working for a company that offers its employees a HUP version of office, does that mean that if I can just pay my 8.95 each time I upgrade my hardware? Or would I be forced to pay full price should I want to buy a Surface Pro for example?
By Shuflie on 19 Feb 2013
I'm used to the job of changing my password on my iPad and iPhone when I change my outlook.com email password.
But now on my Windows 8 laptop I have a few new jobs to do...
Log in to my Outlook.com email, change password. Windows 8 brings up a Metro style window telling me I need to change re-enter my login password. Then I Open a rented Office 2013 program and my login details at top right have a little yellow warning triangle - "we can't log in to your account right now" at which point I have to re-enter my password for Office.
I've got a cold right now and by the time I'd changed my Outlook.com password everywhere I had forgotten why I turned my laptop on in the first place!
Added to which, I was changing my password to something simpler because it was taking too long to type into my laptop every time I want to use it. So my security level has actually deteriorated.
And yes, I have done the grace period hack so the laptop doesn't freeze the very moment the screensaver triggers.
My guess is that this is something Microsoft will streamline in Windows 9.
And no, I don't have a touchscreen.
By revsorg on 19 Feb 2013
The way i see it is if Ubuntu Mobile OS starts to take off, then the Office programs on it will as well,The more people that start using Ubuntu Mobile and therefore say for example Libra office on it,the more Microsoft is going to loose out on both Win 8 and Office 13
By Jaberwocky on 20 Feb 2013
It's like saying any thing goes wrong under the hood of your car you have to by a new car.
Wrong by any stretch of the imagination.
Libre office for me, I have three PC's.
seriously looking at Ubuntu
By regmck on 21 Feb 2013
Freedom of choice
So far as I'm concerned Microsoft can charge whatever it likes and impose whatever unrealistic terms and conditions it wants. Just don't expect me to use their products.
By IT_Dino on 21 Feb 2013
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- Windows 8: what works and what doesn't | <urn:uuid:405f2585-dd12-4a90-970e-9ce797e79015> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/380029/is-office-2013s-single-pc-licence-unfair-to-customers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962747 | 3,728 | 1.515625 | 2 |
'Kony 2012' already an internet sensation
WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley describes a new age of social network docs.
Jason Fraley, WTOP Film Critic
WASHINGTON - Does the phrase "Kony 2012" ring a bell? The film, directed by Jason Russell for the non- profit group Invisible Children, is lighting up the internet with 46 million hits on YouTube, 533,000 "Likes" on Facebook and 48,000 followers on Twitter -- all since being posted on Monday.
Many support it. Many criticize it. And many journalists have listed the pros and cons, including WTOP's Meera Pal. But any film getting this much buzz can at the very least be called one thing -- effective.
You can watch the video, research it and decide for yourself. My goal is to break down the techniques used by the filmmaker in what could very well be a template for the future of activist documentaries.
WARNING: The below video includes some disturbing images.
"Kony 2012" begins by making us feel on the cutting edge of world history. It opens with the quote:
"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come," then changes those words to "whose time is now."
Its first images are shots of Earth, followed by examples of our newfound interconnectedness, thanks to social media. The goal is to make viewers feel like we're all in this together.
As the narrator says, "Right now there are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago ... This connection is changing the way the world works. Governments are trying to keep up. And older generations are concerned."
From here, Russell personalizes it, clicking around Facebook timelines to meet Jacob, a young boy from Uganda who watched his brother's throat cut by the L.R.A., a group of Ugandan rebels led by Joseph Kony. Immediately, we feel like we're watching some sort of a blend between "Hotel Rwanda" (2004) and "The Social Network" (2010).
Act One appeals to our emotions with powerful interviews, particularly that of Jacob crying as he describes what he would say to his brother if he were still alive: "I love you, but now I miss you."
Russell then raises the stakes and defines his mission, saying to the audience, "If we succeed, we change the course of human history. But time is running out. This movie expires on December 31, 2012, and its only purpose is to stop the rebel group the L.R.A. and their leader Joseph Kony. I'm about to tell you exactly how we're going to do it."
It's not until a full nine minutes in that we see the film's title.
The second act introduces us to Kony's backstory through the eyes of Russell's son, Gavin. He shows pictures to his son, describing the situation in clear terms of good guys and bad guys. "Joseph Kony has an army and what he does is he takes children from their parents and he gives them a gun and he makes them shoot and kill other people."
If this were presented directly to the audience in sheer narration, it would sound ridiculous. However, by doing it through his son, he's allowed to talk about the subject matter as simply as possible, ensuring we understand it.
Russell continues to play to our emotions (pathos) by showing slow-motion reenactments of adult hands pulling innocent children into the night, as well as a horrific montage of mutilated faces.
Narration describes Kony's 26 years of kidnapping kids into the L.R.A., turning the girls into sex slaves and turning the boys into child soldiers, even forcing them to kill their own parents.
Here, the filmmaker employs the powerful technique of starting close on an object then pulling back to reveal its true size and scope. Here, it's done digitally, starting with a row of children, then rising up above them to reveal a giant crowd, as the narrator says, "This is not just a few children. It's been over 30,000 of them. And Jacob was one of those children."
This technique was most powerfully done by Alain Resnais in the Holocaust documentary "Night and Fog" (1955), exposing mounds of Jewish hair at a concentration camp. It was also done effectively in "Gone with the Wind" (1939), revealing the countless bodies of confederate soldiers.
Perhaps the real hook of the documentary comes during the interview with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the head prosecutor for the International Criminal Court. As the camera pans across ICC documents, we see the many warlords on the court's wanted list, including Libya's Moammar Gadhafi at No. 24. In this way, Russell relates the issue to a notorious figure we all know -- Gadhafi -- right before revealing that Joseph Kony is No. 1 on the list! The document shows Kony was indicted on July 8, 2005 of crimes against humanity, including murders, rapes, sexual slavery and abductions.
Cleverly, the film then places a photo of Ocampo next to a photo of the filmmaker's son -- an expert and an innocent both agreeing that Kony should be stopped. These photos appear in color amidst a sea of black-and-white photos that ultimately form a giant globe. This image is layered with the narration: "It's obvious that Kony should be stopped. The problem is 99 percent of the planet doesn't know who he is."
These black-and-white photos represent us as viewers, in the dark about this issue. Until now.
From here, Russell moves into the policy segment of the piece. He shows the filmmakers going to Congress to raise awareness and receiving pushback from both political parties. A colleague, John Prendergast of the Enough Project, concludes: "No administration -- Republican, Democrat, Obama, Bush, Clinton, doesn't matter -- would do enough, because it's simply not enough of an important issue on the radar screen of American foreign policy."
So, the filmmakers kept up the pressure, until lawmakers of all political stripes began to support their cause. By including interviews with both Democrats and Republicans, the film tamps down perceptions of political bias, allowing Act Two to end on a triumphant note. On October 14, 2011, the group got the following letter:
"In furtherance of Congress's stated policy, I have authorized a small number of U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield. Sincerely, Barack Obama."
Indeed, in October 2011, 100 American advisers were sent into Central Africa to assist the Ugandan government in arresting Kony and stopping the L.R.A. The narrator says, "It was the first time in history that the United States took that kind of action, because the people demanded it. Not for self defense, but because it was right."
Like most movies (fiction or documentary), "Kony 2012" ends Act Two with an "All is Lost" moment and launches Act Three with a new "race toward the finish." At the 20:00 mark, we realize the trouble isn't over with brooding music and an update from 12/2/11: "A 14-year-old boy who just escaped reports that 'Joseph Kony now knows of the United States' plan to stop the L.R.A. and he is going to change his tactics to avoid capture, now that the great power is after him.'"
The filmmaker shows that the "bad guy" has caught onto the fight against him, and that Act Three will be a call to keep up the pressure and not to allow the American advisers to leave. To do this, Russell again shows political balance, featuring an interview from "The Rachel Maddow Show" at one minute, then an interview with Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) the next. "It's gotta be 2012," Inhofe says, providing a deadline for Kony's defeat.
To bring the film full circle, Russell brings back the historical backdrop and the attitude of "we're all in this together." He shows footage of Hitler and the Holocaust, saying, "It's hard to look back on some parts of human history, because when we heard about injustice, we cared, but we didn't know what to do. Too often, we did nothing. But if we're going to change that, we have to start somewhere. So we're staring here with Jospeh Kony, because now we know what to do. Here it is, ready?"
This allows the filmmaker to lay out his "cause and effect" marching orders:
- In order to arrest Kony this year, Uganda first has to find him.
- In order to find him, the Ugandans need the technology and training of U.S. advisers.
- In order for the advisers to do that, they need more support from the U.S. government.
- In order for more government support, the people need to show they care.
- In order for people to care, they need to know about it.
- In order for people to know about it, Kony's name needs to be placed everywhere.
That's the purpose of Russell's documentary. He wants to make Kony famous, whether it's sending out literature and bracelets, or targeting 12 policy makers and 20 culture makers (celebrities, athletes, billionaires). It's all supposed to culminate on April 20 with a "Cover the Night" event, where activists plan to meet at sundown and blanket every street in every city with Kony posters.
Whether it works or not, the film's idea of "turning the system upsidedown" resonates. As the ICC prosector says, "We are living in a new world, Facebook world, in which 750 million people share ideas, not thinking in borders."
As Russell says, "Arresting Joseph Kony will prove that the world we live in has new rules, that the technology that has brought our planet together, is allowing us to respond to the problems of our friends."
This is the promise of the internet and the power displayed already in the Arab Spring. Moreover, it's redefining the notion of filmmaking and distribution, particularly for documentaries. No longer is a giant studio needed to churn out a movie. Now, one person with a digital camera can piece together his own film, upload it to YouTube, start a social network campaign, and change the world. Whether "Kony 2012" will do this remains to be seen. But its buzz speaks to something greater, that which director Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather") envisioned decades ago:
(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
Star-studded event raises millions for AIDS research. (Photos)
Cockroaches are so adaptive, their brains may reject some foods.
The Galapagos Islands are now just a click away. (Photos)
A fallen officer's daughter gets a swarm of support. (Photos) | <urn:uuid:f002f9b2-fba7-4c7c-9fea-9d17dc33617f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtop.com/556/2779135/Is-Kony-2012-the-future-of-documentary | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964223 | 2,300 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Religious clothing included in Norwegian military dress code
on 30/08/2012 15:32:27
Spokesman Christian Oeverli said new rules will ensure all units have an open, practical approach "concerning clothing with religious symbols."
Norway has allowed the wearing of symbols - such as armbands and crosses - by its military since the 1980s, but the new rules establish when and how they can be used, including the banning of impractical clothing during military action.
The regulations also stipulate that headscarves and skullcaps be of a single colour and without ornaments. | <urn:uuid:2717bf69-aa6c-4849-9a4b-d2df3d6ae604> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.eircom.net/international/20713033/ | 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 | 0.9689 | 123 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Big Ben - 3D Jigsaw Puzzle
Types: 101-499 Pieces, 3D
Puzzle Pieces: 116
Size When Completed:18.5 in x 9.8 in x 24.6 in / 47 cm x 25 cm x 62.5 cm
Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock in the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster. The nickname is often also used to refer to the clock and the tower.
The clock is the world's largest four-faced chiming clock and the third largest free-standing clock tower in the world. The clock tower is situated at the north-eastern end of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. The Big Ben clock tower has been referred to incorrectly as St Stephen's Tower, which is a low tower above St Stephen's Entrance.
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those shown above. | <urn:uuid:f010b472-8bc9-4dea-92f2-f6809ae9b6b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.puzzlemaster.ca/browse/jigsaw/2000to5000/2426-big-ben-3d-jigsaw-puzzle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934342 | 226 | 1.664063 | 2 |
If you are post-term, acupuncture can be very effective at promoting the onset of spontaneous labour.
Acupuncture points are used to help descend the baby into the pelvic area, to aid cervical dilation and to stimulate uterine contractions. It helps prepare you emotionally, mentally and physically for the birth and stimulates the hormones needed to initiate labour. It also strongly calms any fears and anxieties that can overwhelm women when they go past their due dates.
In addition it is very good at promoting optimum fetal positioning; helping to find the best position for the baby’s head within the pelvis. It is also energising and will give you the added strength and confidence to ‘let go’ and relax into having an effective labour and delivery.
During your treatment, you, and, if possible, your birth partner will be taught how to use acupressure on the ‘induction’ points for you to repeat at home. This will help you build on the strength of the treatment, further encouraging your body to spontaneously go into labour.
Acupuncture ‘induction’ is a natural treatment; it works with your body’s own preparations for birth by encouraging your body to work optimally.
It is often helpful to have more than one session of acupuncture over successive days to help promote spontaneous labour.
Acupuncturists are bound by their own code of ethics not to provide this treatment until a woman is at term i.e. on or past her due date.
If possible, please bring your midwifery notes with you to your acupuncture induction session. | <urn:uuid:e896b5d3-67db-48af-a265-10e1e0abe8e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.actbrighton.org.uk/induction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941385 | 330 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Is being conscious of one's own racism enough?
It’s a start; it’s necessary. It’s not sufficient by itself. If you don’t do at least that, you’re not going to get any further. Sometimes people read books about race and they say, “Oh, it’s just people of color complaining and they’re all self-righteous and they make it sound as if whites are just bad.” My goal is to explain, not complain. I confess I’ve done some of this stuff, too. In part because we can’t help it: if what you see on television and in the movies are always the same images over and over again, then of course you are going to think certain things when you encounter different people. It would be odd if you didn’t. Part of what I’m trying to do is confess. I’m not pointing a finger at others. I try to be clear that this isn’t just about white folks changing, it’s about society changing. We have to think more broadly and more deeply about these issues.
Taking action is really what we should be striving for. It’s good to talk about these things. I make a living reading, writing, thinking and talking, so I think these are all good things to do, but it’s not actually getting out there, rolling up your sleeves and doing something. It’s very important to do things too.
Interview conducted by Michelle Caswell, Asia Society. | <urn:uuid:702f4186-b1b6-498d-95e7-267bbe47c438> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asiasociety.org/policy/social-issues/human-rights/exploring-race-america?page=0,3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951479 | 331 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Sat May 18, 2013
by Hugh Whelchel
Resurgence roundup, 5/17/13
Fri May 17, 2013
Grace all the way
Wed May 15, 2013
by Justin Holcomb
How to be on mission in the city
Wed May 15, 2013
by Stephen Um
How to love people well
Tue May 14, 2013
by Dave Bruskas
Since the fall of humankind, women have been oppressed, marginalized, and abused. Likewise, children have been abandoned, left to die, and treated like a commodity. Men have also suffered but have often been the cause of much of the suffering that women and children endure.
Because life is often tragic for women and children, a biblical understanding of how men are called to relate to them is very important. But often, our ideas of gender roles are confused. There are three main positions in regards to these gender roles: chauvinism, egalitarianism, and complementarianism.
Mars Hill is committed to complementarianism in the home and church. We also believe that men and women are partners in every area of life and ministry together. Though equal, men and women have biblically defined complementary and distinct roles, so that husbands are to lovingly lead their homes like Jesus and only men should serve as pastors in the church. Because of the sinful propensity of humans to distort the biblical concept of complementarianism, it’s important to cultivate a compassionate and kind complementarianism that starts with celebrating Christ’s love for the church. Likewise we encourage men to love their wives and children, and for pastors to lead and serve people sacrificially.
Complementarianism Is Not Chauvinism
Chauvinism is an extreme position and says that men and women have been created in a hierarchy with the male as the higher, superior sex—much like a king born into a family with a natural right to exercise authority over the rest of his nation. Women, in this view, are the weaker or lesser of the sexes, inheriting a natural role of submission to the man—like the citizens of a country who have no natural claim to authority.
The practical implication of chauvinism is that in the family, the church, and society, women are not to exercise authority over men because it is believed they are incapable of doing so by virtue of how God has made them.
This is the assumption of “male privilege,” which is a term that refers generally to the special rights or status granted to men but denied to women in a society on the basis of their gender. This position is wrong because it’s oppressive and abusive, and because it is a misunderstanding of God’s creative intentions for men and women as his image-bearers.
We also believe that men and women are partners in every area of life and ministry together.
Complementarianism Is Not Egalitarianism
A second position is often referred to as egalitarianism. While affirming that God creates men and women equal, some proponents of egalitarianism say that there is no God-ordained structuring of how men and women ought to serve in the church and the home.
The egalitarian position correctly sees God as creating men and women as completely equal persons, both gloriously expressing the image of God. However, some egalitarians argue that there is no difference in how husbands and wives ought to relate to and serve each other. Scripture makes it clear, as we’ll see below, that God ordained a framework in which men and women are to use their gifts and talents in the home and church.
What Mars Hill believes about the roles of men and women is called complementarianism. Unlike chauvinism, this view affirms (with the egalitarian position) that God created men and women as equal image-bearers of the Trinity.
Though equal, men and women have biblically defined complementary and distinct roles
While men and women are different, there is nothing inherent in men or women that grants them either authority or submission. However, the Scriptures make clear that God designated that the marriage relationship—patterned after Christ’s own relationship with the church—be one in which the man and the woman each play distinct roles (Eph. 5:22–33; Col. 3:18–20).
In Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul draws a parallel between marriage and the relationship between Christ and the church. The husband is the head of the wife similar to how Christ is the head of the church, and husbands are to love their wives in the same way that Christ sacrificially gave himself for the church. Paul writes: “[Husbands] let each of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Eph. 5:33).
Some people have difficulty with the idea of complementarianism because they have either experienced or wrongly assumed that a husband’s leadership is macho domination. But the perfect example of leadership is shown in Christ’s love for his bride, the church. Christ’s relationship to the church is the kind of leadership that sacrificially gives for the good of another. It’s this type of leadership that husbands are intended to model to their wives so their marriages are reflections of Christ’s love for his church. This leadership is in the context of mutual submission to each other in which both husband and wife are “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21).
For more on the roles of men and women, check out Pastor Mark Driscoll's recent sermon on the subject. | <urn:uuid:2577686c-3f8e-49f2-9cfe-68d2144cc3f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theresurgence.com/2011/12/20/complementariwhat | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967072 | 1,165 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 08:43AM
By Dudley Sharp
To: COMMISSION TO STUDY THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
bcc: The New Hampshire General Court, Police Chiefs and media throughout New Hampshire
From: Dudley Sharp
Opponents of the Death Penalty Have Blood on their Hands
Dennis Prager, November 29, 2005
Dennis Prager, November 29, 2005
Those of us who believe in the death penalty for some murders are told by opponents of the death penalty that if the state executes an innocent man, we have blood on our hands.
They are right. I, for one, readily acknowledge that as a proponent of the death penalty, my advocacy could result in the killing of an innocent person.
I have never, however, encountered any opponents of the death penalty who acknowledge that they have the blood of innocent men and women on their hands.
Yet they certainly do. Whereas the shedding of innocent blood that proponents of capital punishment are responsible for is thus far, thankfully, only theoretical, the shedding of innocent blood for which opponents of capital punishment are responsible is not theoretical at all. Thanks to their opposition to the death penalty, innocent men and women have been murdered by killers who would otherwise have been put to death.
Opponents of capital punishment give us names of innocents who would have been killed by the state had their convictions stood and they been actually executed, and a few executed convicts whom they believe might have been innocent. But proponents can name men and women who really were -- not might have been -- murdered by convicted murderers while in prison. The murdered include prison guards, fellow inmates, and innocent men and women outside of prison.
In 1974, Clarence Ray Allen ordered a 17-year-old young woman, Mary Sue Kitts, murdered because she knew of Allen's involvement in a Fresno, California, store burglary.
After his 1977 trial and conviction, Allen was sentenced to life without parole.
According to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders, "In Folsom State Prison, Allen cooked up a scheme to kill the witnesses who testified against him so that he could appeal his conviction and then be freed because any witnesses were dead -- or scared into silence." As a result, three more innocent people were murdered -- Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18.
This time, a jury sentenced Allen to death, the only death sentence ever handed down by a Glenn County (California) jury. That was in 1982.
For 23 years, opponents of the death penalty have played with the legal system -- not to mention played with the lives of the murdered individuals' loved ones -- to keep Allen alive.
Had Clarence Allen been executed for the 1974 murder of Mary Sue Kitts, three innocent people under the age of 30 would not have been killed. But because moral clarity among anti-death penalty activists is as rare as their self-righteousness is ubiquitous, finding an abolitionist who will acknowledge moral responsibility for innocents murdered by convicted murderers is an exercise in futility.
Perhaps the most infamous case of a death penalty opponent directly causing the murder of an innocent is that of novelist Norman Mailer. In 1981, Mailer utilized his influence to obtain parole for a bank robber and murderer named Jack Abbott on the grounds that Abbott was a talented writer. Six weeks after being paroled, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a 22-year-old newlywed, aspiring actor and playwright who was waiting tables at his father's restaurant.
Mailer's reaction? "Culture is worth a little risk," he told the press. "I'm willing to gamble with a portion of society to save this man's talent."
That in a nutshell is the attitude of the abolitionists. They are "willing to gamble with a portion of society" -- such as the lives of additional innocent victims -- in order to save the life of every murderer.
Abolitionists are certain that they are morally superior to the rest of us. In their view, we who recoil at the thought that every murderer be allowed to keep his life are moral inferiors, barbarians essentially. But just as pacifists' views ensure that far more innocents will be killed, so do abolitionists' views ensure that more innocents will die.
There may be moral reasons to oppose taking the life of any murderer (though I cannot think of one), but saving the lives of innocents cannot be regarded as one of them.
Nevertheless, abolitionists will be happy to learn that Amnesty International has taken up the cause of ensuring that Clarence Ray Allen be spared execution. That is what the international community now regards as fighting for human rights.
Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Los Angeles. He is the author of four books, most recently "Happiness is a Serious Problem" (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com. To find out more about Dennis Prager, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
The Innocent and the Death Penalty
1) "The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents"
The false innocence claims by anti death penalty activists are legendary. Some examples:
2) "The Innocent Executed: Deception & Death Penalty Opponents"
3) The 130 (now 139) death row "innocents" scam
4) Sister Helen Prejean & the death penalty: A Critical Review"
5) "At the Death House Door" Can Rev. Carroll Pickett be trusted?"
6) "Cameron Todd Willingham: Another Media Meltdown", A Collection of Articles
7) "A Death Penalty Red Herring: The Inanity and Hypocrisy of Perfection", Lester Jackson Ph.D., | <urn:uuid:433be008-dd21-4b4d-9351-07f2ffca6e62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nhinsider.com/nhigb/2010/11/23/opponents-of-the-death-penalty-have-blood-on-their-hands.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938372 | 1,202 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Nice look at the wide array of applications possible with the Freescale technology. I think the iPhone-driven home monitoring system is something that would have huge utility, although, I draw the line at all the electronics stuff added to the fridge.
I'm an avid cook and grocery shopper, but I see no reason to keep notes or recipes on the fridge. I'm assuming it would canvass my fridge to see what ingredients I was missing for a particular recipe and pop the shopping list to my phone. Sounds good, but I still prefer the good old-fashioned paper shopping list, even though I admit I lose it more often than not before I get into the store!
Okay - So I can check my home teperature from anywhere in the world with my phone, or the condition of my fridge from anywhere with my phone...
Does this add any real utility or value other than my fridge and thermostat now cost more? Or is it just the OOOOH! Shiny factor?
And we already hear about "distracted driving" as we add more devices to the car to distact us from the essential job of keeping the car and its occupants safe. Do our cars need more touch panels, and how will they keep us between the lines and out of the trunk of the car ahead of us?
I know a cell pphone now does everything (and in some cases makes a lousy phone...) but does that mean every simple device now must be made cmplex in order to justify its existence? Or is it the way of the future to add functions to a device until it is no longer able to do its intended function, and thus someday in the not to distant future someone will be "inventing" the fridge without internet access and teh phone that can actually excel at making phone calls?
Is kind of like the rage about 20 years ago to add voice to every device. Like we all wanted to hear an electronic device remind (NAG) us to turn off the lights, slow down cause we we driving to close or whatever possible use one could imagine to inform us about whatever.
I realize that sometimes "free-wheeling" provides solutions to problems unstated at the time. This may be called serendipity and wonderful when it happens. I am having difficulty in seeing what problems are addressed with the devices given as examples. The skateboard idea is really way out. I know I'm old school but, what are we really trying to accomplish? Is the world a better place for the effort? How has humanity been advanced and suffering alleviated by virtue of the technology? Just a thought.
I wish I had gone. I have been working with many of the Freescale devices mentioned. They are really powerful and well supported. I like some of the new applications. I never thought that a fridge could be so useful!
Freescale Technology Forum is definitely worthwhile, naperlou. The Tech Lab is a great place to stir up a few ideas. As one of the commenters stated accurately below, the ideas aren't always practical (the robotic air hockey table of a few years back come to mind here), but it's a great place to get the creative juices flowing.
By experimenting with the photovoltaic reaction in solar cells, researchers at MIT have made a breakthrough in energy efficiency that significantly pushes the boundaries of current commercial cells on the market.
In a world that's going green, industrial operations have a problem: Their processes involve materials that are potentially toxic, flammable, corrosive, or reactive. If improperly managed, this can precipitate dangerous health and environmental consequences.
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is | <urn:uuid:774f7b6f-69a3-4d1c-a817-07edea8c4c07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=252007&piddl_msgorder=asc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961413 | 873 | 1.695313 | 2 |
WIEF Education Trust (WET)
The WIEF Education Trust (WET) was launched during the 2nd WIEF in Islamabad, Pakistan in 2006. The WET was established on the premise that education is the most important pillar in every society and that the fate and future of a community lies in the quality and availability of education for its people. The WET is aimed at garnering support and resources from the Muslim world to provide education opportunities to the people at large.
In order to help achieve its objectives, the WIEF-UiTM International Centre was set up in 2007 to undertake vocational training and capacity building programmes. H.E. Dr Ahmad Mohamad Ali, President of the Islamic Development Bank delivered a Special Address in UiTM to commemorate the Centre’s Inaugural Ceremony in February 2008.
Since then, the WET has carried out the unique WIEF-UiTM Global Discourse Series that addresses topical issues relating to business and economics, as well as scientific and technological advancement crucial to the development in the Muslim world. This programme has gained increasing popularity with the public and private sectors as well as the academia, and also attracted local and international award winners and high caliber speakers to the discourse. | <urn:uuid:a1439f32-2908-47e3-b036-0b66277a792e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wief.org/wief-education-trust/ | 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 | 0.962717 | 257 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Sherwood's 50 years in the regulator business have allowed them to create the SR1, a regulator that has a breathing performance of less than 0.5 joules/litre, at 50m with a 62.5 RMV. Both the SR1 first and second stage are pneumatically balanced for super smooth gas flow regardless of depth or cylinder pressure. A two piece flow through first stage design allows for precise control of the intermediate pressure allowing the second stage to work correctly at any cylinder pressure.
The first stage is environmentally dry sealed, this stops anything from entering or leaving the regulator. This means contaminants cannot get inside the regulator to cause a freeflow and it also means that water does not get inside to cause corrosion. The first stage is fitted with a 360 degree swivelling turret that has five medium pressure ports, allowing for ultimate flexibility of hose routing. Two high pressure ports allow the use of a transmitter along side a traditional pressure gauge.
The second stage is fitted with both a cracking resistance control and venturi control, both of which are controlled with one knob. This means with one movement the regulator can be detuned to avoid freeflows at the surface and underwater, moving the control the other way retune the regulator back to top-notch performance, all in a couple of seconds. The SR1 second stage is fitted with a SMART demand level and crown, when the regulator is depressurised the valve seated is lifted off, reducing unnecessary wear during storage. | <urn:uuid:5340da5e-b3e9-4405-aab3-1f2cf912c294> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aquanauts.co.uk/regulators/sherwood-sr1-regulator | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940616 | 300 | 1.789063 | 2 |
hard heads soft hearts
Friday, March 18, 2005
Two things I've been thinking recently:
1. from the Jethro Tull album Thick As A Brick
The doer and the thinker, no allowance for the other
2. From the Jonathan Larsen musical Rent
The opposite of war isn't peace
That is all.
Matt Yglesias has a post quoting Jeanne D'Arc on the people killed in the Iraq war, and how they don't get to vote on whether the Iraq war was "worth it". His post triggered a long comment from me concerning a bunch of distinct, but related, issues on how to think about the Iraq War:
First, the issue of dead Iraqis and dead Americans:
The second crucial mistake, in addition to not holding early elections, that Bush made in waging the Iraq war was not establishing the principle that we value the truth and human life, even the lives of our enemies, while our enemies don't. Immediately on winning the war, we should have announced the formation of a Truth & Reconciliation committee, dedicated to rigorously accounting for every Iraqi life lost during the war, including Iraqi civilian & combat deaths, as well as every Iraqi killed during Saddam's reign, including the first gulf war.
If we had done that, the powerful message we might have sent to the Iraqi people is "your long national nightmare is over" & "the truth shall set you free". Instead the message we have sent over the past two years is that we don't particularly care how many Iraqis we have to kill, as long as the end result is a victory. That is of course unfair to the many heroic US troops & comanders who have taken care & great personal risks in order to minimize loss of life in accomplishing the mission, but it is true nonetheless. When we carefully account for US deaths and injuries in Iraq, the message that is sent is that we care about US deaths and that we value each life. When we refuse to release our best estimates of Iraqi deaths on the flimsy grounds that "the enemy might use it for propaganda", what message does that send?
In any case, perhaps we, or the new Iraqi government, could still form such a commission.
Second, the issue of "humanitarian war":
Previously, advocates of humanitarian war have generally advocated military intervention in cases of "hot oppression", where the oppressors are engaging in immediate, current acts of killing & ethnic cleansing, and we are advocating intervention primarily to stop those acts. The Iraq war is an example of humanitarian intervention in a case of "cold oppression", where the Sunni/Baathist elites had been brutally oppressing the Shias and the Kurds for a number of years, but there was no ongoing mass killing/ethnic cleansing going on at the time we intervened, and which would have the been the cause of our intervention.
All this is a long-winded attempt to say that I agree with you that humanitarian war to liberate an oppresssed people from a "cold oppression" is probably not the best course of action (And I think the Iraq war supporters agree with this as well. Their attitude towards the Iraq war seems to be "We did a great thing. Now, let's never do it again").
Rather than start the war in Mar. 2003, FWIW, I would have preferred pursuing a more patient, long-ranging, "surgical" policy of regime change, with a stronger and more authentic Iraqi opposition. And another thing I think the administration should have done was put in the 2002 UN resolution several humanitarian conditions, that Saddam would have to meet in order to avoid war. I have *no* idea why they didn't do this.
Third, the issue of history being written wrongly because "dead men tell no tales", and because most people don't consider opportunity costs:
In other words, you're asserting that the fact that we'll win in Iraq, and do some real good in Iraq, does not necessarily mean that initiating the war was the right decision. Well, you, me & Bob Rubin know this is true. (it cuts both ways, BTW. A bad outcome in Iraq does not necessarily mean going in was the wrong decision.) So then how do you respond to the "I wanted to go to war in Iraq, you didn't. Well, we went to war, and we won. Therefore, I was right, you were wrong, nyah, nyah, nyah, Bow before me nowwwww" challenge?
I don't think the fact that dead people can't speak for themselves affects this issue at all. I'm pretty sure that the Iraqis are not forgetting their dead, and are not disrespecting their dead, when they say they're better off because of the war. In fact, it's much more likely that the large number of deaths makes them much *more* likely to say it was worth it, because they don't want so many to have died in vain.
I think you prepare for the "nyah nyah nyah" challenge by your conduct after the war starts. You make clear that even though you disagree with the decision to start the war, now that it's started you're 100% committed to try to make it a success, and to advocate the best course of action, going forward. The complex and altruistic psychological tricks required to do this shows why opposing a war is amost always a bad move politically, and why opposing a war is almost always an act of great political courage. And great and sophisticated democracies know that there's a natural bias towards using War as a "Force That Gives us Meaning", and they try to create some institutional & cultural safeguards to correct against this.
The great William Burton early on in the post-war said no one should care whether they were pro or anti war. It simply didn't matter any more. Salam Pax said the same. Around May 2003 Salam was getting a lot of questions "Was the Iraq war the right thing to do?". His slightly exasperated response was basically "What fool cares? Maybe once upon a time we might had a nice chat about what the alternatives were, but it's a moot point".
Ultimately, you answer the "nyah nyah nyah" challenge by being 100 percent focused on the future, and what needs to be done going forward, rather than getting bogged down in unproductive arguments over who deserves Vindication or Repudiation. I just read a quote by General George C. Marshall which says it quite nicely: "There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit." And Marshall knew what he was talking about. If he had insisted on commanding the Normandy invasion, he would have gotten the glory. Instead, Ike did.
The obsession of modern conservatives of demanding Credit for their heroes and and Repudiation of their enemies reflects the weakness of modern conservatism, not strength. Instead of making decisions objectively, in the Bob Rubin/George Marshall mold, you become unwilling to hear even constructive criticism, and you start basing your actions on an egoistic, self-destructive need to justify every decision or judgment you've ever made.
Lastly, an interesting historical comparison to the Liberation of Iraq by the US is the Liberation of Bangladesh by India. There, too, I would guess a large number of Bangladeshis would say the war was "worth it", but they don't think of Indians as "liberators", nor do they give India the Credit that US conservatives are so obsessed with. Unless US conservatives pay a lot more attention to the actual situation on the ground in Iraq, rather than just stroking their ego and claiming Vindication, Iraq might turn out for the US like Bangladesh did for India. Not terrible, but not great either. . .
"Roublen, you're just making stuff up". Well, yes. But perhaps another way to think of it: Saying "the war was not worth it" is to implicitly say that the near-term future will be worse, or no better, than the past. Even if someone you know has been killed, an Iraqi still might want to remain hopeful for the future. Also, most Iraqis are *not* out there seeking revenge for deaths of their family members. The way they would justify to themselves the decision not to seek revenge is "Well, we have to think of the long-term good of the country.".
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Matt Yglesias has a really good post on vengeance in punishing criminals. I recently changed my mind on the death penalty. Before, I believed in the Islamic doctrine, that after the murderer had been found guilty of 1st-degree murder, it was up to the family of the victim to decide whether or not to execute him. What changed my mind is the realization that we are better off when there is a very clear bright line that separates the good guys from the bad guys: that the good guys hate killing, and don't kill unless it is necessary, and the good guys don't kill in cold blood. When the good guys execute people, then the firm commandment "Don't kill in cold blood" changes to "Don't kill in cold blood without justification"
Because human beings are so good at rationalizing and manufacturing justifications for their preferred actions, I think this is dangerous, and that's why I now oppose the death penalty. George Orwell dealt powerfully with this topic in his essay Revenge is Sour, which describes, among other things, a Viennese Jew meting out punishment to Nazis:
Thursday, March 10, 2005
The Social Security Debate Explained:
Way back in the winter of nought-four, Chris Anderson linked to a truly great Eschaton comment by one "BunBun vonWhiskers" :
In fact, the entire "debate" over the President's Social Security plan strikes me as having an eerie resemblance to a Simpson's episode:
I often get a "Those are all good points, but the problem is they don't result in me getting the game. . ." vibe when listening to privatization supporters. | <urn:uuid:eefa1716-7755-4a75-bdf2-2259c949f4b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hardheads.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973412 | 2,075 | 1.546875 | 2 |
A gardening list for the new year
Published: Saturday, January 5, 2013 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, January 3, 2013 at 1:47 p.m.
One day the week before Christmas, my wife was going through the mail and noted the arrival of the first garden seed catalogue.
A couple days later, another arrived. Undoubtedly, these went to gardeners throughout the country, and while the garden season is still far away for residents of northern climates, Floridians should be placing orders in the next few weeks if seeds are to arrive in time for vegetable gardens to be planted about March 1.
It is time for some family discussion about what to plant in the garden this year and also some thought about the garden layout. It is important to rotate crops so they are not in the same spot as last year.
I have found it helpful to make a list of items I hope to get done on my farm in the coming year, including the landscape and vegetable gardens.
The lists make an interesting collection for review and are useful to help recall when trees, hedges and ornamental shrubs were planted. These lists also help budget for items to be purchased, and they allow one to focus on sections of the landscape that need attention. A list of this nature results in a planned landscape and helps prevent spot purchases of plants that don't fit landscape goals.
Time is another factor in all this planning, and a list of priorities not only assists with budgeting monetary resources, but also time allocations for projects that encompass more than a day or two.
After you have managed your property for several years, you probably will find recurring activities that always occur at certain times of the year. For example, I always try to plant my spring vegetable garden the first weekend in March. In order to prepare for this, I know the soil should be tilled the third Saturday in February. Potatoes usually are planted on the Martin Luther King holiday, and hedges are pruned Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. A routine like this will make your annual calendar more manageable, and will ensure things get done and that they get done at the right time.
There are, of course, exceptions to planning, and this includes planned purchases. A few years ago, in the middle of the year, my wife purchased a Yellow Jasmine vine at one of the Master Gardener plant sales. It was a good, quality plant at a good price, and the plant was on the University of Florida's recommended list of vines. It would be a good addition to our garden. When we arrived home, she wanted to know where we would plant it. Since this vine needs a trellis and we didn't have one, the question really was not where the vine would be planted, but when we were going to get a trellis. It wasn't on the wish list for that year, and so we purchased a small, inexpensive trellis. Without this vine purchase, I probably wouldn't have thought about a trellis, but in the years since, it has become a nice addition to our landscape.
Annual color is another piece of the landscape puzzle that requires some planning. Last fall, I was in a local nursery and admired the colorful pansies that were on display. Thinking about how well they perform in cool weather, I spoke to the nursery owner about them. He told me they were already sold to a local landscape contractor. An Apopka nursery placed a special order, and the plants were being held until the owner could pick them up. "By the way," he said, "this Apopka nursery has a new pansy color selection you'll find interesting — orange and blue. You might think about getting some for the office." It is my opinion that only a few annuals, planted en masse, make an affordable, yet colorful statement for the landscape. It is important to locate these in just the right spot for visibility and full enjoyment. Over the course of the year, it probably will be necessary to change these out two or three times, so they become another part of your annual planning list. The Extension Service has an old, but very good, publication on annuals — CIR569 — that will be useful in your planning. Of particular interest is the chart indicating planting and removal dates — a perfect item for your landscape-planning calendar. Call the Extension Service at 671-8400 if you would like to receive a copy.
In this season of reflection and planning, creating a list for your landscape and gardening efforts will help budget your time and money while giving you a schedule for getting things done. When it comes time to welcome in 2014, you'll be able to pause and reflect over your list and take satisfaction in all you got done in a productive 2013, and you will have a foundation for planning your landscaping hobby for next year.
David Holmes is Marion County extension director. Contact him at david.holmes@ marioncountyfl.org. | <urn:uuid:6d06f4bd-71e0-4d60-ae59-8e8ae3ecc0c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gainesville.com/article/20130105/COLUMNISTS/130109890/-1/TOPIC0319?Title=A-gardening-list-for-the-new-year | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972598 | 1,026 | 1.828125 | 2 |
WWII vet T. Moffat Burriss, from 11/28/03
T. Moffatt Burriss is a native of Anderson, South Carolina. He served as President and Chairman of Burriss Construction Co., a commercial and industrial construction company, from 1950 until 1990. Mr. Burriss served in the SC House of Representatives from January 1977 until September 1991 and during this time served as the Minority Leader for nine years. Mr. Burriss served in the US Army from 1942 until 1945 where he was a member of the 3rd BN., 504th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. He also served for 2 ½ years in the European Theater, invasion of Sicily and Italy, liberation of Holland, Battle of the Bulge, Ruhr Pocket, Rhine crossing and advance to Berlin.
Dr. Edgar talks with T. Moffatt Burriss about his experience with the 504th Parachute Infantry regiment in Europe and North Africa. Burriss has collected these dramatic accounts in the memoir Strike and Hold. | <urn:uuid:c8dbea7a-c749-4538-b7f7-435617e5465e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scetv.org/index.php/walter_edgars_journal_special/show/t._moffat_burriss/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966769 | 209 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Steve Handelsman reports on the Supreme Court's decision on Arizona's immigration law.
Both sides had something to celebrate as the high court handed down the Arizona decision on Monday.
By a vote of five to three, the justices upheld the the most controversial part of the law: requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop and suspect is not in the U.S. legally.
The court is rejecting the claim that's only the Federal Government's job.
Swing justice Anthony Kennedy sided with court conservatives, writing for the majority.
"The mandatory nature of the status checks does not interfere with the federal immigration scheme. Consultation between Federal and State officials is an important feature of the immigration system," said Justice Kennedy.
That's what Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer had argued.
"This is a day that we have been waiting for. And make no mistake, Arizona is ready. Civil rights will be protected. Racial profiling will not be tolerated," said Brewer.
But opponents of the so called show me your papers provision will fight on.
"I believe it's the most venomous part. Based on race, based on nationality, and based on racial profiling," said Representative Raul Grijalva.
And the high court made clear it clear that if Arizona cops profile or bend the rules to make arrests, the law could be back in court.
Struck down on Monday are the parts of the law banning living and working in Arizona without papers and police arresting those suspects without warrants.
President Obama celebrated that, but played up instead what he did on immigration.
"It's time to stop denying citizenship to responsible young people who are children of undocumented workers," said President Obama.
Mitt Romney was also cautious, saying in a statement that the nation needs comprehensive immigration reform. | <urn:uuid:20adad9f-cbdd-4fbd-a694-0e0213af68a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kveo.com/print/node/22885 | 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 | 0.959764 | 370 | 1.75 | 2 |
RM142m RazakSAT faulty after just one year, says federal auditor
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24 — Malfunctions barely a year after the RM142 million RazakSAT satellite was launched caused it to take 1,328 unusable mapping images that were inaccurate by up to 37km, the Auditor-General’s report showed today.
The report made available today said state-owned Astronautic Technology Sdn Bhd (ATSB), which operates RazakSAT, lost RM10.89 million in 2009, of which RM7.7 million went towards insurance premiums for the faulty satellite.
“The operational lifespan of RazakSAT is three years. But the RazakSAT satellite failed to function fully on August 30, 2010, a year and sixteen days from launch date,” Auditor-General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang wrote.
The Auditor General added that the remote sensing satellite was designed to “capture images within 1km accuracy” but “an image of an area in Sungai Buloh and Subang missed by 37km and captured Kuala Selangor.”
As a result, 1,328 high-resolution images could not be used for the project’s stated objective of providing remote information for land development, forestry and fish migration.
ATSB had promised to deliver images from the satellite, touted as the world’s first remote sensing satellite launched into near equatorial orbit (NEqO), last year but have yet to release any pictures.
Its orbit allows RazakSAT to revisit some parts of Malaysia every 90 minutes, instead of once every two weeks as is normal with sun-synchronous optical satellites.
The Auditor-General said that ATSB, which built the satellite with a RM141.8 million government grant, had made corrections to the satellite but only reduced the level of error by between 2.4 and 22km.
The report said efforts to improve RazakSAT’s accuracy were terminated in December 2010 and “the payment to ATSB was settled for a RM650,000 discount from the total project price of RM5.96 million.”
“Based on the feedback from ATSB, the RazakSAT satellite is a research and development project and not a commercial project,” the audit added.
ATSB’s website calls the RazakSAT project a “cost-effective high resolution imaging system for Earth observation specifically for a small satellite (weighing) less than 200kg”. | <urn:uuid:28f3ba89-0d74-48e4-b0fd-bc9f47fe174c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/rm142m-razaksat-faulty-after-just-one-year-says-federal-auditor/ | 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 | 0.955587 | 533 | 1.570313 | 2 |
SEOUL, Dec. 12 (Yonhap) -- North Korea successfully carried out a surprise long-range rocket launch Wednesday, South Korean officials said, rattling regional security and beyond, and fully demonstrating it is perfecting capabilities to deliver nuclear weapons as far as the mainland United States.
The Unha-3 rocket blasted off from the Dongchang-ri site in the North's northwest at 9:49 a.m., officials said. Its first stage fell in the Yellow Sea off South Korea's west coast, and the second stage landed in waters near the Philippines, they said.
The landings happened as Pyongyang announced, and officials said the launch was a success.
North Korea also hailed the launch as a success.
"The second version of satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 successfully lifted off from the Sohae Space Center by carrier rocket Unha-3 on Wednesday," the official Korean Central News Agency said. "The satellite entered its preset orbit."
The launch came as a total surprise.
Pyongyang had originally set a 13-day launch window starting Monday, but extended it by a week until Dec. 29 after discovering technical problems with the rocket. Officials in Seoul said Tuesday the North had taken the rocket off the launch pad for repair, leading many to believe it would take some time to fix the problems.
The launch came a week before North Korea marks the first anniversary of the death of late leader Kim Jong-il, father of current leader Kim Jong-un. It also came ahead of South Korea's Dec. 19 presidential election, spurring speculation Pyongyang is attempting to sway the tight race for Seoul's top office.
North Korea has claimed the planned launch is aimed at putting a satellite into orbit.
But South Korea, the United States, China and other countries have denounced it as a disguised ballistic missile test and a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban Pyongyang from any ballistic activity because it can be used to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Wednesday's firing was the North's fifth launch of a long-range rocket or missile since the first test in 1998. The other three launches came in 2006, 2009 and April this year. The April launch ended in failure as the rocket exploded soon after takeoff.
North Korea's missile development has long been a top security concern in the region and beyond, along with its nuclear weapons program.
Pyongyang test blasted nuclear devices twice, first in 2006 and the other in 2009, though it is unclear whether the country has mastered the technology to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop ballistic missiles.
Experts have warned the Unha-3 rocket is believed to have a range of some 10,000 kilometers, which means it could fly as far as Los Angeles. They say it is meaningless to differentiate between a rocket and a missile because they are basically the same and are characterized depending on their payloads.
South Korea said it "strongly condemns" the firing as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions while warning that the communist nation will have to "take full responsibility" for the violation and face deeper isolation from the international community.
"North Korea's launch this time will only result in the deepening of its isolation from the international community," Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said, reading a government statement issued after an emergency National Security Council meeting.
"The government yet again urges North Korea to divert the enormous financial resources wasted on the development of nuclear weapons and missiles to addressing the pressing issue of taking care of the everyday lives of its citizens," Kim said.
The White House denounced the launch as a "highly provocative act" and warned of "consequences."
"North Korea's launch today - using ballistic missile technology despite express prohibitions by United Nations Security Council resolutions - is a highly provocative act that threatens regional security," NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
"This action is yet another example of North Korea's pattern of irresponsible behavior," Vietor said. "The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and fully committed to the security of our allies in the region."
He called for the international community to "work in a concerted fashion to send North Korea a clear message that its violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions have consequences."
The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to convene an emergency session on Wednesday morning.
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored the North's launch, expressing concern that it could have a negative impact on peace and security in Northeast Asia.
"The Secretary-General deplores the rocket launch. ... It is a clear violation of Security Council resolution 1874, in which the Council demanded that the DPRK not conduct any launch using ballistic missile technology," Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a statement. | <urn:uuid:2ff20072-0002-4bf9-8b07-73ef6667f2c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2012/12/12/12/0301000000AEN20121212012400315F.HTML | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953801 | 987 | 1.765625 | 2 |
JERRY McBRIDE/Durango Herald file photo
JERRY McBRIDE/Durango Herald file photo
State engineers have a $3.3 million plan to unsnarl the traffic patterns in front of the Durango Dog Park.
The interchange at U.S. Highway 550-U.S. Highway 160 by the DoubleTree Hotel is the area’s worst bottleneck, causing vehicles to back up as much as 1,000 feet at rush hour, said engineers from the Colorado Department of Transportation during a presentation with the City Council on Thursday.
“Its level of service is rated as a D, which is the threshold. If we go into E and F, we have serious problems,” said Michael McVaugh, a traffic and safety engineer.
CDOT’s proposal would boost the level of service to a “B” without having to build an “asphalt jungle,” he said.
McVaugh predicted the plan could maintain service at a level B for the next to 10 to 15 years while also accommodating population growth.
The state doesn’t have the estimated $8 million to $9 million that would be needed to add capacity to the interchange, but its $3.3 million budget should be sufficient to reconfigure the traffic patterns to allow for a more continuous flow.
Currently, traffic gets backed up while waiting for cross-traffic to make left turns.
As an alternative, the state is proposing a new, 500-foot to 600-foot turn lane on Highway 550 for northbound traffic seeking to turn west on Highway 160 toward Mesa Verde.
The longer turn lane is intended to keep the traffic from bunching up right at the intersection while also allowing for more continuous movement north and south.
Westbound traffic would be diverted to the new turn lane by new signs, a painted stop bar on the pavement and flashing red or green signal lights.
Traffic lights also would be synchronized to minimize stops, such as eastbound traffic waiting for the westbound traffic to get into the new turn lane.
Traffic coming from Cortez still would have to wait at the Highway 550/160 interchange to make a left turn onto Camino del Rio.
Councilor Christina Rinderle called it a “creative plan” while urging landscaping to beautify new medians that would be put in to separate the opposite lanes of travel.
Because of joint jurisdiction, the city and CDOT tentatively are planning a public hearing Dec. 18 to get feedback. CDOT also will be meeting with local business owners impacted by the changes.
McVaugh anticipated there might be criticisms.
Because of the proximity, the intersections of Seventh Street and College Drive on Camino del Rio also will be affected. The Camino del Rio-College Drive intersection would get some minor widening and restriping to make it easier to make left turns and prevent traffic from overlapping lanes.
More controversially, a median installed for pedestrian safety would make it impossible for southbound motorists on Camino del Rio to turn left onto Seventh Street to go downtown. This is to give pedestrians a refuge when crossing the busy street to get to Liquor World or Southwest Community College, for example.
This idea is not set in stone.
“If it’s something that can’t be stomached, we want to know,” McVaugh said.
Another median on Highway 160 also would make it impossible for motorists to make a left onto Highway 160 from Roosa Avenue, but traffic on U.S. 160 still could make a left onto Roosa.
Engineers said there is a long history of traffic accidents resulting from motorists trying to make a left onto Highway 160 from Roosa. The engineers also wanted to give people and their canine companions a safe median when crossing to the Dog Park.
As part of the improvements, CDOT also would build a pond to treat the water runoff from the highway before it flows back into the river through a culvert.
Designs on traffic changes are expected to be finished soon with construction anticipated to begin next summer.
Because the summer is the height of the tourist season, most of the work would be done at night to lessen inconvenience. | <urn:uuid:16d5f661-22e2-430b-a39a-cb7cb736e8a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://durangoherald.com/article/20121115/NEWS01/121119687/0/USA-Pro-Challenge-/Plan:-Improve-highway-flow | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948681 | 875 | 1.742188 | 2 |
With the holidays here I think we'll all be enjoying the fireplace and whether your fireplace is a gas one like we have here, or maybe a wood burning fireplace. Let's focus on the wood burning fireplace. It needs a little attention by a professional. And what I mean by that is, I wouldn't build a fire in a wood burning fireplace unless the chimney has been cleaned and inspected. And inspected is the key word, in the last two years. I know on the market you see different chimney sweep logs, and they do a good job of cleaning the chimney, but what they don't inspect the chimney. You don't know if that liner has been cracked or not. So, if you haven't have it cleaned and inspected in the last two years, I really wouldn't use it. Now if you are going to use it, stay away from any kind of boxes in there or gift wrap or greens from the tree, because what that does is it creates a very hot, rapid fire. Hot, rapid fires can catch creosote that's actually lining the chimney, and actually create a chimney fire. Now if you have a wood burning stove, a couple things there, if the gasket itself is worn, and they really should be replaced every two to three years. I would recommend going to the hardware store and getting a gasket. There's a couple different sizes, mainly just the thickness of the gasket itself. And if you have glass doors on the fireplace, those have to be cleaned periodically. There's some wonderful glass door cleaners on the market, they're usually lye, so goggles, rubber gloves and a cotton cloth. | <urn:uuid:aca183ae-1d53-4b40-b0c2-2a6edde3d556> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.local12.com/content/homeworx_team/story/Fireplace-Safety/bmVoUiGaU02IfhSOuEz31g.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967734 | 340 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Sunday, June 1st, 1997
Heather Pringle, Saturday Night Magazine
Physical and sexual assault. Forced sterilizations. Experimental surgery. What might be the worst case of institutional abuse in Canadian history happened at Alberta’s Provincial training school. And the man ultimately responsible for the facility, Premier Ernest manning, kept his first-born son there.
For nearly seven decades, Alberta’s Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives was considered a progressive facility: humane, well run, evolving as attitudes towards feeble-mindedness evolved. Opened in 1923, it perched foursquare on the valley rim of the red Deer River, high above the city’s prosperous houses, and over the years, while “inmates” metamorphosed into “trainees,” “trainees” into “students,” “students” into “clients,” the original custodial care was upgraded to include occupational therapy and vocational training, and then supplemented by fashionable efforts to reintegrate residents into the mainstream. The school came not only to be Red Deer’s biggest employer but to boast its own working farm, elegant gardens, and well-equipped classrooms, plus a small village of neatly-painted dorms, and even its own freestanding clinic and surgery. Involved with the community, it staged Christmas pageants and supplied the local county fair with crafts. It hummed with purpose, seemed a model of its kind – certainly good enough for the province’s leading families when they needed such a place. For a number of years Ernest Manning, premier of Alberta from 1943 to 1968, entrusted his eldest son, Keith – brother of Reform Party leader Preston Manning – to the school, and visited him there often.
Then two years ago, out of the blue, came the sensational court case in which a former “client”, Leilani Muir, by then fifty-one, sued the Alberta government for wrongfully admitting her to the training school, classing her as a moron, and, when she began to menstruate, presenting her to the province’s Eugenics Board for an order to have her sterilized, under legislation designed to prevent mentally defective children from passing on their genes. She was told they were taking out her appendix. This was in 1959.
In 1965, after walking out of the school under her own steam, Muir discovered that she’s been rendered incapable of havnig children. Twenty-four years later, in 1989, and IQ test revealed that her intelligence was perfectly normal. She’d been living in Victoria, British Columbia, and working as a waitress. That fall her lawyers began legal action against the province of Alberta to recover damages. The government fought and stalled for seven years, but the case eventually came to trial, and on January 25, 1996, in a landmark decision, the provincial Court of Queen’s Bench ruled in Muir’s favour and awarded her $740,000 in damages, and another $230,000 in legal costs.
Leilani Muir’s case was, as it turned out all too soon, only the tip of the iceberg.
Slender and stooped after more than twenty years of living alone, Glen Sinclair slides into a seat in his kitchen in Red Deer, hands full of Manila envelopes which he fans across the canary-yellow Formica table. In the living room, antique soft-drink bottles gleam softly from high wooden shelves, evidence of a visual sensibility. Sinclair, fifty-three, is a graphic artist. But just now he is not interested in his work or his surroundings. Picking up the fattest envelope, he shakes loose a torrent of clippings from the Muir trial.
Though Sinclair is still struggling to unearth the whole truth of what happened to him nearly forty years ago, his story strongly echoes hers. Muir was the child of an abusive Polish drifter of a mother. Sinclair was the abandoned son of a hard-drinking Cree woman from slave lake. Muir arrived at the school in 1955 when she was twelve. He arrived at the age of seven, in 1951.
He cried himself to sleep for weeks, terrified of his new home and his keepers with their clinking key chains and hospital whites. It was a fear he never overcame in the nearly twenty years he spent there. “I was always just hoping I could pull through to the next day kind of thing,” he says.
Stripped of all privacy and forbidden even to step outdoors without permission, the boys in Sinclair’s dormitory lived under constant surveillance. Even in the stuffy months of summer, he recalls, their bedroom windows could never be opened more than six inches – a measure to prevent escapes. Any sign of rebellion, any act of resistance, was met with swift punishment up to and including strappings, injections of tranquillizing drugs, and confinement in straitjackets. Any expression of sexuality whatever brought weeks of solitary confinement in one of the school’s notorious quiet rooms: bare concrete cells equipped only with drains and, at night, foam mattresses. Sinclair soon learned to stifle his passions.
Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, Sinclair received word he was wanted in the administration building. Shown into the boardroom, he found the medical superintendent, Dr. Leonard Jan le Vann, and the school matron, with four strangers. There was a dossier open on the table, but it wasn’t explained to him. In fact nothing very much happened. The strangers put a few simple questions to him. Then they sent him on his way. Relieved, Sinclair assumed it was just another test. But, three months later, shortly after his sixtenth birthday, the uncomprehending teenager was taken to the school’s clinical building, prepped for surgery, and wheeled into the operating theatre. There, a surgeon made two deep incisions in his genitals that severed his vas deferens and rendered him surgically sterile. Then Sinclair was returned to the school for another eleven years of confinement.
It wasn’t until the Muir trial that Sinclair learned the four strangers in the boardroom had been Alberta’s eugenics board. It was only in the aftermath of the trial that he learned they had authorized his sterilization in spite of news that had just been added to the dossier on the table before them: in a recent round of psychological testing Sinclair had scored well enough in one IQ test to fall into the thin grey zone between retardation and low-normal intelligence; in a second test he had landed squarely in the normal zone. Sinclair was not mentally retarded at all.
Leaning back in his kitchen chair today, his eyes a mirror of frustration and grief, Sinclair can scarcely believe what happened. “They did not tell us what the purpose of the operation was,” he says angrily, almost spitting out the words. “I didn’t understand what was going to happen.” Never marrying, never really fitting into society no matter how hard he tried, Sinclair has spent most of his life struggling to overcome his past. But after decades of shame, he is no longer prepared to be silent; the month after the ruling in Muir’s favour, he launched his own lawsuit against the Alberta government.
Take his story as symptomatic: to date, educated by Muir’s victory, nearly 700 former patients – including more than 500 dependent adults represented by a public trustee – have stepped forward to file similar suits alleging abuses from as far back as the 1930s. None of these cases has yet been tried and not all the claims may be as strong as Muir’s, but from their combined allegations a terrible picture is taking shape: of a careless, capricious, deeply amoral institution than punished handicapped kids for having ordinary sexual urges; that exploited normal but unwanted children as unpaid labour; that couldn’t – or didn’t – prevent heterosexual and homosexual assault and violent physical abuse on its spotless wards; and that used surgery and drugs for mere convenience, or worse. According to expert witnesses in the Muir trial, some thirty infertile Down’s syndrome boys suffered the removal of at least one testicle to provide tissue samples for research projects. Meanwhile, the province’s Eugenics Board wielded its lawful powers with such giddy righteousness that sterilization of the most capable training-school inmates at puberty was not the exception but the rule.
As lawyers toil over one of the largest legal actions ever undertaken against a Canadian government for mismanagement of an institution, it seems legitimate to wonder just how eugenics legislation passed in Alberta in the first place, and why it lingered on the books until 1972 – nearly a quarter of a century after compulsory sterilization was labelled a crime against humanity. Also to wonder how officials on the Eugenics Board and at the Provincial Training School coudl live with themselevs and what they’d got up to, and why Ernest Manning’s Social Credit government, in power for the whole heydey of the Training School, turned a blind eye on a situation of which it was well aware. The facts now coming to light on what really went on behind the doors of this “model” school, and in the secret hearings of the infamous Eugenics Board, reveal such systematic abuses against defenceless children, and such breathtaking breaches of public trust, that they threaten to overshadow all other examples in recent Canadian history, from Dr. Ewen Cameron’s notorious brainwashing experiments on patients in Montreal to the horrors of Mount Cashel.
A century ago, when the eugenics movement was born in the genteel parlours of Victorian England, its progressive, upper-class proponents had no idea where it could lead. Impressed by the advances that sceintific stock-breeding had produced in English agriculture, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and an early student of psychology, suggested a similar breeding programme for humans. he had become convinced that intelligence was heritable and that “like begat like.” Galton proposed that only the brightest – and therefore the most socially successful – men and women should procreate. As he put it, “The average citizen is too base for the everyday work of modern civilization.” In his peculiar utopia, government officials would grant suitable individuals “eugenics certificates” and list undesirables on a national index.
Galton’s ideas soon fell on fertile ground. In France and the United States, researchers were refining the first tests to emasure human intelligence, permitting teachers in public schools to sift out normal from subnormal children. Eager to put this shiny new tool to work, social workers and others in the United States began running IQ tests in reformatories, prisons, and homes for unwed mothers. The results shaped scientific opnion for decades: most of the inmates, reported researchers, possessed subnormal intelligence. Worse still, community workers elaborated, these felons, deviants, and prostitutes bred far more prolifically than respectable citizens, threatening to swamp civilized societies with their numbers.
Alarmed experts clamoured for quick action. Confining and quarantining the criminal underclass in institutions would be an expensive proposition: sterilization promised a cheaper solution. And, if like begat like, if thieves and delinquents begat even more thieves and delinquents, wasn’t it reasonable to snap this link of procreation? By 1912, eight American states from New York to California had passed sterilization laws, and physicians armed with the results of IQ testing in the public school system had begun institutionalizing and sterilizing low scorers.
Canadian physicians were quick to take up the cause. While many advocated sterilization soberly, as a sad necessity, other seemed to relish their newfound role as social engineers. Helen MacMurchy, first chief of the federal Division of Maternal and Child Welfare in Ottawa, for example, was at pains to point out the special dangers posed by what she called “the feeble minded”: borderline cases who could pass as normal in society. “It was almost like germ theory,” explains the University of Victoria historian Angus McLaren, an expert on the origins of Canada’s eugenics movement. Just as a person who appeared healthy might contain a terrible infectious disease, so too could normal-seeming borderline cases carry the genes of hateful vice.
MacMurchy and others who urged public action met a particularly warm response among prairie reformers, ever impatient for a safe, sanitary New Jerusalem. J.S.Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas briefly took up eugenics, as did such leading feminists as Nellie McClung and Emily Murphy. Indeed, Murphy set aside her more celebrated battle to obtain recognition of women as persons under the law to tour Alberta in 1926 with fervent speeches and films taken from the province’s mental institutions. “We protect our public against diseased and distempered cattle,” she wrote in one of her many articles. “We should similarly protect them against the offal of humanity.”
Mesmerized, women’s groups lobbied hard for legislation and in due course the United Farmers of Alberta governnment drafted the Sexual Sterilization Act. Under its provisions, an appointed board would be granted authority to order sterilization of any person suffering from mental defect – defbtained the individual’s consent. As its supporters trumpeted, such an act would permit institutions eventually to discharge the mentally defective safely into the community – thereby saving thousands of dollars that could be funnelled inot more popular causes, such as infantile paralysis. In 1928, the act passed. A year later, a four-member Eugenics Board was set up, headed by a University of Alberta psychologist named John MacEachran.
British Columbia soon followed suit with its own sterilization law, but in Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba, politicians anxious about the Catholic vote rallied to oppose what was in fact legalized surgical birth control. Meanwhile, if anyone in public life had bothered to r Mendel, geneticists had begun studying heredity in humans. In the process, they uncovered Galton’s error. In the case of medical disorders caused by recessive genes, like did not begat like. For those triggered by dominant genes, a parent had only a fifty per cent chance of passing on the defect to a child. Furthermore, dozens of different causes lay at the root of arrested mental development. Many – including brain injury, severe emotional disturbance, and fetal infection by diseases such as German measles – had nothing at all to do with flawed genes.
But in Alberta, the Eugenics Board showed little interest in such scientific developments. It was already out touring the province, examining the candidates proposed for sterilization by the various mental institutions: the Provincial Training School for mental Defectives became the board’s major stop. The board held its hearings in private, and at first spent as much as half a day per case. Later, judgment was to become much swifter.
In a sunny dining room at the University of Alberta faculty club, geneticist Douglas Wahlsten leans back in his chair, gazing out on skeletal trees and a barren field of February snow. An expert on heredity and behavior, Wahlsten is a cautious researcher and he and his associates have spent months tracking down and examining records of the Eugenics Board and its chairman, John MacEachran. MacEachran is a bit of a mystery man. Over the decades, the other three members of the board were drawn from a roster of sympathetic physicians, psychologists, scientists, and political appointees. But MacEachran – trim and fine-boned with an accountant’s love of precision – clung to the chairmanship like a bull terrier for nearly forty years. At the same time he was exceptionally discreet, and Wahlsten has had some difficulty compiling even the slender information he now has. There’s one thing, though, that Wahlsten says is amply clear: “John MacEachran never made the slightest attempt to ascertain whether any of these kids really did have a genetic disorder.” Pushing away his plate, Wahlsten marvels at the darkness of a man who showed some early brilliance.
Born in 1878 at the village of Glencoe, forty kilometers west of St Thomas, Ontario, MacEachran developed a fascination with the social sciences, gravitating to Europe where he earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Leipzig and later attended classes at the Sorbonne in Paris under the philosopher Henri Bergson and the sociologist Emile Durkheim. At length returning to Canada, he landed a job in 1909 as head of philosophy and psychology at the University of Alberta, thereby becoming the province’s resident expert in the social sciences. When he took up the cause of eradicating human imperfection by means of eugenics, he was a key convert. Once installed on the eugenics board, he set about promulgating his views vigorously, crisscrossing the province to deliver speeches to the United Farm Women’s Associations and other receptive audiences. He was fond of quoting Plato’s Republic, in particular the passage in which Ascepius, the greek god of healing, refused to “lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers begetting weaker sons.” The Social Credit government of William Aberhart, which came to power in 1935, and was keen on speeding up the works, expanded the baord’s powers in 1937 by dispensing with the need to acquire consent for sterilization from mental defectives; five years later, another Social Credit majority broadened the net to include some individuals with epilepsy and Huntingdon’s chorea.
But even as Aberhart, the young Ernest Manning, and other Social Credit members were registering their endorsement of eugenics, other observers, such as the future NDP leader Tommy Douglas, were repudiating it in the wake of revelations from Germany, where thousands of mentally retarded citizens were being sterilized and later gassed, in the service of Nazi master-race theories. It was the start of the Holocaust. By the late forties, in the forum at Nuremberg, the civilized world had judged forced sterilization a crime against humanity.
Not, apparently, MacEachran. MacEachran simply began to keep his head down. “There was a deliberate attempt to keep a very low profile on the part of the sterilization board,” says Jon Faulds, an Edmonton lawyer who served as lead counsel for Leilani Muir. Board meetings were conducted in private; board records were published only as statistics in the annual report of the department of health. Even staff at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer, the board’s major client, were kept largely unaware of who sat on the board or what they were doing. “Nobody ever saw them except the matron and the doctor,” recalls John Curr, a former nursing instructor and charge nurse at the Provincial Training School. “It was all very secretive and hush-hush.”
Behind the closed doors of the boardroom, however, MacEachran and his colleagues had by the late forties fallen into a smooth routine. They took their places at the table with the school’s medical superintendent and matron; they thumbed through the case histories of the sterilization candidates proposed by the institution. These were not the complete files but only terse summaries of the child’s IQ-test results, sexual behavior, school behavior, and family background, with particular reference to any criminal activity, alcohol or drug abuse, or promiscuity on the part of parents; they seldom exceeded a page and a half. Then the children were called in one by one. “And it was never clear to me,” says University of Alberta law professor Gerald Robertson, “what the purpose was of having the patient there and how it added to things, because they weren’t given the opportunity to speak against the motion, as it were.” All the children were asked to do was answer a few questions, random and seemingly pointless.
“They asked me ‘Who is the premier of this province?’” recalls Viola Brown, a retired Edmonton proofreader admitted to the school more than forty years ago by an abusive father. “Then they prompted, and said, ‘Well, he’s a nice man.’ And bingo, I had it. Premier Manning.”
As the years passed, MacEachran grew more and more practiced, more and more perfunctory. Where cases had once taken half a day apiece, the board now crammed dozens into a morning or an afternoon. During the 1950s and 1960s, judgment sometimes occurred every five minutes or so – less time than many people take to pick out a video for an evening’s rental.
Moreover, as evidence at the Muir trial revealed, the fates of the children during this period had been sealed long before hearing day. Placing an abiding faith in the school’s medical superintendent, Dr. Leonard le Vann, hired in 1949, the board hardly ever turned down any case he presented, even when the child’s IQ greatly exceeded seventy, the upper cutoff for sterilization. While researching the board’s decisions, the law professor Gerald Robertson was astonished to find only a handful of rejected cases among nearly 900 files from the school. “And in several of these, the form [authorizing sterilization] had been signed prior to the meeting. The chairman’s practice seems to have been to sign them all off before the hearings began. I guess it was faster that way.”
On a bitterly cold afternoon in March, Jon Faulds slowly spins through the grounds of the old Provincial Training School, long since rechristened the Michener Centre, on a hunt for the site of the clinical building that Dr. le Vann pushed for and finally got built to facilitate the sterilizations and his own research. Fresh from a morning meeting to discuss legal tactics for the forthcoming trials, Faulds, forty-five, peers through the windshield while a lawyer from another Edmonton firm, Allan Garber, points out where some of the school’s other landmarks used to stand. The once sprawling facility still serves the mentally handicapped but it seems to have shrunk. The dairy farm and grain fields are gone, sold to developers, the old dorms largely vanished. There’s no obvious sign of the surgery. “We came here before the trial with Leilani Muir and looked for it,” says Faulds, finally. “I’m not sure, it might be gone.”
But the red-brick building that once served as the school’s headquarters still stands, scarcely touched by time. In fact, it looks much as it did when a cultivated young American with a plummy British accent arrived to take charge of the Provincial Training School nearly fifty years ago. Born and raised in the eastern United States, and trained as a physician in Scotland, Leonard le Vann introduced himself to staff as both a surgeon and a psychiatrist – dual qualifications that would permit him not only to assess students but occasionally to perform sterilizations when local physicians were unavailable.
According to evidence presented at the Muir trial, le Vann never received accreditation anywhere as a psychiatrist. On the other hand, he seems to have known how to keep a secret. After his death in 1987, le Vann’s first wife reportedly old a friend she’d ben shocked to discover that he had changed his name as a young man and concealed his Jewish ancestry from everyone.
As it turned out, the Alberta government could scarcely have hired someone less sympathetic to the job of caring for retarded children. Brusque, formal (he was seldom seen out of suit and tie), moody, quick to anger, and an obvious intellectual snob, le Vann displayed only the most chilly clinical interest in all but a few of his charges. “The picture of comparison between the normal child and the idiot,” he noted in an aside in a 1950 article, “might almost be a comparison between two separate species. One the one hand, the graceful, intelligently curious, active young Homo sapiens, and on the other, the gross, retarded, animalistic, early primate type individual.” Around this time, Glen Sinclair became a trainee.
Le Vann’s Irish predecessor had done his best to foster a warm, family atmosphere for the children. Le Vann put his energies elsewhere – networking in the city of Red Deer, for example. Before long, he had made friends with MacGregor Parsons, a surgeon and a future head of the Canadian Medical Association. In time he was invited to join Parson’s weekly poker game. Eventually, after his first marriage ended in divorce, he married Parson’s daughter.
At work, le Vann embarked on enlarging the aging school and transforming it into an institutional showplace. He concentrated much effort on wheedling money for his building programme from the Social Credit government of Ernest Manning. There was to be new housing to accommodate 400 or so of the children on the school’s waiting list; there was to be his new clinical building; there was to be a Superintendent’s home. And there was to be a caste system: dividing the children into groups according to perceived intelligence, the staff placed the brightest and most capable into dorms containing rows of small private bedrooms. Those with the more severe mental and physical disabilities were assigned to huge open wards in separate buildings.
As the institution grew, as the trickle of children became a flood, boosting the resident population 500 per cent to some 1,400 students in 1959, senior staff struggled to hold things together. Few psychologists or other professionals, it transpired, would take jobs or stay for long in an institution for the mentally handicapped, no matter how well groomed it was. In desperation, le Vann once hired for the position of head psychologist someone with no training at all in the crucial technique of IQ testing. As for attendants and nursing aides, in a city like Red Deer, with a population of less than 30,000, the labour pool was tiny. “Your qualification was grade twelve and they hired just about anybody,” recalls one former employee. “As long as they didn’t have a criminal record.”
Le Vann soon began putting the more capable children to work. Earlier administrators had done the same but had sought a balance between education, chores, and play. Le Vann followed the workhouse model. Hidden away on institutional wards, teenage girls spent their days scrubbing floors, making meals, and dressing and changing the diapers of severely disabled patients. Outside on the grounds, adolescent bys were set to threshing and milking cows. Recognizing a remedy for his labour shortage, le Vann began openly favouring admission of “high-grade” trainees. At a time when marginal farms were vanishing from the province like dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, and rural families were being forced into the city, many parents had no time for children who suffered from difficult medical conditions – particularly in an era before medicare. Foster homes and other facilities were just as uninterested. The Provincial Training School was an easy out.
If the high-grade children themselves burned with resentment, and made trouble on the wards, le Vann had a solution for that, too: enroll them in experimental drug trials. While reading over her own school chart, Leilani Muir was astonished to discover regular doses of Phenobarbitol, chlorpromazine, and haloperidol – powerful tranquillizers usually reserved for the psychotic. She hadn’t realized she’d been doped, but other former students still recall the zombie state the medications produced. One of them is Lorna Dent, now an Edmonton resident, who suffered from a neurological disorder akin to multiple sclerosis, and was committed to the school by her stepfather: “I felt like a machine,” she says, “and that people had put things in my head. Make bed. Go to work. Feed kids. Dress kids.”
Le Vann’s attention to detail was legendary. Nurses, for example, were instructed to line up tiny rows of spruce-tree patterns on the children’s bedspreads so they’d follow straight lines across forty beds in a dorm. Change nurses were enjoined to keep copious ward notes on everything from children’s bowel movements to their interest in the opposite sex. And no-one – attendant, nurse, charge, matron – was permitted to speak to a superior, unless spoken to. At the apex, le Vann ruled supreme. According to Gordon Bullivant, a prominent Calgary educator who worked as a psychologist at the school during the 1960s, he “ran the institution almost, I hate to use this word, like a Gestapo.”
In the mid-1950s,a school psychologist, Laughlin Taylor, discovered that le Vann was threatening children with sterilization if the did not behave. “He was actually saying this as a form of discipline to some of them,” recalls Taylor, now the head of neuropsychology, at the Montreal Neurological Institute. In his private studies, le Vann proved just as icy. His personal research into the formation and development of sperm in Down’s syndrome boys, for example, called for human testicular tissue. To lay hands on suitable supplies, he presented Down’s syndrome boys from the school to the Eugenics Board on fifteen occasions between 1953 and 1971, requesting not just vasectomy but the complete removal of a testis. Medical experts had already discovered that Down’s syndrome males – then called mongoloids – were incapable of fathering children, but MacEachran’s Eugenics Board – which boasted one of Canada’s leading medical geneticists, Margaret Thompson, on its roster for a year and a half during this period – approved the surgery anyway.
Thompson, who has the Order of Canada, testified at the Muir trial. Under questioning, she agreed that her own textbook, Genetics in Medicine, recognized that there were no known cases of mongoloids fathering children. But, she said, nothing would be lost be sterilizing them “to make assurance doubly sure.”
Le Vann, too, advocated precautionary sterilization. To boost discharge rates from the institution – a sure way to curry favour with the cost-conscious Social Credit government – he set up a new vocational programmed whose goal was to help reintegrate his regimented trainees into the outside world. To this end they were sent of as day labourers and domestics to the homes of Red Deer’s professionals. As le Vann saw it, the only snag was the potential for a sex scandal. “He said this was another reason [the students] should be sterilized,” recalls Taylor. “The school couldn’t afford to have someone impregnated in the community.”
Similar worries about public image may have prompted other controversial requests by le Vann to the Eugenics Board. Young lesbians, for example, were proposed for oophorectomies – complete removal of the ovaries – instead of the more commonplace excision of the fallopian tubes. Such invasive surgery did much to extinguish sexual desire. Similarly, castration was requested for the most sexually aggressive boys.
John MacEachran complied with almost everything asked of his board, briskly signing sterilization order after sterilization order: for battered children who later graduated from grade twelve; for native kids from families who spoke only Cree or Blackfoot; for abused girls whose complaint was incest or sexual assault in their family homes; for bewildered teenagers with hearing or speech problems, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, rare genetic defects of the hands or feet. Never once did MacEachran stop to question who these frightened children really were, or why the school’s ambitious medical superintendent wanted them rendered barren.
In early 1952, a poignant ten-page letter landed on the desk of Premier Ernest Manning. Penned by a middle-aged Calgarian, it described in detail wheat had befallen the correspondent’s sixteen-year-old son, who was a resident of the Provincial Training School. It seemed that, a few weeks earlier, staff members had caught the boy talking alone with a female student behind one of the buildings. This was forbidden. The boy was according bundled off to one of the school’s quiet rooms, and there, a day later, an attendant had found him, lying dazed in a great pool of blood amid a litter of shards from an earthenware chamber pot.
The teenager was rushed to a Red Deer hospital, where he was treated for a five-centimeter deep wound to the groin. A week later he was still pale and weak from loss of blood. School authorities, however, brushed off the incident, intimating that the boy, “a confirmed masturbator,” was himself to blame. The father had a different theory. His son was a severe epileptic. With its chronic staff shortage, he suggested, the school had failed to detail someone to keep an eye on the boy. Locked in a hot, stuffy room alone, he had suffered a major seizure.
The writer took the opportunity to unburden himself to the premier about other disturbing school practices, clearly confident that the Christian preacher whose “National Bible Hour” broadcasts echoed over the airwaves each Sunday would be sympathetic. “It is easy to love children that are clever,” he concluded sadly, “but I think it takes grace to love these unfortunate ones.”
Manning’s two paragraph reply is preserved in the provincial archives. Promising vaguely to improve educational facilities in the school, the premier sided squarely with the school’s administration. “I feel that the staff of the Training School is doing everything possible within existing facilities to give proper care to the youngsters at the Training School.”
True to his vague promise, the premier and his government in due course found funds for le Vann’s ambitious schedule of improvements at the school. Then, around 1960, the premier committed to its care his eldest son, Keith, who was afflicted with both epilepsy and arrested mental development as the result of a birth injury. The Mannings had spent much time and money chasing a cure and had finally sent the boy away to a New York State school. But according to Preston Manning’s autobiographical reminiscences in The New Canada, American medical care for Keith had stretched the Manning family budget to the limit. The Red Deer school offered welcome relief.
And there, in Pine Villa, in the Small Boys section of the school, the premier’s son, then a young man, was ensconced, to be treated “like royalty,” according to Glen Sinclair, who roomed next to him for a time. It was one of the more cynical chapters in the training-school saga. Everyone seemed to know who Keith was, showering him with privileges and the small acts of kindness so notably missing from the other’s lives. While everyone else slept four to a bedroom, Keith got a special double room, number ten Pine Villa, and was permitted to pick his own roommate. As a rule, personal possessions were discouraged; Keith was free to keep games, snacks, and even a typewriter in his room.
School officials frowned on family visits, but Keith’s parents dropped in at least once or twice a month on their way to Calgary for the premier’s weekly “Bible Hour.” They often took him along for a day trip. Instead of continual chores, Keith, in his late teens or early twenties, got piano lessons. More enviable still, Keith, who had an explosive temper, was handled with kid gloves. “They’d take him out for a walk and try to calm him down,” recalls a former resident, Donald Passey, who ended up at the school despite a recent test that indicated he has an IQ of 113. “Or they’d go to his room and try to discuss things with him.” In contrast, Passey remembers being disciplined by a staff member who pinned him to the wall and slapped and punched him; another resident lost part of his finger when an employee deliberately kicked a door shut on it. Even the most profoundly impaired children were sometimes beaten.
Keith Manning remained at the school for several years. Just how far the red-carpet treatment went to protect him from the Sexual Sterilization Act is unclear. He married in late middle age, though he remained childless, and succumbed to a brain tumour in 1986 while living in a nursing home in Edmonton. Preston Manning has firmly declined to be interviewed about his brother.
But there were other Keith Mannings, for kids from powerful families turned up surprisingly often at the school. At one point, as the Red Deer archivist, Michael Dawe, notes, “The premier, the MP [for Red Deer], and the MLA all had family members in there.” There’s no question that they got better treatment than other residents.
In return, their political-heavyweight parents backed the school. Thus did the attempts to right abuses fall on deaf ears. In 1963, for example, David Gravells, the NDP riding president for Calgary West, called for a public investigation of what he called a “mass program of sterilization” at the school which he’d been put onto by friends among the staff. His report to a constituency meeting hit papers as far away as New York and Birmingham, England. But the Social Credit minister of health, Donovan Ross, denied any wrongdoing. And other resistance, says Gravells, emerged from within the NDP itself. “One of the principal people in my organization had a child in the Provincial Training School and who had been sterilized. And he thought it was the most wonderful thing.”
In the mid-1960s, surgeons at the old red-brick University Hospital in Edmonton began taking notice of a succession of young female ex-trainees – nearly a dozen over a three-year period – who arrived pleading tearfully to have their fertility restored. While little could be done for the women surgically, news of their plight soon leaked out and, in 1968, a University of Alberta geneticist brought the matter to the attention of Peter Lougheed’s young legislative assistant, David King. King was eager to examine the Sexual Sterilization Act for himself, and searched for it in the Revised Statutes of Alberta. It wasn’t there. He finally located it at the very back of a book in a small table listing inoperative legislation. “In other words, it had sort of lapsed from people’s attention,” says King today, “but not lapsed judicially or in terms of the statute.” Indeed, far from being inoperative, the Eugenics Board was continuing to act under its power.
After forty years, MacEachran had finally stepped down in 1965, but there was a new chairman, Kenneth Thomson, an Edmonton psychiatrist who would become president of the Canadian Medical Association. In 1969, under his aegis, sixty-three Albertans were sterilized.
But Lougheed’s Conservatives, who had committed themselves to reforming the province’s mental-health system, began to push for repeal of the Sexual Sterilization Act. “The legislation was repugnant,” says King. “If or when we formed the government, it would be one of the first things to go.”
And so it turned out. The Conservatives won handily in 1971. The first bill they passed was the Alberta Bill of Rights. Right on its heels came the repeal of the Sexual Sterilization Act. In its forty-four years in force, 4,278 sterilizations had been authorized. A study by a law professor at the University of Alberta suggested a consistent bias against minority groups: Indians and Metis, predictably, but also Poles, Ukrainians, and other eastern Europeans.
In Red Deer, le Vann pronounced the repeal “ill-advised and regressive.” Conservative officials simply ignored him. Closing wards and tearing down dorms at the old Provincial Training School, they were moving on to a newer development in the care of the mentally handicapped: open group homes in the community. Le Vann resigned in 1974. In 1977 what was left of the school was renamed the Michener Centre.
But for Glen Sinclair and hundreds of other survivors of Alberta’s crude experiments in social engineering, the past is not over. Having fled from the school in June of 1970, with just sixty dollars in his pocket, Sinclair worried for years that someone would appear one day with orders to return him to the institution. For a while, indeed, while he was living in a group home in Edmonton, long before he finally moved back to Red Deer, a social worker did call from time to time. “He was always wondering where I was at, what I was doing. I finally said, ‘I’m discharged now. Leave me alone. I don’t have anything to do with you people any more.’”
But of course he has. Sitting in his small kitchen today, gathering up the faded clippings, Sinclair still feels the stigma of being classified a defective, the injustice of his sterility, and the utter humiliation of his confinement. People, he says sadly, always manage to find out where he’s from.
Source | See Also: Mounties pinned me down in cell and tasered me, Manitoba girl says | Population control thinktank to Britons: Have less children | The evolution of baby-making | Remembering Brainwashing | Don’t blame right-wing thugs for eugenics – Socialists made it fashionable | Canada hears of native abuse pain | Despite criticism, electroshock therapy commonly used in depression | Location of Mass Graves of Residential School Children Revealed for the First Time; Independent Tribunal Established | Government knew of HIV risk from imported blood | Canadian MKULTRA project mind control victim to tell of pills, shocks, brainwashing | <urn:uuid:b3ee6f50-4f53-4fed-bb56-87b28a37ed5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://statismwatch.ca/1997/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975685 | 8,883 | 1.820313 | 2 |
10USC... covers the military and all the laws that govern its activities. It is one of the longest and most exacting acts of Congress.
10USC... was first enacted in 1834 under the Articles of War. It was re-enumerated in 1957 as the War Powers Act and re-codified in 1967 as 10USC.
The usual Rocmike aliases didn't start posting until 7 hours ago which is unusual. Renner comes on and posts for 3 straight hours then stops. Bill immediately follows stops posting and Mike Dudley follows as usual there are some anonymous posts thrown in.. Do they call each other to let them know when to start posting or are they the same poster? Rocmike you are an idiot. | <urn:uuid:b88ecc15-100f-47ff-b522-cf6a28b9a9bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aolanswers.com/questions/history-title-10-united-states-code_495367738007181/10usc-covers-military-laws-govern_735880147438202 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967891 | 152 | 1.5 | 2 |
. "Methodological Issues in the Measurement of Work Disability." The Dynamics of Disability: Measuring and Monitoring Disability for Social Security Programs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2002.
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The Dynamics of Disability: Measuring and Monitoring Disability for Social Security Programs
severity of an impairment or disability further complicate the measurement process.
Recent shifts in the conceptual paradigm of disability, in which disability is viewed as a dynamic process rather than a static measure and as an interaction between an individual with an impairment and the environment rather than as a characteristic only of the individual, imply that those responsible for the development of disability measures must separate the measurement of the impact of environmental factors in the enablement-disablement process from the measurement of ability. Viewing disability as a dynamic state resulting from an interaction between a person’s impairment and a particular environmental context further complicates the assessment of the quality of various survey measures of disability, specifically, the reliability of a measure. As a dynamic characteristic, one would anticipate changes in the reports of disability as a function of changes in the individual as well as changes in the social and environmental contexts. The challenge for the measurement process is to disentangle true change from unreliability.
This workshop comes at a time when the federal government is undertaking several initiatives with respect to the measurement of disability in federal data collection efforts. The Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA) defines disability as (1) a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual, (2) a record of a substantially limiting impairment, or (3) being regarded as having a substantially limiting impairment. Although the measurement of disability within household surveys is not bound by the ADA definition, the passage of the ADA provides a socioenvironmental framework for how society comprehends and uses terms such as disability and impairment (e.g., the popular press and court rulings on ADA-related litigation). These definitions will evolve as a function of litigation related to ADA legislation and presentation of that litigation in the press. Hence, society is entering a period in which potential dynamic shifts in the comprehension and interpretation of the language associated with the measurement of persons with disabilities can be anticipated.
This paper is intended to serve as a means of facilitating discussion among individuals from diverse theoretical and empirical disciplines concerning the methodological issues related to the measurement of persons with disabilities. As a first step to achieving this goal, a common language and framework needs to be established for the enumeration and assessment of the various sources of error that affect the survey measurement process. The chapter draws from several empirical investigations to provide evidence as to the extent of knowledge concerning the error properties associated with various approaches to the measurement of functional limitations and work disability. | <urn:uuid:f9fb8088-b6fc-44ec-9a02-b0f9526b7cc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10411&page=213 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935675 | 590 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Toshiba borgs into IBM's 32nm alliance
Intel stays outside the tent
Toshiba confirmed yesterday that it had joined a 32-nanometre chip development group led by IBM and made up of a number of key industry players minus top dog Intel.
The alliance has been formed over the past few months in an attempt to push down spiralling development costs in the switch to the new geometery, which are proving increasingly difficult for any lone chip-maker to stomach.
Toshiba is the latest firm to climb on board alongside AMD, Samsung Electronics, Freescale, Germany's Infineon Technologies AG and Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing.
The seven firms will work together over the next three years to design and develop manufacturing technologies that shrink the average circuit feature to 32-nanometres. It's fair to say the alliance is relatively loose - they haven't even bothered to think up a grand-sounding name for the group.
The industry is only just beginning to ship 45-nanometre chips in volume, but the shift to a new geometry is always a long-haul.
Intel, which is expected to begin production of 32-nanometre chips in 2009, remains notably absent from the alliance.
Presumably the chip giant is happy to shoulder any development costs on its own, while the combined group will doubtless be hoping to take a bite out of Intel's hefty market share. ®
I'm not suprised that they haven't come up with a group name. You try coming up with a name that encapsulates the idea that all those in the group have much smaller ones than those not in it without any scope for mirthsome double-entendres......
Also missing from the list....
Sun, FSC, and nVidia. Maybe Sun can claim Rock is too different for a there to be a point in joining, but then surely Sun and/or Fujitsu need some 35nm knowledge if one or other of them really intends to make a follow on to SPARC64.....? And nVidia may not be in because AMD = ATi, but nVidia are currently at 65nm with their cores and the new Radeons are 55nm already. If AMD also get the benefit of stealing a march on chipset design then they could get a nice lead over nVidia in graphics and chipsets.
What you give is what you get...?
"investing a lot of money is a way to bankrupt your oponents... just ask the USSR.."
Yes, that's more than likely a lesson well learned and etched into their DNA/silicon. Makes you wonder if SANTA is bringing them a special present this year for all of their past suffering.
I wonder who's investing in what and bankrupting the sub-prime dodgy credit brokers.
Why should Intel join
There really is no reason for Intel to join. If they plan to actually ship product in 2009, that means that they are already making trial runs.. so they do have the process NOW.
If they joined, thay had almost nothing to gain and a lot to loose.. and remember this is a capital intensive game: investing a lot of money is a way to bankrupt your oponents... just ask the USSR.. | <urn:uuid:fd775a0f-7a7e-46e7-82c8-e228f040f4c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/18/chip_alliance_ibm_amd_intel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95111 | 672 | 1.53125 | 2 |
This week, students across the state are returning to school. That means back-to-school sports and, too often, sports injuries. The National Athletic Trainers' Association says emergency rooms treat 8,000 children a day in the U-S for sports-related injuries. The Healthy State Collaborative's Dalia Colon spoke with a young gymnast and her doctor about staying safe.
Sunday, May 19th
Last update08:00:00 AM EST | <urn:uuid:4ef5b934-a82a-4ad3-abe7-a84c5bc7d7f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgcu.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=26256: | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940785 | 94 | 1.789063 | 2 |
SYDNEY, Nov. 23 (UPI) — Cooler weather failed to dampen bushfires raging in areas across New South Wales, Australian fire officials said Monday.
The Rural Fire Service reported major fires along the far north coast in the Liverpool ranges, the west central area, and in the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains area and said the blazes hadn’t posed a threat to anyone’s property so far, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Assistant Rural Fire Services Commissioner Rob Rogers said officials were concerned about more hot conditions forecast for later this week.
“The last thing we want of course is to go into bad weather days, having a lot of fires on the books already,” Rogers said.
He says fires were started by lightning from storms Friday.
Meanwhile, police say they would charge two men allegedly caught starting fires on their property, ABC said. Both men likely would be given notices to appear in court for failing to comply with the fire ban.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International | <urn:uuid:61056c1d-a1ef-489a-a6e0-e8fd7df116aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecoworld.com/nature/bush-fires-churn-through-new-south-wales.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96238 | 211 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Glenn Beck Co-opting the Steps of the Lincoln Memorial
I am grieved and angry that Glenn Beck is going to be on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 (the anniversary of the historic civil rights March on Washington on August 28, 1963) -- and I am not sure what to do about it. I'd like to invite you, as a reader of Sojourners, into a journey of deliberation because this affects you, too (whether you know it or not).
Glenn Beck's co-opting the steps of the Lincoln Memorial troubles me on several fronts:
- On his signage he has "Restoring Honor," and I must reflect: Whose honor? How is it "restored?" What makes him imagine that he is the one to do it?
- His tag reads: "Throughout history America has seen many great leaders and noteworthy citizens change her course. It is through their personal virtues and by their example that we are able to live as a free people. On August 28, come celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage and our future." No mention is made of Dr. King in any of Beck's literature. I also am unclear that, as we "celebrate ... our heritage" that we will remember that some of our heritage is tarnished -- and continues to be tarnished -- by our discrimination and continued lack of access to fair housing and decent medical care for our poor and many people of color.
- They also proffer that "Our freedom is possible only if we remain virtuous. Help us restore the values that founded this great nation." How far do we want to go back? To when people had to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar for the privilege to vote?
- "There will be absolutely no politics involved" promises their promotional literature -- I would suggest, given his proclamations on his show, that this promise is already broken.
So why does this matter? Because, as impossible as it seems, a lot of good-hearted Christians have been taken in by his rhetoric -- people whom I perceived had the capacity for critical thought but who are taken in by his gentle conversations with Alveda King, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's niece (aired on July 16).
How are others responding? The NAACP, National Action Network, and others will gather at Dunbar High School and some will march to the site of the Martin Luther King Memorial, being built near the FDR Memorial. Black churches from around America are taking buses to D.C. that day, focused on "Reclaiming the Dream."
But what about the rest of us who won't be in D.C. that day? Do we just remain silent? More than a few of my friends have suggested that addressing this day and responding to Beck's plans empowers him more than ever. Perhaps -- I don't know. But what keeps ringing in my spirit are the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
Some of us are talking about gathering that day locally and remembering the words of Dr. King and the original speech that Congressman Lewis wanted to give that day, so many years ago on August 28, 1963. Most Americans refer to that speech of Dr. King as the "I Have a Dream" speech. But most older African Americans refer to that day as "The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." It was a day birthed in hope -- and anger from the centuries of dreams deferred. On August 28, 1963, the government was afraid; they closed the liquor stores, and government officials were told they didn't need to go to work that day. But on that day God's demand for justice was proclaimed when Dr. King preached:
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
No one "owns" the Lincoln Memorial. By God's grace, I've obtained the permit to gather there twice -- with Naomi Tutu on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's martyrdom, and with the Rosa Parks Institute on August 28, 2008. But we yearned to honor the sacrifice of the tens of thousands who traveled to an inhospitable Washington, D.C. so many years ago.
To remain silent as Glenn Beck attempts to co-opt the legacy of that place on that day seems egregious. This is not a "Glenn Beck" vs. "social justice" or some persona that Beck keeps seeking to diminish (like Jim Wallis). This, to me, seems to be a very basic issue of right and wrong.
But with a month away, how do we respond as faithful Christians who seek to love God, neighbor, and the Jesus who said, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor ... release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor?"
Rev. Ruth Hawley-Lowry is a pastor in Michigan. | <urn:uuid:62fe42fc-6ff0-4311-8292-8ba0b0b509cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sojo.net/blogs/2010/07/27/glenn-beck-co-opting-steps-lincoln-memorial?quicktabs_blog_homepage_tabbed_block=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974439 | 1,342 | 1.625 | 2 |
Anna Záborská (Slovakia)
MEPs speak out on dementia
Anna Záborská (Slovakia) talks to AE about his priorities for the European elections (May 2009)
In the run up to the elections, Alzheimer Europe asked Members of the European Parliament the following questions:
1. As the mandate of this European Parliament draws to a close, we would be very interested in hearing which you consider to be the key accomplishments of this Parliament which had a direct impact on people with Alzheimer’s disease and their carers?
2. After the European Parliament elections in June, which are the main policy initiatives that will be important for people with dementia and their carers?
3. If you are re-elected, do you have any personal priorities that would be of particular interest to people with dementia and their carers?
Anna Záborská: In the European Parliament, it is possible to raise awareness of those engaged in taking a political or legislative decision. The problems of the people with neurodegenerative diseases – and particularly with Alzheimer’s disease – as well as those of their carers must not be left out of the picture. Our Carers Interest Group in the European Parliament is a real medium for reflection and setting up of strategies. It enables the institutional decision makers to get acquainted with the very problems of the carers thanks to the contribution NGOs such as Alzheimer Europe or the European Federation of Unpaid Parents and Carers at Home (FEFAF), as well as their national associations.
During my first mandate in the European Parliament, I wrote a report on women’s poverty in Europe and another one on inter-generational solidarity. Of course, I called on the policy makers to officially recognise the contribution of the women and the men who care for a dependant person. It is just a matter of equity and social justice.
Policies at all levels must reflect the carers’ predominant cross-cutting role for the sake of the people who are ill and for the common good of society. This is why I note with great pleasure that this was addressed not only within the Women’s Committee that I preside, but also within the Public Health Committee.
Do not forget that the European Parliament adopted written declaration 80/2008 on the need to recognise Alzheimer’s disease as a European public health priority and that this declaration is now an official European Parliament document ! I invite all the people with Alzheimer’s disease as well as their carers to make good use of the work of the European Parliament.
The work continues! I am fully aware that various political issues will compete with each other. The work of the Carers Interest Group is vital for policy makers who work on carers’ issues. It must remain a high priority and survive.
Right from the beginning of the next mandate, we must fight to include a budgetary allocation for the financing of Alzheimer associations and carers associations.
Then, I strongly believe we need to continue to speak about Alzheimer’s disease and the importance of the carers to the policy makers. We can easily work on the opportunities offered by the political agenda. In addition to World Alzheimer’s Day (21 September), I also think of World Day of Social Justice (20 February), World Health Day (7 May), Mothers’ Day (10 May), International Day of the Family (15 May) and Fathers’ Day (in June), Old People’s Day (1 October), or still, International Human Solidarity Day (20 December). All these dates are public opportunities to remind us that the people with Alzheimer’s disease are first and foremost cared for by a family member, and that these carers play a fundamental role for those who are sick, the other family members and the common good.
I would also suggest to hold a European policy forum on Alzheimer’s disease and their carers. This cross-cutting event could be held in the European Economic and Social Committee.
Finally, if you allow me to dream, I would be delighted if DG Health in the European Commission could take forward the Council conclusions of 16 December 2008 that call for public health strategies to fight neurodegenerative diseases linked to age, and in particular Alzheimer’s disease. There again, this will be a major political initiative.
I am a Member of the European Parliament for Slovakia. In my country, we also face problems linked to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease. We have marvellous people who we need to support in their endless fight. I thus will continue my involvement in favour of the persons with the disease, their families and their carers.
I promise to take forward the priorities of Written Declaration 80/2008 on the need to recognise Alzheimer’s disease as a European public health priority. We will thus need to promote pan-European research on the causes, prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, improve early diagnosis, simplify procedures for patients and carers and improve their quality of life, and, finally, give the Alzheimer associations regular support.
At the end of the mandate, we will be called upon to negotiate the 8th Framework Programme for European research. Neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer’s disease, will have to be included in the Programme. Regarding carers, we should make a better use of the European agencies to carry out a detailed analysis of the real work provided by the carers in order to better develop tools that will recognize the true value of their engagement.
Last Updated: mercredi 14 octobre 2009 | <urn:uuid:85d0e239-65ea-4ac7-a9f9-dca81b5db8e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alzheimer-europe.org/FR%C3%82%C5%8A/Policy-in-Practice2/European-Alzheimer-s-Alliance/MEPs-speak-out-on-dementia/Anna-Zaborska-Slovakia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955912 | 1,153 | 1.71875 | 2 |
I’m often asked about who is and who isn’t getting into heaven. Like most questions pastors get while shaking hands after services, the question often is about something else.
Sometimes it’s a concern about personal salvation. Other times about someone in particular: a friend, a family member, someone in the news. And sometimes it’s about themselves in a not-very-pretty sort of way.
That is, some people ask because they’re confident about themselves but are curious about the other, the losing side. Who’s in the pit? Jews? Muslims? Mormons? It’s not about me and my relationship with Christ, but about others and their fate. It’s less about theology and more about gossip.
The presiding bishop of my denomination rubbed some the wrong way on this question. She said that Christ is the name given us for our salvation. “But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.”
In other words, God can save whomever God wants to save. Moses and Elijah joined Jesus on the mountaintop, so we’re on pretty safe ground there. Noah, like so many others in the Old Testament, was assured of God’s blessing. But is it up to me? No. I’ve given myself to God’s Son, who gave himself for me. And I trust him to make good decisions on everyone else, too.
Michael Rich, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Jacksonville
Three epochs of righteousness
It has been the same since the fall of humanity; every person since Adam and until the return of Jesus must make the same journey of faith.
If human existence can be condensed into three epochs relative to righteousness, then the third epoch is the time of righteousness through the person and work of Jesus, the Christ. It is characterized by the exchange of humanity’s sinfulness for His righteousness. This is our generation.
The second epoch is characterized by humanity’s work to keep the law, which acted as a tutor to lead us to understand that righteousness is not of the law but is a grace gift from God through Jesus.
The first epoch, from which our question comes, is distinguished by simple, elementary belief in God. In this epoch, when a person believed God, it meant that they placed their whole weight in the promise of God — just as we do when we sit in a chair. We do not show the chair mercy, do we? This epoch is characterized by a person totally believing, as though it were already done, in the promise of God ... and the Bible said of Abraham, “…and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.” These men and others are saved because they totally believed God.
The question now becomes, “Will you believe?” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4; Phil 3:9).
Eric Richardson, 17th Street Missionary Baptist Church, Anniston | <urn:uuid:c04ff656-5281-4ed3-a1e4-a719fc9bc507> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://annistonstar.com/view/full_story/19680357/article-Religion-roundtable--If-the-only-way-to-salvation-is-through-Christ--what-about-Moses-or-Noah--who-died-before-he-was-born-?instance=2nd_right | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965257 | 637 | 1.632813 | 2 |
They Blame Bush for everything wrong with the planet and get away with it because they most people are just too lazy to seek the truth.
In the past 20 months, liberal media members have routinely blamed 2008's financial crisis on George W. Bush, Republicans, Wall Street, and greed.
Someone that has hardly ever been accused of having a hand in what led to the tumult is former President Bill Clinton.
As NewsBusters has been reporting almost since the crash began, it was Clinton who signed into law two key bills -- the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 -- that ushered in the malfeasance that almost toppled the world economy.
On Saturday, a former editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal, George Melloan, made the connection even stronger as he pointed a finger at someone most in the media have shamelessly given a pass for his involvement in this crisisTo promote "affordable" housing, Bill Clinton had excused the two giant government-sponsored housing finance agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from normal banking rules, allowing them leverage ratios far in excess of the limits on ordinary lenders. Banks were forced to write risky mortgage loans, a large number of which were then folded into mortgage-backed securities that Fannie, Freddie and others sold internationally with triple-A ratings.
This business seized up, crippling banks throughout the world, when holders began to realize that the assets that backed the securities, home mortgages, were going under water at an alarming rate.
Of course, Melloan was right. As the New York Times reported in September 1999:
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. | <urn:uuid:abde1741-2db6-499d-be73-948cd31c2f47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politikditto.com/2010_04_18_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96777 | 488 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Embraer has reached an agreement with China after almost two years of negotiations to manufacture the Legacy 650 business jet in the country.
The company will convert its assembly line in Harbin, where it assembled the ERJ145 regional jet from 2002 to 2011, into a Legacy 650 facility during the next year.
Harbin Embraer Aircraft Industry (HEAI), the joint venture with state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), will use the existing infrastructure, financial resources and workforce, says Embraer.
"The agreement is based on the understanding of both parties about the potential demand of China's flourishing executive aviation market, and their wish to extend their decade-long strategic partnership," says Embraer.
The deal was signed during Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's state visit to Brazil, and AVIC says this is a "win-win strategic international cooperation" programme.
"As the leader of China's aviation industry, AVIC will seize the opportunity to develop a platform building executive jets that will meet the demand of the global and China markets, and ultimately assist China's executive aviation industry progressing into a new stage," says Tan Ruisong, president of AVIC.
The first Embraer business jet to be produced in China will leave the facility at the end of 2013, says the company.
China's ICBC Financial Leasing has also signed a deal with the joint venture to take up to 10 Legacy 650 business aircraft.
The agreement, which consists of five firm order and five options, makes the lessor the launch customer of the China-built Legacy 650s.
Embraer's China-based representative was unable to provide further details on the plans.
The company had been in negotiations with Beijing since 2010 on the future of the Harbin line. Its earlier offer to convert it into a E190 regional aircraft production facility was rejected as that would have pitted the aircraft against China's indigenous Comac ARJ-21 regional jet programme.
China, however, is keen to manufacture a family of business jets in the country and the deal for the Legacy 650s fits that plan.
Embraer has received 154 firm orders for aircraft from China and has delivered 116. It says that it accounts for about 78% of China's regional aviation market.
It is also increasing its presence in the business aviation market and received 18 firm orders in this segment in 2011.
"The cooperation with AVIC on the Legacy 600/650 programme further consolidates Embraer's presence in China's executive aviation market," it adds.
The company, however, will face stiff competition in the Chinese market.
In March, American aircraft manufacturer Cessna signed an agreement with AVIC to develop and produce medium- and large-cabin business jets in China. Two months later, the pair formed a joint venture to perform final assembly, sales and customer support in China for the Caravan single-engined turboprop. | <urn:uuid:69d55540-eccf-4cdf-91ce-6da70bbd2625> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/embraer-and-china-reach-agreement-on-legacy-650-line-in-harbin-373358/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966543 | 601 | 1.507813 | 2 |
November 14, 2012 —
When Matthew Smith talks about that incident back in November 1975, he seems intelligent, energetic, frustrated and perhaps a bit wistful about the way things might have been. Back then, he was a cop with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) stationed in the Alphabet City section of Manhattan, making at least a couple of drug busts a week and racking up the overtime.
According to a new book, “Counting the Days, 366 Days in Prison,” written by Smith’s wife Leslie Rutkin, one bust involved 10 cops, 110 decks of heroin and about $30,900 in cash. Back at the station, the heroin and about $900 was entered into evidence. Some of the other cops divided up the $30,000, and as one of ten officers involved in the bust, Smith was handed $3,000 in cash.
She quoted Smith as saying, “If I had vouchered the money I felt I would have been shot. There was no question in the other officers’ minds that the money belonged to them. They weren’t doing anything different than anyone else on the job.”
After the bust, Smith was contacted by the anti-crime unit, seeking to recruit him. Regarding this time Rutkin writes, “Everyone knew the cops in anti-crime were killing dealers, stealing large amounts of money, taking kickbacks from dealers they let slide.”
Months later, Smith and four other officers who participated in the bust were indicted.
Smith was offered the opportunity to avoid prison time by turning state’s evidence against the anti-crime unit, but he refused. The couple learned about his indictment when they were on their honeymoon. On September 6, 1977 Smith was handcuffed and taken off to jail to serve a term of one to three years.
Then began a year-long period of detailed and poignant correspondence between the newly married couple that now, more than 35 years later, forms the backbone of the memoir and reveals how the relationship survived that year.
The letters show the process of being integrated into the prison system and the sometimes unexpected situations prisoners sometimes face. For instance, shortly after Matthew is taken away, Rutkin writes, “I can do what I want, go where I please. I ache when I think of your immobility and the impossibility of having your own clothes or seeing the things you want to see day by day.”
Early on Smith writes to Rutkin, “The absence of any worthwhile conversation is probably the most distressing aspect of my present company. I do not avoid other inmates completely, but these people are from the street—hardened criminals with no intention of breaking off with the past. They probably become more knowledgeable in the art of criminal behavior and are more of a threat after being released than after entering.”
Because he is a former cop, Matthew creates a history to tell other inmates. He writes, “The black inmate next to me has started asking questions relative to my placement in protective custody (PC) because all the other inmates have discipline problems in PC and he thought I fell into that category. I said I was a white-collar criminal, who, with six other people, embezzled $60,000. I had a very influential attorney and at his direction I was placed in PC. This statement satisfied his curiosity.”
Overall, the letters reflect a roller coaster of emotion, hope, insecurity and fear. When Smith finally returned home, the two stopped writing everyday, and the marriage nearly fell apart.
But ultimately, they worked things out, and the couple now lives in Barryville. | <urn:uuid:4c4d0b2e-eeed-4637-ab34-214cf9c13b63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.riverreporter.com/print/news/14/2012/11/14/barryville-book-looks-back-ex-cop%e2%80%99s-imprisonment-newly-married-couple-separated-y | 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 | 0.981745 | 762 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Valve’s Steam Box initiative will probably not end up being a single device, but a platform approach which includes a variety of hardware from different OEMs. The first such device is available now for pre-order from Xi3, for the hefty price of $999.99 (or $899.99 right now with a $100 pre-order discount). At that price, it’s not likely to sway anyone considering an Xbox, but it shows that Valve and its partners might be pulling a Google by showing the world the top end of the market before they launch more practically priced gadgets.
The Xi3 Piston is a gaming-optimized personal computer, with a small, portable enclosure that contains a 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM within, with upgrade options to either 256 or 512GB of flash storage (for a price). The Piston is set for a late 2013 delivery date, and boasts a 3.2GHz quad core processor. Little else is know about the gadget, but it will be designed specifically to play nice with Steam and that software’s Big Picture mode, thanks in part to an investment from Newell’s company. Other details of what’s inside the hand-holdable case (and how exactly it’ll integrate Steam) will come as the official launch date nears, so this isn’t only a pre-order for big spenders, but for gamblers, too.
The Piston will most likely be among the top-tier of upcoming devices that can wear the “Steam Box” moniker according to the Verge, so don’t get too freaked out if you don’t have $1,000 to spend on a gaming rig. Newell’s approach to the Steam Box seems to involve creating a platform that’s all about extending the reach of Steam to as many as possible, not shutting it down behind a high cost of entry. It’s also worth noting that despite the Piston’s small size, it’s also going to be upgradeable, which is a big selling point when you’re talking about a home console, which often has a shelf life of 10 years or more.
Just last week, Newell told the BBC that Valve is currently working on Steam Box prototypes to release to testers in the next three or four months, and this could be part of that project, though it’s also possible that Steam will contribute own-branded hardware to the ecosystem as well.
Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company became famous from it’s first game Half-Life. Valve currently develops and maintains several video games including the Half-Life 2 series, Counter Strike Source, Day of Defeat Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. As well as it’s current projects, Valve has impressive back catalogue including Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition... | <urn:uuid:0e792e0e-d34b-47f6-ac06-9aa3e6a9f7ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/11/the-top-end-of-the-steam-box-line-goes-on-sale-for-just-under-1000/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940266 | 631 | 1.507813 | 2 |
CANTON A wind power project may find its way to SUNY Cantons campus in coming years.
The New York Power Authority has given $6.6 million to Northland Associates of Syracuse to study, design and possibly construct a campus wind turbine.
David Gerlach, SUNY Canton vice president for advancement, said the project has been in the works for some time.
This project is something weve been talking about with NYPA for a long time, three to four years, he said. We are finally down to a level of serious review.
Phase one would involve designing the wind project, which Mr. Gerlach said would consist of a single turbine.
It is not a wind farm, it is a wind turbine just one, he said. This is a part of them attempting to distribute power production in smaller chunks across the state through alternative energy methodology.
The second phase, if approved, would be construction of the turbine, which would make a visible addition to SUNY Cantons campus.
I think it is a 2.8 megawatt it is the size of the ones you see in Lowville or Chateaugay, he said. It is capable of providing one-third of our power for the campus.
The project would reduce SUNY Cantons reliance on electricity purchased from National Grid, and could, during times of low energy use on campus, supply energy for the grid. The schools primary electricity source is generated by natural gas.
Mr. Gerlach said pursuing renewable energy projects made sense for SUNY Canton.
I would have to say it is a part of our culture, he said. The governor has established benchmarks for acquiring renewable energy.
In addition to the environmental and economic benefits, the wind turbine could extend educational opportunities to the universitys students, Mr. Gerlach said.
We have a four-year degree in alternative and renewable energy, he said. These students would be able to have a very strong academic component built into the project, to be able to see live data and analyze the outputs from the turbine. It would be a wonderful learning possibility.
SUNY Cantons location is ideal for wind power, Mr. Gerlach said, noting that the elevation and average wind speed were within standards for generating electricity.
We had a feasibility study supported by NYPA and it indicated that this would be an ideal location and we moved on from there, he said.
Mr. Gerlach emphasized that the grants would bring the project through the first phase, and no decision on whether to build the turbine has been made yet.
Phase one is a design phase, environmental study phase, all of the normal community feedback and things along that line, that will bring us up to a decision point of go-no go, he said. SUNY Canton would be able to take this up to a point of a very detailed review process before we actually have to commit. | <urn:uuid:e1a9db4c-91bd-4839-977d-188b92db0e4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20120707/NEWS05/707079969/0/NEWS03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970111 | 603 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Kelly: Handguns the main problem on NYC streets
Eds: Adds detail, quotes.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Handguns are the main problem on New York City streets when it comes to gun violence, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
In an interview Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," Kelly said he supported efforts toward an assault weapon ban, but that in New York City, handguns are much more prevalent.
"Only 2 percent of the people that we have arrested for guns in the last two years have had assault weapons," Kelly said. "We don't want them on the streets, make no mistake about it, but the problem is the handgun."
He said 60 percent of murders in the city are done by handguns.
Kelly spoke out in support of universal background checks. He said about 6 million weapons were sold last year without one, and that requiring the checks would go a long way toward identifying straw purchases, the buying of guns by people who can legally do so on behalf of people who can't.
Kelly also spoke about technology the NYPD is looking into that would be able to read a certain kind of energy emitted by people to detect the presence of a weapon.
The technology would give authorities the ability to look at terahertz radiation, which is naturally emitted by people. If a person was carrying a weapon, it would show up on the scanner as blocking some of that terahertz.
Kelly said it's not ready for widespread | <urn:uuid:88fd776c-db59-4501-abdc-fcb150b326df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_22461857/nyc-police-chief-says-handguns-not-assault-weapons?source=rss | 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 | 0.979316 | 304 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The board of this game consists of six rows. On each row, twelve gems (of several colours) are arranged. Each player places his pawn in front of one of those rows.
Each player receives a playing card on which a shape consisting of several squares is depicted. Each player also gets 12 tiles consisting of 3, 4 or 5 squares in some shape. By means of a dice roll, each player is assigned three tiles which he has the use to fill the shape on his card.
Now, the players try to solve their own "puzzle". The race is timed by a sandglass. The outcome of this race determines the play on the main playing board.
The player who was the first to solve his puzzle in time gets to move his pawn up to three rows, the player who came second may move two rows and the player in third may move a single row. The players may collect two gems from the front of the row their pawn is on, so the more rows you can move, the more control you have on what colour gems you can collect.
After collection gems, each player receives a new playing card with a new puzzle to solve, and a new round starts. In total, nine rounds are played.
In the end, the player who has collected the most gems in a single colour wins the game.
Language Note: This game is imported from Germany. An English translation of the rules is included. Game components are language-independent. | <urn:uuid:f5221d8a-5b6f-4aed-93f2-2941f381baf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gamesurplus.com/product_info.php?products_id=734 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985366 | 298 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Georgia Wildlife Resources Division
2070 U.S. Hwy. 278, SE, Social Circle, GA 30025
Drought conditions causing drastically low water levels at Ocmulgee Public Fishing Area and throughout Middle Georgia, combined with a suspected leak in the deepest part of the main lake, create a tough situation for fisheries personnel with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division.
“We have made the decision to close the boat ramps at the main lake,” said Bert Deener, Fisheries region supervisor. “Trucks are having a tough time navigating the muddy parts of the ramp, and launching a boat is proving difficult.”
The lake was last at full pool in April 2011, but since that time the level has continued to drop. In the spring of this year, the lake was already 7 feet below full pool, and now is more than 12 feet low.
What will be done about the leak? A private engineering will investigate the dropping lake levels. The suspected leak area is at one of the deepest portions of the lake, which likely means that the lake will need to be drained to evaluate and potentially repair the area.
Can people still fish at Ocmulgee? Absolutely! However, angling opportunities will be somewhat limited as ramps will be closed. Small crafts, including canoes, kayaks, gheenoes and jon boats, can be portaged from the shore and used to fish the main lake.
“Big bass and crappie are still here to catch, so we definitely want to encourage anglers to continue to come out and enjoy the fishing, despite the current circumstance,” said Deener. “Anglers can fish for bass, crappie and bream, walk the nature trail, and enjoy this beautiful area.”
Bonus fishing! Anglers that catch a bream with a colorful tag can turn that tag in for a prize! One hundred bream have been tagged for the Georgia Bobberthon. Catching a tagged fish allows anglers to win a prize plus one free admission to the Go Fish Education Center, as well as a chance at one of four grand prizes. More information can be found at www.georgiabobberthon.com .
Ocmulgee PFA is open from sunrise to sunset, Wednesday through Sunday, all year long. Anglers 16 and older must possess a current Georgia fishing license and a Wildlife Management Area (WMA) stamp in order to fish. Anglers in possession of a three-day fishing license, sportsman’s, lifetime, senior (65+) or honorary license do not have to possess a WMA stamp. Anglers may use up to two fishing poles, and any size outboard motor may be used at idle speed. Non-angling visitors to the area will need to have a Georgia Outdoor Recreation Pass (GORP).
For more information on Ocmulgee PFA, visit www.georgiawildlife.com/PFA/Ocmulgee . | <urn:uuid:e3c5bc26-3b42-4656-ac2e-1a810cf202ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://georgiawildlife.com/print/3087 | 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 | 0.938086 | 630 | 1.6875 | 2 |
On December 8 of this year, the FDA will have a meeting of both the Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee and the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. These Committees are meeting to consider the risk of blood clots to women associated with taking birth control pills that contain drospirenone. The Bayer pills, Yaz and Yasmin, are some of the most widely used brands containing this chemical.
Just yesterday, the FDA came out with the results of a study
that showed women taking birth control pills containing drospirenone were 74 percent more likely to develop clots than women taking low-estrogen pills. Also published this week was a study in the British Medical Journal
which found that drospirenone caused a six-fold increased risk of venous thromboembolism (otherwise known as deep vein thrombosis). These clots typically form in the legs and can move to the lungs. Both of these studies should be front and center at the Advisory Committee meetings.
The judge handling the MDL involving this litigation has indicated he wants the cases to move toward settlement. These studies do not bode well for Bayer in limiting the damage amounts in any potential settlement. They do, however, tend to indicate that the women claiming that Yaz and Yasmin caused their blood clots have a very valid point and a good case. | <urn:uuid:df200794-cd0b-48a8-9673-f12640bf95cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taylorfirmllc.com/new-studies-confirm-clot-risk-yazyasmin.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965607 | 275 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Thousands flee violence threats in Indian city of Bangalore
Thousands of people from India’s north-eastern states have fled the southern city of Bangalore amid fears that they will be targeted in attacks.
Indian Home Secretary RK Singh blamed the mass exodus on “rumour mongering”.
He insisted there was was no threat to anyone from the north-east living anywhere in the country.
Correspondents say the rumours of attacks may be linked to clashes in the north-eastern state of Assam last month.
More than 300,000 people fled after fighting between indigenous Bodo tribes and Muslim settlers in Assam.
Fresh violence between the two sides was reported on Thursday when a mob burnt down a bus and a road bridge, reports say.
Police said local Muslims blocked a highway in protest against an overnight incident in which a group of Bodos set a car on fire near Rangiya, 60km (40 miles) west of Assam’s main city of Guwahati.
The main railway station in Bangalore was flooded with migrant workers from north-eastern states after rumours spread on Wednesday.
The railways ran special trains to the north-east to cope with the rush, officials said.
There are 250,000 people from the north-east living and working in Bangalore, which is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of India.
Many of them are students, security guards and workers in the hospitality sector.
Around 4,000 fled on Wednesday, a senior police officer in the city told the BBC.
He said that rumours about possible violence were spread by text messages.
“We will soon catch hold of people who sent out these messages,” said the police officer.
Karnataka Chief Minister Jagdish Shettar said that he had reassured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that there were “no untoward incidents nor any threat to people of north-eastern states [living in Bangalore].”
He added: “I promised that [the] necessary steps would be taken to give protection to these people.”
Manoj, a security guard from a north-east state, told the BBC that residents of the region were “all frightened”.
“My friend [from the region] was threatened by a knife-wielding man saying that he should leave the city if he cared for his life,” he said.
A worker at a city restaurant from the region said there were “rumours that people from the north-east would be attacked”.
The rumours came a day after a 22-year-old Tibetan student was allegedly attacked in Mysore city near Bangalore by two people who suspected him of being from the north-east.
Many young people from the restive north-east region have migrated to the cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore in search of better jobs and education. | <urn:uuid:3f28a5cd-3a39-443f-bcf2-24c5ec3b9dc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mopays.com/thousands-flee-violence-threats-in-indian-city-of-bangalore/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982857 | 601 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Oncology is about to take a huge step toward changing the way that cancer is understood and treated with the development of a breast cancer-specific prototype for a rapid learning system in cancer care. This system takes advantage of health IT advances (such as EHRs) in order to connect oncology practices, measure quality and performance, and provide physicians with decision support in real time.
The prototype is part of the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO’s) vision for CancerLinQ a “system that assembles and analyzes millions of unconnected medical records in a central knowledge base, which will grow ‘smarter’ over time,” according to the organization.
As part of ASCO’s focus on quality improvement, the protoype will use clinical practice guidelines and measures of the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative to build quality measurement and clinical decision tools. Next, breast cancer patient records and data (stripped of identifying information) imported from the electronic health records (EHRs) of academic centers and oncology practices will be added.
As a proof of concept, ASCO says that the prototype will:
- provide the foundational information and lessons learned to allow ASCO to move into a full-scale implementation;
- provide real-time, standardized, clinical decision support integration within a demonstration EHR;
- demonstrate a set of value-added tools; including a physician’s ability to measure their performance against a sub-set of QOPI measures in real-time;
- demonstrate the ability to capture data from a variety of sources and aggregate the data using novel methodologies;
- and create a demonstration which will allow exploration of data in unprecedented ways and generate hypotheses related to breast cancer.
Once the full technology platform is completed, CancerLinQ ultimately is expected to improve personalized treatment decisions by capturing patient information in real time at the point of care; provide decision support to cancer teams to adapt treatment plans to each patient and his or her cancer; and report on quality of care, compared with clinical guidelines and the outcomes of other patients. It’s also hoped that the system will help to “educate and empower patients by linking them to their cancer care teams and providing personalized treatment information at their fingertips.” Lastly, the system stands to be a powerful new data source for analysis of real-world quality and comparative effectiveness, as well as to generate new ideas for clinical research. It’s hoped that in time, this approach can be adapted to all types of cancer. | <urn:uuid:c6fb2878-877f-45e7-9f70-9a9b50f66096> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://egmnblog.wordpress.com/category/obstetrics-and-gynecology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941352 | 528 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The debate rages on tonight on whether Nebraska should do away with the state income tax. Would it help or hurt the economy?
About every 50 years, major tax reform happens behind these walls. This session, the Governor says it's time.
LB-405 would eliminate state income tax for Nebraskans by eliminating many of the sales tax exemptions big businesses across the state get.
Members of the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs stood by the Governor in support, saying they want to keep veterans in Nebraska.
"A lot of our younger veterans now are going to other places to live because it's cheaper—you don't see as many young veterans coming back to Nebraska," Dave Beran said.
The Governor said this will make our state competitive with other states that are growing faster. He said 43 states exempt social security from taxation and 23 states exempt a portion of or all military retirement from taxation. Americans for Prosperity agree.
"States without an income tax, their economies grow faster, they create more jobs, people move into their state instead of move out, people invest in their states—we want Nebraska to be a magnet for new states and new jobs," Brad Stevens from Americans for Prosperity said.
They say there are a few changes they'd like to see in the bill, but overall, they agree. Others aren't on the same page. Senator Nordquist said in a statement that this will shift the tax burden to the middle class he said:
"It creates a 'sick tax' levied on prescription drugs and hospital stays, and it raises taxes on the cost of a college education. It's the wrong direction for our state and our economy."
Many of the state's largest business groups have also said the proposal would hurt their members.
By: Jenn Schanz firstname.lastname@example.org Memorial weekend at Branched Oak Lake last year was packed, crowded with nonstop camping action. That's what kiosk worker Kile Willet says. This year, he's not soMore >>
Memorial weekend at Branched Oak Lake last year was packed, but due to gas prices and predicted rain, this year might be different. More >>
By: Cole Miller email@example.com Workers at Beatrice High School are cleaning up a big mess. Someone spread birdseed all over their new football field and getting it out is not easy task. SomeoneMore >>
Superintendent Roy Baker says clean-up is costly and those responsible will turn themselves in.More >>
By: Brittany Paris firstname.lastname@example.org Three grades, three weeks of testing, 64,000 students. The state's writing test results are in, result the state board of education says are better than ever. TheMore >>
Three grades, three weeks of testing, 64,000 students. The state's writing test results are in, result the state board of education says are better than ever.More >>
Posted By: KLKN Sports Sports@klkntv.com A trial date has been set in Lancaster County Court for Husker defensive lineman Avery Moss. Moss previously pled "not guilty" to public indecency and disturbingMore >>
A trial date has been set in Lancaster County Court for Husker defensive lineman Avery Moss. More >>
Posted By: Newsroom email@example.com Lincoln Police arrested the 67-year-old man after they say he pulled a gun on a car dealership employee. William Strain was arrested Friday morning at Husker AutoMore >>
Police say the man was upset about his service contract.More >>
Posted By: KLKN Newsroom firstname.lastname@example.org OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - The Nebraska Supreme Court says Nebraska's self-defense law, which says a person does not have to retreat from his home before using deadly forceMore >>
Nebraska's self-defense law covers those fending off an attack from a roommate.More >>
Posted By: Dan Messineo email@example.com Memorial Day weekend is upon us, as the weather warms up, the lakes and pools will be packed. In case of a water emergency do you know what to do? A newMore >>
In case of a water emergency do you know what to do? A new American Red Cross poll shows many people don't.More >>
By: Cole Miller firstname.lastname@example.org Lincoln's own urban search and rescue team is back home Thursday night after spending more than two days in Moore, Oklahoma. The town was destroyed by and EF-5 tornadoMore >>
Lincoln Fire and Rescue's Urban Search and Rescue team spent more than two days in Moore, Oklahoma.More >> | <urn:uuid:a16cb3bf-1e79-4a54-85d0-dfd7c46e0d14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.klkntv.com/story/21011291/tax-bill-could-eliminate-state-income-tax | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954006 | 978 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Monday, September 10, 2007
Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle
That is on of our mantras here at The Funny Farm. As soon as I knew we were going to get the place, I began planning how to exploit the large roof areas to capture as much rainwater as possible. I plan on using 1500 gallon tanks which are 7.5' wide and 5+' tall which will require flat spaces on which to sit. My landscape crew was about to remove an old concrete patio on a job so, instead of taking the material to the landfill we stored it until we could repurpose it as wall-building material at the farm.
We needed a wall to make a flat area for a water tank at the corner of the house by the downspout. For some reason there are large amounts of broken concrete all around the farm so we used that along with the material we had previously stored to build a wall. My crew was amazed at how good it looks so now they all want to build themselves a wall with what a friend has dubbed "urbanite" or broken up concrete.
There was some sedum, sempervivum and variegated liriope growing in places where we didn't want them so we harvested them and incorporated them into and below the wall to create a finished look. The mulch we used is wood chips we stockpiled when we cleared out some tree saplings elsewhere on the farm. Everything organic we will use in some fashion here. It will be reused, repurposed or recycled as compost. More on that subject later. | <urn:uuid:81659ef8-2bd3-444e-bbdd-338ab2642dcb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://happyfood-funnyfarm.blogspot.com/2007/09/reuse-repurpose-recycle.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978571 | 324 | 1.53125 | 2 |
How To Carry On When the Cook Has Died?
Thanksgiving without my dad.
Thanksgiving was my father’s holiday. He was a psychiatrist, a rationalist, and didn’t go in for religion, but a holiday where he could peel chestnuts, chop onions, and hang out in the kitchen in his flannel shirt, shooing errant family members away from the turkey before the meal, was more his kind of thing.
He died six years ago, a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving. Until then he had been the cook of the family: He baked bread, serving warm slices with butter; made soups, carrot ginger, tomato dill, watercress; he caught and cooked bass, trout, salmon, bluefish. In the summers when I was a child we picked blackberries and he made them into jam, pies. He was reserved in the extreme, taking the artful professional silence of the psychiatrist to a whole other transcendent level in all aspects of life, but he loved to feed his friends, his family, his grandchildren.
I remember the first few Thanksgivings after he died. No one mentioned him, which was strange because everyone was thinking about him. In a letter, Freud once described his father’s death as feeling like being “torn up by the roots.”
It was like having Thanksgiving without the cook. The food presented itself on the table; between us we had cobbled it together using mostly his recipes, my mother heroically stepping in with the giant turkey, but somehow it seemed insubstantial, tasteless.
How can I describe the feeling? It’s like you are gathered around a table and steaming plates are brought in but when the steam disappears there is no food. You feel like the Native Americans who sold all of their land for some beads.
It would perhaps in those first years have been more honest to abandon the whole endeavor, not to pretend that the world just carried on, when of course it did not—not entirely, and certainly not on Thanksgiving. There was a time when I envied a friend who was flying off to Jamaica, drinking margaritas with another friend on the porch of some old hotel instead of coming bang up against the loss almost cooked into this holiday.
One could argue that Thanksgiving and other baroquely traditional holidays are about the missing people, the people you used to have Thanksgiving with who are no longer there, about what isn’t, what once was, what could be. My 3-year-old learned a song at school: “There’s a turkey tom and turkey mom going gobble gobble all the day. Arm in arm, on the farm, as they make their merry way.” And of course they are dead, too.
At night, when the children are asleep, I am cooking pumpkin pies and cranberry breads. I am not a natural cook by a long shot, but I follow my father’s recipes very carefully and hope everything turns out OK. I am using a tiny pint-sized Cuisinart, which I feel sure my father would not find sufficiently efficient, and I can’t always figure out how to close it properly so it turns on.
I am not sure what it is about his handwriting, but seeing his scrawled notations on a recipe still slays me. It is like the years of cotton packing, of insulation, of functional carrying on melt away with the markings “½ cup of sugar” or “¾ tsp nutmeg.” It is just a recipe, I try to remind myself, but some complicated whipping together of his absence and presence floors me anyway. While the breads cook, I go out onto the deck outside my kitchen, where it is very dark and very cold and a little wild-seeming.
For form’s sake, it would be satisfying or reassuring to end by saying that, at the Thanksgiving meal, with the family seated around a table decorated with chocolate turkeys and magic-markered place cards, my father is there; you know, the pie bakes, the nutmeg smell is in the air, and a sense of warmth and being cared for descend, and I suddenly understand that he is, in a complicated semi-mystical way there but that’s not how it is. He is very definitively not there. I am sitting torn up by the roots in front of a very big plate of food.
But I can say this: For the sudden panic of his absence, the almost unbearable richness of memory, the return of fresh grief that I have lost touch with or don’t think of every day, I am thankful. Does one want to lose that startled, consuming loss? Does one want to competently carry on? Does one want to feel fine the way you do after a certain amount of time, in spite of yourself? The English writer Vera Brittain wrote, “at a certain point the living have to break faith with the dead.” And I get this, I really do. But for one day I don’t. This Thanksgiving contains all the ones that came before.
Katie Roiphe, professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, is the author most recently of Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages, and the forthcoming In Praise of Messy Lives. | <urn:uuid:7b48b40e-8f1f-407f-8e6c-ad4d4317928d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/roiphe/2012/11/thanksgiving_how_to_carry_on_without_the_main_cook.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978629 | 1,119 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Updated 01/09/2013 06:02 PM
Penfield Girl Will Get a 'Smile For a Lifetime'
A 14-year-old Penfield girl has a reason to smile! Thanks to a national program, the local teen is receiving free orthodontic treatment. The financial scholarship will provide a life-changing opportunity for the patient.
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"I would love not to have to think about this everyday."
Tori Farenholz is a freshman at Penfield High school. She's a straight-A student, a member of the cross country and track teams, but her teeth have kept her from smiling.
"I've been wanting braces for a long time."
Getting braces would be an added expense that Tori's mom couldn't afford, so they decided to apply for help through the Smile For a Lifetime Foundation. The non-profit organization provides orthodontic care to those with financial challenges and special situations.
"Tori has always wanted braces, it hasn't been something that I've been able to reach out to achieve for her," said Lisa Farenholz, her mom.
Just days before Christmas, Lisa got a phone call from the local chapter: her daughter was chosen to receive braces.
"I kept crying and crying with tears of joy, and then they put together a card for her. They asked me to keep it a secret and I presented her the card on Christmas," Lisa said.
"When I opened it, I said to my mom, I'm gonna cry cause I was so excited," said Tori.
Local orthodontist Dr. Terry Giangreco established New York State's first chapter of the Smile for a lifetime foundation two years ago.
"We've had about seven applicants that we've put braces on already and one of the challenges we're having right now, is just getting that out in the community that this is available for families that couldn't normally afford to provide braces for their children," Giangreco said.
The local chapter awards up to two dozen financial scholarships per year for children up to age 18. A couple of references must be provided along with a personal letter that explains why they feel a new smile will help improve their life.
"All of my friends either have braces or have gotten them off. I often feel self-conscious when I laugh or smile," said Tori, reading her letter.
It's words like these that helped local board members make their decision.
"There's so many great kids around Rochester that are so self-conscious about their smile that they don't smile like they normally would. They're whole outlook is different," said Giangreco.
It's hoped that Tori and other patients can help spread the word about the program and how a healthy smile can help boost self-esteem, motivate and change lives.
"Our hope is that when they receive this gift as a smile, that someday they know when they're older, they may see that opportunity to give back to our community as well."
Tori says her time spent in the dental chair, along with about a two-year waiting period, will be well worth it!
"When you take pictures, you don't have to feel embarrassed to smile."
"I'm so excited to get my braces on, and then I'll be even more excited to get them off." | <urn:uuid:301a7f96-0534-42b9-b35d-2659bce44add> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://batavia.ynn.com/content/top_stories/628806/penfield-girl-will-get-a--smile-for-a-lifetime-/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97291 | 723 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Gun owners need to be responsible
My nephew was a young fellow in grade school when he and his little cousin were coming through the summer kitchen of the old farmhouse where they lived. There were a bunch of rifles stacked in the corner. He grabbed a shotgun out of the stack and pointed it at his cousin and pulled the trigger.
No one thought there was a loaded gun in that stack — but there was — and one little boy lost his life. Really, two little boys lost their lives because the ongoing nightmare that the survivor lived was truly tragic.
Yes, people have the right to bear arms, but it seems to me that the gun owner must carry his share of that burden of responsibility. If you own a gun and you do not properly secure it, or even if you do properly secure it, I believe that when it has been available to a child under any circumstance, then the gun owner should receive an automatic jail sentence, and that sentence should be substantial where death is resulting.
I would not presume to write that law in this short letter, but I know that my nephew carried a very heavy burden throughout his life and the gun owner got away with only a guilty conscience. This situation has never produced justice, but a law could be written that would make the gun owner responsible, and I believe there should be a minimum sentence that would be automatic and would include anyone of whatever age or means.
With this letter I challenge our Legislature to write this law — and pass it. Let Vermont be the first state to address the “gun problem” in a practical way. Should you do so, I would consider it an honor to the two boys involved if you would name that law “The Patrick Law.” Thank you.
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Born Marion Morrison, John Wayne was the son of a pharmacist. Wayne got into acting after becoming a friend of actor Tom Mix who got him a job as a prop man in exchange for football tickets to USC, where Wayne played. He became friends of director John Ford who got him bit parts. He made 70 low-budget B westerns before Ford cast him in Stagecoach, which made him a star. He went on to appear in a string of major motion pictures, including The Alamo, The Green Berets and Fort Apache. He is perhaps best known for his role as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, which earned him an Oscar.
Copyright © 2002-2013 Great Quotes.com | <urn:uuid:9de5bc01-6469-486e-ae6a-f6c6246efe94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.great-quotes.com/quotes/category/President+Bush | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990577 | 146 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Bonds, or mutual funds, investment funds, there is a tendency. If the (longish periods in history when, 10 years has been the clear) 10% interest each year does not expect to double your money every 5 years, so that every dollar you should be * about * 10 years is $ 4.
March 28, 2005 8:42 AM posted by RustyBrooks
The time horizon sufficient resources is their best bet. I "modest amount", with a mean I am not sure that the best way to mutual funds investing diversely.
You can reduce the volatility for low-cost resources, such as bonds, and some want to. Wellington, STAR, or Balanced Index: "I'm about a 60/40 mix of stocks and bonds you all the avant-garde's balanced investment proposals, it was three, will recommend.
If you want to read up on this thing, I see the Morningstar and MSN Money's investment income section.
One of the Exchange trading funds (ETFs) may suggest. They are, even if a brokerage account, mutual funds * * cheap, and especially if the plan is a one-time purchase. However, when you're in or you add a little bit of money (and presumably to pay the annual fee) brokerage account to do so, and no need to have - stick to mutual funds.
Preview, and I am 10%, a little optimistic right now, I think Rusty. I see the plan year may be 8%.
March 28, 2005 8:46 AM posted by pmurray63
Avant-garde Target Retirement 2015 Fund (VTXVX) you can do. This is more risky investment, but now the time automatically as a more conservative approach in 2015, and will need to return the money.
March 28, 2005 8:47 AM posted by profwhat
Argh, I have three groups that will be any funds. They are quite probably all three, or even the two that I do not want, like you.
March 28, 2005 8:47 AM posted by pmurray63
If you would like the United States, I consider a 529 plan. He, like Ira a, sort of education, but education for the fund to save for a tax advantaged. You can control the state, they're weirdly enough, the time spent on a variety of options should be investigated. However, there are a number of investment options and significant tax advantages you get.
March 28, 2005 8:51 AM posted by Nelson
To 10% optimism - at this time. However, at least historically, most of the time periods of 10 years have seen returns of 10% or more. When you are a long-term investment "this year" or even this month, a bad back is not how much you worry.
On a scale of 10 when the shares are a good investment, but they have more knowledge, patience and time is required. And for the casual investor, will include a risk of psychological in nature. Every time I do not want to trade. When the market is working, so you can, pay the operating expenses, but many people feel the need to muck around with the resources is very important. I am only a few shares of their own, and I want to feel that less than one year, not to try anything. Of course, I work for a financial services company (but I am not a financial advisor) shall be regulated so highly of my investment - only to me as they have less restrictions on mutual funds, investment easy for the UP's.
The above advice on the low-load mutual funds to find a good one. Your mutual fund pays 10% of the year, but you pay 4% fee, clear off low-yield mutual fund with low fees will be better.
March 28, 2005, 10:09 AM posted by RustyBrooks
Market work time, and other operating expenses, you to pay a lot of
You have at least $ 5,000 was Freetrade, (they are, and I really can not even check how) at least two years brokerage account has a place.
March 28, 2005 11:55 AM posted by kindall
I want to tell you how many covers there are a few threads Diehards: one, two, three
March 28, 2005, 12:52 PM posted by milkrate
rusty, 10% during the year, what can only be 10 years back to 4x? with the calculations that the rate of return 10 years later, I am in, you do not put a 2.5x or may be wrong about?
March 28, 2005 1:15 PM posted by quadrinary
We're sorry, but you're right. I really, I was thinking 15% and 10%. 10% 5 years or more, such as 1.6X 10 per year is approximately 2.5 times. 15% for the present, well-chosen mutual funds 4, with a portfolio unhead not. However, perhaps more than 10% may be.
Get your money into anything but. money market and savings account where your savings account rates will lose money. Although they have recently risen to the ranks of non-CD (CD-5, but still 4.5% a year?)
Government bonds for investment in safe way. They are not losing money is guarunteed. They are also very low interest.
Nothing appears to be a very Freetrade.
Today was musing about. 3 above, about 15 percent on the investment opportunities will be available. Perhaps, a good and successful you are with the resources of 20-25% annually. Do you know where the real money investment? The real risk of the same place. , Other than to start a business of real estate purchase and sales of financial, business, etc. Since I am stating. But you (and then some) could stand to lose all the money is practically endless. The rate of clear stacked against you. 2 years ago I started a joint work. The side, part-time thing, but to me any more money earned by the investment of traditional low-WAY i, we have hands. You and your skills, time, effort and money to invest in short supply - to some extent where the game is that you can invest more money. How can you get from you or, depending on the internal calculations.
I, I want to do this for a number of valuable What is required to run about once a year, every time I'm a hobbiest woodworker, I am sure that I can be sufficient, assuming enough money (that may, may I suggest, such as market prices in I) for a sold-offs, but then you probably hate it more than any other business, such as that, as more items to sell. Of course, in order to manage their work without hating woodworkers, but a few and far between.
March 28, 2005 9:30 PM posted by RustyBrooks
Oh, as long as I am not a very bunging clear something up: 10% of the 15 per cent during the year your money is 4X. 15% interest for 10 years your money is 4X. 10 - 15, 15 - it'll save the best for you right in 10;)
March 28, 2005 9:32 PM posted by RustyBrooks | <urn:uuid:8d7594fe-a11c-4c4f-a3ae-aba377db5579> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://free-online-banking.blogspot.jp/ | 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 | 0.968563 | 1,522 | 1.75 | 2 |
This post by Andy Boyle seems to have struck a nerve on Twitter today. It exhorts news organisations to stop referring to things they produce as blogs just because they use different CMS or are branded differently to regular content. While I don’t think it quite applies across the board – this, for instance, is definitely a blog – Andy makes some very good points.
Sadly, blogs brought along a stigma that people still use – which is wrong — that they’re done by people in their pajamas in a basement somewhere. Blogs are not the same as regular news content, some media folks thought, because they weren’t in your “main” CMS. They had a wall between them and they are different. They may even be branded differently, with a different header and logo. They weren’t the same as regular content because they were in a different system! Right?
It’s time to stop bifurcating your content as blogs and news because they run on separate systems. It is all content, so why not call it that? Even if you have outside people writing posts on your website that are unmoderated by your staff — that’s still content that’s part of your media outlet’s website. I don’t have any research proving this, but in my short journalism career many media outlets just slapped the name “blog” on something because it lived in a different CMS. We should stop this. Please.
While I don’t have any hard stats or user testing data on how readers react to the word “blog”, my gut instinct is that their readings are very different from the way news organisations tend to use the term. To a newsroom, the word blog might signify a lighter tone than news or feature. It might imply a home for specialised subject matter that might not fit with the rest of the site. It might be used to signify a linked, ongoing set of posts like the word “series”. It might mean “something done through WordPress” or “something put online without subbing first” or “a side project we give the juniors to prove themselves”. To some, in some newsrooms, it almost certainly means “not proper journalism”, despite the (somehow, still ongoing) conversations about whether bloggers can be journalists.
The question is what it means to our readers. My fear is that for them it may have more resonance with the meanings towards the end of that little list than the ones at the start. Blog shouldn’t be a dirty word or one that’s used to put down the effort of the people creating something – but in the minds of many, at the moment it still is. It’s important to set readers’ expectations by what’s on the page, but we don’t need to distinguish web-only or web-first or even tone in this way – there are other words that might make just as much sense to us, and even more to readers. | <urn:uuid:5130a8ca-4500-4cc1-a30e-acc427e600ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maryhamilton.co.uk/tag/blogging/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962285 | 640 | 1.65625 | 2 |
In politics, timing is everything, Howard Dean being a wonderful example. So is Al Gore, who chose to give a completely paranoid speech about global warming in New York two weeks ago, on a day when the temperature was 22 below normal. In a remarkably Dean-like rant to the Democratic organization MoveOn, he said that the reason Americans reject his vision of climate-Armageddon has more to do with what he called “a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation” on the part of me and my few friends, than it does with the thermometer.
When it comes to disinformation about climate change, Al’s got competition in the principal beneficiary of Howard Dean’s rhetorical largesse, John Kerry, who looks to me like a cinch for the Democratic nomination. On May 17, 2000, Kerry said:
“In Massachusetts, we always looked forward to fall because the ponds froze over and we could play hockey. Today, you are lucky if the ponds freeze in northern New Hampshire. Up there … I do not wear a coat until after November now.”
I’m offering a night of free beer to the first journalist who can come up with a picture of John Kerry wearing a coat in November (and expect to have to pay off within one minute of this column’s publication). But what about that whopper about northern New Hampshire’s ponds?
One lesson in climate hype that Gore never learned (and which may have cost him the presidency) is that people can look up facts pretty quickly now. Gore lost normally Democratic West Virginia because of his hype on global warming and his resultant vitriol against the coal industry. Miners, who he would have put on unemployment, stayed home or voted for Bush. Now Gore’s venting about planetary heating in howling blizzards.
So should Kerry beware. There’s lots of data on the Internet, including a study by the U.S. Geological Survey of “ice-out” dates on lakes in northern New Hampshire. That’s the day of the year when you can no longer play hockey.
John Kerry is 60 years old, so it’s safe to say he was playing hockey in northern New Hampshire, his home, from the ages of 7 to 17, or 1950 through 1959, near First Connecticut Lake. The average date of ice-out for that period was May 1. From 1991-2000, when, according to Kerry, “you are lucky if the ponds freeze,” the average ice-out date is later, on May 5.
A year later, on May 1, 2001, Kerry said, “This summer the North Pole was water for the first time in recorded history,” a story that was originally carried by the New York Times in September 2000. It was retracted three weeks later as a barrage of scientists protested that open water is common at or near the pole at the end of summer. Further, it’s common knowledge in the scientific community that there has been no net change in Arctic temperatures in the last 70 years.
He went on: “In 1995, after a period of unusual warming, a 48 by 22 mile chunk of the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed.” Disregarding that ice shelves don’t “collapse,” the fact, as accessible as the nearest Nature magazine, is that Antarctica shows a slight cooling trend in recent decades.
Voters need to stay tuned to Kerry on global warming for the Arizona primary on Feb. 3. John McCain, who will do anything to defeat George Bush, has been on a merciless campaign of badgering the president about climate change, including shepherding the first Senate vote to restrict energy use because of global warming, which only failed by eight votes last fall. You can bet Kerry is going to feed off of McCain’s Arizona popularity. He may even entreat him into the Veep slot, claiming to be the ultra-centrist and spelling sure defeat for President Bush.
Anyway, now that he’s the front-runner, he’s going to have to watch what he says. Or what he wears. Again, free beer for that picture of him wearing a coat in November.
If Kerry doesn’t check his facts better, he’ll soon be sharing the platform with Al and Howard, trapped in the living hell of the formerly relevant. | <urn:uuid:93d5c005-0c26-4f6e-a1f9-478641afeeb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/kerry-gorier-gore-global-warming | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967272 | 916 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Pornography, Race and Effeminacy at Lavender Languages
Last weekend, American University hosted the 20th Annual Lavender Languages & Linguistics Conference, which examines the diverse spectrum of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer lifestyle through a broad academic lens. This year’s Lavender Languages Conference took place from Feb. 15 to 17 and featured exploration of various topics including online communities, queer women discourses, the LGBTQ deaf community, geographic links to LGBT identity, anti-effeminate and racist discourse among gay men, how LGBT representation varies from country to country and the role of politics in LGBT expression.
In "Politics, Pornography, Performativity," Jake Silver examined the connection between pornography, politics, nationalisms, ideology and global identity. In his presentation and research, Silver focused on gay pornography featuring Israeli and Arab men.
What he discovered was that gay pornography featuring Arab men was framed by dichotomies: free versus suppressed, western versus non-western, modern versus savage, and liberal versus non-liberal.
In the films he studied, these productions were typically framed by western tourist narratives that appeared to indicate that the Arab men could only be freed from their suppression by an outside western influence.
"There is no effort to connect nationalism," said Silver about gay pornography featuring Arab men. "There is no declaration of sovereignty or nation."
Meanwhile in his study of Israeli-themed gay pornography, Silver noticed distinct references to Israeli nationalism and lifestyle including the presence of Jewish religious icons and interviews with actors about their lives growing up in Israel.
Other presentations of interest during the pornography panel included Tyler Schnoebelen’s investigation into the coding of paralinguistic signals of sex and how we attempt to express them in writing and Dr. Brian Adam-Theis’s examination of how male bodies in gay pornography are created for specific audiences, consumptions and sexual potentialities.
Queering Inclusion: The LGBT Deaf Community
The most fascinating panel of the conference was entitled Corporeal Ambiguities: Queering Inclusion. The panel, which was held entirely in sign language with the assistance of interpreters, focused solely on the LGBT deaf community.
The panel began with the screening of "Austin Unbound," a short film that told the true-life story of Austin, a deaf transgender man. The film, the narrative of which is told through the use of subtitles, shared a unique viewpoint and allowed the audience to experience, on some small level, the challenges and joys of being a transgender individual.
After the screening, presenters dove into a number of issues that were unique to the LGBT deaf community.
Of particular note were presenters Alex and Tamar Jackson Nelson who recognized that a gap existed when looking at the linguistic choices of deaf LGBT individuals. Their hope is to eventually fill that gap with their research and to help train interpreters to interpret for members of the LGBT deaf community more effectively.
An interesting note that arose during the presentation was the importance of interpretation and how the meaning and tone of signed words and phrases is dependent on the individual who is interpreting as well as the person being interpreted.
One example was on the multiple ways that one could sign the word "gay." Alex Jackson Nelson demonstrated that one method previously used included the use of hand motions near the bottom of the face.
While this may work for some, at least one individual has seen it as offensive. The reasoning behind it is that in sign language, motions that include the lower half of the face are generally feminine.
Another example that was mentioned involved the fact that there are multiple methods in which to describe the concept of coming out. The example method signed by Alex was dismissed by some members of the LGBT deaf community as being "too theatrical" and thus they developed their own means of communicating the concept.
In discovering these examples, their research not only identifies areas for refinement, but also paves the way for the introduction of terms that more accurately reflects the intent of the signer and allows the interpreter to present the information conveyed more efficiently.
Race, Effeminacy, and Consumption in Online Communities
Brad Rega, moderator of the Language & Queer Online Communities panel, presented two interesting and controversial subjects in the LGBT community: race and effeminacy.
Succinctly named "No Queens, Chocolate, or Fried Rice," the talk investigated the line between prejudice and preference and the presence of discriminatory language when it comes to gay online communities.
Rega’s research focused on blogs, online forums, and public dating services such as Adam4Adam and Grindr and through the use of linguistic techniques examined the language used in these digital venues.
According to Rega, how individuals state their preference in sexual partner can be divided into positive and negative descriptions. In negative descriptions, individuals actively exclude other races by using such terms as "no" or "only." In positive descriptions, other races are not actively excluded. Instead, individuals only state their preferred race.
Some individuals have caught on to the difference and have changed negative descriptions such as, "vanilla and spice, no chocolate no rice" to positive descriptions such as "prefer whites and Latinos." As Rega pointed out in his presentation, one online commenter stated out that the use of such conversions can result in someone contacting another person on the false assumption that a stated preference does not mean the exclusion of all others.
To illustrate his point, Rega made use of various quotes culled from the online communities of his research. These included the language used in Grindr profiles and comments made on an Adam4Adam article on the issue.
As the presentation continued, members of the audience seemed to be locked in stunned silence as they read the quotes up on screen. Some were cold, some were brutally honest, and others were simply outspoken declarations.
One particularly memorable quote from an online African-American commenter only known as Todd read, "I’ve experienced more superficial prejudicial behavior from the gay community than I have any other."
Lavender Languages ended as a good conference should: with a critical look at the past with a positive look toward the future.
In a roundtable style conversation, panelists and audience members were encouraged to submit ideas for future panels and possible ways of improving the conference in the coming year.
The goal of the Lavender Languages Conference is to examine language use in LGBTQ life. With an inclusive focus present in the diversity of panel topics and reflected in the participatory nature of the audience, it’s difficult envision a scenario in which it will not continue for many years to come.
For more information, visit www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/lavender-languages/ | <urn:uuid:08282f27-aa51-4d40-b318-fb1a77ac7367> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgeonthenet.com/news/local/141943/pornography,_race_and_effeminacy_at_lavender_languages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961846 | 1,374 | 1.5 | 2 |
Before The Interview
Research the Company
Make sure you research the company before you go for your interview. Go to the company webpage and read press releases. Conduct a web search and find out any recent news from the company. Displaying knowledge of the company is a way to let the interviewer know that you are serious about the position.
Questions to Expect
There are some common interview questions that you will likely be asked, and you should take some time and think about how you will answer them.
Tell me about yourself?
This opened-ended question is a typical way for an interviewer to begin. It starts conversation and allows them to get a sense of who you are and your priorities. What is important for you to remember is to keep your answer to this fairly short, and stick with details about your professional career.
Why should I hire you? This is another chance for you to explain to the hiring manager how your background matches the description of their ideal candidate. Go through your experience and talk about how it relates to the position.
Why are you interested in this job? This is your chance to demonstrate that you did some research about the company and talk about what you found out that makes you want to work here. Hiring Managers and interviewers want to hear about how you're excited about the opportunity with their company, not that you are just looking for a job anywhere.
What is your greatest strength/areas you want to improve? For both of these questions make sure that you keep your answer work related. When asked your greatest strength this is your opportunity to explain what makes you special and why you'd be a great person to hire. When asked your greatest weakness one of the worst answers that you can give is "I don't have one" or "I can't think of any". For this question you should point out some minor work related weakness and anything that you've done to help correct it.
How has your training/education prepared you for this job?
What would your teachers, former employers or references say about you?
Do you understand that you may be subject to drug test and background check if you are extended an offer of employment?
When are you available to start working?
Questions To Ask
Prepare some questions about the company. Most interviews will end with the hiring manager giving you an opportunity to ask any questions that you have about the position or the company. Take some time before the interview to think of a few questions that you'll ask at this time. If you don't ask any questions the hiring manager may take that as a sign that you aren't as interested in the position or that you don't know much about the position/company.
Would you describe a typical work day?
Can this job lead to other positions within the company?
What skills are most important for this position?
If hired, would I report directly to you, or to someone else?
What is the wage or salary being offered?
Do you provide training?
When can I expect to hear from you?
Dress the part!
One of the first things that an interviewer will notice and use to evaluate you is how you are dressed. It's important that you show up looking your best. For men, a suit, pressed dress shirt and tie are standard interview attire. If you don't own a suit, then a collared shirt and dress pants are a good alternative. Women should wear a clean, pressed blouse and suit or skirt and make up should be subtle and in good taste. Even if you are applying for a job in a casual office environment it is better to be overdressed than underdressed. Never wear shorts, jeans, or athletic shoes to an interview.
Be on time
Make sure you have directions to the location of the interview, and if necessary do a trial run so you know how long it will take you to arrive. You should arrive at the interview location 10-15 minutes before your scheduled interview time. Arriving more than 15 minutes after your scheduled time should be avoided, since some interviewers see this as being disrespectful of their time and ignoring your appointment.
During the interview make sure you stay aware of your body language. When you sit down maintain good posture. Don't slouch in your seat and you may even want to lean forward slightly in your chair to show that you are engaged in the conversation. Maintain eye contact with your interviewer.
When you first meet your interviewer give them a firm handshake. You don't have to squeeze their hand, but it is important not to have a weak or limp handshake. Many interviewers will tell you that a limp handshake is often seen as a sign of inexperience or lack of confidence, and may even eliminate you from consideration for the job.
One thing that all interviewers hate is when they ask a question and receive one or two word answers. Take the time in an interview to talk about yourself and why you are a great candidate. The more detailed your answers to questions the better the chance that you will connect with your interviewer, and ultimately get a job offer. It's also important to be honest during the interview. Don't exaggerate your achievements. Most companies conduct background screenings and if you are caught in a lie you'll likely lose the job offer.
AFTER THE INTERVIEW
Write a thank you card within 24 hours of the interview
When you are done with your interview make sure you get a business card from your interviewer. The day after your interview send a brief thank you card or email to the interviewer to thank them for their time.
After your interview you are going to be impatient and hope to hear something quickly. Please realize that even after a great interview it takes most companies a few days to make a final decision and to conduct a background check. If you haven't heard anything after a week it's okay to check on the status of the search with your interviewer, but don't contact them too often. | <urn:uuid:405f8368-8372-4c07-925b-edb2cad9eab7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.borgatajobs.com/interview-tips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966028 | 1,212 | 1.546875 | 2 |
United States Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood joined a group of DOT bike commuters this morning for a ride to the office.
In his blog post this morning, LaHood reminds people of the benefits of biking to work: “That can help ease the pain everyone feels at the pump these days. It can lower the burden of tailpipe emissions on our environment. And it can create economic opportunities. We know that building bicycle, transit, and rail facilities creates jobs. And we know that businesses will pop up where streets are friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians.”
The Huff Post writer assigned to cover this story admits he snoozed right through the 7 AM start!
Last week, the DOT posted the latest of Ray LaHood’s “On The Go” videos, in which he answers questions about fuel economy standards, high speed rail, bicycle infrastructure, and hipster fashion.
Photo Credit: Julie Fischer McCarter, DOT | <urn:uuid:cf55671e-bf5a-4eb6-a0fa-4bb70ac81965> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cyclelicio.us/2011/ray-lahood-bike-to-work/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943302 | 197 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Yvonne Jones, MHA for Cartwright-L’Anse Au Clair and Opposition Health and
Community Services Critic, says government’s negligence in addressing the
significant shortfalls of the methadone treatment program is disturbing and
she is again challenging government to boost services and resources at the
The Eastern Methadone Clinic was established in 2005 as an interim
measure to help address the considerable prescription drug abuse problems
that were identified in a 2004 OxyContin Task Force report.
Since then, the clinic has experienced a large waiting list. The Liberal MHA
has called upon the Minister of Health in the House of Assembly on several
occasions to tackle this serious deficiency of the province’s health care.
"This government has been notably incompetent right from the start on
this matter," stated Jones. "Initially, they underestimated the amount of
clients that would require these services, which immediately led to a
lengthy waiting list. They also failed to add the type of services such as
counselling, a central pharmacy and urine analysis which would have resulted
in a more comprehensive and thus, a more effective treatment program.
"When questioned in the House of Assembly earlier this year, the minister
stated that he was aware of the serious problems and that his government
would be addressing them. The only forward movement on this issue has been
the allocation of four nursing positions announced in this year’s budget and
these staff will not start work at the clinic until July. This does not come
close to addressing the overall problem."
The Opposition critic says the inadequacy of the program and the abysmal
inaction by government were once again highlighted just last week when one
of the two physicians working at the clinic quit out of frustration at
government’s indifference to the program’s challenges.
"If government assumes their unwillingness to address this issue is
acceptable, I can assure them that it is anything but adequate. Not only are
those who require this service being shamefully shortchanged, but the
communities at large are being placed at risk from the associated crime rate
rises, as addiction problems are not managed properly. Ironically, this
government committed to a full methadone clinic a year ago. This serious
healthcare shortfall illustrates that the only repeat prescription this
government appears able to fill is in not fulfilling its commitments." | <urn:uuid:37cc8885-d511-403c-a0d2-b7cc43144905> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.liberal.nf.net/News_Releases_2006/june_13_jones_methadone2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96246 | 495 | 1.648438 | 2 |
all home speakers?
Video: Overhauling a Music Teacher's Audio System
When you're learning to play and appreciate music, it's important that you can hear it as well as possible. We overhauled a local music teacher's classroom audio system, taking it from a tired old shelf system to a sonic marvel the whole class could enjoy. New speakers, a CD player, an iPod dock, an amp, and power protection complete the package.
Hi. I'm Kevin White, and I teach music at Meriwether Lewis Elementary School here in Albemarle County. The music system that I had here at this school for many years was a good system, but it was kind of a low power. The fidelity was okay, but it really wasn't true to the experience of the music I wanted my children to hear at the school.
The system I have now from Crutchfield includes mounted speakers, an iPod dock, CD player, an integrated amp, and power protection. It has excellent fidelity. It's a wonderful sound. The bass sound is just very thick and rich. I think the kids really notice the difference. I did a little test with them and said "Which one's which?" and they all could tell the difference immediately. It really helps having a music system that re-creates the sound in the way it was intended to be. It's just really allowed the kids here, the students at the school, to have a much fuller and richer musical experience. | <urn:uuid:ef0382c8-3240-4a8f-a155-e0707be42ca8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crutchfield.com/S-9YwPGWiIBrN/learn/video-overhauling-a-music-teachers-audio-system.html?showAll=N | 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 | 0.981551 | 303 | 1.796875 | 2 |
On Wednesday morning, the Youngstown State University community recalled the horrific events of one year ago with a commemoration service and dedication of a memorial flag pole.
The service took place on a beautiful sunny morning, much like one year ago, before our spirits were torn apart by unbelievable acts of terrorism.
It was an opportunity to acknowledge and remember the life of Terry Lynch, a YSU alumnus who perished at the Pentagon, and dedicate the successful student-initiated flag pole project.
As the Protestant campus minister at YSU, I wondered what the student and faculty response would be to the commemoration service. My seven-year history at YSU has shown me that "getting a crowd" for anything other than a required class is never guaranteed, and often an extremely difficult task to accomplish. I was glad to discover that this tradition was broken with a beautiful service that was well attended, and took on special meaning for those present.
Effect on students
In a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "One Year Later," Eric Hoover reports that life has returned to normal for college students at the University of Maryland. He reported that most college students have not changed their lifestyle or their career goals as a result of 9/11, and "... the campus itself has long since moved on. Many students say Sept. 11 touched them only superficially, or in ways that were easier to feel than to measure."
I thought about this statement as I watched several hundred students, faculty and staff gather for the YSU memorial service on Wednesday morning. "Is it true here as well?" I wondered. As we waited for the service to begin, the student sitting next to me on the lawn was preoccupied with locating friends in the crowd. Lots of students talked on cell phones, telling friends or family where they were. Some students visited and laughed, moved in and out of the crowd, walking to class or other places.
Then something happened that I never expected. As the service moved toward its end, "Taps" was played by two members of the YSU band. The brilliant notes of the trumpet filled the air and moved with the breeze, and seemed to touch each person with its message of sorrow and yet hope.
Directly in front of me there was a YSU student in jeans and boots, his backpack filled with books was on the ground next to him. When "Taps" started he suddenly stood at attention, saluting the newly dedicated American flag. Maybe he had served in some branch of the military; perhaps he was a member of the ROTC. The young man stood at attention as the solemn notes were played by one musician, then returned by another. It was a moving moment.
I'm not exactly sure how the events of 9/11 will affect students at YSU.
I'm sure that some of what the Chronicle reporter stated is true. For most, life has returned to normal, and terrorism is simply more of a reality than before.
A defining moment
One faculty member at the University of Maryland (Sue Briggs) states that "she doubts that Sept. 11 will be this generation's defining moment."
While that may be true, as I stood on the grass on the campus core outside Kilcawley Student Center, listening to the tribute of the trumpets, watching the student in respectful attention, observing students and faculty wipe away tears that had unexpectedly come, I couldn't help but feel that one year later, it was most definitely a defining moment for YSU.
XThe Rev. Kathryn Adams is the Protestant campus minister at Youngstown State University. | <urn:uuid:85d01228-b90b-4e19-ae83-8228700e4ed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vindy.com/news/2002/sep/14/rev-kathryn-adams-sept-11-ceremony-touched-ysu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984969 | 737 | 1.515625 | 2 |
|A11 : by Tony Garland |
I do believe the Scofield Bible is still a useful tool for bible study. I believe it is useful for two reasons: (1) for the teachings it contains, many of which are excellent summaries of dispensational thought; (2) for reference—this Bible had a major impact upon Bible understanding in the pews of America and Scofield is a giant among dispensational teachers.
Having said that, there are also some areas where I would disagree with Scofield. Two which come to mind are: (1) the Gap Theory where an undetermined period of time is inserted between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2; (2) the view that there are two Babylons in Revelation: "Mystery Babylon" in Revelation 17 and "Babylon the city" in Revelation 18. (However, both of these views are not uncommon even today.) In many other ways, Scofield's Bible has some excellent summary material.
I wouldn't choose the Scofield Bible as my main study bible simply because I think there are other study Bibles from a dispensational perspective which are superior. I rely heavily upon cross-references between related passages and Scofield's Bible is weak in that area. So if you get one, I'd get it mainly for access to his notes and for reference to the doctrinal summaries.
As for the new vs. the old Scofield, I have both . My impression is that the new Scofield is probably better in that it clarifies some statements that he made which have been pulled out of context to imply he taught salvation by works prior to the cross and a different way of salvation (by faith) afterward. He did not hold this view—as other passages in the original work make clear—but he made an unguarded statement to that effect which has been highly criticized by those who dislike dispensational teachings. Overall, I think the new Scofield would be preferable as it clarifies some of these areas and also has more readable fonts. Another issue to consider is that the older version used Roman numerals for chapters which is much more difficult to read for modern readers.
My preferences for a study bible for ongoing use would be:
- Ryrie Study Bible (KJV or NASB)
- Baptist Study Edition (NKJV)
- KJV Study Bible (Nelson)
- MacArthur Study Bible (NKJV)
These are all basically dispensational and include full cross references. Of the four, MacArthur is the least dispensational—not clearly distinguishing between the various OT covenants in some of his notes and the topical index. | <urn:uuid:82ea58b8-3911-418a-807b-17feaf36c0cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spiritandtruth.org/questions/11.htm?x=x | 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 | 0.971799 | 538 | 1.679688 | 2 |
BANGALORE: If you have not tuned into 90.4 MHZ, then do so. In today's life, when the voices of marginalized communities are lost in the hustle-bustle of the city, this radio station provides an opportunity for these secluded communities to express themselves. Imparting the real meaning of broadcast media, the channel brings fourth the voices that are heard the least. Sex workers, transgenders, rag-pickers, auto drivers, physically disabled, slum-dwellers and HIV positive persons, all are part of this community radio station called Radio Active.
Licensed to the Jain University, the radio station is one of its kind in Bangalore that is providing unmatched opportunities to the marginalized. "Radio Active is a Government of India initiative that came into being on June 25, 2007 in the city. The station acts as a wonderful platform for those who are excluded from the society," says Pinky Chandra, director, Radio Active, CR 90.4MHZ.
Priyanka R, a pansexual, is one of the Radio Jockeys. She joined the radio station a year ago and says that her life has flipped after getting this platform. "I was a sex worker and a beggar before coming here. It's a wonderful platform. I host two programmes. I want to make my listeners aware about various issues we face," says Priyanka.
She enjoys the full-time job. "I have a different and respectable life now. People who looked down upon me, respect me today," says Priyanka.
For 32-year-old HIV positive Poornima (name changed), life was a living hell after she was detected with it. She was isolated till she spotted Radio Active. "It's a different world all together. I am no more an untouchable. I got an opportunity to talk my mind after years of silence. I work as RJ for a programme that listens to unheard voices. And being one of them, I connect to them easily and try to pull them out of the darkness. I want to reinforce the fact that even HIV positive people should be treated like human beings," says Poornima.
Radio Active covers a 15-km radius and runs for 24 hours. The station with as many as 10 programmes on daily basis, runs folk songs or community songs as well, very much on the lines of commercial radio stations.
Radio Active has yet another special RJ, rag-picker Sujata. She does secondary waste segregation for the Jain University campus at Palace Road and feels that waste picking is a noble job. Sujata, airing a programme called 'Active Women', also believes in women empowerment and desires to impart the message through her new profession. "Rag-pickers have an important contribution to make. It's a noble profession and should not be looked down upon. It has the potential to provide employment to women like me, who are sitting idle at homes," says Sujata.
There are special RJs like Jaydeva M (visually impaired), Manjula S (slum-dweller) and Nagina ( sex-worker).
The station has brought them into action after providing them RJ training. "They are taught to develop content, handle computers, edit the text, handle camera, write reports and make videos. The only area that is left unedited is their language. They are free to talk in any language they wish to. And the transformation in their personalities becomes unbelievable after some time. Some of them have also shared national platform representing their communities," says Pinky.
The station acts as a wonderful platform for those who are excluded from the society. It's a station by these communities, for these communities and of these communities.''
__ Pinky Chandra, director, Radio Active | <urn:uuid:ab21243f-cca6-4950-89bb-833dd5eb76f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-09/bangalore/30606665_1_radio-station-15-km-radius-radio-jockeys | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973243 | 783 | 1.617188 | 2 |
DWP: 4.3m more pension savers by 2015
New figures reveal 11m people aren’t saving enough for their retirement, with pension saving falling from those in their 20s from 43 per cent to 24 per cent.
By the end of this year around 600,000 more people will be saving into a workplace pension due to the incoming auto-enrolment, but this will accelerate to 4.3m more people by May 2015, figures from the Department for Work and Pensions have revealed.
According to DWP, 11m people in the UK are not saving enough for their retirement. The figures show that pension saving has fallen across all age groups, but it is steepest among those aged 22-29, falling from 43 per cent in 1997 to 24 per cent today.
Both men and women are saving less, although pension saving has fallen further for men – down from 59 per cent to 44 per cent and from 49 per cent to 39 per cent for women.
From October, starting with the largest employers, bosses will be required by law to pay into a workplace pension for all eligible staff who do not opt out. The DWP describes auto-enrolment as the “biggest shake-up” in UK pensions for over a hundred years.
Up to 11 million people are expected to be eligible for automatic enrolment, with 6 to 9m newly saving or saving more in all forms of workplace pension schemes.
Under automatic enrolment, employers will eventually contribute 3 per cent of earnings, individuals 4 per cent of earnings, and there will also be 1 per cent of tax relief to make up a total contribution of 8 per cent.
Employees are able to opt out of the change, but they will not receive this extra contribution from their employer or the tax relief, or be contributing to a workplace pension. They will be re-enrolled every three years and be given the same option.
A new £3.5m advertising campaign was launched this week on TV, radio and across national and trade media to raise awareness of automatic enrolment among individuals and employers.
Steve Webb, minister for pensions, said: “This October we can celebrate a major milestone - automatic enrolment is the biggest boost to pensions for over a century. By the time all employers are included, millions more people will be saving for their old age, with over half a million new savers in workplace pensions by Christmas.
“Few policies affect as many people and this will be a truly radical social change. All the international evidence shows people respond positively to automatic enrolment, and I’m determined to make sure that pensions are no longer seen as the preserve of the few.”
Neil Carberry, director for employment at the Confederation of Business Industry, said: “As the UK’s ageing population continues to increase, we need more people to start recognising the value of saving for retirement.
“Auto-enrolment will help rebuild a positive savings culture in the workplace and encourage people to take control of their retirement plans. It will help the country adapt to the happy challenge of rising lifespans gradually over time, and avoid a future pension funding crisis.” | <urn:uuid:14c245f2-5c63-434c-8b9a-29130614e97c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ftadviser.com/2012/09/20/pensions/group-pensions/dwp-m-more-pension-savers-by-WRZVZO4WdUpt0Uy7Joe2HP/article.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95265 | 660 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Microsoft Kin, incarnated in the form of the Kin One and the Kin Two, its larger sibling (next of Kin, get it?), launched in April of 2010 was originally intended to be a Social Networking smart phone, based on the fact that it was launched in a night club with neon green festoons back in April of 2009. This was effectively a tell-tale sign of its intended target demographic: Generation Y [ages 14 to 27] and Generation X [ages 28 to 45] who are into Social Networking, albeit apps already existed that made most smart phone Social Networking ready. Based on technology from smart phone maker Danger, makers of the T-Mobile SideKick, a company which Microsoft acquired for a pretty penny, the Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two Social Networking smart phones made by Korean smart phone maker Sharp failed because it was cursed from the beginning, if you believe in technology curses.
The T-Mobile Sidekick was the subject of a recent data failure earlier in 2008, proof to all dry and sundry that Data Failures are taken rather seriously by dedicated users of a device upon which they depend, especially if their Data is backed up via the cloud [wireless Internet] on remote servers somewhere in Silicon Valley, California. Thus, one can draw from this the reason why Data Failures should be taken quite seriously, as unlike failures in Voice Telecom Services, Data Telecom Service failures affect a crowd that is a lot more educated and not so easily pleased by sooth-saying Customer Care Representatives with little knowledge of how their company’s services work. Despite the minor foibles of missing a calendar and abnormally high Data Plan fees on Verizon 3G Network when compared to more capable smart phones as postulated by CNET Reporter Ina Fried, it ultimately may have been the history of such Data Failures that scared off an initial mass adoption of the product, hence the less than stellar performance of the Microsoft Kin.
Proof of this is that the product is now being relaunched on Verizon in November 2010 as a “feature” phone sans Verizon’s US$30 Data Plan, the Social Networking features such as Kin Spot, Kin Loop and the Kin Studio being completely gutted from the phones design. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to make better purchasing decisions or at least, product design decisions, instead of copying a previously failed service. Stay tuned for results on how well this redesigned phones does in the fickle American Market. | <urn:uuid:b188f735-5d33-4f85-974c-3ff804efea14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geezam.com/microsoft-kin-design-is-everything/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95462 | 500 | 1.648438 | 2 |
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There are many types of bees, such as bumble, honey, masonry & mining. Only the honey bee forms a swarm. A colony of honeybees reproduces itself by swarming. In the spring, the colony will start to build in numbers quite rapidly and once the hive starts to become overcrowded, the worker bees will rear a new queen. When the new queen is due to emerge from her cell, the older worker bees will fill themselves with honey and fly off with the old queen to create a new colony. When the swarm lands they will gather in a cluster surrounding their queen.
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The council does not offer a service for the treatment of bees' nests. Should you believe a bees' nest is a health & safety hazard you should contact a commercial pest control company for further information. Please note that bees can only be destroyed if they are in a dangerous location. | <urn:uuid:85b586cf-8e91-4bf8-8af3-e0bbc40d00f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cherwell.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1695 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937836 | 705 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Georges Seurat @MoMa11 West 53 StreetNew York, NY
so amazing that helium hoop skirt
I think that was called a bustle. I wonder if it will ever come back?Do The Bustle!
Seurat seurat, love the silhouettes in the foreground
Perhaps it is this seeming ability to walk into these paintings that leads one to remember them as larger in size than they actually are. I don't mean to imply that the air in the paintings seem breathable because the works are so detailed and "magically" real. I feel the quality of air in a painting has little to do with tightness of technique. One can see good examples of paintings that seem full of air in the works of the Impressionists whose use of the vibrant color can be studied and applied to realism. As tree trunks grew progressively blacker, however, it became easier for birds to see and prey upon the speckled variety of the peppered moth. The once-vulnerable black moth, becoming indistinguishable against the darkening bark, found it easier to survive and multiply. By 1900, black peppered moths outnumbered the speckled variety by 99 to 1.
The reproduced image looks better than the actual drawing.
THe actual show has several of the same image - leading one to assume that perhaps it was a money maker.My fantasy has turned to madness And all my goodness Has turned to badness My need to possess you Has consumed my soul My life is trembling I have no controlI will have you Yes, I will have you I will find a way and I will have you Like a butterfly A wild butterly I will collect you and capture you
Chevreul was also influential in the world of art. After being named director of the dye works at the Gobelins Tapestry Works in Paris, he received many complaints about the dyes being used there. In particular, the blacks appeared different when used next to blues. He determined that the yarn's perceived color was influenced by other surrounding yarns. This led to a concept known as simultaneous contrast.
Man wikipedia is the best! The information there is like a conversation. I prefer the Seurat drawings and oil sketches to the large works. The big pieces feel like the chemistry that Chevreul was known for, like big science experiments with excellent compositions (calculated and rigid) Those drawings have flipped my lid ever since undergrad. They have an incredible command of value and the edge quality between shapes make you see the values as powerful statements thta are nearly colorful. It seems he was able in the drawings to make greys glow with more light than the whites! the lady's dress is like a glowing coal...those fucking edge shifts! Wow. In any other person's drawing the silhouettes would feel fuzzy but in the seurat world of comparison they make such a strong statement. Sorry for the prolonged wet spot on my keyboard but the work is for real this time.
film grainlets the brain brainfeel better about its own memoriesand dreamsperforated by necessary loss of detailas they arei said it before i'll say it againpeople like the gaps and soft focusbecause it hits them in the privatedreams and memoriesnostalghiapsychologicalimmaterialghostlyloss is the realest(at least for the noetic)
oh and this is for our previous friend tronand this for seurats great great grandchilllldrenand this for youshit, o.d, but one morego sewerat! splinter wasn't it?
Even before film/photo the eye granulates by rods and cones. Colour and B&W - high and low intensity.Memory works with what it's given.
yeah true capisn't it color is cones, in the centerand rods around the edges are mostly black and white receptors, better at noticing motion, like when that tiger is jumping out of the bushes at protohuman, who with the rods in his eye detects motion and reacts. color is in the centre. there is also a blindspot right in the middle where the optic nerve is. you can do a little drawing test that reveals it, a strange sensation to see part of the drawing disappear from view. old media - vinyl records with pop and hiss, celluloaid films with jump and fleck.safe to say that time has been mostly about noise reduction from signal based entity. but the romantics and analogue pouters lament... while my noise gently weeps.
Oops, typos. Again:Agree with emil. Very well put. Thank you.
Mosaic is the art of decoration with small pieces of colored glass, stone or other material. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small tiles or fragments of pottery (known as tesserae, diminutive tessellae) or of colored glass or clear glass backed with metal foils are used to create a pattern or picture. Gates excelled in elementary school, particularly in mathematics and the sciences. At thirteen he enrolled in the Lakeside School, Seattle's most exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the school mothers used proceeds from Lakeside's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric computer. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted he and other students sought time on other systems, including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation, which banned the Lakeside students for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time. Now place the object in its context. Set up your own still life by choosing a location where the object might be found. Then place related objects around it to create an interesting still life that tells a story about the object, or gives clues about how it is used. For example, if you choose a spoon, it might be places in the kitchen next to food or dishes that create a theme.
The threading of a Jacquard loom is so labor intensive that many looms are threaded only once. Subsequent warps are then tied in to the existing warp with the help of a knotting robot which ties each new thread on individually. Even for a small loom with only a few thousand warp ends the process of re-threading can take days.
You will be graded on:The close observation of the shape and tone of your objectThe careful depiction of the contextThe clarity of the still life compositionThe correct use of tone drawing techniqueDue Wednesday June 29:2 gesture drawing of the object from different angles (5 minutes each)2 contour drawing of the object from different angles (5 minutes each)1 tone drawing of object (15 minutes)2 fingernail gesture sketch of possible still life composition (10 minutes each)Due Friday July 1: Final Still Life drawing (1 hour)
INTENSE!!! like his paintings better
yes I have to say this piece has the most insane unnerving wonderful left to right to left to right balance
what can i say, critical discourse was more valuble than the object; his discourse made it seem like sale;that all commodification of art;was problematic.... interest in experamental film, in a way that partoook of this double bind. the first stuff had in it quasi/documentury so it was a mixed bag, Actualy... because they would think that it was formaly bankrup and was looking to content, so for instance I guess he put the readerly apeal in the prospect both of gaining documentiry information scrupalously researched and plausibely interpreted, and of experiencing the aesthetic pleasure. well done!
Theres a dvd out about Seraut $13.99 - "To better understand the artist, Seurat's life is set in a historical context, allowing the viewer to better understand the inspiration for his works. Seurat's creative process is also examined. Commentary and analysis by Seurat scholars who focus on non-publishing-related activities (such as instructing undergraduates), or who publish too infrequently, or whose publications are not clearly connected to one another in topic, may find themselves out of contention for available tenure-track positions - just think of the story "The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!'" and the fatal danger of repetition. Today, I am less inclined to grin - later they captured and dismantled one of the weirdest V.C. gimmicks yet: a giant crossbow, rigged with an 8-ft.-long arrow aimed to wing a helicopter. The "Light-Space modulator" was finally realized in 1930, after many years.
Goya is cool too - have you seen his drawings? I saw them on OvationTV. I think he's a better draftsman - by far. talk about tonal ranges! And he didnt depend on the textured paper for the quality of his line. In fact, I'd argue that Seraut, as represented in the MET, may be a painter, but hes not a very good drawer. That's interesting because you think of painters as having to go THROUGH drawing, where clearly, depite Seraut's academic training, he remains as stiff handed as a corpse at the crossroads gallows.
Seurat's figure studies where far more interesting/appealing. After a newly purchased ticket to see this exhibit, 2432 miles (3914 km) away from home, I couldn't help but to notice a gated off section of the museum. Amoung the museum staff, members, and those that were allowed within the special area, one particular person was of special interest. Locked dead in my track, it was him, the man, the myth, the legend. No one other than Martin Puryear in the flesh. For approximately five seconds, eye contact was made... A day to remember.
Sounds like love.
i agree with you zip about Goya. He was by far a better draftsman. His lines which are arguably what drawing is all about are fluid energetic and ruthlessly clear. Paula Rego,one of the many artists indebted to him, shares this "painters who draw better than they paint" style. (Painting in this context dealing with value and color shape relationships.) Dont get me wrong Goya paintings rock! the thing about Seurat it seems to me is that he never defined forms with line in the majority of his work i have seen. The textured paper is almost like rough canvas that is ideal for building value shifts and subtle edges. No doubt Goya is the superior here, but I almost think that Seurat drawings are better than Seurat paintings because they play to the artist's strength. It all depends on what you like I guess. His "stiffness" is not the stiffness of someone faithfully copying a photo, but the stiffness of someone deciding shapes in there own way that happens to be a little stiff and klunky. That is partially why the tonal range is so convincing... the drawings are compelling in their mastery of space and light but at the same time a little cartoony. I think it adds to there authenticity. Goya drawings are the same way but add mind blowing lines to the equation.
whoops THEIR authenticity.
it is a striking style he has. the top of whatever it is in the bottom right bothers me. it needs to be there for the composition, but is it the top of another bass, or a tiny goblin about to shoot lightning from his palms. is the pov from the band. the lamps are outstanding. I remember looking at La Grand Jatte once and seeing the guy in the bottom left sitting on the grass and thinking he looked so out of place, like a time traveller with his feet in the light of a time machine, while everyone else froze in this similar pose he had for people, stiff and unmoving like trees. there's even a sinking ship in the lake, while the dogs run to the time traveller. dead at 31, artschool dropout. a much better painter than drawing, but still both have his distinction.
I think the stiffness to the line is not so much Seurat deciding ‘shapes in their own way’ but - given his commitment to color and tone diffusion to points or dabs – he has to make room for that in the drawing (or the drawing stage), so that the first sacrifice is really detail or focus to an object – in order that the artist can exercise the color/tone blending over a simple – and necessarily static – volume – hence the stiffness or clunkiness. More detail or motion simply doesn’t allow room for what Seurat wants to do with a scene. And obviously the more subtly you want to break down color/tone definition, the simpler and more recognizable the volumes treated have to become – hence the cartoon or stereotypical aspect. And if you go at it like Monet, the diffusion soon starts to eat away at depth or distance as well, so that the whole picture is in danger of falling into two or three shimmering clumps.So Seurat ends up with these token-like figures, that social historians love to analyze – usually detecting prostitutes somewhere - but in terms of the role color atomizing plays in perceiving these types, the effect tends to rob the aim of any real purchase – we get our diffusion but only so long as it leaves us with cutouts and caricatures.
The name "stump" is older than stomp, yet the name "stomp" refers specifically to cigar-shaped compressed paper cylinders, while stump has more than twenty other meanings. I forget exactly. It appears to be of Southern Black origin.
Cap, I am with you. I stand corrected. the overall vision is dictating the "cartoonish" look.
if you want to make this image in photoshop there are several ways - one is to create a layer, fill it with a color and use the "add noise" filter - you can scale this layer up to controll the size of the grain. If it;s too blurry, you can up the contrast (adjust>curves) or conversely, you could use a blur filter.Once you have the grain you use the adjustment laye ror transfer modes in the layers palette to create some interesting effects - remember you are dealing with additive color.Anothe interesting thing to do would eb to scan in the paper of your choice (photoshop has some pre made tiling texture "fills") and then do the same.Another trick is to select the highlights of a texture using the magic wand tool set on about 10-25 (non contiguous) and then change layers and cut (Cmd/option+C) This creates a neat distressed look, popular in amny movie posters and promotional flyers, t-shirts and so on.You can design these patterns as you wish - for example one guy made various cracking patterns for vintage looka and feel t-shirts. If you ever had a puffy iron-on type deal you know what Im talking about - sort of cracked paint meets acid wash.This is all sort of computerized frottage actually. Historicly Seraut may be important, but that show at the Met sucks so badly you just want to go walk in the park - very nice this time of year as the trees still have leaves. Light-space modulation indeed.
Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul. I played the Oregon Trail computer game in ninety-four in my fourth grade classroom. That had atmosphere you could breath. Wikipedia... The open-source model is very important to us, but it's not a panacea. It's much more of a wild west kind of world, with huge opportunities and huge risks.
Did I mention I saw the show? All I remember about it was -- a figure had to run through a castle and avoid pitfalls, falling stalactites, and bats. I can still hear those bats. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough - reminiscent of Odilon Redon, going in for imagery of ghosts, bats, and owls. I was entranced by skulls and bats, along with furs and wraps - also chips, dips, chains, whips...You know, your basic high school orgy type of thing. I mean, uh, I'm not talking candlewax on the nipples, or witchcraft or anything like that, no, no, no. Just a couple of hundred kids running around in their underwear acting like complete animals. Now we can read Pavia’s own record of the beginnings of the New York School in Club Without Walls: Selections from the Journals of Philip Pavia, recently published by Midmarch Arts Press.
I think the stiffness people are talking about has to do with Seurat's desire for timeless, platonic form. His contours have their roots in ideas about the classical and in egyptian and cambodian sculpture.
ok i might travel into NY from the republik of the bush over the weekend...Is the Seurat show worth 20 bucks?Is it worth the cold?Anything in chelsea?Is that gavin brown big-dig worth a look?or is it gone?
Happiness is not an abstract, timeless, Platonic form, but an activity, since if it were a mere state or capacity, it would be meaningless, for living, breathing, moving human beings "connect the dots" in these ways: We connect the dots in an associative-statistical way that works much like the way Latent Semantic Analysis works - and extracts very good guides for guessing about meaning based on what things associate with others - and how closely - you! follow the white rabbit !
i know cap, i may not be the kingpinof bushwick yet, but a few more deals,and i'm in yo. Til then, it's the L to getmy fresh herb and wine at union square.Any tips on good shows?
jpeg - I honestly think the gormley at Marx is the biggest abng for your buck - no attention span required. I;m not a huge fan of the sculpture - repetition rubs me the wrong way, maybe because its the one trick that I never get tired of.I also want to make a case for reverie - what soem people call spacing out - thats huge for me, and so much work puts you back into your own space,requiring you to do all your own work, and thats just not where I am at right now - I'm intor escapism and not being here, or there, even - this makes for blood on the fence but at least I don't have to crawl through the broken glass of art historical pretext. The new Rambo movie looks good as a ham fisted allegory for whats wrong and right about Amrican culture. The posters are stencils a la Banksy who incidentally, but not coincidently I presume, is opening in NY Sunday? I dont care for mad houses so I guess I might skip the opening and hit all the dead artist corpse fucking shows and Banksy in one go.When closeuup came to town I was not so forthcoming (I didnt have a clue), so consider yourself privileged - this shit is gold you hear me? GOLD!!!!
Tonight was big - I guess they are pillow fighting in Bushwick and stuff. Good times. I stayed in and had steak and potato with vodka martinis - its the way its done right now. Mudhoney plays tomorrow in the burg - I hope to attend.
Moma is worth 20 if you spend a long time there - remember to flush every toilet several times and grab some complimentary paper towels.The Met is probably a better dea, even if you pay the full recommended donation (I paid a dollar last time). They have a show of very sophisticated a+ african shit, mostly of Fang tribal origin since thats the only place the priest dude went, apparently. What;s cool about it is you realize that many avant guard artists had these objects and hadn;t a clue as to what they meant (or so I presume, because I still don;t).Ine thing I wonder is if you had an abusive parent, did you make a scary devotional figure or did you use a surrogate like an ossified turd? The met has some other stuff, also.
Guess it's nyu open studios if nothing else.And the dollar de Hooch' at the met.
I think I paid 5 at the met, so generous--and u told me to see julie heffernan but if theres one thing weve seen in sf its julie.i had an abusive parent--whats the ?I try to be free. like tears in the rain
dont listen to me I'm nuts. Go where you want to go, so what you want to do, as the song goes - but do check out the 27th street renaissance, which blows the money galleries out of the water with their dead corpse fucking blue chip art. I guess I am deeling youthfull - what with the cynicismth that pervades the 20 something or other demographic, cynicism sprinkled like arsenic on ginger snaps.I'm hoping for some crystalization, some sense of a center to hold the splinter cells together. A leader is uneccessary at this point - though flash mobbing is an isdea (but who controlls that?)Sending chain letters is good. I think it needs to evolve past yahoo groups to be an effective tool in the revolution.Do I sound delusional? I am, not and finally, mall culture is not art, even if you recontectualize it. No. No. No. No.
peg: check it?
no link - im not practicing ambiguity there,,,though I am seeing many abusive parent fallout type dealios (my parents made sure to keep me out of any tyoe if irrationality based on their problems (sounds worse than it was) but every child loves sponge bob, so there must be some correlation beteween their actions and my personality and further, my peers suffer falloutor residual effects from a variety of experiences. I think there is a tendency to discount the effects of trauma, no matter how severe. SOme would call this the bootstrap or stoic sense of rugged individualism and self reliance - very protestant or calvinist or whatever, please chime in.- im not a psychologist, so I think just introducing mentalities - say - survivor types is interesting,. Im not an extrovert either, nor am i in a possition to socially engineer mass migrations based on personality (brave new world) - but the thought occurs that indeed society is structured along lines of pathology or at least mentality, that are inherited - interesting in that patterns can be restructured - but also that identity is threatened. My god. is an awesome god. oh yes.
african figures - all icons - I forget the tern - like reliquary's - but memento mori or whatever. SOme of the african stuff - sharpened teeth like queequeg. But that happens mostly when metal shows up - I could be wrong. But htere are a lot of frighterning wire and metal clad sculptures.Weird right? It jsut occured to me that the arrival of ou tsiders might have created tension. In anthropology class I learned about the yanomamo - that they were warlike and cannibalistic as an adaptive measure to scare resources. That is, apparently irrational behavior had a deifnite cause and effect relationship.What may draw many people to contemporary art is the esthetics of discovery, where art is a record of a pathology.For example, Jeff Koons makes a great case for a disfunctional (or hyperfunctional) value system. WHat would drive such an ass?I dunno, but Chris Johansen is not all that - though I know his work attracts the attention of many who I cannot discount offhand. Indeed, I am forced to reconsider my assessment of him as a trendsetting graphic designer or simple illustrator.
ionomentality is inherited-mos deflearned too--so a dubble whammy from the fammilyletting go of identity is the best thing that can happen 2 1. all i know is that it hurts forever. the degree to which i've avoided replicating that is my greatest acheivement--but I just couldnt--not serbian enough thank fukin god
Theoretically, so long as the center of power remains unaffected, anything is allowed on the margins, where serious culture mostly operates (Russian pop culture seems not to ruffle any feathers, or maybe it doesn’t want to, and television is firmly under the Kremlin’s thumb).Just hinking about propaganda and such - demonize the enemy is my motto - im not into the game - hows the weather man, fucjk that shit. I want to hear how you have cured cancer or at least are sticking to big business for being so oriented to the bottom line.So glad the US got into a war with Iraq. Really fucking cool. If I could blow myself up and end the Bush bloodline, I think I would.
I mean the NY times article on russia reminds me of the idea of nations having a lifespan and also more importantlyu, a level of maturity in mentality - tha the sum of the parts ads up to a personality. That national character is shaped by it's literature is not a new idea - but that this literature has a level of sophistication that evolves can be compared to the stages in human development - adolescence perhaps.But the propagation of the moral culture across cultures is a sort of Christian idea to me - prosletyzing secularly or non-secularly. Most recently we see the idea of memes - and in art that ideas themselves (ideas about behavior even) can be commodities.I promise to buy coke. Please feed my tribe.
For example the russians are always protrayed as adolecents - sort of primitive people being fleeced by con artist-gangster-politicians. and I wonder if that somehow mirrors some people's views of the US governement, or if theres some sort of objective measurement I can use to comparatively evaluate the corruption in the US vs that of other first world democracies. Im thinking here of France, with its vested interest in war profiteering. Where is the press on this? War contractors made news for a week, in my mind, despite serious concerns. And in the presidential debates I only heard one supposed concerned citizen ask a tangential question regarding relative pay scale between soldiers and contractors.Its like talking to the fakest faker in the art world. And I know the art world is political, its not an issue for me anymore. But the vapids use of this power (with arguements that plurality is threatened when consensus is reached) bug me. Its nihilist at its core. And even though I dont care about nothing, I find this brand of nihilism particularly pointless, even as a parody, satire, burlesque or critique. WHere is the moral courage to change things? Or is the status quo acceptibe, or better, awesome? I;m here voicing concerns I read about an art world that is experienced as profoundly dysfuntional, for some.Personally, I look at the beacha nd wonder why its just a picture on the wall rather than a regularly scheduled interlude in an otherwise qutedienne life. Could not the entire art world be transported to the beach? I must selfishly confess that I too desire to be transported, despite my outsider blogger status. Reverie!!!!!
reicycled services, you know the nerve of this?the oxgyen gone, you neevr heard of it from the forest firemovin out from the elemnets you know my central inteligence is Llke the elephants @Information is more concaeled Papers get printed Trees may be extinct.You know the advancemeet for the elegancedow ;jones Industrial, real like my reels You know the environmental change and its appea lInformattion is more concealedScientific study, ask your chemical buddy Cut McGillicuddy,dispatching out to you imagine, Use material for Christmas,
And it landed in the sandWhere the pyramids blazeAnd this is how the dictionary defines such a placeA polyhedron with a polygonal baseMedian and common vertexTriangular face; I know my demographicsSee how this was crafted and draftedThere's precision in the incision; There wasn't one before hasn't one since meA gangster of loveI come from up aboveI give the mic a tugI give the world a hugI give skies a kissI give suckers a kissSome people like my old styles better than this but; I catch rec andTangle in circles with squaresTriangles to test if indeed you're preparedThis is the shape of things to comeThis is the shape of things to come
mdeitative attention is an art;and shit or a acquired skill whch brings clarity an a inteligence that sees the true nature of stuff, Among the variety of techniques in.... budhist meditation, the art ofatention is the common thread underpining all schools of ,budhist; meditation: mahamudra in the tibetan traddition, zazen in Zzen budhismand vipassana meditation in theravada and shit. Its ubiquitousenes is illustrated by this zen story and shit..let me adjuts my binocculars real quick she's putting peanut butter all in the dog's mouth the dog is wearin lingerie;wow... this is differetn,
a membership to Moma is cheap (Tax-deductible amount: $75) includes PS1 and film program. im going to check this out 2morrow an hit up the 4clock The Godless Girl. 1928. USA. Cecil B. DeMille. Approx. 128 min.
I found the poor souls coming away thence, so I took them back, and eat and drank and shit,very strange to obsierve and shit;I left them praviding for his stay there tonight and getting a pettition against tomorow and the ;conditions doing nothing tomorrow. besides taking a bubble bath reading and eating the whole time I'll probably just wear my pujamus tumorrow. yes that sounds good aproc.tenhundred min.and st0uff;
there exists no such thing as "nothing" schnabel wears his pjs everyday... all day...
Mudhoney rocks. Grunge is not dead. I blew my museum membership fee, oops. I hate the either/or shit. Don't you?The raider submarines were specially designed as long-distance bases for gas warfare. They carried no guns nor ordinary fighting equipment. They had practically unlimited cruising range, and within them from five to nine aeroplanes were packed with a formidable supply of gas bombs. One of them carried thirty long-range air torpedoes with all the necessary directional apparatus. The smallest of these raiders carried enough of such stuff to 'prepare' [euphemism in the original] about eight hundred square miles of territory. Completely successful, it could have turned the most of the London or New York of that time, after some clamour and running and writhing and choking, into a cityful of distorted corpses. These vessels made London vulnerable from Japan, Tokyo vulnerable from Dublin; they abolished the last corners of safety in the world.
The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the Planet. Transportation is Civilisation, our motto runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies. Practically, the A.B.C. confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little Planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders.
Weren’t artists just a short time ago fretting about how art is devalued by all mechanical reproduction? And now the art world is doing its own forgeries and letting collectors pass them off as real? I mean look at Basquiat used color photocopies in some of his works - is that legit? Pluralism doesn’t equal peaceful coexistence; it just means more sides to the argument and shit.
if mechanical reproduction is used in a process that involves the human intuition somehow, value remains? idontbathe, the art of attention, supertrue...i smoked dmt on the weekend, sitting by a river looking to the trees and the stars, full on tomaselli/riley/grey/vasarely visual stuff immediately with eyes closed, a total writhing lattice, i couldn't help but chuckle at the sight. the brain is a pattern sensor. and the heart likes surprises. to first suggest a rhythm, and then provide a surprise - the basis of all good composition.
Kelley's "Garbage Drawings," 1988, have their origin in the depiction of garbage comic strips. One might compare them to Bertrand Lavier's "Walt Disney Productions" series, 1985, in which the paintings and sculptures that form the backdrop of a Mickey Mouse adventure in the Museum of Modern Art, published in 1947, become real works. Kelley writes: "Art must concern itself with the real, but it throws any notion of the real into question. It always turns the real into a facade, a representation, and a construction. But it also raises questions about the motives of that construction." And these "motives" are expressed by mental frames, pedestals, and glass cases. By cutting out cultural or social forms (votive sculptures, cartoons, theatre sets, drawings by abused children) and placing them in another context, keeley uses forms as cognitive tools, freed from their original packaging. The idea of newness was merely a stimulus. Now what is at stake is to positivize the remake, to articulate uses, to place forms in relation to each other, rather than to embark on the heroic quest for the forbidden.B-movies,the art of shopping and display....the tensions between commonplace elements. A kitchen chair is placed under an abstract, geometrical painting, spurts of paint in the style of Larry Poons run alongside an electric guitar. The main difference between European New Realism and American Pop resides in the nature of the gaze brought to bear on consumption.
I just can never get enuf camp
touch me Im sick
which camp you in?
hey kurts wearing the pjs like schnabeldid mudhoney grow up? i doubt it but thats ok. nostalgia for dudessaw the bob dylan movie yesterday. it was pretty good. kinda obvious but ok. we sat next to wavy gravy. old people in the audience laughed a lot--especially at julianne moore playing joan baez. my little dotter liked it. she is a bob fan at 15. she likes the mod period. the one that cate blanchett played. Me, I like the heath ledger era with the wifey. Thanks for the gratuitous frontal nudity on Heath, Todd. Mmmmm-yeah. Beautiful. Oh and I love Richard Gere too. Billy the Kid HA.
how bout "Bands I forgot about" That reminded me of fang. i think i saw them a barrington hall? iono was i drunk? so yea thanks
Did Mudhoney do the one about haircuts of the 70s being the hair of the future?
No but I could be wrong. I used to listen to Seaweed and Green River on the radio, so yeah, nostalgia. Still, Mudhoney is a good live act.Mudhoney has some new young fans not all dudes - I don't go to concerts for a mellow good time unless I can sit down. I guess I'm old. In manhattan reserved seating sit down venues are reserved for big names and priced beyond my budget. Ideally I could sit on a couch, smoke a joint and watch bands from the balcony. One can dream.I get on my feet for Turbonegro (Nokia theater is a mindfuck) and Sonic Youth. I can see where the ironic pose stuff (alt.country) gets old - but I prefer it to the kids with Casio wimpalooza - or even pared down electro. Not cathartic at all and it reminds me of thrift stores in a Napoleon Dynamite meets reality in a big way. You need good deep bass or gravelly distortion to really rock the joint - like Chicago Blues. That stuff frightens some people.
if you wanna get nostalghia...
fuckin admrers of seurat often regret his method; the little dots.and shit Imagine, he said, veronese's marriage at Cana done in petit point. I cannot imagine it,and shit but neither can I imagine eurat's pictures painted in broad or blended strokesor something. but dots are not a technique; they are a tanguble surfase and the ground of important qualities, including hisfuckin finese. T. The question whether they make a picture more or less luminous. A painting can be lumanous and artisticaly dull, or low/keyed in color and radiantthe mind and shit Besides, to paint brightly is no secret requiring a special knowledge of science.and stuff
Seurat's smaller studies are usually in broader strokes - while he tested color harminies. The giant Bathers (Nat. Gall. London) actually uses cross hatch strokes - methodical like Cezanne, but non-directional like Monet. Luminosity was thought tantamount to visibility (what hits the retina) but not to be confused with mere brightness.Obviously Georges thought it was never going to be enough to test it on rural serenity or still lives - figured he could take it to where the action was - cabaret night for the riff raff. Only problem was stacked up against Degas or Lautrec, little dots and dashes tended to zone out the excitement, can’t get a line on motion or music, leave even the grungiest acts looking stilted or too karaoke.Speaking of true grit -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUdoxs3twqc
Actually this is a great page to scroll down for sheer variety of posts, at the moment.well done Painter!
To give shape to what is disappearing before our eyes.Not as objects, which would be to fall into the trap of reificationBut as mediums of experienceBy striving to shatter the logic of the spectacleArt restores the world to us as an experience to be livedA successful encounter of historiesaffinitieswishesconstraintshabitsthreats skinstensions
not for nuffin' pointaillism refaers to the fuckin technique of using dots of pure color in such a way that;seen at the apropriate distance, they achieve maximum lumonosityand shit. a pointillist painting is no more “luminous than anything else that is printed with small dots, or something such as a magozine photogruph. and shit.Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? He got an ice pick That made his ears burn Whatever happened to dear old Lenin? The great Elmyra, and Sancho Panza? Whatever happened to the heroes? All the Shakespearoes? They watched their Rome burn Whatever happened to the heroes? No more heroes any more
my favorite animal is the liger
the heroes needed hearsay to perpetuate the whispers of their legend, until instant and on demand access to information came along and sliced the hyperbole. for some reason the act of global knowledge systems have the effect of sending things back local, local heroes, local stories. local fame. probably because there's just too much now in the airwaves for any signal to gather strength over the others. letting us all publish creates a flattening effect. but there are still spikes. possibly coming from collectives moreso than the old traditional solo genius wanking in splendid insanity, nicola tesla style. long shall live the solo genie in the bottle. i really like what your sayin rmut. u all heard about the poor surfer dude who has made the most recent breakthrough in physics? check out his work on the old E8.
the dude surfs a big one
Images perish in their effectiveness and are considered to be living and dying fragments; gone is the ideal of painting for assurance. All too long one had preserved a bankrupt metaphysics in aesthetics. We renounce all purified existence; vulgar barbarians. The perfection-hype has gone out of business. Now images serve to increase unrest and disorder instead of wasting away as musty ghosts.But still we muse dare to comprehend every new form as an augmentation of reality or at least as a tendency for sensing a new reality.Every totalization creates discontinuities and in this lies the chance for human freedom.
Is it still a total if allowing discontinuity?
The discontinuous is total but ephemeral as the passing totalizing of the moment is never completed or perfected.
An hour after candling, I developed a terrible earache and experienced hearing loss. This phenomenon can occur because the medium is moving in the opposite direction to the wave, or it can arise in a stationary medium as a result of interference between two waves travelling in opposite directions. There is no net propagation of energy, so the receiver actually doesn't see any signal.a wave that comes to focus in a small region of space and then disperses. This is followed by another similar wave that focuses in a slightly different position, then by another and another and so on indefinitely until a “track” is formed that resembles the path of a particle. Granularity is a measure of the size of the components, or descriptions of components, that make up a system. Granularity is the relative size, scale, level of detail or depth of penetration that characterizes an object or activity. It is the "extent to which a larger entity is subdivided. The smooth surface can be calculated from the coarse mesh as the limit of an iterative process of subdividing each polygonal face into smaller faces that better approximate the smooth surface. Boy, it's amazing to think Hopper did Grit in the same year he made Easy Rider! As the athlete falls or slides on the ground, friction causes layers of skin to rub off. and shit
The defense of reality is achieved through the temporal shift in the matrix of the continuity of time interrupted by ceremonious acknowledgment of the present as continual change. Realism as creation of the world is the active and explicit epochal production, a rift in the continuity of the progression of history which, similar to the hallucination, is characterized by both the nebulous uncertainty of its limits and the pragmatic materiality of its singularity.It remains to be seen if the problem of the jurisdiction of any unique order can be maintained in the face of the common process of society, as the duration of certain formalisms will inevitably, and perhaps paradoxically, continue to constitute the context for the production of culture. RESOLVEAs forms become styles, as groups become institutions, the problems of the congruence of expression and actual experience begin to become confused with the fate of the collective.Alienated labor and utopiaThe diachronic and synchronicThe reconcilliation of object and subjectThe choice between subservience and autonomyA collage of differenct possibilities has been pasted together both in order to point out the holes in the comprehensive totality, and simultaneously to complete the work at hand (to point out that there are, in fact, no holes). Corresponding to the final cusp of nowArtworks and research have been construed as effective and fundamental moments of autonomy, which in their fragmentary and necessarily momentary appreciation/creation present us with a (defense of the real) as ubiquitous and timeless posibility for utopia.But inspite of this potential, these progressive and hope-promising ideals are confronted with the simplistic realism of a violent alternative. These fragmentary and local totalities are surrounded on all sides by the permanent counter-revolutionary power of the totalitarian unsurpation of reality. The Fabrication of Fictions
The methods of option pricing introduced in the 1970s led to the Black-Scholes formula and a number of extensions, but they are not able to handle things like stochastic volatility, jumps, or non-Gaussian innovations in any convenient way. In the 1990s, researchers began to model these features using powerful mathematical techniques based on Fourier transforms and similar methods, that allow closed-form valuation equations for much more general returns processes. But once again, the new technology seems pretty daunting. IN SHORT:Because lava cools and crystallizes rapidly, it is fine grained. If the cooling has been so rapid as to prevent the formation of even small crystals after extrusion, the resulting rock may be mostly glass (such as the rock obsidian). If the cooling of the lava happened slowly, the rocks would be coarse-grained. As a result, Shell was able to anticipate the Arab oil embargo, andlater to anticipate and prepare for the dramatic drop in oil prices in the 1980s. Not only do the black sails act as a sort of intimidation tactic, but the Pearl's crew can put out the deck lamps for added stealth at night. There is no reason why you can't have a new kind of vacation. An exciting getaway- the kind you hear about, read about and your friends keep telling you about. It's your turn this year.Discover the pleasures of the Outer Banks.Visit the Sea Foam Motel - One of the most popular spots on the coast today!Sea Foam is listed on the "National Register of Historical Places".
A gap is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be.
Yes! Anything I can stick my dick in!
I think that's what Duchamp was trying to say.
E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887.But to me it will always be plain old Hackney...
"He said, 'You up there in the North, why don't you build me another subway station?'" recalls Nohal.Continue Article"'OK', I said, 'But we don't build in concrete there, we do it in logs', and that's what I did."Nohal built the station next to his hotel, which Kippenberger actually visited once."He liked [Dawson]," recalls Nohal, especially a bar known locally as the "Snake Pit."
what do you wimps know about laying it on the line? evil knieval. not random, dum dum
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them, fucking cowards.
Did someone mention things that have a history of "social relevance" in defining culture, but have become highly coded genres and purely theatrical gestures? Every encoding is an decoding. To put the point more generally, and in more basic ontological terms, if we are to understand anything at all, we must already find ourselves ‘in’ the world ‘along with’ that which is to be understood. All understanding that is directed at the grasp of some particular subject matter is thus based in a prior ‘ontological’ understanding -- a prior hermeneutical situatedness. On this basis, hermeneutics can be understood as the attempt to ‘make explicit’ the structure of such situatedness.
What am I looking at and for? What Knowledge does my look desire? Who am I when I look at this?gaping wounddark holeopen gapcentral cavityinaccessible hollow in the midst of chiasmusformed by a process of folding and unfoldingINVAGINATIONNo Beast is there without glimmer of infinity,No eye so vile nor abject that brushes notAgainst lightning from on high, now tender, now fierce. Victor Hugo, La Legende des SieclesEven though information provides the basis for much of contemporary society, it is never present in itself. Through the development of information technologies, however, the interplay between pattern and randomnes became a feature of everyday life. A common site where people are initiated into this dilectic is the cathode tube dislplay. working at the computer screen I cannot read unaided the magnetic markers that physically embody the information within the computer, but i am acutely aware of the paterns of blinking lights that comprise the text in its screen format. When i discover that my computerized text has been garbled because i pressed the wrong function key, i experience firsthand the intrusion of randomness into pattern.It is also sensory and kinesthetic, as Freidrich Kittler has demonstrated in Discourse Networks 1800/1900, typewriters exist in a discourse network underlaid by the dialectic of presence and absence. The keys on a manual typewriter are directly proportionate to the script they produce. One keystroke yields one letter, and striking the key harder produces a darker letter. The system lends itself to a model of signification that links signifier to signified in direct correspondence, for there is a one to one relation between the key and the letter it produces. By contrast, the connection between computer keys and text manipulation is nonproportional and electronic. Display brightness is unrelated to keystroke pressure, and striking a single key can effect massive changes in the entire text. I know kinesthetically as well as conceptually that the text can be manipulated in ways that would be impossible if it existed as a material object rather than a visual display. As I work with the text-as-image, I instantiate within my body the habitual patterns of movement that make pattern and randomness more real, more relevant, and more powerful than presence and absence.Once image that woman imagines and the object loses its fixed, obsessional character. As a bench mark that is ultimately more crucial than the subject, for he can sustain himself only by bouncing back off some objectiveness, some objective. If there is no more "earth" to press down/repress, to work, to represent, but also and always to desire (for one's own), no opaque matter which in theory does not know herself, then what pedestal remains for the ex-sistence of the "subject"? If the earth turned and more especially turned upon herself, the erection of the subject might thereby be disconcerted and rist losing its elevation and penetration. For what would there be to rise up from and exercise his power over? And in?
Do you have a problem with student-quality paints, though?
Like many postmodernist novels, Snow Crash has a chaotic structure that might confuse readers unfamiliar with the genre. It contains many references to history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, geography and philosophy. Set in a world with a political-economic system that has been radically transformed, the novel examines religion along with its social importance, perception of reality versus virtual reality, and the violent and physical nature of humanity. The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976).Stephenson explained the title of the novel in his 1999 essay In the Beginning...was the Command Line as his term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer. About the Macintosh, Stephenson wrote that "when the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set — a 'snow crash.'Stereotypically, high-level languages make complex programming simpler, while low-level languages tend to produce more efficient code. In a high-level language, complex elements can be broken up into simpler, though still fairly complex, elements for which the language provides abstractions, keeping programmers from having to "reinvent the wheel." Social theorists of the Frankfurt School in Weimar Germany like Theodor Adorno had also observed the new phenomenon of mass culture and commented on its new manipulative power, when the rise of the Nazis drove them out of the country around 1930 (many of them became connected with the Institute for Social Research in the United States). The Nazis themselves were no strangers to the idea of influencing political attitudes and re-defining personal relationships. The Nazi propaganda machine under Joseph Goebbels was a synchronized, sophisticated and effective tool for creating public opinion.Today the triumph of this type of social personality is complete. If one applies the outer-direction criteria to everyday actors as portrayed in modern culture, for example, Death of a Salesman or How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, or the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, the other-directed person is easy to identify.
Thus, as you move along the spectrum, it becomes more difficult to distinguish the data from the algorithm. Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao, counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe. For this would only cause resistance. Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed. Lean years follow in the wake of war. Flashing rings on their fingers to inspire respect, they traveled up and down the vast plantations of the South. They would pick out a wretched black and offer him freedom. They would tell him that if he ran away from his master and allowed them to sell him, he would receive a portion of the money paid for him, and they would then help him escape again, this second time sending him to a free state. Money and freedom, the jingle of silver dollars together with his liberty - what greater temptation could they offer him? The slave became emboldened for his first escape.
Ow! Hermeneutic me some more!
Was Schnabel Grunge?(Disco Remix)
Seurat was not a struggling or impoverished artist who could not afford medical care. At a time when the average industrial worker was paid 150 francs a month, Seurat received a monthly allowance of 400 francs. He wore expensive top hats and black suits, which led Edgar Degas to dub him "le Notaire" (the Notary). As his power grew, he appears to have become mentally unstable. He increasingly ordered the deaths of his men for no apparent reason. A world where you must work or be discarded. Madeleine herself died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 35. Not much later, diphtheria was to touch and shape the life of another great artist. Picasso's 8-year-old sister died of the disease. While she was sick, Picasso vowed that if she survived, he would give up art. The relief he felt upon her death for not having to keep his promise left him with lifelong guilt. He organized his society for warfare and developed an effective style of fighting that involved the use of short stabbing spears.
Van Gogh described Degas as a notary as well.
i'd say grunge was late (post) modern in the sense that the cast off detritus of mainstream modern life and radio was available at thrift stores and record bins everywhere. Indeed when parents and children wanted to know how to dress their kids grunge they were in essence asking for lessons in thrift store shopping - a skill any poor but knowledgeable (Woolrich!) individual or "grunge" musician (Casio!) might pick up through peer pressure and personal idiosyncracy (Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House).Well before well known artists started detourning thrift store paintings in bulk, there were plenty of collectors of everything from paintings to coffee cups. I find it ironic that Jeff Koons made it ok for the rich to "thrift shop" as it were, or is. This trend seems to be in full bloom (still!), wile or because most of the best thrift shopping has gone e-bay.I recently saw an excellent e-bay collection (all of a set) and was impressed with the rigour.Grunge was not Glam. Remember, disco still sucked, both as an expression of class (Disco had not and to my knowledge never hit the fabled thrift stores of Burien)People were doing german expressionism in schools around 1988 (or earlier) on, roughly when Nirvana and Pearl Jam were on their ascendancy.You don't have to know how to draw to achieve something roughly resembling an expressionist work of art - that is even a naive student could hammer away at a canvas and make a picture. That's what Kurt Kobain did, and thats the kind of work you find in thrift stores.I think most people agree that Julian schabel is not a good painter, that he doesn;t try to be, but that ultimately he is not grunge because his work, while referencing german expressionism, is not concerned with the kind of abjection spawned in the appliance section of the local Salvation Army.
Actually I dont recall much expressionist art in thrift stores, and I do remember a lot of stuff with wide collars and weird dry clean only fabric - so I guess I am talking out of my ass. When you go into a thrift store (or Chelsea) sometimes it's best to go with blinders on.
I read a letter Van gogh wrote shortly before he was assassinated. In the letter he was raving incoherently about local color - something about how the background reflected on the subject and he should very much like to have some grey and brown cloth as a backdrop. Fucking crazy!His allowance was only 150 francs or whatever. He spent it on drugs, hookers and Holbein paint.
Van Gogh could be colorful, by picture or word. And he may have been crazy but he was no fool. He could see how Pointillism missed the point and culture codes schooled the retina well before light frequencies were sorted by nerve endings. You could read a lot of his late work as a demolition of Seurat. But if the color particles are never big enough, close enough, long enough, for a first impression, on the other hand le motif he cannot surrender verr much to the moment without losing identity, either. Alors! So we ‘experience’ the thing remade up to a point, even when point is stretched to a line and the line is drawn at volume, where volume needs projection or perspective with no fixed vanishing point or angle always available. Merde!Expressionism soon has trouble holding onto even tribal affiliations there. But let’s face the music.I like the equation between grunge – feedback, distortion – and atmosphere to painting, even at its most molecular. I thought of Schnabel’s plates as doing something similar, spreading out the surface, slowing down the picture. But strictly, he’s a bit early for grunge – closer to punk – which I think is quite different. Punk definitely is like Expressionism, in that it’s after deliberate simplification, emphatic recklessness. The Schnab’s stuff is slower – wall of feedback (Dust Devils, anyone?) as opposed to Ramones’ urgency. But without the ‘grunge’ surface, his stuff definitely looks poor. He’s probably no less skillful than say Dubuffet (also big on surface action), but you never get the feeling that Dubuffet is just inept.The thrift shop thing is different again. There was this dress code side to grunge, but that just subverts or blurs fashion the way that grunge spreads the melody – a close S/N ratio. But thrift store/junk sale paintings as you note, are different. You do occasionally (very) see some fantastic/hilarious paintings in thrift shops – as you do in high school art exhibitions – like a dentist hitting a nerve without knowing – but you actually need a pretty refined sensibility to pick them up. I can’t imagine anyone doing it to much profit other than painters. If everyone thinks they can pick up cool paintings at thrift shops, the return diminishes double quick.
"You could read a lot of his late work as a demolition of Seurat."Yes, yellow means death. I looked at the Barnes Collection - maybe I'm hallucinating but the shadow of the paint strokes creates volumes - but also GREY or local colored shadows - and neutralized grey makes the colors pop. It amounts to a sort of grey demi-cloisonee, and that makes the glitter golder over all.optical illusion is important I suppose.Julian Schabel is the Soul Asylum or Pearl Jam of Grunge - a big act but not really loud and fast enough to be Grunge.Faux sentimentality or arch conceptualism without revelation or catharsis (what truly high art is sentimental?) That's why Jules is better as a filmaker tugging the velvet wings off of lowbrow drama about glam subjects. Not that I demand heart and soul, just that I give as much as I get.Sonic Youth Put Raymond Pettibon, Richter, Mike Kelley and so on and so forth on their album covers. They are nuts if you ask me. I'd design my own, because what If I put Richter on my album and then later we became frienemies? Fuck that, keep it in the family. Incest is best.
In our age of "values" voters and globally distributed christian films, viewers are primed to see the diagonal fixture immediately for "what it is"-an industrial metaphor for the burden of the cross.shitmy apple pie is burning in the oven
what a sad person you are moralizing, i never did understand coreleone, Godfather had his own code, could have made bank legally instead he had to kill just to breathe like a shark swimming in crime, I got no time for the prime time, just trying to make it ryme, sort of, never got far but i couldve been somebody - a contender or a money lender, these are the obverse sides of the coin, smoke weed or get cancer, I'm a dancer - you know death and the maiden like iron, metallic or a band around your chest, a brand at best, signifying nothing or other - your mother, Im not a moral animal, I feel empathy but I am not intot he show or the faux, navel gazing when Im blazin but not shocked, dont taze me bro! some people call me the space cowboy, I round up the dogies like bock choi, border collie to the hoi polloi, some people call me the gangster of love, looking up at the stars where the cars get parked, in the dark, headlights lighting the dog, more as a bite than a bark, more kite than a cart, you know I need a head start, even when its jsut a go cart I need police liek lies need fleas, some people call me maurice
And Thurston being such a keen collagist as well.What truly high art is sentimental?How about all those baroque ceilings by Tiepolo et al?
I really like the comment about a dentist hitting a nerve without knowing Cap. I had a intro painting student that had an uncanny intuition with paint but absolutely no eye for drawing. He was taking the class as an elective, and as in many introductory classes, we covered basic blocking in etc. It was almost like this guy could not see at all or had some kind of shape disability. he was very nice and intelligent, but there was no understanding of perspective, value, shape relationships or scale. I patiently worked with him on measuring and he was very attentive. He would work the whole period with immense concentration. At the end of any session his support would have a completely flattened and distorted version of what he was looking at. However, the use of the paint was fantastic for anyone. Subtle edges, washes to impasto, strange greys that spoke to each other, and an overall sense of real intent. it was neat and he got a pretty good grade because in so many nameable ways his paintings were ahead of the rest of the class. I think he is finishing up his electronic arts degree this year... I think the class was really hard for him because his work looked so much less recognizable in a group crit, and I think his classmates had a hard time understanding what i saw.
speaking of musicians making drawings/paintings.. "You have to paint abstract after you've been seeing Bill de Kooning" - Sir Paul McCartney Paul credits the artist Willem de Kooning with being one of his greatest influences, as well as being a family friend. They met at the end of the seventies when de Kooning was a client of Linda's father's law firm.Linda and Paul frequently visited the artist in his studio and Paul often became so fired up by the visits that he would go to the paint shop on the way home and buy all the same paints and canvases as de Kooning, or 'Bill' as he affectionately refers to him.(Taken from the walker art center page on a paul mccartney show)pretty funny but the paintings are only marginally awful
Yeah I’ve seen some of McCartney’s efforts in repro and they just look so art school or worse you realize he has no shame. This is all about indulgence for the once beautiful and still famous. It’s the same with his awful symphonies. The same goes for David (“Oh I can paint like Erich Heckel!”) Bowie.If Macca had really bothered to look at DeK’s stuff, instead of just schmoozing, he’d have realized you don’t ‘have to paint abstract’ at all. At a certain point in all of DeK’s stuff he is definitely following figurative cues.Actually I think we covered Star Art in an earlier post on Don Van Vliet – for any readers who have just joined us.Teaching the young and untalented is a real education - for the teacher. But I found I didn’t know what to do with the humor – it’s so hard to explain some stuff. Even to myself! You certainly have to stretch a lot of categories to ‘stay even vaguely positive’ – and that stays with you. But I also resented getting all the dud students just so someone else’s classes could look good – but that’s careerist political shit that’s always in there as well.
i was always thinkinYesterday I was going to post : "Julian schnabel isnt grunge cuz he's not abject" but I didnt. You guys are windy aintcha?I like what yr doing with the cut ups. Can you fit this one in? "Sexual objectification is characteristically human and indistinguishable from the art impulse." Camille Paglia
oh yea and i was going to say that JS is just a slob. i love slobs tho,dint I say they are all revolutionaries?
Sailing takes wind. Was jsut comparing Bourgeoise to Puryear in the sense that the viewer (human scale) is always important. I remember reading how say a six foot painting is obviously a person, in some sense. To exclude the idea of a viewer is of course ideal and pure and true. But to construct a viewer as bourgoise does, is interesting because it highlights her own particular pathology, just as McCartney does his.That Bourgeiose rather tediously hammers home the point over and over again to great acclaim in some circles is not only awesome but somewhat frightening, like a shizophrenic parent or a hydroencephalitic adult.Fortunately her lazer beams are not pointed at me, too deep in the shell hole. More human than human. Thats my abjection. 2:46wait for it.
you know these stylists just troll youtube and if u think bono picks his own sunglasses u are niave. if the stylist doesnt, ali does.scale-viewer-etc. Bourgeoise is always parent/child. That's classic. I like to get the viewer lost in the experience--that 's what I try for.I think "Human After All" is the new thing. But, did you see the new directors cut?
Kids may find scat tracking especially appealing. After all, when else are they going to be allowed to talk about poop? Deer scat tends to be small and oblong; fox scat is tubular and tapered, a cross between cat and dog droppings. Rabbits and hares produce small, round pellets. Bowman notes, though, that scat will vary significantly, depending on the animal's food source.The first, is that dialogue is minimalistic. "The unspoken comes into sharp focus" when Charles tries to embrace her before the ball, and she tells him he is wrinkling her dress. Does anyone want to share some other instances from Part I of subtle expressions, body language, and/or verbally passive aggressive ways in which Emma displays her contempt for Charles? He was himself, bourgeois, and by living among the people he acquired an innate ability to immitate the dialectical patterns and punctuation of the speech he grew up surrounded with. A few years ago, scientists found a biological explanation for this phenomenon: specialized brain cells called mirror neurons. There are as many forms of "attention" as there might be methods of attracting it; What, in other words, is the precise quality of the attention a novel asks of us? Culler connects the idea of stupefaction with Flaubert's notion of the experience of "reverie" and the incomprehensible as the goal of art.
zipthwung said... “Yes, he’s a replicant. He was always a replicant.”30/9/07 9:16 AM zipthwung said... reflections that cause acoustic interference and standing waves, and those are what affect the level of low frequencies produced in a room. When the reflections are reduced by applying bass traps, the frequency response within the room improves. And if all reflections could be removed, the response would be exactly as flat as if the walls did not exist at all.30/9/07 8:55 PM
Analysis: Why Brands Should Skip the "Conversation" on YouTubeanyone in Miami?
I bet the conversation at ABMB is of a very high caliber.Most people on YouTube who comment seriously use video, from waht I;ve noticed. The most effective viral branding campaigns invite this sort of interaction over text, which does indeed tend towards the purile, juvenile and redundant...the vlogging community is highly decentralized and exhibits a core/periphery structure, indicating that the group consists of a core group of active participants and a peripheral group of significantly less active participants. In addition, the results indicate that the characteristics of the vlogging community are similar to text blogging in a number of ways, including the community’s highly interactive and social nature. However, results also indicate that the rich nature of the communication afforded by the video medium allows for a more personal, intimate, and empathetic interaction. Further, the low barrier to entry enabled by inexpensive tools and web distribution is an importantmotivational factor for vloggers.
NADAlinks to art miami and shit
vlogging, clearing forests as cap once mentioned under a previous avatar. For any spiritual concerns regarding video and consciousness refer to the now freely downloadable text from Gene Youngblood, if you don't have it already... color plates and all!Expanded Cinema
More high calibre chit chat -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRDT5wxcpHk
Truth at 24 frames a second huh?SO if you are not seriously funded you are not taken seriously, as in art knowledge cannot be manufactured without the alchemical catalyst of money.Ok, proceed to the next slide at the beep.
Europe is the head if the continents represent parts of the body. It is prone to migraine. Asia is the hands. America the shoulders, sore shoulders. It wasn't always this way. But for now it is. 29.97fpsLight is god. Light is painting, film, your computer screen, the sun, it's all the same. Diversions make it more interesting. Painting means "thinking while looking". In that case, staring at cheerleaders is an art for many. Life models just make it more sombre, but it's all there the same. DIvert, SPlit, BReak, DIvide, SOrt, FIle, DIfferentiate, FRacture, CAtegorize, DIstinctionthe elements of wo(man)kind. or somesing like zis.
food is paint.pixels are paint. history is paint. historic history is history.its over. phew!
dontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdontdont mais je pense que oui
The European Graduate School for Rich and Stupid Americans is now accepting submissions for Spring 08.Sergeant Schultz’s keynote address will cover the camps, invasions, press passes, and Shock & Awe – the hermeneutics of pre-emptive public works and extreme rendition. Guest speakers for the semester will include Bruno Latour and Thierry Henri, doing their famous ‘Walkin’ The Dog’ routine.
CONSTRUCTIVE: Circle around circle negative point against the unpoint positivve; blue vlog yellow; sign you. Crossing the Triangle. I's clamoring against Chao-unform. JUST TAKE: 20-30% watered down cubism; dye it with Van Gogh and boil it all for 10 minutes in an easy to digest, thrown-out worldview. Shake the whole thing carefully around an Ingres and while you're doing that read Vanity Fair.
So you've been looking at Piers Secunda as well?
so beautiful i could cry
Still loving Seurat.
For some time now, a large majority of you have been crying out for answers. We recognize that many of you have spent a significant amount of your time in our game worlds. It is this very reason for which we fought with great resolve. I have done everything within my power to fight for Space Cowboy, and I do not possess a single regret regarding my work here. Unfortunately no compromise was able to be reached, and no transfer could be agreed upon.
Gaff's 115 Dream
Gene Youngblood - Never thought I'd hear that name again.
I thought Lev Manovich's "The Medium is the Massage" really wet's your appetite for ecological thinking. "Tight-lipped"? I'm thinking it might mean "ventriloquist." I'm not very collaborative. I like being alone. Working alone. I hate actresses. I don't like having to ask permission. A green light is not something I'd be happy waiting for. I remember one woman collector asking me who "anon." was. She was surprised she didn't know him or her, because they seemed to be listed in a lot of collections. The best thing about being collected is getting money. The Road Warrior. First Blood. Alien. Drugstore Cowboy. The Terminator. Did Blade Runner come out in the '80s? If it did, I liked that one--the original, not the director's cut. Do androids dream of electric sheep? Virtual reality. Cloning. Sampling. Substitutes. Surrogates. Stand-ins. It's either here or right around the corner. I'm not sure what "digital theory" is. I don't know who Gene Youngblood is. I never read Baudrillard. I read Christian Metz. I read Truman Capote. When my little girl falls on the pavement and her teeth go through her lower lip and I have to take her to the hospital and watch her get stitches, I don't really think about "almost real" or "really real." I don't think about what's real anymore. My response was kind of schizophrenic: I made a personal attempt to reconcile the two positions, merging the aesthetics of photographic truth and photographic lie. Today, the contested question of photography's truthfulness has lost its urgency. Photographers use conventions from both. traditions to construct their own subjective approaches to the medium.
A prisoner is waiting in line at the death camp. He finally reaches the front of the line and Mengle is there, pointing people to the right or the left. He sees the prisoner and pauses, it has been a long day. The prisoner says:"Why don't you take a picture so it will last longer?"
Whos got the conch?Attention all shoppersIt's Cancellation DayYes the Big AdiosIs just a few hours awayIt's last callTo do your shoppingAt the last mallYou'll need the tools for survivalAnd the medicine for the bluesThe sweet treats and surprisesFor the little buckaroosIt's last callTo do your shoppingAt the last mallWe've got a sweetheart Sunset SpecialAnd all of the standard stuff'Cause in the morning-that gospel morningYou'll have to do for yourself when the going gets toughRoll your cart back up the aisleKiss the checkout girls goodbyeRide the ramp to the freewayBeneath the blood orange skyIt's last callTo do your shoppingAt the last mall
Christian MetzNever thought I'd hear that name again either.
Primarily, most scholars follow the crowd in the academic world just as most women follow fashions. To buck the tide means social and professional ostracism. The same is true of the mass media. Most of us have had the experience, either as parents or youngsters, of trying to discover the "hidden picture' within another picture in a children's magazine. Usually you are shown a landscape with trees, bushes, flowers and other bits of nature. The caption reads something like this: "Concealed somewhere in this picture is a donkey pulling a cart with a boy in it. Millions of Americans are concerned and frustrated over mishappenings in our nation. They feel that something is wrong, drastically wrong, but because of the picture painters they can't quite put their fingers on it. Most intellectuals, pseudo and otherwise, deal with the conspiratorial theory of history simply by ignoring it. They never attempt to refute the evidence. It can't be refuted. "Intellectuals" are fond of mouthing cliches like "The conspiracy theory is often tempting. However, it is overly simplistic." "Ah, you right wingers," they say, "rustling every bush, kicking over every rock, looking for imaginary boogeymen." Everyone knows that Adolph Hitler existed. No one disputes that.
There appeared almost a terror, a sense of loss, at an inability to answer the query, “what is this film about?” as there was terror at the posing of this kind of question. What if it could not be possessed? What if it had no meaning?
in sand and shit at art aositions beyond the concrete aaves exhibit or something, iggi poP and the fuckin stooges conitnued the counte/rclulture bibe one night with a lifely conceart for several handred fans or something.who would've thinkedso many fuckinart basel poeple would be able to sang alung to So messed up I want you hereIn my room I want you hereNow we're gonna be Face-to-faceAnd I'll lay right down In my favorite placeAnd now I wanna be your dogNow I wanna be your dogNow I wanna be your dogWell c'monNow I'm ready to close my eyesAnd now I'm ready to close my mindAnd now I'm ready to feel your handAnd lose my heart on the burning sandsAnd now I wanna be your dogAnd now I wenna be your dogNow I wanna be your dogWell c'mon and shitthe high/laght of the showw came when uggy Pop invated peoples onstage too fuckin dunce with ham during no Fun. A artistic statement and shit emndeed
missed iggy but enjoyed Basel, - is this fair an extension of museums or is it the other way around?
academic = academyacademy = defineddefinitive = pastundefined = present +the academy cant really touch it like they want to, the now thing. they can try, sometimes it works. but usually it comes from the left field. pillars can't house what the glass can't case.
hmmmmmy grad school Modern Art History Profwas from Montreal and she loved Philip Gustonand would pontificate, sound off if you willoften about the boldness and self inventionhe made through painting ... reinventing himself like Madonna something pop stars celebrities politiciansdo regularly now she would point out. YES.I did not go to college for Art but somethingelse entirely .... so this no nothing about artMEwas very captivated by this painters imagesand methods ... but either her French accent or some French biasThe Art History Prof would pronounce his nameFrench as in"Fee-leep Goo_stohn"until someone corrected me just this year.Thanks JefHow many times I went to a museum and pointedout the "Fee_leep Goo-stohn" to all the hot chicksI hang out with I mean want to hang out with memakes it very difficult to laugh ...I like Art.What is general to allis specific to no one.
iggys cool but he cant tuch r kelly
By the time the movie is over, the rescue site has literally become a carnival, with rides and entertainment.
When people say something's academic, they usually mean it's a waste of time.
ok.. well neither museums., or the market are "academic" as a rule -what i was hinting at is mechanism. take Basels "Art Kabinett" - any first hand impressions from how the market in 1:1 relations with the concept space came off? or what this could 4shadow? pls. note which project and where - and how it made you "feel"
"so:whatre you gona do now is the question,in't it the only question he have. all otherquestions are suporting pluyers to that one ask yurself if you paid the rant last monthfuckin ask yaurself if you should leave your husbandor someething, ask yourself if you're in the mood for pista,and shit nbutt you bail it down you luft wiht/ What now" this day the question is purticularly hurd. parhaps excruciuting is a better word.here wun't be other days for doing otherfuckin things. this, as they sayis it and something. whatever you do you better choose wisely, and shitand you butter do it right.or wrong. it really don't mutter in thegrund; schame fuckinof things.cause prety soon thare will be no shit grund schame of fuckinthings and shit.
fuCKIN biG tumPorRery MUeZeum and stufF
Think of yourself as a writer and not god. Don't compare yourself to people with different backgrounds. You are not them, and when you think about it, wouldn't want to be them, would you? would you trade your life and experiences for those of these people? I don't think so. If you want absolute certainty, go into televangelism. You are a writer. Send your imagined critics to the Bahamas. Put your critics on a plane and start serving cocktails immediately; you can write while they're drunk, distracted, and intriguing to sleep with each other. Do free writings so you can get used to writing that you're not invested in. Every word doesn't have to count. Get comfortable with words that don't. The desire for eternal words, eternal certainty, lack of change--it's a death wish.
Warm leatherette,See the breaking glass,Beneath the underpass.Warm leatherette,Feel the crushing steel,Feel the steering wheel.Warm leatherette melts,On your burning flesh,You can see your reflection,On the luminescent dash.Warm leatherette,A tear of petrol,Is in your eye,The hand brake,Penetrates your thigh.A tear of petrol,Is in your eye,Quick lets make love,Before we die.On warm leatherette,Join the carcrash set.
“Certain things stimulate chimps when they paint, just like with us,” he said. “With them it’s often food, or each other. Which is like us, too, I guess.” “Some teachers say, ‘How do you know it’s art?’ I guess. But what makes a urinal or Campbell’s soup cans art?” he went on. “I guess if you’re expressing yourself on canvas, that’s art.” Ms. Allen said a pilot had offered to take her chimps up in his plane; he suggested that it might help their art, I guess. “Monkey painting is a total joke, I guess” said Damien Roman, a sales representative at the Vered Gallery in East Hampton. “It’s a disservice to artists who’ve, I guess, trained and studied for years to call it art when monkeys splash paint, I guess, on a canvas, even if it happens to resemble something and stuff.” The artist John Alexander, who paints in nearby Amagansett, expressed support for Ms. Allen’s sanctuary but found it difficult to weigh in on the chimp-art issue.“If it’s beautiful and touches people in a magical way, I guess that’s art,” he said. “But I guess beauty alone doesn’t necessarily make art. Neither does self-expression; I guess it has to operate on more than one level. When a bird does its mating call, is that music?” I guess. “There are so many chimps that people have hidden in their garages and their attics, i guess” Ms. Hess said. “They need sanctuary, and a lot of stimulation — like art I guess.”
"bro, One line came out, 'It's like picking stars out of a coffin," ' he said. "I don't know what I said brah, but I didn't say that. Dude, It sounded so weird that I kept it."The hospital is an extraordinary place dude - it looks like an antonioni set, man ...it totally looks like the moon out there [on the beach] so we stuck him in the middle of the image brah. He can totally breakdance dude. Bro, If you stay still that long it totally has an effect on you. I could never do that bro. He had a gnarley patch over one eye dude. This man is extremely gnarley - very tough. dude, he went in the diving bell also. Dude, I totally resisted making this movie. Brah, he had prostate cancer..never been sick in his life but he was very young inside of his body. Sculpting in time life contains death art unlike life does not contain death, bro. I never thought I was going to be a movie director dude. I have been a painter since I was a child and I am a painter. That;s my day job brah! I would paint. If I were god. You can paint by yourself, god dude! - because without the freedom I have because I'm a painter I could never have done this, man. The thing about painting is you don't have to be good or bad when you are doing it, brah. If god came to you and asked you to choose between painting and directiong, which would you choose, bro?Brah, I'd totally ask him who gave him the right to ask me that question.I paint outside. Summer is synonymous with life and painting is synonymous with summer, brah.I could have ninety summers, total freedom bro!
if seurat were alive today he'd be a vj in some retro throwback. he'd be obsessed with vinyl and probably listen to marnie stern. it'd be her on the stage in this drawing, he'd always practice at drawing guitar pedals with his eraser.
i mean bro, I would paint, Its sort of a trick question, dude, either or. Thats totally a straw dog or something bro. There was this painting I was thinking about that had this kid of surfer in the curl, shredding a gnarley tube, you know? Not like Pettibons, I was doing waves long before him and Longo, but its not aobut the wave, good or bad bro, its about chillin' with a brewski brah! If I take two vacations every year, dude, to places where its summer, then I like double my summers, bro! Dude that is killer.
when we preach to the converted, the feedback signal produces an axial emulation, but whereas in the past it was across the coffee table first, now it echoes right around the city and the earthball and comes back to the speaker in the voice of another, and with a few words altered, the meaning has changed. the greatest slip is knowing and the cycle is chained to a paradox, wanting things to complete but never be completed. to each elder the whole thing must appear to periodically reset, all the teachers retire, and all the students come to learn it all again. the lineage gathering it's things to move out like a dumped ex lover. when toward us the wall does not come, silent and still, we find a way to adorn failure with the trope of sisyphus..
Albert Camus, in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus, sees Sisyphus as personifying the absurdity of human life, and concludes "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" as "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
We breakin egg through these days GodYouknowhatI'msayin? We got the fuckin wayWe got the medicine for yo' sicknessOut here, ya knowhatImean?I was telling Shorty like --Yo Shorty, you don't even gotta go to summer schoolPick up the Wu-Tang double CDAnd you'll get all the education you need this yearYouknowhatImean?(Their poisoned minds can't comprehend this shit)Word man, it's Wu-Tang Forever GodNiggaz can't fuck with these lyrics GodYouknowhatI'msayin? Knahmean?(Oh hell no, none of this shit)C'mon man -- beats, lyrics man, y'all niggaz(Niggaz can't even understand half this shit)Nah (man, no)I think niggaz ain't gonna figure it out til the year Two-G(Wax niggaz ass for free or fee) WordYo, you know what? The next Wu-Tang album ain't evencomin out until Two ThousandYaknowhatImean? That's just gonna come back with a cometYou hear, we gonna bring a comet(Check for that shit in the millenium)YouknowhatImean? So, yo, y'all niggaz man(Be the ressurection) The Gods is here manBorn Gods is here(Born God)
Think about it. If someone were to come to you and say, "I am God!", wouldn't you want proof? Yes, you would. Of course you would. And you would not want goofy proof. You would not accept something that looks like a faith healer's show at a tent revival, and you would not accept something that looks like a magic trick. You want real, solid proof. You want any person who claims to be God to do something that is clearly impossible, like picking up a skyscraper, levitating it through the air and settling it into the middle of Central Park.
More dots than substance by today's standards. The technique is commonly practiced in basic art courses and its merit lies mainly in the context of the Impressionist movement; it had not been seen before and was the rock star of its time. Anatomically, no person with those proportions would be standing upright, ie., Barbie. Overall, I'm unimpressed and unmoved.
Fo sho, Nuttin' stays da same; no triumph be the eternity, he done warns; his theory, fo sho, fails to take into considuh-ration Herodotus' own followup, wherein some uh deese heah "marmots" are said tuh chase and devour duh full-grown camels, howevah this could be some kindah example of a tale told to keep uthas from seekin' dis relatively easy tah access source of dis "gold dust" . But Persia’s heritage of tyranny — untempered by reflection — means that its huge army and empire composed of scores of differing cultures are never really bound together by anything but fear. Tyranny done got its frailties.
after his puinting was rajucted by fuckin the poris Saloon seurat turned and away and shit from such establishments or something unstead allying hif with the indapendent artists of puris.a lttle man walked up and fuckindown he fund a eating place in town he looked the munu through and through too see whut fifteen cents could doOne meatball, one meatball,he culdn't bought but one meatballor something e told the waiter near at hand the simple dunner he had planned.The guests were startledand shit one and all and stuff to hear that waiter odly call one meatbell, one meatbull,;this here gent wants one meatball."The little man felt fuckin ill at ease,Said Some bread, son, if you please."The waiter hollered down the halland shit Ya gets no bread with one meatball! !one meatball, one meatball,Ya gets no ;bread with one meatball!"and stuff scientifuc beckground and anfluences' Seurat's fuckinmelding of science and emotionand shitthe ;crowning fuckinachievemunt
I tink duh sex unt technology questions waised by Cwash awe intewesting to apply to electwonic music. A lot of pipple tink of techno music as cold, unsexy, which I dunt, at all. Some is cwap, of cose, but I tink good electwonic music is vewy expwessive -- tho not by using wock language, wock dynamics. U dunt physicwy hit duh instwument, so pipple might not tink dat it's physical. But I dunt tink you can equate duh sexiness of a twack with how hawd you hit duh dwum. Dare's emotion expwessed in gud electwonic music dat can be vewy attwwactive, ewotic. duhduhduhduhduh
fuckinWithout the gravyOne meatballOr nothing at allOne meatballWithout the gravyOne meatballOr nothing at allOh fairest bulletOf the bullet raceHow sweet thou artAnd what a tasteOh my sweet lardI see you make hasteYour fists are looking fullAnd there's blood on your faceWhere's the breadDown the hallYou get no bread with one meatballWe belong togetherLike bacon and hamWe belong togetherLike faking and shamOld daddy wolfHe does the cuttingPut a weasel in the coopThat devil left nothingBreak the breadBicker and brawlStir don't shake your highballI've wrung every dropFrom the truth that comes out of meMilked you dry on lies and dishonestyThere's a stain on the shrineA nail for each crimeDown home deliciousHoned down viciousVultures lying in wait with the guiltBy a hot wet river laden with siltThere's many a slipBetween cup and lipDown in the pig ironWith the shaven ravenDragged kicking and screaming toldYou ain't worth savingThe light of this lifeIs a stanley knifeI've bled myself dryI'm my own parasiteWhere's the breadDown the hallYou get no bread with one meatballMy heroine is heartbreakA two-timing liarShe made me sweat fuel for my funeral pyreA foul belle she's foul mouthedFingered on the triggerTrigger on the lipWhere's the breadDown the hallYou get no bread with one meatballIf you get to heaven before I doMake a little holeAnd pull me throughand shit
Clinton Road one Saturday nightTowin on a cheeba I was feelin alrightThen my homie-homie called me on the phoneHis name is Chief Keith, but we call him BoneTold me 'bout this party on the SouthsideCopped my pistols, jumped into the rideGot at the bar, copped some flackCopped some cheeba-cheeba, it wasn't wackGot to the place, and who did I seeA sucker-ass nigga tryin to sound like mePut my pistol up against his headI said, "Sucker-ass nigga, I should shoot you dead"A thought ran across my educated mindSaid, man, Schoolly D ain't doin no timeGrabbed the microphone and I started to talkSucker-ass nigga, man, he started to walkPSK, we're makin that greenPeople always say, "What the hell does that mean?"P for the people who can't understandHow one homeboy became a manS for the way we scream and shoutOne by one I'm knockin you outK for the way my DJ kuttinOther MC's, man, they ain't sayin nothinRockin on to the brink of dawnI think, Code Money, yo time is onAnds shit
I hear the dog is barking tonightThe first foot forward is the rightThe blood in the sands and the broken crutchThe blood on my hands whose magic touch?Yeah, yeah my, my, my, -gasoline is burningYeah, yeah, my, my, my,Listen to the mother cryYeah, yeah, my, my, my - gasoline is burningYeah, yeah, my, my, my, - listen to the mother cryBe-bop-a-lulaThat's our gravy trainTo the place where desperation reignsBe-bop-a-lulaDeliver me from evilFor slime is this kingdomThe incubus waiting to flyI've been ground down honeyI've been wound round your little fingerI hear the dog is fighting tonightThe first fist forward is the rightI see the would of lies through Judas' eyesMy life in your hands, your knife in my glandsBe-bop-a-lulaThat's my gravy trainTo the place where desperation reignsBe-bop-a-lulaBreak the daisy chainThe is the place where Desperation rainsDownDownDownDown
I met a caribbean man at an afternoon bar near the big lane market in london some time back, who told me he was god. he lifted his shirt and he had no belly button. this was within 15 seconds of meeting him. i looked twice and stared and he saw something outside and followed it. i stayed seated, and sipped my irish coffee. he had a very far away look in his eye and his eyes were extremely large and white. electronic music is for other times when the standards are playing thin. there's a netlabel called www.thinner.cc where you can download the entire catalogue of artists work as creative commons license, in high quality. some great music, top presentation. the sister label is www.autoplate.cc, for the ambient side. fantastic free labels from germany. hours of enjoyment. my ipod is crammed with the entire catalogue of many netlabels and podcasts. www.myspace.com/arepeoplereal is a n interesting place to find fresh cuts. JUSTOFFERINGwebthing
Any Extreme Noise Terror?
downloadable ENT eh? would've thought you were a subtler type listener, but try spook core for albums...www.myspace.com/spookcoremusic
We is all still bumpin to glitch down on this farm.
The samples are not used directly however, they are split in small pieces of around 1 to 50 ms (milliseconds) in length, or the synthesized sounds are very short. A dead end void, puerile existenceKilling time, ambitions now just a vacant urge. These small pieces are called grains. Multiple grains may be layered on top of each other all playing at different speed, phase and volume. Lost aspirationsBuried in the past fast sinking in the the existence of mind scenes still breed inside The result is no single tone, but a soundscape, often a cloud, that is subject to manipulation in a way unlike any natural sound and also unlike the sounds produced by most other synthesis techniques. By varying the waveform, envelope, duration, spatial position, and density of the grains many different sounds can be produced. The gimmick that when warm water is added to the dry kibble, a brown gravy forms when mixed with the kibble's powder coating. The gravy supposedly makes the food more palatable for the dog.The result is usable as music, sound effects or as raw material for further processing by other synthesis or DSP effects. The range of effects that can be produced include amplitude modulation, time stretching, stereo or multichannel scattering, random reordering, disintegration and morphing.
And by the way: The latest instance of subliminal advertising, an NYC billboard for A&E’s Paranormal State uses technology that transmits an “audio spotlight” from a rooftop speaker that makes passersby feel like they are hearing voices in their heads.
It just seemed like it was me, the gunman and God. My hands weren’t even shaking. I said, ‘Holy Spirit, please be with me, God was with me, He never left my side - The shots were so loud, I thought he was inside. The group members approach the target person as if they were their best friend. Whatever the person says is considered remarkable and interesting. I identified myself and engaged him and took him down, down, down, down, said Assam, who described feeling weak as she approached him because she’d been fasting for three days. Their attention and the preaching within the group may well be about love, but it is now on a diet, and they are taught that affection is a just reward for correct behavior. And that land that I live in has God on its side.
I hate it when they do this--seems so tacky.
Too much invested in the artist. "They discovered Mr. Blake’s labeled folders in Adobe Photoshop, the graphics-editing software. Each folder contained sequential picture files with titles. But within each dense file were numerous layers of the artist’s “moving painting” imagery, their intended direction and flow indecipherable."From this we may infer that Jeremy Blake, like many artists, was an absent minded professor type, and that his process was disorganized and fragmented, mirroring perhaps a mind on the brink or a mad-man genius working without a story board or script, intuitively and on the edge - where rationality cannily meets the non-rational.A disorganized mind and work-flow would make the work much harder to decipher as well as archive.The journalist Choir Sicha proposed that crack was the culprit, and given the facts, it seems likely that a shared drug induced psychosis (methamphetamine) is not beyond the pale and consistent with the symptoms. Is that what the article is hinting at?People who don't know anything about photoshop (or computers) are prone to hyperbole.A while back Roberta Smith called using Photoshop "programming," I believe unironicly. Photoshop does not have that funtionality unless you consider "actions" as a rudimentary "program" - not what RS was describing though. Maybe she was quoting the source indirectly, as many reporters do.I have no doubt that combing through Jeremy Blake's files was time consuming, but photoshop is pretty easy to deal with for a hobbyist or professional (but everything takes time - for example you might spend a week designing and tweaking a web page so making an animated movie with refined animation "S" curves could take months, even with a storyboard)No mention is made of the way the animation was created - I assume the photoshop document was imported into After Effects as I read was done in the past. Did JB do all his own animation or did he usually direct it as the idea guy?"With a deadline looming, Mr. Binstock approached a friend, David Sigal, a documentary filmmaker and videographer"Clearly the article works to create a sense that this posthumous work has value, and that the process was intriguing and valuable because it illuminates JB's process. But is Mr. Sigal qualified to make command decisions in animation in a work that apparently had no storyboard?I think this article leaves a lot to the imagination - and that smells like PR to me.This reconstruction is not the same as Editing Anne Frank's Diary to reflect a more positive outlook, or Nietzsche being made into an anti-semite. But still, one has to wonder what the work would have been.
oregon is where it's at I guess.
i think sigal was a former collaboraborator/craftsman downplayed as a technician, as usual.Some people like being session musicians.
I suppose we might just get one more post in this year. Looking back my three favorite posts for 07 have been:1) Donna Huanca2) Don Van Vliet3) Neo RauchNot because they were great shows, but because participating in the commentaries was a lot of fun. When there were two or three posts a week there was definitely more momentum.Now it’s a kind of chat-room, basically. People think yeah it’s gonna be like a kind of on-line Cedar Bar Tavern thing at first. After about 50 comments, they realize, naw, it’s more like a stoned version of Cheers.
Here's another very serious gallery, which has represented famous and now very expensive artists but do people understand that? Are new buyers unwittingly being siphoned to lesser fairs and buying what is, overall, inferior stuff? The stories can be traced back to trickster figures in Africa. You'd have to have your head in the sand to say it's not happening. It's a war of attrition. I don't think it will be as dramatic or as nasty as the previous buzz about a young painter's vernacular pronunciations of the words "corporosity" and "sagaciating. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. For those who have not read an updated version in recent years, this is a reminder of why, in the words of Fortune magazine, "PARACHUTE remains the gold standard of career guides.
Turbulence causes the formation of eddies of many different length scales. Most of the kinetic energy of the turbulent motion is contained in the large scale structures. The energy "cascades" from these large scale structures to smaller scale structures by an inertial and essentially inviscid mechanism. This process continues, creating smaller and smaller structures which produces a hierarchy of eddies. Eventually this process creates structures that are small enough that molecular diffusion becomes important and viscous dissipation of energy finally takes place. In nonscientific terms laminar flow is "smooth," while turbulent flow is "rough."
zip - hey, (hi) We're hanging out enjoying a lager (Brooklyn) and we see A) No new works up on the site and B) you're still ranting. Please continue. We love that shit.Love-Chicago
"Everyone” doesn’t appeal to everyone. No one says, "Just say all the food was good. In the present moment, artists are better off training themselves at home. The art world has gone from being a community to being an industry. Its success has signaled the dawn of the Age of Acquirers. Eighty or 90 percent of them will disappear back into the woodwork. When the student is ready, the master will appear. It’s a very opportunistic thing, and when the opportunity is gone, they’ll be gone. You can’t hope to succeed in New York unless you are a fashion victim - never be sanctimonious or dull, and be written in a distinctive, readable way. This can be exhausting. I fashion my future on films in spaceI got the electric bluesI got the electric blues
phonetic: suckseedpicked up and dropped,picked up and dropped.a bright spark, or a slow candle.or both. cap i agree with you on the discussion side of neo. on the cedar bar/sitcom thing, well, discussion moves in peaks and troughs. i'm sure pnyc might return to that commentary, somewhen. for no reason at all, i'll add that before i wrote a single word here i read every word for every work prior to that point, it took some time. initally i wrote to address concerns with painting, until somehow it became abstract and conversational, wider. i had a funny thought yesterday that if for some reason this blog were to disappear, it would do so without a trace. i'd have no knowledge whatsoever of what it was, making it dreamlike. VANISH!
Hey Webthing, did you know there was an http://expandedcinema.blogspot.com/?Don't think it's Gene though.
Mmm, seen it printed somewhere in a search but never went to it - just did. Worth a revisit now and then perhaps. Last thing i heard of gene was teaching in santa fe. When I showed expanded cinema to a good friend some years back, he reprinted an entire copy, canvas handbound for me as a thanks, so now i have this one off edition thing. one day i might actually read it all... the preface by old buckminster fuller is a classicthanks for the hedzup
Post a Comment | <urn:uuid:4f467df4-c549-4b53-8fb4-056e5507626d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://painternyc.blogspot.com/2007/11/georges-seurat.html?showComment=1196933640000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956331 | 23,348 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Economy grows larger as political issue
2008 presidential candidates, clockwise from upper left, Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards; Republicans Mitt Romney, John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
TEXT OF STORY
Bob Moon: There was obvious concern at the White House today as President Bush huddled with the Fed chief, his Treasury secretary and other top economic advisors.
Bush insisted financial markets and economy are on solid ground, but he might yet offer an economic stimulus package later this month. The president spoke of "new signs...that require diligence."
You can read that not just from an economic perspective, but a political one. We asked Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer how these growing recession fears might affect the looming presidential election.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: If there's a recession, will the populists become more popular?
Democrat John Edwards and Republican Mike Huckabee paint themselves as one of us. So, Jordan Lieberman of Campaigns and Elections magazine says they might pick up traction.
Jordan Lieberman: Two Americas and the lost middle class -absolutely that message resonates across America.
Lieberman says some Democrats will customize that message.
Lieberman: You're going to see certainly Barak Obama talk about the mortgage crisis and recession and how families are struggling.
And remember "it's the economy, stupid?"from Bill Clinton's campaign. Hillary Clinton is likely to take a page from her husband's playbook.
Huckabee is the only populist Republican so far, although some critics say that his national sales tax proposal would hurt the poor.
American University Political Science Professor James Thurber expects Mitt Romney to keep highlighting his management experience.
James Thurber: He sort of looks like a CEO. This hurts him with the common man when he goes out and says I'm going to help you get your jobs back.
Republicans John McCain and Rudy Giuliani may avoid the "R" word, but Harvard economist Robert Lawrence says whoever wins won't really steer the economy.
Robert Lawrence: Getting out of a recession depends far more on what the fed reserve does with interest rates than anything the government can do in the short term -- no matter who'd in charge.
Still, no candidate is going to be stupid enough to ignore the economy.
In Washington, I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace. | <urn:uuid:83acd3d3-da2a-4cb8-a170-ff0b13a38016> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/economy-grows-larger-political-issue | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947819 | 471 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Wed February 15, 2012
American-Born 'Linderella' Is The Pride Of China
How do you say "Linsanity" in Chinese? Lin Shuhao feng.
And how do you quantify it? Jeremy Lin has more than a million followers so far on the Chinese version of Twitter.
The legend of Lin, the Asian-American point guard for the New York Knicks whose success story draws comparisons to a fairy tale, continues to grow. On Tuesday night, he scored 27 points, including the winning shot, in the Knicks' victory over the Toronto Raptors.
Lin has been a sensation in the U.S., but he has also become a point of pride in China. Although Lin was born in America, many Chinese basketball fans are now claiming him as their own.
'His Ancestry Is Chinese'
At a gym in Shanghai this week, basketball players say they've been awed by Lin's performance in the past week and a half.
Wang Qi plays at the court regularly. He says that when Lin scored 38 points against Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers last Friday, he became a believer.
"I never imagined he could score so many points in a game against the Lakers," says Wang, who works for a local university. "He is China's pride."
It's a cold, rainy night at the court, a fourth-floor walk-up with graffiti-scrawled walls and open windows. Wang is playing half-court in a burgundy sweater and jeans.
During a break between games, Wang says he doesn't see Lin as American.
"What country is he from? He's Chinese," Wang says. "His ancestry is Chinese."
Actually, Lin grew up in California and attended Harvard. Even Lin's parents aren't from mainland China, but from the island of Taiwan, a de facto independent country that China claims nonetheless.
But Wang won't budge on his adopted basketball star.
"Although he was born in the U.S., he doesn't represent America," Wang fires back. "He represents the Chinese. His skin is the skin of the yellow people."
The reference to skin color is offensive in English, but Chinese say it in Mandarin all the time.
Yang Yi, deputy chief editor of China's most popular sports newspaper, Titan Sports, says his sports blog is loaded with comments from basketball fans who see themselves in Lin.
"They only see Lin's face, a Chinese face, and Lin Shuhao, a Chinese name, so they use this very Chinese way of thinking," Yang says. "They think: 'Why can't Lin play for the Chinese national basketball team? If he could play for China, how great would that be?' "
Comparisons To Yao Ming
Not everyone in China is consumed by the Knicks' new star. Back at the Shanghai basketball court, Li Mengyun is shooting baskets with his left hand while talking on a cellphone with his right.
When asked about Jeremy Lin, Wang replies, "I've heard of him, but I'm not very clear. Ever since Yao Ming retired, I haven't been paying as much attention to the NBA."
Yao Ming is a huge star in China, as well as the country's most successful NBA player. He retired last summer from the Houston Rockets after a series of injuries. China's millions of hard-core basketball fans were heartbroken.
Li, who sells iPhones for a living, says Yao is irreplaceable.
"Yao is very, very famous, you know. I think no Chinese player can play as well as him," Li says.
But Yang, the sports editor, says Lin could have more appeal over time. Until now, Chinese players in the NBA have been 7-foot-plus centers like Yao and Wang Zhizhi, who played for the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat.
Lin is a 6-foot-3-inch, 200-pound guard — much easier for most Chinese players to relate to.
"Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi were excellent players, but fans can hardly learn their styles, because without Yao's stature, you can't learn his way of playing," says Yang. "But Lin is someone everybody can imitate."
Yang says Jeremy Lin has tremendous marketing potential in China. The NBA is working to add Knicks games to Chinese TV and websites. And Lin's No. 17 jersey has already sold out on China's e-commerce giant, Taobao. | <urn:uuid:ce912524-db1e-493a-894f-22dfccf941bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kasu.org/post/american-born-linderella-pride-china | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980288 | 919 | 1.726563 | 2 |
I’m going to be totally honest and say that I had originally planned to fill this this article with a diatribe about mobile display advertising. I was going to criticize the misleading stat that click through rates are 15 times higher on a mobile, (50% of which occur in error I might add), especially in view of the fact that we don’t measure standard display ads based on click through rate, since it is not a valuable brand metric.
I then had a rethink. Facebook’s recent decline in fortune has happened in part because more people are accessing the web on their mobile phones. In fact 10% of media consumption now happens on a mobile device and yet only 1% of ad revenues go to mobile. A lot of optimistic pundits see this as an opportunity, in particular Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet trends. The more cynical discerning minds have criticized this belief. The Guardian has gone so far as to say that “If the industry hasn’t cracked the mobile advertising code after five years of energetic and skillful work it’s because there is no code to crack. Together, the small screen, the different attention modes, the growing concerns about privacy create an insurmountable obstacle”. We all know that mobile screens are too small for display advertising and people only spend 68 seconds on a web page, so how can you possibly ‘engage’ anyone in that time? It’s easy to become inclined to agree with the Guardian’s conclusion.
Throwing my cynical hat off, I thought it might be worth exploring how the mobile advertising riddle might be solved. After all, getting mobile to work is everyone’s problem, not just publishers; ad revenues are what fuel innovation and development in this industry whether some like to admit it or not.
Searching for solutions I recently read that the majority of Twitter’s ad revenues come from mobile. The main reason for this is that Twitter ads are native to the experience; they are not interruptive (or so small as to render them useless like mobile display ads). Native advertising is not new or clever, many brands have been creating content that is part of an experience for many years (see example of Jello in 1900 for more details). Google of course is the pioneer of native advertising online, sponsored links are (increasingly) like organic links on the search results page. For many other content discovery sites native advertising is par for the course (e.g. Foursquare’s promoted locations and Itunes promoted playlists). Are native ads the key to solving the mobile advertising riddle? Facebook spotted this trend (perhaps a little too late) and followed Twitter’s example by making their mobile ad formats posts in the newsfeed. There are still many questions surrounding the effectiveness of Facebook advertising, perhaps promoted Tweets are so easy to digest, so ‘snackable’ that they are perfect for mobile devices, unlike Facebook’s sponsored stories which are a bit too long and increasingly numerous so as to be interruptive, native or not.
Forgetting Facebook for a moment, how might other publishers capitalise on native advertising for mobile? Many “companies like Outbrain and Disqus power recommended content widgets on publisher sites like Mashable and USA Today, which enable marketers to promote their links through native ads”. This model is perfect for mobile, by making advertising part of the content discovery process and at the same time overcoming the challenges around smaller screen and attention span. There are some massive challenges for marketers of course, in many ways we lose the power of being able to buy reach, instead relying on our advertising being discovered and then enjoyed enough to be shared. This isn’t a world media planners are ready for. It also presents numerous challenges in terms of creative. Instead of banners, we have a plethora of native ad formats including posts, articles, locations, videos, all requiring a slightly different approach. Planners are already thinking about how their brands can live and breathe in different online environments, this complexity becomes ever more apparent when considering native advertising for mobile. The major challenge is measurement, being native does not necessary make you effective, display advertising will have the same challenges in terms of effectiveness whether it is native or not. We are still working out how to measure standard display correctly (by introducing new metrics like the viewable impression) and changing the formats so they have more impact. Native mobile ads will face the same challenges if not more complex ones, in terms of measurement and effectiveness that standard display ads have over the last 10 years. My colleague, David Midgley (CTO, VCCP Media) is sceptical about these emerging forms of native advertising, observing that there is a ‘distinct lack of data’ around the new models, and that transparency to the user should be a big consideration, “I just worry about a backlash from users complaining of ‘stealth’ advertising in a similar way there was one about retargeting”.
These are challenges for us all but this much I know to be true, push media does not work on a mobile device, whatever stats you throw at me. If the last five years has taught us anything about mobile, it’s that we can’t do things the old way any more. The post advertising era has arrived. It’s time to get native. | <urn:uuid:3b2b9852-0619-4f56-8aaf-3a8a794e76bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.the-makegood.com/2012/08/16/is-native-advertising-the-saviour-of-mobile-for-publishers-and-marketers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948009 | 1,110 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Democrats in both houses of the Legislature passed bills dealing with individual insurance regulations that would prevent insurers from discriminating and overcharging customers.
The bills, ABx1 2 by Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and SBx1 2 by Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, also seek to ensure quality health coverage.
The bills now switch houses while lawmakers work out the details with Gov. Jerry Brown to eventually pass and sign just one of them. One of the sticking points is how many geographic regions health insurers will be able to use to determine premiums.
"This is just one part of the puzzle," Hernandez said.
The bills were introduced during a special legislative session convened by Brown to implement health care reform in the state.
The governor wants lawmakers to tweak state laws as soon as possible so officials can launch a new insurance marketplace and expand the state's health insurance program for the poor.
The two regulatory bills passed Thursday on party-line votes prevent insurers from discriminating based on an individual's health status, medical condition, plan experience and genetic information. Instead, insurers will be limited to adjusting rates on age, geography and family size.
"If you have a child who gets diagnosed with autism or born prematurely, you can get health insurance." Pan told lawmakers in the Assembly.
Republicans opposed the bills, saying more restrictions will drive up health insurance costs rather than make it more affordable. They also say the state should reconsider its decision to prevent health insurance companies from charging smokers up to 50 percent more on their policies.
Assemblyman Don Wagner, R-Irvine, worried that the insurance industry has never had to account for the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions.
"Put them in there and there's an inevitable increase in price," Wagner said.
Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles, said the insured are currently subsidizing the uninsured in the state.
As a child, he said, he developed pneumonia and eventually had to spend a week in the hospital because his family was unable to afford health coverage and preventative care.
"This will actually prevent those situations because it will allow people to take care of their loved ones as soon as they get sick and help drop the cost for all of us," Gomez said of the new bills.
Brown, a Democrat, has committed to expanding Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, for people who make up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,400 a year for an individual. The expansion is estimated to bring 1.2 million new enrollees by 2017.
The program already serves about 8 million adults and children, nearly one of every five California residents.
Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Redlands, and Sen. Ted Gaines, R-Roseville, said they're concerned that expansion costs could soar out of control, particularly once the federal government reduces support to states for Medicaid expansion.
The federal government will pay the full cost of expanding the low-income health program for the first three years then gradually reduce payments to 90 percent starting in 2020, putting the rest of the cost on the state.
Emmerson had urged the state Senate to hold off on Thursday's vote until the state receives more direction from the federal government on insurance regulations.
"Let's not rush into this and pass something today that we're going to be sorry that we passed," he said. | <urn:uuid:6f070e07-573e-4d9a-97ba-d266af752644> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thereporter.com/ci_22695377/california-lawmakers-move-forward-health-insurance-law | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969321 | 700 | 1.820313 | 2 |
BERLIN (AP) -- The opening of Berlin's new airport, one of Germany's biggest infrastructure projects, may be postponed for a fourth time, officials said Monday, marking the latest delay in a project that has turned into an embarrassment for a country that prides itself on efficiency and punctuality.
The management of the new Willy Brandt airport has informed its government stakeholders of "major problems" with the project's fire safety system and other technical features, Transport Ministry spokesman Sebastian Rudolph said.
The airport was first scheduled to be opened in late 2011 and was designed to replace Berlin's two small and aging airports, Tegel and Schoenefeld, which served West and East Berlin respectively during Germany's Cold War division.
However, the 2011 opening was first delayed to June 2012, then March 2013, before a new date was set for Oct. 27. Fixing the problems announced on Monday is likely to delay the planned opening beyond that final date.
The costs for the Willy Brandt airport have already more than doubled to €4.4 billion ($5.8 billion). Postponing the opening date yet again will lead to additional costs, Rudolph acknowledged.
Finance Ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe said the government was "surprised by this development and nobody can put an exact figure on the financial repercussions."
The project has quickly turned into a fiasco for local politicians in Berlin and Brandenburg, the state that surrounds the capital and is the site for the new airport. The two state governments together own a majority in the airport's management company.
In Germany, a nation that has gained a reputation for planning, engineering and financial discipline, the airport's elusive opening has become the butt of jokes, many of them singling out Berlin's center-left mayor Klaus Wowereit.
Opposition lawmakers called Monday for him to step down.
"Such an incompetent handling of an infrastructure project of that dimension must have consequences," the Greens' national party leader Claudia Roth told n-tv television.
Local Greens and Pirate Party lawmakers both said they will organize a confidence vote to unseat Wowereit. The mayor's centrist coalition, however, holds a comfortable majority in the Berlin state legislature.
Transport Ministry spokesman Rudolph reiterated that the federal government, which holds only a minority stake in the airport, no longer has confidence in the airport's chief executive Rainer Schwarz.
The airport's stakeholders will hold a meeting to discuss the new situation as soon as possible, he added. Rudolph declined to speculate on a possible new opening date ahead of those talks.
German mass-circulation tabloid cited internal documents as saying that the opening might be delayed until 2015.
The airport's press department did not return calls seeking comment.
Geir Moulson and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed reporting. | <urn:uuid:9487b41f-cd35-4d4b-8632-2deb9a5efbba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tnl-news.com/ap%20travel/2013/01/07/new-berlin-airport-set-to-be-delayed-for-4th-time | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9585 | 571 | 1.539063 | 2 |
If we add up the current Pentagon budget,
the nuclear weapons budget of the Energy Department, the military
portion of the NASA budget, foreign military aid, veterans' benefits,
interest payments on debt incurred by past military spending and other
military-related expenses, the U.S. spends over $776 billion a year to
feed its addiction to war.
That's more than a million dollars a minute!
This costs you plenty. An average American household "contributes" over
$4,400 in taxes every year to the cause of building up the world's most
powerful military.
Now I know why we can't ever seem to make ends meet!
Mom -- could we get...
If you need anything else, just give a holler!
Because Congress is so generous to the Pentagon...
Social programs get short-changed.
That's all we can afford -- we can't bust the budget, you know.
Bridges, roads, sewers, and water systems are crumbling because the
government fails to provide the money needed to maintain them.
Bus fares are rising and service is being slashed as the Federal
Government has eliminated financial support for mass transit operating
[RTD bus with signs on the side saying:]
Be all you can be in the Army! [and] NOT IN SERVICE.
Go to Next Page | <urn:uuid:572e1630-cb51-41b0-9657-a10e77106984> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naderlibrary.com/addictwarupd.51.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931057 | 283 | 1.632813 | 2 |
How You Remind Me
There are certain people in my life who are constantly reminding me why I do the things that I do and who I do them for.
There are also people who make do these things in spite of the things the say and do to stop me or make it harder.
"It's not like you didn't know that, I said I love you and I swear I still do. It must have been so bad, 'cause living with me must have damn near killed you... this is how you remind me of what I really am."
I am, by my own personal definition and adaptation of the word, a realist. I look at my options objectively first, and then see which makes me feel like I can do my best at it.
Without stress in life no one would have a push to work hard, this is simply because we all hope that if we continue to fight through the crappy parts, we will be rewarded with some small great thing. Which a lot of the time is true. Though we all still ask ourselves if that one great thing was worth all the little bad things. I think so. For the most part.
I know you're probably thinking, 'this girl's thoughts are everywhere!' (laugh)
Not really. These thoughts all do have something to do with one another.
Just let me finish.
Inspiration is something we all need to motivate ourselves to do things right? And so we draw energy from those who remind us of why we do what we do. Moreover, the people who make it harder, are equally as essential because they make us feel like there is something to fight for!
Although the people who are supportive and 'remind us of why we do what we do' are a healthier motivator, I think that everyone needs that negative push as well.
Because without people telling us we can't do something, when we finally do do it, who whose faces would we laugh in?
Maybe my thoughts are all over the place and don't make sense...
Oh well. (laugh) | <urn:uuid:3fbc6910-c89b-42aa-a72b-d9a6d06fe9c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nickelback.com/users/neighboorgirllove/blogs/3878103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976071 | 425 | 1.554688 | 2 |
05-06-2011 10:26 AM
I've just recently started using the Cursors function to determine specific values within a recorded signal.
Problem is when I use the Zoom tool (located within the magnifying glass icon under the timescale) to zoom in on a specific peak the cursors malfunction. When you grab a cursor handle and drag it the cursor intersection no longer follows the signal trace in the graph.
I'm pretty confident this is recreateable since the same behavior exists on both our machines in the lab as well as the 2011 Beta software at my desk.
Solved! Go to Solution.
05-09-2011 02:45 PM - edited 05-09-2011 02:46 PM
Unfortunately, I was never able to duplicate the behavior you're seeing. I sampled a sine wave, and no matter how I zoomed or when I displayed the cursors, etc., I was always able to keep the crosshairs following the graphed signal.
Perhaps it's something specific with the signal you're trying to measure. Could you provide a screen shot of it? Also, at what resolution are you trying to zoom to? Are you sure the cursors don't follow the graph, or are they simply not able to define the peak you're interested in because of a too-high resolution?
05-09-2011 05:33 PM
Ive attached some screen shots of the graph and the steps along the way. Also included is the project file.
I'm feeding an analog +/-10V signal through the feedthrough panel then scaling it as a load cell.
The signal I'm viewing in the graph is dbl signal from the Amplitudes and Levels step.
05-09-2011 05:34 PM - edited 05-09-2011 05:35 PM
05-10-2011 02:01 PM
I changed your project files to acquire an analog input for the hardware I have and I still cannot replicate this issue you're seeing. Can you replicate this problem with other graphs? With other log files? With other SignalExpress projects? Or is it only with this project and this graph in this particular log file? Which version of SignalExpress are you using?
Also, does this same behavior occur with other zoom methods, or just the one you have outlined (top-left zoom icon)? After zooming in, if you right-click on the graph and disable the crosshairs, then right-click again and re-enable them, do they lock to the graph then?
05-10-2011 04:16 PM - edited 05-10-2011 04:19 PM
I created a completely new project (still using the same signal as an input). Here's some new results:
If I take the signal straight from the DAQmx Acquire step and add it to the graph I can view the cursors as expected. I can also zoom in using the zoom tool shown earlier and the cursors intersects follow along nicely.
If I pass the signal through an Amplitudes and Levels step and drag the DC signal into the graph this is where the problems start. Cursors are normal but once I zoom they no longer follow the signal. This is true regarless of which zoom tool I use.
I should also mention, when zoomed in and dragging the cursors drag handle right and left across the graph I can see the crosshairs following "something". It's not the signal line in its current zoomed scale, it's something else; as if it's following the signal in its original scale, even though the whole graph and signal line are zoomed in and scaled much larger- the cursor's crosshairs are not 'zooming'.
Hope that made sense.
When viewing signals I only use scope/strip charts, XY graphs, or the Large Display for a numerical readout. Since I cannot use the native signal from the DAQmx Acquire step to view as a scope chart or XY graph I pass it through the A&L step. As such, I will likely never use just the raw signal from the DAQmx Acquire step. It will always be turned into something I can view as scope/strip or XY graph; hence the need for the A&L Step and where the issue seems to generate.
The crosshairs do not lock onto the graph if I disable/re-enable them.
Check my signature for current hardware/software versions. Also attached is a screenshot of the MAX's device drivers list.
Thanks for your help too btw.
05-11-2011 12:22 PM
OKors, I still cannot duplicate this issue you're seeing. I've tried all of the things you've listed in your posts, but still no luck. Could you list out the exact step it takes to cause the problem you're observing? If this is a bug you've found, it could be very specific to what you're doing. In addition, you may try repairing SignalExpress 2010, as part of its installation could have been corrupted in some way. You can run a repair by going to the Control Panel » Programs and Features » National Instruments Software » Uninstall/Change » NI LabVIEW SignalExpress 2010.
05-11-2011 02:24 PM
Okay, I've discovered a few step details that may determine why you have not been able to replicate the issue on your end.
The main step which seems to make or break the cursor issue is whether or not you view the graph as a strip chart or scope chart. Changing the Update Mode to Scope Chart is where the issue seems start.
This time I simply created a 0.5hz Sine wave (Create Analog Signal step) and passed it through the Amplitudes and Levels step. Here are the detailed steps following the creation of the sine wave:
If what I've outlined above does not cause the issue try this:
With the actions detailed from above I am able to recreate the issue on both our lab PC's running identical hardware and software, as well as the cDAQ at my desk running Signal Express 2011 Beta.
05-12-2011 06:48 PM
Thanks for providing those steps! It is greatly appreciated and very beneficial. While I wasn't able to duplicate this issue exactly as you have described, I did get to a point where I noticed strange behavior with the cursors. Depending on where and how I zoomed into the graph, I could get the cursors to "think" they were following a signal, when in fact this was the incorrect signal. What it actually was was the larger zoomed out version of the signal that the cursors were trying to follow. So, bottom line as you described it, when you zoom in to a particular level, the cursors don't follow the zoomed in signal.
Also as you mentioned, this behavior is only viewable with a scope or sweep chart, as I could not duplicate it with a strip chart. This is most certainly a bug and I've filed it so to R&D. Unfortunately, there's no workaround at this time, except to use a strip chart. I'm sorry if this causes any inconvenience, but hopefully R&D will be able to resolve the issue quickly. I will try to post with any updates I have.
05-13-2011 09:17 AM
Thanks a lot for your patience while trying to isolate this issue. I'm glad you were able so see some sort of stange behavior.
You describe exactly what I'm seeing on my end. If you zoom in far enough the cursors "think" it's following the signal when in fact its a ghosted signal left over from a previously zoomed resolution.
The workaround is to change the graph to strip chart momentarily while I use the cursors, then back again to view the live data.
This is not much of an inconvenience but I'm glad we can document it as a bug. | <urn:uuid:097e164f-bd97-46bc-8d6f-068c196a5c1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.ni.com/t5/SignalExpress/Incorrect-behavior-while-using-cursors-on-a-zoomed-in-signal/m-p/1558358 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9532 | 1,633 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Revolution #280, September 16, 2012
RAPE is NEVER the Victim’s Fault
Andrea Strong is a Steering Committee Member of End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women.
[Written after reading the letter, “I Still Don’t Call It Rape and the Weight of It Gets Heavier All the Time” from Abigail Lynn.]
These two pieces originally appeared online at stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com. Responses to either or both of these pieces, as well as letters telling further “Stories from the War Zone,” are strongly encouraged and can be sent to StopPatriarchy@gmail.com or submitted through the website StopPatriarchy.org.
Rape is NEVER the victim’s fault. Let me repeat that: Rape is NEVER EVER EVER EVER the fault of the victim. If you were raped, suspect you were raped, or if you were coerced by words or charm or threat, and may not call it rape, but still feel violated, IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.
We live in a RAPE culture, a culture where people think that rape has to do with sex. Rape has little to do with sex; it is about one person controlling another: whether through physical violence, emotional pressure, or leveraging of power or other social capital, to the point where the victim of the rape feels anything from humiliation all the way up to fear for their life as the dominant emotions. Any female, from the age of 6 months to 90 years old, of any nationality, from any walk of life, wearing any kind of clothing, doing any kind of work or activity (sometimes even sleeping in her own bed), is at risk. Any female in any physical environment, at any time of day or night, is at risk. It could happen in her own home, at a college frat party, at her kindergarten playground, at her church or temple, at her job, in her car, on the street, on the bus or subway, etc., etc., etc. The aggressor could be her boyfriend, her teacher, her priest, her husband, her friend, her date, a stranger, her employer, her boss, her client, her co-worker, even her father/brother/uncle/ or other family member, etc., etc., etc.
This idea that women that get raped somehow asked for it: by their dress, by their behavior, by the work that they do—like prostitution, or pornography, (or babysitting!!), those ideas are wrong. Let me be clear, they are wrong because morally it’s wrong, not to mention ludicrous, to blame a victim of a crime for the crime that someone else committed against them. BUT moreover, those ideas are wrong, meaning that those ideas don’t reflect reality; they don’t accurately describe why rapists rape women.
Remember that list of things to do to avoid being raped or assaulted? They include things like: don’t walk by yourself late at night, bring a whistle with you to blow if you get attacked, keep your car doors locked, check the back seat of your car when you’re getting into your car, never give a ride to a hitchhiker, etc. This is sound advice, and many of the points these lists make are important for women to follow. However, those lists can make it seem like rape is just some natural and permanent part of our landscape. “Now here’s Vanna with the forecast: Well Todd, it appears that there’s a big rape cloud threatening the area around Main St., so if you own a vagina, you’re gonna wanna lock your car doors, or better yet, just not go anywhere tonight if you don’t have to. Make sure you lock your doors tight if you live in that area!” How come they don’t give out a list similar to the ones that women get, but geared toward rapists and potential rapists??? Feel like raping a woman? Then you need to carry a whistle with you, and blow the whistle on yourself if you feel like raping your date.
We also have these ideas that only vile, evil, old, gross men are the rapists. Look around you the next time that you are in public. Realize that one out of every four women that you see has been raped. In the U.S. every two minutes a woman is raped. How many women is that? Who is it that’s doing all this raping??? The fact is, it isn’t mainly old gross evil men who are strangers to the women that they rape. 80% of women who are raped are raped by someone that they know, they probably trust, and maybe the woman even likes and admires him.
Most women that have been raped, sexually assaulted, or molested blame themselves, and it is UNACCEPTABLE that this culture reinforces patriarchal notions of blaming victims for the crimes that were done to them. Furthermore, if you know and trust someone, and they are already a part of your life, how the hell is that list going to help you? It won’t. The straight-up fact for women the world over is that we live in a world that degrades us simply on the basis of our gender. We didn’t do anything to deserve the kind of punishment and outright brutality that one can be dealt if one happens to be a woman. This is a painful fact…I think that many times women try to figure out what their “mistake(s)” were, so that they can feel some control or find some logic in the betrayal and the crime that took away their control and their choice. If we can find some way that we fucked up, then we can protect ourselves and prevent it the next time that it might happen. Or if we can figure out, “Why did I deserve this?” then we could avoid it by being a better “good girl.” But it’s just wishful thinking, it’s bullshit to try to think that way, to try to wrest power from a situation where one was deprived of power, in a culture where all women are subverted on account of their gender.
Women everywhere are under these common threats of violence, and it’s intensifying. There is no way to avoid a culture of rape, a society that has become saturated with porn, the sexualized degradation of women and young girls. People have to recognize that no amount of women blaming ourselves, blaming other women for their rapes, no amount of denial or avoidance is going to drown out the fact that half of humanity is under attack. There is a real need to stand up against this shit, and part of what can happen when you stand up against it is that you start to see more clearly where the blame actually lies, and you begin to gain the ability to put the blame firmly on the patriarchal society we live in, the culture it gives rise to, and the rapists it produces. A part of this fight to defeat the war on women has to include us telling ourselves, our friends, and any one that we meet that confides in us about a rape or sexual assault that IT IS NOT OUR FAULT!!! It is not said often enough, and we need to say it, firmly know it, and tell others…because part of how that internalized blame gets reinforced is through how society treats women after they are assaulted or raped. THEY NEED TO HEAR THE MESSAGE, LOUD AND CLEAR: IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT. No more whispers—let’s shout it: RAPE IS NOT OUR FAULT!!!
Get out of the shame, and the blame, and all of those head games, and START FIGHTING TO STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN! And you will probably find that all the crap thoughts finally, finally, finally have somewhere to go, some fucking usefulness. And under all the weight of all that hurt and horror there is probably a wellspring of fury that is just a whisper…just a wisp. As you get further into this, the whisper grows, until the rage that you didn’t even identify as actual rage can get channeled into something really earthshaking. And there are so, so, so MANY of us, and this fury moves DEEP in us. And we aren’t getting angry just to feel better, or to try to get even, we are out fighting to create a world where women aren’t preyed upon; we are out to create a world without rape, a world where women are treated as HUMAN BEINGS in EVERY sphere of society. This is something that both women and men should welcome and actively foster. And all this is WELL worth fighting for.
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper. | <urn:uuid:0422d221-8aa8-4a53-9643-c929ff4288af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.revcom.us/a/280/rape-is-never-the-victims-fault-en.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963558 | 1,842 | 1.765625 | 2 |
It's one of the most basic questions in financial planning: Do I need a trust or not?
This week, Sacramento attorney Kay Brooks answers that question. To see more of her "Ask the Experts" advice or that of our other local experts on taxes, investing or personal finances, go to: www.sacbee. com/personalfinanceblog.
When is it best to set up a trust? My assets are four cars, household goods (but no house), less than $100,000 in savings, and a federal retirement account. What type of trust would you recommend, and how do I select a firm to set one up? Thank you.
Different types of trusts are used for different purposes, but for basic estate planning, most people use a revocable living trust. This type of trust can be changed or revoked by the person creating it during his or her lifetime.
After death, the trust becomes irrevocable and can no longer be changed. At that point, the trust's assets will be distributed as set forth by the trust itself.
When you create a revocable living trust, it is very important to retitle your assets in the name of the trust. For example, you would change the title on your savings account to your name, such as "Bob Jones, as Trustee of the Bob Jones Trust" and the same for your house if you owned one. Otherwise, court proceedings may be required at death to move assets into the trust's name.
Revocable living trusts are typically used for the following reasons: (1) to avoid probate costs; (2) for privacy; (3) to plan for beneficiaries who need assistance managing their assets; and (4) for incapacity planning.
In California, probate can be hugely expensive, based on fees to both your executor and attorney that start at 4 percent of probate assets up to $100,000, 3 percent for assets up to $200,000, etc.
However, no probate is required if a person's assets do not exceed $150,000. Not included in that amount are vehicles, as well as assets that are joint tenancy accounts or that have a beneficiary, such as an IRA.
In your case, it sounds like your savings account and household goods are below the $150,000 limit. Provided that you remember to name beneficiaries (with alternates) on your federal retirement account, your estate would not have to go through the full probate process, even without a revocable trust. You could simply execute a will that states who should receive your assets.
Another reason people like trusts is that they are more private than probates. Probate proceedings are public, so anyone can find out about your estate plan and your assets. With a trust, the only people who receive a copy are your heirs, other beneficiaries and the trustee.
People also use trusts if they have family members or other beneficiaries who need assistance from a trustee in managing assets, including minor children, young adult children or others who have difficulty managing money.
Finally, revocable trusts provide a mechanism to name someone to assist with your financial affairs when needed and to handle your affairs after your death.
If you are interested in setting up a trust, I recommend consulting an experienced estate planning attorney. If you haven't worked with an attorney before, ask advisers, friends and family for referrals. The California State Bar lists licensed attorneys on its website, www.calbar.ca.gov, where you can search by location or type of legal practice.
If you contact a lawyer who is not taking new clients or whose fees are out of your price range, ask if he or she can refer you to another local lawyer. Your goal is to work with an attorney who is knowledgeable, competent, responsive and trustworthy.
Remember, you also should create power of attorney forms (for health care and for general financial matters), in case you ever become incapacitated.
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Cameron Urges EU to Prepare for Greek Exit From Euro
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said European leaders should make contingency plans for a Greek exit from the European single currency.
Greeks will go to the polls again next month after their political leaders failed to form a governing coalition following the last election. Cameron, speaking to reporters in Chicago at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting following a Group of Eight summit, said the voting could decide whether the country keeps the euro.
“They can vote to stay in the euro-zone and meet their commitments, or they can vote to give up on their commitments and, in effect, give up on the euro-zone,” Cameron said. “I think the point that was very clear from the G-8 was that the euro-zone has to put in place the most robust contingency plans for both eventualities.”
Speaking during the G-8 at Camp David, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Union President Jose Barroso refused to discuss such plans. Barroso said “Plan A” was for Greece to stay in.
Cameron denied he is turning the Greek election into a referendum on the euro. “It’s up the Greeks how they arrange their election, what they do and don’t say, how people do and don’t vote but we’ve got to make sure it’s a moment of clarity and decisiveness for the euro-zone,” he said.
The prime minister warned against putting off decisions. “What would be bad for Greece, bad for Europe and bad for the world is if we just allowed the can to be kicked further down the road with an inconclusive outcome,” he said. “What’s required is decisiveness. There needs to be a resolution because it’s the lack of resolution that’s leading to a lack of confidence.”
Cameron denied the G-8 meeting had been a failure, saying it had “helped to crystallize the thinking.”
There’s no mechanism for a country to leave the euro, and a Greek exit would increase market pressure on other European countries deemed to be vulnerable.
The yield on a benchmark Spanish 10-year government bond closed at 6.2 percent on May 18, near a five-month high.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at email@example.com
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:a0f6e761-1977-4a1f-b22e-18e3f87616b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-20/cameron-urges-eu-to-prepare-for-greek-exit-from-euro.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 | 0.958892 | 568 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Microsoft is aiming Office 2013 at touch-screen devices as well as PCs. So the company is starting to pull out the stops to convince tablet users that the new Office is just right for them.In a blog post yesterday, Clint Covington, a lead program manager for Microsoft's User Experience team, explained how touch works in the new suite. Products such as OneNote and Lync have been redesigned from the ground up to fully support touch. The other applications in Office have been "touch-enabled," which means they support certain touch features but remain true to their roots as desktop applications.
Designing apps to respond to a finger instead of a mouse can be challenging, so Microsoft had to enlarge certain elements in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Users will find fixed parts of the interface larger, such as the Quick Access toolbar, the ribbon, the status bar, and folders in Outlook. Certain menus will also appear larger.
But the size only increases when touch mode is enabled. You can turn touch mode on and off, depending on what type of device you're using, and the interface adapts. The onscreen keyboard also provides a fuller view of your document by automatically minimizing the ribbon and giving you more room to work.
Drag-and-drop gets an assist in touch mode through the use of selection handles that appear when you try to move or copy an item. Other touch features have been enabled through the suite, and Microsoft says it's still working to polish them up.
The new interface across the entire suite of applications has been reinvented, mostly for the better. First off, the Ribbon, which disappointed many users when it first appeared in Office 2007, remains part of the new Office. But before you start grumbling, consider that Microsoft has made it optional this time around. So now you can show or hide the exhaustive collections of tools across every tab, and decide how much or how little you want to use them. In my review of Office 2010 I liked the Ribbon, but I've heard enough from users who disagree to know that Microsoft has made a wise change. Aside from the Ribbon, the interface is similar but much simpler than it was in Office 2010 and earlier. Flat buttons and plenty of white space make the interface look less crowded. Newly added start pages for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel help you get to recent documents and new templates immediately upon launch. Other interface tweaks are tablet-focused such as the radial menus in OneNote that show options (like sharing, search, and zoom tools) in a circle around the area you pressed. The general feel of the suite is more streamlined and more cloud-integrated, and it seems like it will be useful to those looking at the same documents on several devices. | <urn:uuid:1b10752a-53ea-4e3b-82ea-b09c4f4d9614> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crackmonster.blogspot.com/2012/07/microsoft-office-2013-crack.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95319 | 556 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Don Walker offers news, notes and perspective on the ever-changing sports business landscape in Wisconsin and around the country
Big Ten to study head injuries in all sports
Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany announced Wednesday that the conference's member schools will begin a research study to determine how head injuries affect athletes.
The research initiative includes all Big Ten sports.
ESPN.com first reported the announcement.
"We basically lack across the country great longitudinal information," Delany said. "So we're trying to organize ourselves in a way to begin to develop that information. We've got 9,500 athletes (in the Big Ten), so what that is over a four-year period is 40,000 student-athlete years. We're having important discussions with other major research institutions, the presidents in some of those other conferences, are determining whether or not they want to join with us in this collaboration."
You can read more here. | <urn:uuid:38c23d4f-a5b7-4cfe-8a75-d3fe70df49c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/151880535.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948755 | 188 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Mahindarama Buddhist Temple chairman Kung Kok Chye said there are only between 600 and 700 Buddhist monks currently serving in Malaysia for both the Theravada and Mahayana sects.
"The government should not impose excessively strict rules on visas for
foreign monks coming to Malaysia," he said in an interview. "It is our hope on this holy day that the authorities will seriously look into this matter."
"These monks teach our children the important values preached by our
religion such as to be good, to cease all evil and to purify the mind."
He also said there is an urgent need for more local youths to be encouraged to take up monkhood. "There are parents whose faith and understanding are not deep enough, and are reluctant to let their children, especially their sons, to be made monks."
Surya Gidwani, a principal of the Sunday Pali School, stressed that the need for foreign monks has become particularly pressing as not many locals are inclined to be monks.
"The locals should not to look at monkhood as a career, but as a decision made. But they should take up the call only if they are fully ready," she added.
A senior member of Siamese people in Malaysia said the community has been particularly hit as there is now a critical dearth of genuine teachers who can imbibe the language and customs to youngsters.
There are about 70,000 Siamese, mostly in Kedah, Kelantan and Penang, who practise Buddhism. Most of the temples run by the community lack qualified monks, he said.
"Many temples have applied to bring in monks from Thailand to reside here and lead our community in religious matters," he added. "But most have had to face restrictions and delays with the immigration department."
Malaysian Buddhist Association secretary in Penang, Lim Tien Phong,
advised Buddhist groups to submit proper supporting letters when applying for visas for foreign monks to ensure they are genuine.
"You can never tell the real monks from the fake ones. We should be
cautious when applying for foreign monks as we must always consider the monks' qualification and experience." | <urn:uuid:b65e268d-6ef2-45d1-be8b-6d8a32b3b039> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=56,6509,0,0,1,0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975552 | 446 | 1.78125 | 2 |
160,000 women serve in the U.S. army, but it's taken until now for them to get a uniform design that's designed to fit their bodies — one that acknowledges the existence of breasts and hips, and adds elastic waistbands.
The ACU, or army combat uniform, was "designed for a male," Sgt. 1st Class William Corp told Army Times. "A man typically has broader shoulders. So when a woman puts on the jacket, the shoulder pockets are more toward her back. This is one of the things we're looking to correct." It will come in 13 sizes.
Here's the new uniform. Another army official told AFP, "The goal is not to have female soldiers accentuate their curves, but... it alleviates some of the excess material." Overall, it's meant to make female soldiers feel more comfortable as they perform their duties. It's currently being tested and hasn't been widely released yet.
Meanwhile, Navy said in August it would consult with Ralph Lauren, which had "offered to provide advice
regarding women's uniform sizing and help support current initiatives," a spokeswoman said. Many female sailors had complained about the rise, or crotch-to-waist distance of the pants.
Via Get Kempt. | <urn:uuid:986384fe-8c1e-4019-a437-a167883285dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jezebel.com/5668893/the-army-shows-womens-butts-some-love/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985728 | 258 | 1.507813 | 2 |
1 a false b is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.
2 When a cometh, then cometh b: but with the lowly is wisdom.
3 The a of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.
4 a profit not in the day of b: but righteousness delivereth from death.
5 The a of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall b by his own wickedness.
6 The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.
7 When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish: and the hope of unjust men perisheth.
8 The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.
9 An a with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through knowledge shall the b be delivered.
10 When it goeth well with the a, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.
11 By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
12 He that is void of wisdom despiseth his a: but a man of understanding holdeth his peace.
13 A a revealeth secrets: but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.
14 Where no a is, the people fall: but in the b of c there is safety.
15 He that is a for a stranger shall smart for it: and he that hateth suretiship is sure.
16 A gracious a retaineth honour: and strong men retain riches.
17 The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is a troubleth his own flesh.
18 The wicked worketh a a work: but to him that soweth b shall be a sure c.
19 As righteousness tendeth to a: so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.
20 They that are a a b heart are abomination to the Lord: but such as are upright in their way are his delight.
21 Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished: but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.
22 As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.
23 The desire of the righteous is only good: but the expectation of the wicked is wrath.
24 There is that scattereth, and yet a; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.
25 The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that a shall be watered also himself.
26 He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.
27 He that diligently seeketh good procureth favour: but he that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him.
28 He that a in his riches shall fall: but the righteous shall flourish as a branch.
29 He that troubleth his own a shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.
30 The fruit of the righteous is a a; and he that winneth souls is wise.
31 Behold, the righteous shall be a in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner. | <urn:uuid:79580a92-a73c-46e1-b35f-3fd15f8043f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/prov/11.9?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963257 | 721 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Providing Support to Single Parents through Higher Education
Single Parent Success's mission is to provide support to single parents who desire to attain higher education to be able to receive better paying jobs in order to better their lives financially for themselves and emotionally for their children.
In most cases, a single parent is forced to work at low end jobs due to their lack of education. With the high cost of day care and living expenses, many of theses single parents are forced into working multiple low wage jobs which in return takes away anytime for them to go to school and most importantly time away from their children. As a result of not spending time with their children, in many instances the cycle continues in which the same children grow up to have their own kids at a very young age and end up being single parents themselves.
The goal of this organization is to stop this cycle, by providing support to single parents through higher education, parenting support, tutoring and other services that will enable them to live a better life for themselves and guide their children to a better life.
Objectives of Single Parent Success:
- Provide Educational Grants and Scholarships
- Provide Mentoring
- Provide Career Support
- Provide Professional Services | <urn:uuid:77ec3a77-999b-48f2-bc36-77878d227647> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.singleparentsuccess.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974141 | 243 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Unless you are a robot with no consciousness, then there are more than likely things about yourself that you do not like and wish you could change. A few very common things that people do not like about themselves are wrinkles, crow’s feet, laugh lines, and dark skin spots which are also known as aging spots. Although there is no immediate cure of these skin issues, there are things that you can do to help reverse and slow down the process of the aging of skin by using certain anti-wrinkle creams.
Deciding between anti-wrinkle creams and choosing which product you think will work best for your issues can sometimes be a very time consuming, bank breaking, and confusing task for some people if they do not do their research first. Due to the constantly growing demand among people all across the world to reverse the signs of aging on their body, things like anti-aging creams, serums, and lotions have become extremely popular. Much of this is due to their lower price compared to having surgical procedures done by a plastic surgeon. They also have an extremely lower rate of risks and impact on your body and health and also do not involve recovery time.
Every person dreams of how they wish they could look, and men and women spend a good amount of their income on products to change and alter their appearance to suit their wishes. The biggest issue with buying anti-aging items tends to be deciding on which brand and type of product to buy for your aging skin.
Since all anti-wrinkle creams, lotions, serums, and pills claim that they offer the best, quickest, and cheapest results, it can be a very confusing task to find the right product for you. However, with a few easy steps you can be on your way to reversing your aged skin and achieving good results with your anti-aging product.
The first things you should do are ask around among your friends and family to see if they have any favorite brands, which creams worked best for them, and which they thought did not quite do the job. Another thing is look online and check customer reviews on the products you are considering. Once you have chosen a few products you need to look at the ingredients. Creams with more active ingredients tend to be better because they have more ingredients that work towards different issues.
Once you have chosen which of the anti-wrinkle creams you want to buy you then need to search around on the manufacturing site, and online, and see if you can find coupons. This is also a great way to locate which stores are offering the cheapest prices on their products. This is a step that can also ultimately save you a large amount of money in the long run. | <urn:uuid:3d0c1209-090f-4d14-8931-9e5b2ae193bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://antiwrinkleskinproducts.com/anti-wrinkle-cream/anti-wrinkle-creams-and-things-you-should-know-before-buying-them/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981066 | 551 | 1.539063 | 2 |
I recently got the chance to chat with Paul Donnelly, the Microsoft Windows Vista beta program manager, to ask about the development process for Windows Vista and branching. It looks like I was wrong about a lot of things, but through his explanations, I was able to get a better understanding of how everything worked. So here is the updated RC1 branching diagram.
Basically, the changes I’ve made to the diagram are:
- New “features” were only added before Beta 2. No new “features” has been added after Beta 2.
- Only “content” has been added post-Beta 2.
Features vs Content
So whats the difference between “features” and “content”? Paul explains, a feature is a set of code to do a specific function. Aero is a feature, the log-on screen is a feature. Content on the other hand, provide additional resources for a feature, which might contribute to the end-user experience. An example of this is the system sounds. Obviously without a doubt, new Vista system sounds are coming, but not as a feature. The feature for system sounds is the ability to play specified sound files on predefined events. The sound files themselves are content, which is audible to the user. Wallpapers and help files would also be classified as content. And since a new boot screen may not involve modifying code, that might be considered content too!
I also took the opportunity to ask Paul whether modifying Aero Glass would be possible at this time.
Not only did he say it was possible, but he went as far as saying He says it is possible, and I quote, “A new theme is again, just content. Since the theming code would just apply it.”
A new theme is possible at this point Changes to the existing Aero Glass is possible, a new Aero (tier) is not. But I’m confident nothing more than only a refined Aero Glass is coming, since there are only months left before Vista has to be
Important: Paul wants to make sure everyone is clear on this issue. NO new Aero is coming. NO vector Glass. NO new theme. These were ONLY stated as examples.
Paul also reconfirmed strongly since Beta 2, Vista was “feature-locked”. That is, no additional features may be added to Windows Vista at this time in development. However exceptions apply.
No new features can be added, but features can be changed. Changing the log-on screen feature after it’s already been in the build is very possible. I didn’t clarify how much you could change a feature before it is considered a ‘new feature’, but I presume you could quite a bit of remodeling.
Then I asked about the possibilities of adding a clock to the log-on screen. Paul states two possible alternatives, depending on how the feature was documented. If the clock feature was internally enumerated in it’s own feature specification, then adding that feature after Beta 2 would be impossible. However, if the specifications for the log-on screen includes a clock as part of its features, then adding the clock would be considered a “work item”, a yet-to-be implemented part of a feature. For example, if the clock was in the original pre-Beta 2 specifications for the log-on screen, then is definitely possible for it to show up in the future.
Important: Paul also wants to make sure everyone is clear on the clock idea. He cannot confirm whether or not a clock will/will not be added to the final release. It was ONLY stated as an example.
But without access to the internal specifications, we can never know for sure what is planned for the final Windows Vista release. There could even be significant chunks of features still missing from current builds.
In conclusion, it was a very short but informative conversation. So here’s what I learned in summary:
- New wallpapers, system sounds, help files are not features.
- An updated Aero Glass is possible, although not probable. A new theme is even possible too (from a development standpoint), but is definitely not planned.
- Vista is definitely “feature-locked”. No new features can be added.
- “Features” may be incomplete. New “features parts” could be coming.
From my blog http://www.istartedsomething.com/20060901/windows-vista-beta-features-vs-content/
I also did an interview with Oliver Scholz, the program manager for speech user experience. Check that out here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20060901/interview-oliver-scholz/ | <urn:uuid:67f6ba5c-2460-4a30-a6e7-13437670787c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/226114-Windows-Vista-Beta-Features-vs-Content | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961879 | 993 | 1.710938 | 2 |
A UC-Davis police officer pepper-sprays student protesters.
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
Campus spies. Pepper spray. SWAT teams. Twitter trackers. Biometrics. Student security consultants. Professors of homeland security studies. Welcome to Repress U, class of 2012.
Since 9/11, the homeland security state has come to campus just as it has come to America's towns and cities, its places of work and its houses of worship, its public space and its cyberspace. But the age of (in)security had announced its arrival on campus with considerably less fanfare than elsewhere—until, that is, the "less lethal" weapons were unleashed in the fall of 2011.
Today, from the City University of New York to the University of California, students increasingly find themselves on the frontlines, not of a war on terror, but of a war on "radicalism" and "extremism." Just about everyone from college administrators and educators to law enforcement personnel and corporate executives seems to have enlisted in this war effort. Increasingly, American students are in their sights.
In 2008, I laid out seven steps the Bush administration had taken to create a homeland security campus. Four years and a president later, Repress U has come a long way. In the Obama years, it has taken seven more steps to make the university safe for plutocracy. Here is a step-by-step guide to how they did it.
1. Target Occupy
Had there been no UC Davis, no Lt. John Pike, no chemical weapons wielded against peacefully protesting students, and no cameras to broadcast it all, Americans might never have known just how far the homeland security campus has come in its mission to police its students. In the old days, you might have called in the National Guard. Nowadays, all you need is an FBI-trained, federally funded, and "less lethally" armed campus police department.
The mass pepper-spraying of students at UC Davis was only the most public manifestation of a long-running campus trend in which, for officers of the peace, the pacification of student protest has become part of the job description. The weapons of choice have sometimes been blunt instruments, such as the extendable batons used to bludgeon the student body at Berkeley, Baruch, and the University of Puerto Rico. At other times, tactical officers have turned to "less-lethal" munitions, like the CS gas, beanbag rounds, and pepper pellets fired into crowds at Occupy protests across the University of California system this past winter.
Yet for everything we see of the homeland security campus, there is a good deal more that we miss. Behind the riot suits, the baton strikes, and the pepper-spray cannons stands a sprawling infrastructure made possible by multimillion-dollar federal grants, "memoranda of understanding" and "mutual aid" agreements among law enforcement agencies, counter-terrorism training, an FBI-sponsored "Academic Alliance," and 103 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (which provide "one-stop shopping" for counterterrorism operations to more than 50 federal and 600 state and local agencies).
"We have to go where terrorism takes us, so we often have to go onto campuses," FBI Special Agent Jennifer Gant told Campus Safety Magazine in an interview last year. To that end, campus administrators and campus police chiefs are now known to coordinate their operations with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "special advisors," FBI "campus liaison agents," an FBI-led National Security Advisory Board, and a Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which instructs local law enforcement in everything from "physical techniques" to "behavioral science." More than half of campus police forces already have "intelligence-sharing agreements" with these and other government agencies in place.
2. Get a SWAT team
Since 2007, campus police forces have decisively escalated their tactics, expanded their arsenals, and trained ever more of their officers in SWAT-style paramilitary policing. Many agencies acquire their arms directly from the Department of Defense through a surplus weapons sales program known as "1033," which offers, among other things, "used grenade launchers (for the deployment of less lethal weapons)... for a significantly reduced cost."
According to the most recent federal data available, nine out of 10 campus agencies with sworn police officers now deploy armed patrols authorized to use deadly force. Nine in 10 also authorize the use of chemical munitions, while one in five make regular use of Tasers. Last August, an 18-year old student athlete died after being tased at the University of Cincinnati.
Meanwhile, many campus police squads have been educated in the art of war through regular special weapons training sessions by "tactical officers' associations" which run a kind of SWAT university. In October, UC Berkeley played host to an "Urban Shield" SWAT training exercise involving local and campus agencies, the California National Guard, and special police forces from Israel, Jordan, and Bahrain. And since 2010, West Texas A&M has played host to paramilitary training programs for police from Mexico.
In October, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte got its very own SWAT team, equipped with MP-15 rifles, M&P 40 sidearms, and Remington shotguns. "We have integrated SWAT officers into the squads that serve our campus day and night," boasted UNC Charlotte Chief of Police Jeff Baker. The following month, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a SWAT team staged an armed raid on an occupied building, pointing assault rifles at the heads of activists, among them UNC students.
3. Spy on Muslims
The long arm of Repress U stretches far beyond the bounds of any one campus or college town. As reported by the Associated Press this winter, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and its hitherto secret "Demographics Unit" sent undercover operatives to spy on members of the Muslim Students Association at more than 20 universities in four states across the Northeast beginning in 2006.
None of the organizations or persons of interest were ever accused of any wrongdoing, but that didn't stop NYPD detectives from tracking Muslim students through a "Cyber Intelligence Unit," issuing weekly "MSA Reports" on local chapters of the Muslim Students Association, attending campus meetings and seminars, noting how many times students prayed, or even serving as chaperones for what they described as "militant paintball trips." The targeted institutions ran the gamut from community colleges to Columbia and Yale.
According to the AP's investigation, the intelligence units in question worked closely not only with agencies in other cities, but with an agent on the payroll of the CIA. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, facing mounting calls to resign, has issued a spirited defense of the campus surveillance program, as has Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "If terrorists aren't limited by borders and boundaries, we can't be either," Kelly said in a speech at Fordham Law School.
The NYPD was hardly the only agency conducting covert surveillance of Muslim students on campus. The FBI has been engaging in such tactics for years. In 2007, UC Irvine student Yasser Ahmed was assaulted by FBI agents, who followed him as he was on his way to a campus "free speech zone." In 2010, Yasir Afifi, a student at Mission College in Santa Clara, California, found a secret GPS tracking device affixed to his car. A half-dozen agents later knocked on his door to ask for it back. | <urn:uuid:6f2527a2-75eb-4f50-92b8-162cd1b15bec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/homeland-security-college-campus-crackdown-occupy | 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 | 0.965686 | 1,518 | 1.625 | 2 |
Cities and environmental groups predicted little or no reduction in risk from PHMSA’s routing rule. Railroads and chemical manufacturers questioned whether the TSA rule was cost-effective.
PHMSA estimates that its rule will cost railroads $20 million over 20 years, in 2008 dollars adjusted for inflation. To place the projected cost in context, AAR places the annual revenues of North American railroads at $42 billion.
TSA’s cost projections for compliance with its rule are higher and more a matter of debate among carriers and vendors. TSA estimates that compliance will cost the industry $22 million in its first year, with that figure trailing off to $11.8 million in the rule’s tenth year.
Railroads have charged that TSA is underestimating the rule’s cost. The greatest expenses are likely to result from the personnel demands generated by chain-of-custody and car-attendance requirements, in particular for the country’s smaller Class II regional and Class III “short line” railroads. Many railroads in the latter group operate on a limited schedule, a couple of days each week and do not staff facilities all the time.
Larger railroads have commented that the risk reduction offered by the rules is not worth the cost. Norfolk Southern told the agency that the benefit of the rule will be “minimal.”
While TSA’s parent agency, DHS, assesses programs and policies based on anticipated risk reduction, neither TSA nor PHMSA used a risk-reduction test to assess the value of the new railroad rules.
“Estimating the security benefits of the proposed new requirements is challenging,” PHMSA wrote in its 2006 proposal, later stating that “the probability hazardous materials will be targeted is, at best, a guess.”
The agency concluded that the rules were worth pursuing because “the fact an event is infrequent or has never occurred does not diminish the risk or possibility of such an event occurring.”
Joseph Straw is an assistant editor at Security Management. | <urn:uuid:5cd637ff-cefc-4a5f-95f6-c82bfb5ac9cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.securitymanagement.com/article/hazmat-safety-track-005250?page=0%2C2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957723 | 431 | 1.734375 | 2 |
FIFPro: violence against players must be banned
Tuesday 20 November
FIFPro urges the national authorities and football associations to stamp out violence in professional football. In the last seven days, FIFPro has noticed a handful of disturbing incidents, with players being the victim.
The past week has been a horrible week for professional football and all its players and fans. ‘Almost every day I was informed about a violent incident aimed at a professional footballer’, says Tony Higgins, FIFPro’s spokesman on player’s welfare.
Some of last week’s incidents:
- On Tuesday, after Zambia beat South Africa 1-0 in Johannesburg, Zambia goalkeeper Kennedy Mweene was hurt when rocks were thrown at the team bus. Mweene needed stitches to heal the cut. According to reports, two teenage boys were taken into custody.
- On Wednesday, referee Saul Laverni suspended the Argentine league match between Independiente and Belgrano before the second half could start, after Belgrano goalkeeper Juan Carlos Olave was stunned by a flare and fans continued to throw flares at the pitch.
- On Saturday, the Russian premier league match between Zenit St Petersburg and Dynamo Moscow was abandoned late in the first half after Dynamo goalkeeper Anton Shunin suffered an eye injury from one of the many firecrackers and missiles thrown by Zenit fans. Shunin was diagnosed with chemical burns to his cornea in both eyes and some hearing loss in his right ear. According to his club, the Russian international must rest up to 10 days. Police arrested 53 people, including the supporter who allegedly threw the missile.
FIFPro is shocked by these incidents. ‘It is still unclear to some people, that professional footballers are human beings’, says Tony Higgins. ‘Do those people realize that players like Mweene, Olave and Shunin could be handicapped for the rest of their life, because of their hooliganism?’
‘Mweene, Olave and Shunin are human beings. They are sons, maybe husbands and fathers. They are not only sportsmen, but also workers who support their families and happen to earn their money on the football field.’
‘One missile causing a nasty explosion could impact the player’s life and that of his family in a horrific way.’
FIFPro, the voice of all professional footballers in the world, demands that the national authorities in all countries together with the national football associations and the clubs, prevent that the players get harmed by hooligans indulging in violent incidents.
‘As every professional workman, each professional footballer is entitled to a safe working environment. It is up to the football and national authorities to provide such safe environment.’
Higgins: ‘We are living in the year 2012, but apparently some people still have the impression that they can behave like barbarians and are allowed to abuse players. Those thoughts and acts need be banned from football. Now!’
On Monday, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev announced strong measures after the abandoned match between Zenit and Dynamo. ‘It was a deliberate criminal act, therefore we must change the legislation to try to prevent such unlawful acts in the future’, Medvedev told senior ministers at a meeting, according to Reuters. ‘Such crimes cannot go unpunished, you have to go to jail if you commit them.’
Higgins on the announcement by Prime Minister Medvedev: ‘I welcome the remarks made by Prime Minister Medvedev and his intention to provide adequate laws to deal with this violence. But football authorities must do their bit too and work with the fans to educate them that this behaviour is completely unacceptable.’
- 19-06-2013 Call for action in fight against match-fixing »
- 19-06-2013 First female member in Costa Rica: Shirley Cruz »
- 17-06-2013 In Croatia, 58 players have blocked bank accounts »
- 14-06-2013 Mahmoud Sarsak: ‘Football is my weapon of resistance’ »
- 14-06-2013 Agim Ibraimi named Player of the Year in Slovenia »
- 13-06-2013 Modric and Sammir Best Croatian Players »
- 12-06-2013 Montenegro: union warned for European football ban »
- 11-06-2013 Barça players show solidarity to suffering colleagues » | <urn:uuid:db224736-48db-4a80-ae81-8decb3e070d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fifpro.org/news/news_details/2098 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966472 | 927 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Calhoun County deputies fry more than 200 turkeys | News
CALHOUN COUNTY, AL (WBRC)- It's a Calhoun County tradition--the smells and sounds of the sheriff's annual "Turkey Fry."
The Sheriff's Office fried about 220 turkeys this year. Donated turkeys went to children at the Alabama Baptist Children's Homes. Many more turkeys were brought in by the public and fried up for their own Thanksgiving dinners.
For years, Calhoun County Chief Deputy Matthew Wade has organized the turkey fry, recruiting his own wife and daughters to the cause.
"We're all safe, living, and healthy, and we want to let everybody know that we're thankful for what God's done for us. And we want to share that blessing with somebody else and maybe that person will share a blessing with somebody else. And I think that's how you change the world," Wade said.
At one point today, the sheriff's office had to stop accepting turkeys for frying because there were just so many. Jail inmates also participated in the turkey frying.
Copyright 2012 WBRC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:3c79df4e-db2c-41e7-acd0-876bcb329d85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://calhouncounty.myfoxal.com/news/news/123492-calhoun-county-deputies-fry-more-200-turkeys | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980783 | 230 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Early on, Matteson planned a career in printing management, but a college job editing font bitmaps quickly changed his mind. That’s when he discovered the world of typeface design and font technology, an irresistibly fascinating convergence of left – and right-brain processes. Sensitively designed letters and their digital representations soon became Matteson’s calling.
A practical-minded designer, Matteson believes that the best typefaces are created with a specific goal in mind. His Andalé typeface family is a perfect example. It was designed to meet the demands of low-resolution imaging, maintain high levels of legibility and provide a platform on which to build numerous multilingual character sets. The design is currently in the core set of many products and supports character sets for Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Greek, Cyrillic and several other languages. Matteson’s Truesdell family revives a rarely used hot-metal font for digital technology. | <urn:uuid:fd615a42-b0ac-4e07-9167-da90f4dc11e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fonts.com/browse/designers/steve-matteson?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951298 | 198 | 1.554688 | 2 |
North Korea's success in launching a satellite into orbit has put the Obama administration on unfamiliar ground, no longer able to dismiss North Korea's efforts as failure but loath to acknowledge its success.
Moreover, beyond its typical response of statements of condemnation and efforts at strengthening sanctions, the U.S. does not seem to have a playbook for curbing North Korea's increasingly threatening behavior.
The U.S. government was braced before the launch, with Asia hands across the U.S. government tracking North Korea's preparations and warning against going through with it. Officials have voiced concern that such a feat would prompt an arms race in East Asia.
"We've been very concerned about their firing this missile, in violation of every international standard and rule," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CNN's Erin Burnett. "It's clear that have one of the reasons we're rebalancing in the Pacific is to deal with the threat from North Korea, and we will. We're prepared to do that. We will respond if we have to."
But now the launch has been completed, the Obama administration seems to be struggling with how to respond. Victor Cha, who holds the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that while Washington is not downplaying the test, the administration is sending the wrong signals by not even issuing a statement after the launch.
Comparing the response to President Obama's strong statements last week warning Syria's president not to use chemical weapons, Cha noted that there was no statement of condemnation from the president. Instead, the White House statement condemning the launch was issued by his press secretary, Jay Carney.
"There here has been an unspoken tendency in the United States to discount these tests as yet another foolish attempt by the technologically backward and bizarre country," Cha wrote in a posting on the group's website. "This is no longer acceptable."
Even as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice pushes the U.N. Security Council for a tough resolution condemning the launch, senior U.S. officials seemed loath to acknowledge that the launch was a success.
North Korea managed for the first time to get through all the stages of sending a satellite into space. But when asked whether the launch was a success, Panetta withheld judgment.
"We're still assessing just exactly what happened here to look at each of the stages and determine whether or not it really was a success," Panetta said in the interview on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
No matter the public line, North Korea's launch is a big deal and creates a new strategic reality. Launching a payload into space means it has intercontinental ballistic missile capability with the potential to reach Alaska or Hawaii. North Korea is the first country not aligned with the U.S. to be able to do that, other than the Soviet Union and China.
The Security Council swiftly condemned the launch as a violation of resolutions. In April when North Korea first tried, and failed, to launch a satellite, the council promised to "take action accordingly in the event of a further DPRK launch."
U.S. officials say they are encouraged by statements by Russia and, to a lesser extent, China criticizing the launch, but whether that tough talk translates into tough measures in the Security Council remains to be seen.
Although North Korea has made significant advances in its weapons program, officials say the program is still in its rudimentary stages: about where the U.S. was in the 1960s. Sanctions have worked, and officials say more can be done.
Rice is leading discussions in New York about possible sanctions against North Korea's shipping, insurance and banking sectors. But China, whose support on this is critical, could fail to go along with harsher steps, citing the fact that the launch did not rise to the level of the president himself issuing a statement, observed Cha.
But even if the U.S. can't get past the Russian and Chinese vetoes in the council, it always has the option of working outside the U.N. system to implement a tough sanctions regime with its allies, similar to the crippling measures the world has imposed upon Iran.
"There will be blood," one senior U.S. official said. "It just depends on how it's drawn."
Yet despite being one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, North Korea's technology is advancing by leaps and bounds and can still demonstrate success.
Officials say the U.S. expects North Korea to now be working on re-entry devices and miniaturization, necessary to convert a rocket into a missile. But even without those developments, the administration fears that North Korea can already hit the United States with a conventional weapon or worse, a chemical weapon. North Korea's chemical weapons stockpile is among the largest in the world.
"They already have a terrorist weapon that can hit the United States, which is exceedingly concerning. And that is what we are telling the Chinese and Russians," one official said. "There is no question North Korea is moving further to the top of the charts when it comes to foreign policy for the administration. They wanted our attention. And now they have got it."
Yet the same old challenge remains: What can the U.S. do, short of taking military action? The Obama administration was burned when Pyongyang attempted the satellite launch in April, after negotiating the so-called Leap Day deal in which the North agreed to stop nuclear activity at its main facility in Yongbyon, impose a moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile launches and allow international inspectors into nuclear sites. Officials say the White House will be hesitant to negotiate with North Korea again.
In lieu of engaging North Korea, officials and experts said, the U.S. could refocus on containment and strengthening efforts to curb its weapons program. In addition to tightening existing sanctions and examining further ones, the U.S. can intensify measures to curb North Korean procurement of sensitive technology, including the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led effort to stem the illicit trafficking of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. Close to 100 countries are members of the program.
Moreover, U.S. officials say it's important to get North Korea, and indeed the world, to understand that Washington and Pyongyang are not the only two players in this game. In a globalized world, it's neither possible nor fair for one country to shoulder the security burden, the officials explain.
"There has to be common cause," one senior official said. "Everyone has an interest in Asia, which is now the engine of the world's economic growth. These BRIC economic powers -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- out there need to care, because this is coming to affect a market near them." | <urn:uuid:59718df3-8344-4920-8488-369a13bd0bfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kesq.com/news/N-Korea-rocket-prompts-diplomatic-concerns/-/233092/17764076/-/hnqm6l/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965324 | 1,382 | 1.726563 | 2 |
“They had this lawsuit hanging around for years, and basically the publishers have all moved on,” James Grimmelmann, a professor at New York Law School who has been following the case, told The New York Times. “They are selling digitally now. That’s the future. This just memorializes the transition.”
The case against Google was originally filed in 2005 after Google had made public its plans to create the world’s largest digital library and partnered with several major research libraries to digitize books and journals in their collections. Authors and publishers argued this constituted copyright infringement and filed suit against Google, seeking financial damages and a court order to block the copying. A deal was reached in 2008 but was rejected by federal Judge Denny Chin, who said it raised copyright and antitrust concerns. | <urn:uuid:b7649dc8-16fa-472c-b6ea-53b0fe23606f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/1005/Google-and-publishers-reach-settlement-on-digitized-books-case/(page)/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981205 | 166 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Hampshire residents set to benefit in 'big switch' to drive down energy bills
Tuesday, 08 January 2013
Councils across Hampshire are joining forces in a bid to help residents across Hampshire benefit from greater savings on their gas and electricity bills.
The County Council is working with other local authorities across Hampshire to set up a 'collective energy switching service' which will enable gas and electricity consumers in the county to combine their purchasing power and get a better deal on their bills.
Councillor Mel Kendal, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Environment at Hampshire County Council, said: "This is good news for households across the county since it will mean that people who register for the scheme will possibly be able to get their gas and/or electricity at much cheaper rates than if they were buying either service as an individual customer.
"For instance, there are approximately 760,000 households in Hampshire. If two per cent sign up to switch energy supplier through our collective energy switching service, this would give a combined purchasing power of just over 15,000 customers, enabling the negotiation of greater discounts on their behalf. Clearly, the more people who sign up, the more negotiating power we will have - so it is vital as many people as possible register for the scheme.
"Being able to access cheaper energy has the potential to bring significant benefits to those on low incomes, the elderly and families in fuel poverty which in turn should have a positive impact on their health and wellbeing.
"It will also give an opportunity for greater savings to be made by those who rely on electricity alone for heating and cooking because they cannot be connected to a mains gas supply.
"Typically customers could save in the region of £60 to £200 on their energy bills by participation in collective switching. Running an energy switching scheme three times a year could lead to potential savings of up to £25 million for Hampshire residents."
To get the scheme up and running, the County Council, on behalf of the other Hampshire local authorities, is proposing to contract an intermediary organisation to manage the collective switching process. A decision on this is to be taken on 22 January 2013 at the Executive Member for Environment and Transport Decision Day. If agreed, the organisation under contract would be responsible for registering consumers, negotiating with energy companies to secure the best deal for householders and arranging the switch for each individual customer. There would be no charges to the customer or any council tax payer for this service, since the organisation's payment would come from a referral fee paid to the organisation by the energy supplier.
More details about the scheme and how people can register will be announced at the beginning of April 2013, subject to the agreement (on 22 January) to contract an agency to undertake the energy switching work, and the tender process leading to the appointment of a contractor with the required expertise, skills and resources.
Nationally, collective energy switching is supported strongly by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Local Government Association and consumer groups including Consumer Focus. | <urn:uuid:57e62292-6639-4d81-b239-111bc1308dfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hantswebnewslist?id=568436&stdate=1358717199993&relatedlinks=no&pagetitle=Hampshire%20residents%20set%20to%20benefit%20in%20'big%20switch'%20to%20drive%20down%20energy%20bills | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96195 | 607 | 1.609375 | 2 |
HT: Stan Ott
HT: Stan Ott
The Guardian: Boom time for Mozambique, once the basket case of Africa
As African lions outpace Asian tigers, one of the world's poorest states is moving from civil war bust to boom – but who will gain?
... A construction boom is under way here, concrete proof of the economic revolution in Mozambique. Growth hit 7.1% last year, accelerating to 8.1% in the final quarter. The country, riven by civil war for 15 years, is poised to become the world's biggest coal exporter within the next decade, while the recent discovery of two massive gas fields in its waters has turned the region into an energy hotspot, promising a £250bn bonanza.
The national currency was the best performing in the world against the dollar. Investment is pouring in on an unprecedented scale; as if to prove that history has a sense of irony, Portuguese feeling Europe's economic pain are flocking back to the former colony, scenting better prospects than at home. Increasingly this is the rule, not the exception in Africa, which has boasted six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies in the past decade. The first oil discovery in Kenya was confirmed on Monday, while the British firm BG Group announced that one of its gas fields off the Tanzanian coast was bigger than expected and could lead to billions of pounds of investment. Bankers, analysts and politicians have never been so bullish about the continent, which barely 10 years ago was regarded as a basket case.
From Cape Town to Cairo, there are signs of a continent on the move: giant infrastructure projects, an expanding middle class, foreign equity scrambling for opportunities in telecoms, financial services and products aimed at a billion consumers. Growth is no magic bullet for reducing inequality or fostering democracy, but the stubborn truth that it is still the world's poorest continent has done little to dull the confidence and hype about the African renaissance. ...
USA Today: Evangelicals seek positive change
... But not far below the surface, change is afoot in the ranks of a once-reliable GOP voting bloc and around that term, "evangelical." As has been widely reported, more evangelicals are breaking formation and tackling social problems such as poverty and human trafficking that weren't on the evangelical political agenda a decade or two ago. Even more seismic, though, is a challenge being mounted against the notion that electoral politics is the way to do God's work in America's public life.
In a refreshing departure from the culture war mind-set that has come to characterize this and other recent elections, some of evangelicalism's leading thinkers and spokespeople are trumpeting an important insight: Christians too fixated on politics are bound to end up frustrated and tarnished. And politics is not the only way to create positive change. ...
Let us bow our heads and give thanks that life begins anew. ;-)
(This is cross post with a post done earlier today at Jesus Creed.)
How do we create coherence between faith and work? John Knapp has explained how important rethinking vocation is, and how important it is that we carefully consider a moral theology of work. Today, Chapter 7 of How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it), Knapp describes a workplace awakening.
Knapp suggests that an awakening to faith and work issues has emerged in the past ten to twenty years. But even prior to that, there were people who were surfacing the issues. Lutheran steel company executive William Diehl was writing books on this topic in the 1980s. Peter Hammond, connected with Diehl, became influential in Intervarsity with their Ministry in Daily Life work. There were people like Howard E. Butt, Jr., originally connected with the Billy Graham Crusades, who founded the Laity Lodge and an online ministry to businesspeople called TheHighCalling.org.
Knapp lays out several ways people are trying to integrate faith and work. Which ones do you find hopeful and which ones give you concern? Why? Are there other avenues of finding coherence that you did not see mentioned here? What do you think the institutional church might learn from the faith-at- work movement?
My sense is that a move toward more serious theological reflection began about this time. Miroslav Volf published “Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work,” in 1991, David Krueger published “Keeping Faith at Work,” in 1994, and R. Paul Stevens began publishing a string of books on work and faith, most notably for me, “The Other Six Days: Vocation Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective,” in 1999. Other authors have emerged in the past decade but I still have the sense that interest in this topic in the theological academy is relegated to a small minority. The real change has been coming from Christians outside the institutions of the church.
Knapp highlights some examples of lay-led ministries that have emerged to hold conferences and retreats, offer resources, and to create networking opportunities. He mentions Kevin Latty’s Souly Business, Chuck Proudfit’s At Work on Purpose, Aric Renicke’s Christian Business Roundtable and Christian Professionals Worldwide, and Richard Boxx’s Integrity Resource Center. There are countless websites and social media initiatives from a variety of and organizations.
Also emerging are attempts by Christians to form groups that meet for study and prayer within the workplace. This is easier within private companies, but some public companies accommodate this, and even some government entities permit this as well. Knapp devotes a section of the chapter to pointing out that this is not without controversy. EEOC requirements and concerns about creating a hostile work environment for people who are not Christian is a challenge. Yet the walls between work and private life have been lowering and many employees want more integrated lives, whether Christians or people of other faiths. Knapp sees this as an area that is likely going to lead to more controversy and the business world is really not ready to reckon with it.
Another response to the faith and work divide has been for companies to openly embrace faith. There has been a rise in the number of “Christian-based companies,” firms that have a Christian vision as part of their business plan. Interstate Batteries, Hobby Lobby, Chic-fil-A, ServiceMaster, Amway, and Covenant Transport, are just a few prominent examples of a growing trend. Many of these businesses network through organizations like the Fellowship of Companies in Christ (FCCI).
Another growing phenomenon is the idea of corporate and industrial chaplaincies. Companies employ or contract with chaplains to be onsite and available for employees. Businesses have organized to provide these chaplains, the largest being Marketplace Chaplains USA, with 2,400 chaplains serving 418 companies. There is formal and ongoing training required to qualify as a chaplain. Chaplains are not involved in overt evangelism but rather offer spiritual support, hospital visitation, and possibly an occasional funeral or wedding.
Finally, there is Business as Mission, or BAM. Here, businesses are established (usually in emerging nations) to evangelize, create jobs, and to apply the profits to various types of community development. Traditional mission models are often not welcomed in some regions in of the world and they are harder to sustain. BAM has somewhat of a tent-making quality, while being more agreeable to authorities, and with the additional benefit of sometimes creating jobs.
What Knapp is pointing to in this chapter is an explosion in the effort by businesspeople to make connection between public life in the business world and faith. For a more comprehensive look that reviews the past century of faith and work developments, read David Miller’s God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement, published in 2007.
Whether reading Knapp or Miller, I have a conflicted response of both hope and disquiet. The hopeful part is that people are working at finding coherence in their lives. There are hundreds of organizations rising up as Christians help each other navigate the challenges. That is a good thing and there is a role for this type of service.
But the disturbing reality is this. We already have thousands of communities all over the nation that should already be offering the kind of integration and support that these disciples are craving. They are called congregations! From what I can tell, virtually none of the ministries being described are congregation based or are about equipping congregations to be more effective at addressing the faith and work divide. Concerning the movement to address the divide, Knapp writes:
“… Today the movement is flourishing, aided greatly by social media and globally networked organizations, yet without much involvement by the institutional church. Indeed, many of today’s most successful work-related ministries were born out of frustration with the church and its failure to respond to and obvious need and opportunity.
The rise of this trend is well-documented by Princeton University’s David W. Miller in his book God at Work. He concludes, “The church and the theological academy have a choice: they can sit on the sidelines, ignore the movement, and let it pass them by, or they can learn from it, engage it, and help shape the theology and practice of faith at work.” (123)
A few paragraphs later Knapp writes:
“Diehl, Hammond, Butt, and others like them erected a platform of ideas that has allowed a multifaceted movement to thrive through the initiative and leadership of laypeople. The institutional church, meanwhile, has been less than enthusiastic about these ideas, preferring to redefine lay ministry as more active involvement in existing church programs. ‘Whether church professionals never fully absorbed that, by definition, the location of lay ministry was extrinsic to the gathered church or whether they were threatened by a loss of power and control is open to debate,’ writes Miller.”
As someone from a Mainline Protestant perspective, I confess that many sectors of the movement are not all that comfortable for me. It often feels very white, very male, very Republican and deeply entrenched in conservative Evangelical and Pentecostal milieus. I worry that some of what I see too heavily equates Christian faith with patriotic American civil religion. The theological reflection, at times, strikes me as much less than adequate.
Still, these folks are making the effort to find coherence, even if the effort is being made from outside the institutional church. The Mainline churches have vacated the arena altogether. In fact, I sometimes wonder if rather than seeing the daily world of business as something that needs attention from Mainline theology and institutions, there isn’t an ethos that says that business is “conservative” and that isn’t what we do. With so many people in Mainline pews from business backgrounds, and with declining numbers of people involved in these denominations, it is quite remarkable to me that the movement to find coherence between work and faith is virtually nonexistent in Mainline tribes, except possibly in the case of a few isolated congregations here and there.
Muchas felicidades! Hispanic babies, born in the U.S. at a rate four times the total population between 2000 and 2010, are still gaining ground in the youngest of demos. While a slight dip in the birth rate correlated with the economic crisis, the parting of recessionary clouds and a recovering housing market may reignite what has been a steady cultural explosion.
One-fourth of children in the U.S. are Hispanic. While this expanding segment represents a marketing opportunity, many of them are second- or third-generation, and accordingly, advertisers need to keep culture and language in mind.
“They’re growing up in this dynamic and are very much acculturated, but they’re seeing how their parents operate and are still influenced by the cultures of their grandparents,” said David Hohman, evp and global performance director for MRM Worldwide.
Advertisers targeting this group can use Hispanic actors and models, but have them speak in Spanglish. Marketers also need to be aware of differing media habits. Hispanic kids, for example, multitask more than non-Hispanics, with 21 percent below the age of 8 using more than one medium most or some of the time.
New York Times: Average cost of U.S. wedding hits $27,021
(Reuters) - New York, where the average cost of a wedding is $65,824, is the most expensive city in the United States to get married but many couples will spend about $27,000 to tie the knot and that doesn't include the cost of the honeymoon.
Most things in Manhattan and the New York metropolitan area are expensive and weddings are no exception, according to the wedding websites TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com, which polled nearly 18,000 U.S. brides who were married in 2011 about the cost of their big day.
Chicago came in second with wedding costs of $53,069, but metropolitan New York, which includes Long Island and counties north of New York and the city's boroughs, neighboring New Jersey and Rhode Island rounded out the top five.
The price tags ranged from a high in Manhattan, which topped the poll of 20 cities to Detroit, where couples spend $27,017 on their nuptials.
The state of West Virginia, where nuptials cost an average of $14,203, was the least expensive wedding location.
"For the first time since 2008, wedding budgets are on the rise," said Carley Roney, cofounder of The Knot. "In 2011, one in five U.S. couples spent more than $30,000, and 11 percent spent more than $40,000 on their weddings," she said. ...
I could comment on this and risk getting blasted as an unromantic fuddy-duddy but I will hold my peace. (Is that sublte/diplomatic enough?)
(This is cross post with a post done earlier today at Jesus Creed.)
Today we continue with John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). We turn now to Chapter 6, “A Moral Theology of Work.”
The business environment can often present significant ethical challenges. Where might we begin as we think about ethical behavior? Knapp suggests a good place to start is with Micah 6:8:
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”
Is it possible to be competitive in business while loving justice and kindness, and walking humbly with God, while grounded in love and responsibility?
What would it take to create the five-fold moral community Knapp describes?
Is Micah and the Jesus Creed the place to ground our ethical reflection or would you frame things differently?
Grounded in Love
Knapp says this definition of what is good is grounded in the Jesus Creed: Love God, love neighbor. What would it mean to respond to others out of this ethic in business? Knapp writes:
“An ethic of love goes beyond both duty (keeping promises, telling the truth, doing a job well) and compliance (with civil law, contractual requirements, or employment policies), both of which are necessary in the workplace. Love recognizes that every person is unique and must be cared for individually, whether or not a rule mandates it. This requires us to take the time and effort to discover what actually meets the other’s need.” (101)
To Do Justice
Business people are to be advocates for justice within their sphere of influence. It goes beyond just upholding the law. It is about pursing more just structures and behaviors. Sadly, Knapp writes:
“Paul Camenisch, a theologian with expertise in business ethics, believes that the church has failed to convey to believers their personal responsibilities for doing justice at work. In a critique of Protestant policy statements on economic justice, he writes, “Seldom if ever are Christians addressed as influential actors responsible in their vocations for seeing that, within their power, justice is done. They are not seriously challenged to ask questions about the human impact of their actions as workers, managers, consumers, and owners on their fellows …” As we have discussed, church pronouncements on economics tend to critique the macroeconomic system with little or no thought to the difficulties faced by individuals or organizations within the system.” (103)
To Love Kindness
We are not just to do kind things but to love kindness. We might easily see the natural application of this to our coworkers or customers. How about to our personal rivals or the competition?
To Walk Humbly
“It is easy fall prey to an illusion of becoming self-sufficient through the accumulation of material wealth.” (106) And with this sense of self-sufficiency can come a sense of entitlement. That entitlement can be evidenced in the form of smug condescension or even as envy of others for what should “rightfully” be one’s own. For Christians there is a danger of self-righteous as we strive to be more “Christ-like” than others. I’m inclined to think that walking humbly may be the slipperiest of all. Knapp sees it as the precondition for the first two.
Central to living out this ethic is an embrace of responsibility. Knapp writes:
“This [human] potential includes the capacity for genuine responsiveness in all relationships, for authentic discipleship is a process of learning to enact Christian love in every circumstance. H. Richard Niebuhr … proposes that responsibility is defined chiefly by how we respond to others including God. This concept of responsibility as response-ability may be a better way to think about ethics than adherence to abstract more principles, compliance with rules, or even achievement of good outcomes. The responsible Christian must be fully attentive to the “decisive present” and the possibilities of God’s activity through the lives of others.” (109)
With the response-ability we have, we are to make “fitting responses” based on God’s justice.
Referring back to the survey results mentioned in the first post in this series (where people from all walks of life considered an ethical dilemma they had once faced), Knapp writes:
“Few of the dilemmas reported by our research subjects could be reduced to neat choices of right over wrong, good over bad. Nor were they problems where rules could determine the best course of action. The inherent difficulty in most of the cases involved conflicting values and priorities.” (111)
In short, ethical decisions are frequently messy. Two legitimate ethical concerns may be in competition with each other. On top of this, we are frequently distracted by competing demands and time pressures. All this requires conscious effort to be truly present in the decisions we are making.
Questions to guide us
Knapp offers a list of questions we might ask ourselves when we face difficult questions with justice, kindness, and humility grounded in love and responsibility (His questions with my summary sentence):
The Necessary Role of the Church
Knapp closes the chapter with an important section called “The Necessary Role of the Church.” He lists five facets of faith community that should be present to equip and support people in the workplace. (The short summaries of each listing are mine, not Knapp’s.)
A Community of Moral Discernment – Rarely are any of us capable of answering the above questions on our own. Including people who know us, love us, share our commitment to God, and/or may have special insight into how to process some of these questions, are essential to sound discipleship.
A Community of Moral Discourse – People within a faith community often don’t agree with each other on particular problems but it is often the civil debate about a problem that helps us individually to come to better conclusions. The church needs to be a place for honest questions.
A Community of Moral Influence – Individuals often find they are powerless alone to address injustices that emerge in the work world. Congregations and denominational bodies are needed to work in support of efforts to reduce injustice and be supportive of businesspeople needing to take difficult stands.
A Community of Moral Encouragement – The business world is frequently messy. Rather than casting businesspeople as tainted Christians, we need to pray for them and support them as they work to integrate their work and faith (even as we help build the expectation that they should do so. )
A Community of Moral Example – The church needs to engage in just employment and financial practices if it expects the broader world to give any heed.
This concludes the summary of Chapter 6. I’m not sure I’ve done it justice. I hope folks will read the book. But this chapter raised two issues for me that I want to briefly mention … one economic and the other theological.
I love the use of the Micah passage grounded in love and responsibility as a starting point for ethical reflection. And Knapp is exactly right that love is not about having warm fuzzy sentiments but rather about knowing individuals and seeking their good. Knapp is calling us to look at the neglected realm of everyday micro-economic business decisions and giving us tools to live out our calling in that context. But as we move to the meso and macro levels of economics, to decisions that deal with large firms and interactions beyond the firm, I think it becomes impossible to meaningfully apply the “love” principle.
A signature feature of advanced market economies is the ability of firms to gather and coordinate large numbers of people. Markets create vast webs of interconnection among people (who will likely never meet each other), allowing us to benefit from specialization and exchange with countless strangers. It is not possible for a businessperson to “love” hundreds/thousands of others in a businessperson’s own firm, much less those outside the firm, in the sense we have described above. Theologian Economist Paul Heyne wrote in an essay (“Morality of Labor Unions.” Chapter 24 in Are Economists Basically Immoral?, 429.):
“What does justice mean in this world of completely impersonal transactions? If we take the most general definition of justice – giving to each their due – how do we decide what each is due? In such a world the Golden Rule is simply irrelevant. Social transactions in a market-coordinated economy cannot be governed by the principle “Do for others what you would like them to do for you.” The appropriate rule is what someone has called the Silver Rule: “Do not do to others anything that you would consider unfair if they did it to you.” (429)
I do not want to minimize the important framing that Knapp has offered here. Rather, I want to emphasize that as we move much outside the sphere of face-to-face community, we encounter inescapable sociological realties that may require a different kind of ethical analysis. We can’t simply deal with larger institutions as a family (or face-to-face community) writ large. All the more reason why we need communities of disciples to help us work our way through ethical thickets.
The theological thought I had goes directly to Scot’s King Jesus Gospel. Scot rejects the Evangelical tendency to collapse “gospel” into “salvation.” The King Jesus Gospel is about Jesus’s completion of the story of Israel and that story is rooted in the creation story, including the first great commission of exercising dominion over creation and the redemption of that mission. But I don’t think it is just the Evangelical world in Protestantism that needs rethinking.
In my Mainline PCUSA world, gospel is typically about rectifying wrong, either via compassion or justice advocacy. If Evangelicals have a “salvation gospel ,” as Scot says, then my tribe has a bias toward a “justice gospel.” Just as the King Jesus Gospel includes salvation, it also includes justice, but “gospel” cannot be collapsed into salvation, justice, or their combination. The King Jesus Gospel includes (among many other things) redemption of the first great commission. Neither the salvation gospel nor the justice gospel will do. Without the King Jesus Gospel there is no reason to give focused attention to the issues Knapp is raising. Work is peripheral to the “real” issues of either salvation or justice. I think the real starting place for a moral theology of work likely must begin with our understanding of gospel.
Lausanne Global Conversation: An Indian Perspective on Business as Mission by Daniel Devadatta
I believe the time has come for more Christians to unashamedly enter the realm of business in India. It is time for the larger Christian community to support, encourage and even challenge Christian business persons in terms of the influence they have and can have in the public square. How will the gospel shape business people in one of the most exhilarating periods in the history of our nation?
In my daily work I am an encourager of Christian business professionals. The market, the work place and the people who function in this realm are my parish. This post reflects a personal narrative of what I have discovered in this journey amongst business persons.
First of all, it is my conviction that business is a moral and spiritual calling. It is an equally legitimate calling like all other callings; a task set by God who calls some for the sake of others.
In my engagement with those business persons who have this inner sense of calling to business, I have found a deep passion and determination. They do not merely enjoy what they do, they have the sense that this is what they were meant to do. They wake up each day to see how their business can actually do something worthwhile in society. They ask themselves: what does it mean to run a successful business where the vendors, customers, suppliers, government and bureaucratic officials, employees, etc., experience the love of God? Business for them is making a tangible difference in the lives of others, be it their customers or employees, or the myriad web of relationships that develop through business. They are called by God to serve Christ and others in and through their business.
There is an emerging world-wide network of such business persons. We are beginning to see it even here in India, Christian business people operating their business ‘as mission’. However, much more work needs to be done by the church and Christian organizations to encourage business persons in their business calling, and provide resources that strengthen them in their primary place of influence. ...
HONOLULU (AP) — Hollywood icon James Cameron has made it to Earth's deepest point.
The director of "Titanic," ''Avatar" and other films used a specially designed submarine to dive nearly seven miles, completing his journey a little before 8 a.m. Monday local time, according to Stephanie Montgomery of the National Geographic Society.
He plans to spend about six hours exploring and filming the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam.
"All systems OK," were Cameron's first words upon reaching the bottom, according to a statement. His arrival at a depth of 35,756 feet came early Sunday evening on the U.S. East Coast, after a descent that took more than two hours.
The scale of the trench is hard to grasp — it's 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall. ...
... Actually, that's not really accurate. The chart above shows the manufacturing shares of GDP for the U.S., the entire world economy and four of the countries cited in the study (Japan, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands) as having a "stable or growing" shares of GDP using United Nations data here for the years 1970 to 2010. For all five countries and for the world economy, the manufacturing shares of GDP fell to historic all-time lows in 2009, before increasing slightly in all cases in 2010. Like the U.S., manufacturing's share of GDP has fallen in Germany, Japan, Finland and the Netherlands.
It’s also interesting to note that the decline in manufacturing’s share of U.S. GDP over the last forty years (from 24% to 13%) is nearly identical to the decline in world manufacturing as a share of world GDP, which fell from 27% in 1970 to 16% in 2010. Therefore, we can conclude that the declining share of manufacturing’s contribution to GDP is not unique to America, but reflects a global trend as the world moves from a traditional manufacturing-intensive Machine Age economy to more a services-intensive Information Age economy. ...
... Manufacturing’s declining share of output isn’t a sign of economic weakness - it’s just the opposite. It’s a sign that advances in manufacturing productivity and efficiency translate into lower prices for consumers when they purchase goods like cars, food, clothing, appliances, furniture, and electronic goods. In the U.S., the price of goods relative to services fell by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010, so it’s not surprising that manufacturing’s importance in the economy has fallen significantly.
As spending on manufactured goods as a share of household income declines, it raises our standard of living, and for that “decline in manufacturing” we should celebrate, not complain.
A longer version of this post appears today at the National Chamber Foundation blog.
New York Times: From Engineering Marvels, a Turnaround in U.S. Oil Output
... Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have been around for years, but over the last five years, engineers have fine-tuned these and other techniques, even as many environmentalists worry about their impact on water and air.
Computer programs have been developed to simulate wells before they are even drilled. Advanced fiber optics permit senior engineers at company headquarters to keep track of drillers on the well pad, telling them when necessary where to direct the drill bit and what pressure to use in injecting fracking fluids. Seismic work has become far more sophisticated, with drillers dropping microphones down adjacent wells to measure seismic events resulting from a fracking job so they can more accurately determine the porosity and permeability of rocks when they drill nearby in the future.
Just a decade ago, complete wells were fracked at the same time with millions of gallons of water, sand and chemical gels. Now the wells are fracked in stages, with various kinds of plugs and balls used to isolate the bursting of rock one section at a time, allowing for longer-reaching, more productive horizontal wells. A well that once took two days to drill can now be drilled in seven hours. ...
... But new adhesives and harder alloys have made diamond cutters and drill bits tougher in recent years. Meanwhile, Apache experimented with powerful underground motors to rotate drilling bits at a faster rate. Now, a well that might have taken 30 days to drill can be drilled in just 10, for a savings of $500,000 a well. ...
... “We’re having a revolution,” said Steve Farris, Apache’s chief executive. “And we’re just scratching the surface.” ...
... Environmentalists are critical because burning more fossil fuels contributes to climate change.
“Life needs to be protected and global warming is the most profound threat to life on earth.” said Jay Lininger, an ecologist at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is pushing the federal government to protect wildlife from the effects of drilling in the Permian Basin, the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaskan Arctic. ...
Slate: The Economics of The Hunger Games
Could any real country have an economy like Panem’s? Actually, yes.
At first glance, the economic landscape depicted in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling Hunger Games trilogy doesn’t make much sense. Despite its post-apocalyptic condition, the fictional nation of Panem is quite technologically advanced. It has high-speed trains, hovercrafts, extraordinary genetic engineering capabilities, and the ability to create extremely advanced weapons. And yet Panem is also a society of tremendous economic inequality, with clear examples of absolute economic deprivation and even famine.
Economic theory teaches us that over the long term, prosperity is driven by two factors—capital accumulation and the “Solow residual” of technology—and that of the two elements the technology is more important. Perhaps the best example comes to us from the experience of Germany and Japan around World War II. These were, before the war began, prosperous, technologically advanced societies rich in industrial capital. They had the capacity, in other words, to build the tanks and bombs and aircraft carriers one would need to mount a successful effort at global conquest. But during the course of the war, the capital stock of both countries was run down to almost nothing by massive Allied bombing. In the very short-term, this impoverished both countries, but they bounced back remarkably quickly. Knowing how to build a prosperous society, in other words, was more important than actually having the physical stuff.
So how can Panem, more than 70 years after the conclusion of its last major battle, be so poor and yet so rich in knowledge?...
... District 12 is a quintessential extractive economy. It’s oriented around a coal mine, the kind of facility where unskilled labor can be highly productive in light of the value of the underlying commodity. In a free society, market competition for labor and union organizing would drive wages up. But instead the Capitol imposes a single purchaser of mine labor and offers subsistence wages. Emigration to other districts in search of better opportunities is banned, as is exploitation of the apparently bountiful resources of the surrounding forest. With the mass of Seam workers unable to earn a decent wage, even relatively privileged townsfolk have modest living standards. If mineworkers earned more money, the Mellark family bakery would have more customers and more incentive to invest in expanded operations. A growing service economy would grow up around the mine. But the extractive institutions keep the entire District in a state of poverty, despite the availability of advanced technology in the Capitol.
Similar conditions would apply to the plantation agriculture we briefly see portrayed in District 8, and presumably other commodity-oriented Districts such as 7 (lumber), 10 (livestock), and 9 (grain). On the other hand, Collins wisely avoids going into detail about what life is supposed to be like in Districts specializing in luxury goods or electronics. It’s difficult to have a thriving economy in electronics production without a competitive market featuring multiple buyers and multiple sellers.
Absent market competition, personal computers never would have disrupted the mainframe market and the iPhone and Android never would have revolutionized telecommunications. Entrenched monopolists have no interest in developing new technologies that shake things up. It’s difficult to get real innovation-oriented competitive markets without secure property rights, and exceedingly difficult to have secure property rights without some diffusion of political power. That needn’t mean real democratic equality—a standard the United States and Europe didn’t meet until relatively recently—but it does mean fairly broad power-sharing, as the U.S. has had from the beginning.
But Collins is right in line with the most depressing conclusion offered by Acemoglu and Robinson, namely that once extractive institutions are established they’re hard to get rid of. Africa’s modern states, they note, were created by European colonialists who set out to create extractive institutions to exploit the local population. The injustice of the situation led eventually to African mass resistance and the overthrow of colonial rule. But in almost every case, the new elite simply started running the same extractive institutions for their own benefit. The real battle turned out to have been over who ran the machinery of extraction, not its existence. And this, precisely, is the moral of Collins’ trilogy. [Spoiler alert: Ignore rest of this story if you haven’t finished the trilogy.] To defeat the Capitol’s authoritarian power requires the construction of a tightly regimented, extremely disciplined society in District 13. That District’s leaders are able to mobilize mass discontent with the Capitol into a rebellion, but this leads not to the destruction of the system but its decapitation. Despite the sincere best efforts of ordinary people to better their circumstances, the deep logic of extractive institutions is difficult to overcome, whether in contemporary Nigeria or in Panem.
I'm presently doing a chapter by chapter review of the book at Jesus Creed. I'm also posting the reviews here at the Kruse Kronicle. Chapter Six will be posted tomorrow. Here are links to each of the first five entries at Jesus Creed. There are three more to come and the series will be complete next week:
HOMEWOOD, Alabama -- A pastor once asked a professor for advice on how to handle a controversy in his church. The largest financial supporter of a Baptist church was nominated to the board of deacons. He happened to be the owner of a busy liquor store.
No one ever complained about his large donations to the church, but his nomination to the deacon board aroused a furor.
That's one of the scenarios addressed in a new book by Samford University professor John C. Knapp, founding director of Samford's Francis Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership. ...
... Many times there is an implied devaluation of any work that is not Christian ministry, he said.
"We will go to great lengths to set aside time to pray for people going to do a short-term mission project in Mexico; this is seen as doing the Lord's work," Knapp said. "Do we take time to pray for a person who is starting a new job? Do we pray for new college students looking for a career? Do we commission them for discipleship in those contexts?" ...
... There is reasonable caution about blatant evangelism in the workplace, he said.
"It's not about evangelizing the workplace," Knapp said. "It's about how do you find meaning in your work." ...
... The church needs a doctrine of vocation -- calling to be disciples in whatever their line of work -- and a moral theology of work, Knapp said. ...
I'm presently doing a chapter by chapter review of the book at Jesus Creed. I'm also posting the reviews here at the Kruse Kronicle. Chapter Six will be posted tomorrow. Here are links to each of the first five entries at Jesus Creed. There are three more to come and the series will be complete next week:
Black, White and Gray: Are Religious Organizations Like Firms?
Can ideas from economics, such as that monopolies are lazy and that competition leads to better products, be applied to understand religion? Every year I teach my students–both those in my class on economic sociology and those in my class on sociology of religion–about the economistic or the rational choice perspective on religion.
Most people think individual religious behaviors and religious organizations are driven by emotions, theology, and/or tradition. But rational choice theories of religion are modeled are assumptions about human behavior now current in mainstream economics: humans are rational, self-interested beings who seek to maximize rewards and minimize their costs. What makes religion so powerful in motivating human behavior is that most religions promise rewards or punishment in another life. ...
... Talking about religion as a product marketed to buyers and sellers sounds appealing, saying that Methodists and Baptists are just like competing car firms is intriguing, and arguing that martyrs aren’t crazy but rational is counter-intuitive. Ultimately, however, rational choice theory doesn’t provide a comprehensive explanation of individual religious behavior or organizational religious behavior. Do some things about religion resemble market behavior? Yes. That is why I always teach rational choice theory: it provides unique insights into religion. As long as rational choice theory and its assumptions about forward-looking and self-interested behavior are considered alongside other important explanations of religious behavior, I think it makes an important contribution to understanding religion. But rational choice ultimately only tells us some things about religion, not everything, nor even the most important things about religion.
All social analysts–whether paid academics scholars like myself, journalists or readers of this blog–should put rational choice explanations of behavior alongside other perspectives, such as cultural and organizational theories. For example, it was not only competition from new religious movements or community megachurches like Willow Creek that led to the declining identification with religious denominations in America, but also important theological changes within those denominations about the authority of scripture, among other things. Dramatic cultural changes since the 1960s have also changed what people expect from religion–the God some people seek out today may be an authoritative God that expects sacrifice but for many others seek a therapeutic God who provides psychological comfort on demand. ...
... He says gasoline demand peaked in 2007 and has fallen each year since, even though the economy has begun to recover.
"The U.S. has already reached what we can call 'peak demand.' Because of increased efficiency, because of biofuels, we're not going to see growth in our oil consumption," Yergin says.
That view is shared by the government's official source of energy data, the Energy Information Administration. Its long-term projection is that gasoline consumption will steadily decline by around 7 percent over the next 25 years.
Howard Gruenspecht, the EIA's acting administrator, says the projection does not take into account the latest proposal on automotive fuel efficiency, likely to be approved later this year. It requires fleet averages of 54.5 miles per gallon.
"If you put those into the mix, we would expect a somewhat steeper decline in overall liquid fuels demand, and gasoline demand in particular," Gruenspecht says. ...
(This is cross post with a post done earlier today at Jesus Creed.)
Real estate people say real estate is about three things: location, location, location. Well I suspect integrating business and faith is also about three things: vocation, vocation, vocation. “Vocation” comes from the Latin vocare meaning “to call.” “God calls each of us into the divine relationship, and we respond to this call through the living of our lives, including our work lives.” (89) You might say that vocation helps us understand our location within God’s mission.
Today we move to the second part of the John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). The first four chapters have explored the nature of the divide between work and faith. The last four chapters invite us to think about how we might find coherence. Chapter 5 “Rethinking Christian Vocation” is the topic for today.
Does Knapp’s description of vocation match your understanding of the term? What impact does this understanding of vocation have for the sacred/secular, eternal/temporal, and public/private dualities we discussed last week? What do you think about the Naaman story and the idea that we can be whole working in a less than perfect business?
Knapp opens with a story about a man who told him that, “God called me out of AT&T” into a “business as mission” enterprise that would aid the poor in emerging nations. I’ve heard many similar stories myself. But Knapp wants to know, is it possible that God calls some people into AT&T and to remain there? Do we have a theology that would support this idea?
Knapp reminds us that:
“The Scriptures affirm even the most basic forms of work, not necessarily because they yield individual wealth or even happiness, but because they nourish life and prevent suffering (e.g., Gen 3:19; Prov. 14:23; Prov. 20:13; Eccles. 9:10; 2 Thess. 3:10-11).” (88)
Calvin believed that everyone must work. Work is part of the mission to which God has called us. It is partly through our work that we demonstrate we are part of the elect. I’m not sure most of us are ready to go that path with Calvin but the positive legacy of the Reformation was in realizing, as Knapp says, “…that work is not merely a means of survival but is a service to God in the ongoing process of creating and ordering the world.” Work is not primarily about personal gain but about seeking the welfare of others as we serve God.
Knapp points us to a helpful distinction about primary and secondary calling. We all have a primary calling to follow Christ and a secondary calling to do so in a particular context. Our primary call becomes particularized in a secondary call. We are called to a particular family, a community, and to a particular work. Our identity is in Christ but we are commissioned to serve in particular ways.
Knapp raises an issue that called to my mind the oft repeated Frederick Buechner quote, ‘Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need’. It is indeed special when someone can find employment that matches some great passion. My experience is that this is not the case for most of us. Work more typically is about providing for our own needs, being of service to others through the work we do, and serving family and friends with the wealth we create. It is about service to God in both good and difficult circumstances. I’m reminded that it is possible even for a slave to live out his or her primary vocation in work:
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.” Col 3:22-25
Knapp suggests that, “We are to be as faithful as possible within the confines and limitations of our own situations, whatever and whenever they may be.” (90)
He goes on to say:
“Certainly we should seek God’s guidance when considering career choices, but Christians would do well to give much more attention to discerning God’s will in their current situation. Are our lives the sum of random experiences, or has God’s hand and providence brought us to a place where we may serve here and now?” (91)
Now Knapp points out that this “serve where you are” idea can be taken too far. Luther believed that based on 1 Cor. 7:17 (“each of you should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him”) that each person should stay in the station to which he or she had been born. Many have also concluded that this means there is only one occupation to which God calls each of us and that if we want to find God’s will then must discern what that call is. This is a misreading of the passage. Paul was making the case that new Christians need not alter their status, including work, as a result of their newfound faith. Unfortunately, this “one true calling” idea is widely shared and the source of considerable anxiety for some Christians. A false sense of “higher callings” or anxiety about missing the one true job may actually take us away from where we might best be of service.
In essence, I read Knapp to say that it is not so much what we do for an occupation but whether we are serving Christ in that occupation. But it is not true that every expression of work is as legitimate as any other. Most Christians would agree that a pornography store is not a legitimate business. Other examples are not so clear. How about working for a cable company that includes pornographic programming? Should a Christian work for a military contractor (particularly if you a pacifist)? What about a bank that exploits low-income borrowers? Knapp writes:
“How, then, can a Christian know when to leave a job for moral or spiritual reasons? Sometimes the answer is obvious, as when some activity risks criminal liability. At other times it’s a matter of gauging one’s potential for changing things for the better.” (95)
“To be sure Christians should be unwilling to participate in some activities or even to hold certain jobs, but leaving a situation must always be weighed against the potential of staying for the benefit of others. Although either decision may be difficult, the latter usually takes an extra measure of courage and spiritual stamina.” (97)
There is no simple formula.
I particularly appreciated Knapp’s reflection on the story of Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-19). (You may recall that Naaman is one the gentiles of great faith Jesus mentions at the announcement of his ministry in Luke 4:27.) Naaman was the commanding officer over the Syrian army, Israel’s enemy. He discovers he has leprosy. A servant girl tells him of a prophet that can heal him. He gets permission from his King to visit Israel. He goes first to the King of Israel to request permission to see the prophet. The King of Israel is suspicious and will not see him, but sends him on to Elisha. Elisha also refuses to see him but sends out his servant to tell Naaman to wash in the Jordan seven times. A bit insulted, Naaman hesitates but finally decides to go wash in the river and he is healed. Naaman gives credit to God and declares there is no other God but the God of Israel.
But now he must go back to Syria and return to his command. That will mean kneeling to pagan gods, an act of blasphemy against the one true God. As Knapp says, “His public actions in the workplace will conflict with his personal faith.” (96) He is deeply concerned to have Elisha intercede with God on his behalf so that he may be forgiven of his inevitable transgressions. Elisha simply instructs him, “Go in peace.” “The prophet pronounces God’s blessing with the assurance that it is possible for Naaman to be whole and undivided in his workplace.” (97) Finding that sense of wholeness seems to be the key.
Knapp is suggesting that we need to revisit and rethink the idea of vocation. Doing so has two important implications. First, it communicates that what I do in my daily work life matters greatly to God. It integrates my life with God’s mission. Second, because my life is integrated, it communicates that what I do in my daily life is subject to Christian ethical reflection. So recovering a sense of vocation is the first piece in addressing “what can be done about it.” Maybe the first place pastors and church leaders can start is to cultivate a greater awareness of vocation and how our work is connected to God’s mission in the world.
The Christian Post: Youth Turned Off by Religion and Politics, Turn Away From Church
... One of the most surprising findings from the data they collected, Campbell said in a March 13 interview with The Christian Post, was that people are driven away or toward religious involvement because of their political leanings. In particular, those who are politically conservative, or Republican, are more likely to become churchgoers and those that are politically liberal, or Democratic, are more likely to turn away from religion.
This is the opposite of previous understandings of the interaction of religion and politics. Social scientists believed that people first got involved in a particular religion, which then influenced their politics in some way. Increasingly, more studies like Campbell and Putnam's are finding, though, that politics is more likely to determine religion than religion determine politics.
Campbell likes to use the image of a "brand" from marketing. The Republican brand has been increasingly associated with religion and social conservatism due to the influence of the Christian Right, a social movement which has been a part of the Republican coalition since the 1980s. Moderates and Democrats are uncomfortable with that brand and seek to not be identified with it.
"A lot of what goes on in politics is not so much people thinking through political positions but it's sort of a visceral reaction you have to a brand, whether it be Republicans or Democrats," Campbell said. ...
... "Anything you might say about the general population, double it or square it when you talk about the young," Campbell said.
Since young voters are more likely to be politically liberal, especially on the issue of gay rights, they have been driven away from the church by the perception of a close association between religion and Republican politics.
To young adults, Campbell and Putnam write, "'religion' means 'Republican,' 'intolerant,' and 'homophobic.' Since those traits do not represent their views, they do not see themselves – or wish to be seen by their peers – as religious." ...
... "The reason this is important for clergy is these are not people who are lost completely to religion. It's almost like they're an untapped constituency, or untapped market, that could be brought back to a different kind of religion, or a religion that they thought was stripped of politics," Campbell argued.
There is a trend among nondenominational evangelical congregations that attract younger Christians to avoid involvement in politics. Campbell believes that the pastors of these congregations understand more intuitively what his data is showing more crudely – that young people dislike their religion mixed with politics.
And yet, it seems to me, that the vision of many in the PCUSA world is to offer a very political left version of the church as the alternative to the Christian Right. It is just a different "brand" of the uholy elevation of politics to the center of church's agenda. Stripping the church of all political reflection seems a bit too far to me, but with each passing month I'm more and more persuaded that the future lies in a church that integrates daily life with God's mission in the world, and includes people of all politcal stripes wrestling together through the issues that confront us.
...Here at the Work Research Foundation we believe in markets. We believe markets to be the best way—no, the only sane way—to structure interactions in economic life. We don't only believe this because of the historical evidence from the complete failure and ghastly horror of socialism and fascism, but even more because we consider markets to be built into the very design of economic life. Markets as the proper setting for economic interaction, for buying and selling, are in our view a feature of the structure of reality. So we flagrantly support the idea and the reality of a market economy.
But this does not mean we support the idea of a market society—what Warren Bennis calls "a bottom-line society." Human life is not all about economics. Contrary to rational choice theory, we human beings do not make all of our decisions simply in terms of cost/benefit analyses.
While economic life needs room to flourish, and needs protection from the encroachment of excessive government intrusion, it also needs limits. The sphere of economic life does not only provide businesses with a space for their wealth-generating manufacture of products and provision of services, and labour unions with a space for negotiating fair participation in these activities—it also sets the outer limits for business and labour. ...
The Atlantic Cities: Uncovering the World's First Cities
... By analyzing satellite imagery, archaeologist Jason Ur and computer scientist Bjoern Menze have identified thousands of settlement sites in one section of the Fertile Crescent. They've mapped more than 14,000 settlement sites in a 23,000-square-kilometer region in northeastern Syria, and they suggest that their method can be used to map the entire region. Their work appears in this month's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Ur and Menze trained a computer program to analyze the satellite imagery's pixels to detect large concentrations of "anthropogenic sediments" – the remains of buildings and settlements now turned to dust, mounding up from the alluvial basin of this part of Syria, and detectable through radiation from the near infrared and infrared spectrum.
"One of the conclusions that we've drawn – and this won't be a terrible shocker – is settlements that were closer to perennial water sources or in areas of higher rainfall tended to have longer life histories, they tended to be larger in volume," says Ur. ...
... This new map also challenges previous ideas that the earliest cities were official constructs, created by kings or rulers. Ur says that places like Tell Brak show that early urbanization developed organically.
"We're talking about 6,000 years of urban development in one place. And cities change through time. This is one thing that’s really emerging from intensive research that’s been done in the last ten years: there's no one model for the city," says Ur. "There are any number of different approaches."
Urban Perspectives: Referring Jesus Bob Lupton
The Atlantic: What Isn't Sale for Sale?
Market thinking so permeates our lives that we barely notice it anymore. A leading philosopher sums up the hidden costs of a price-tag society.
I'd quibble with the author at some specific points. It is hyperbole to say "everything" is up for sale. Creating markets for some things brings more of those things into existence. It doesn't destroy them. Creating markets to curb negative externalities or to rectify the "tragedy of the commons" can be the most just response. Still, I like his closing paragraph:
A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide, as a society, where markets serve the public good and where they do not belong. Thinking through the appropriate place of markets requires that we reason together, in public, about the right way to value the social goods we prize. It would be folly to expect that a more morally robust public discourse, even at its best, would lead to agreement on every contested question. But it would make for a healthier public life. And it would make us more aware of the price we pay for living in a society where everything is up for sale.
On a related note, watch this clip by William Pollard, Chairman Emeritus of ServiceMaster Company:
(This is cross post with a post done earlier today at Jesus Creed.)
The Godfather movie trilogy has one of my favorite takes on ethics with business: (insert best Brando voice here), “It’s not personal. It’s business.” And then there is the infamous tell-all Mayflower Madam from the 1980s, Sydney Biddle Barrows, who said, “I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.” We chuckle at such rationalizations but it isn’t only mafiosos and madams that feel the need to compartmentalize. Many people in business feel the same pressure.
Have you ever experienced role strain in your work life? Have you ever caught yourself justifying questionable behavior by convincing yourself you were “playing by the rules?” Is there some sense in which ethics might play out differently in work environments versus other contexts?
What impact, for good or ill, has your work life had on shaping your identity?
We continue today with John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). The first two chapters looked at how both business and the church contribute to the faith and work divide. The third chapter looked at the church’s ambivalence about money. Chapter four, “Divided Worlds, Divided Lives,” rounds out the first part of the book where Knapp has been describing how faith and work became worlds apart. The final four chapters will explore ways we might move toward coherence. The challenge explored today is how to live as if Jesus is Lord in a compartmentalized world?
A central aspect of Modernism was faith that we can find unity in broadly shared values. The Christian narrative and the secular modernist narrative battled to gain preeminence. But now, faith in any broad narrative has collapsed. In postmodernism, there is no overarching narrative. Societal institutions have become independent, developing their own rules and norms. As Peter Baelz says, “… individuals and groups fashion their own ideals and society is held together by a minimal morality which is sufficient to make life in society possible.” (70)
“Where the self of modernity was vaunted as a locus of rationality, autonomy, and individual freedom, the de-centered and splintered self of postmodernity is described by Anthony C. Thiselton as no longer “regarding itself as an active agent carving out any possibility with the aid of natural and social sciences, but as an opaque product of variable roles and performances which have been imposed upon it by the constraints of society and by its own inner drives and conflicts.” (71)
While we may have many roles we tend to gravitate to the roles that give us the most status and satisfaction. For many, particularly for skilled professionals, the work role is often dominant. Absent any overarching ethic, we convince ourselves that as long as we are living within the rules for our role that we are behaving morally. Conforming to the rules begins to mold us so that our identity becomes integrated with the role. The role provides our meaning in the absence of a broader narrative. Adherence to the rules, a type of legalism, becomes our comfort and gives a sense of order. Conscious reflection on relationships and the greater purposes to which God has called us is crowded out.
But as Christians, we at least assent to the idea that Jesus is Lord of all and that God’s ethics apply to all of life. My sense is that much of what passes as ethical behavior in most businesses in most industries most of the time is not out of accord with ethical Christian living. The two worlds are not wholly antithetical. But what is our response in the significant number of cases where Christian ethics and the “rules and norms” of a business don’t mesh? What is our response when our career comes to define our very identity? We experience what is known in sociology as role strain. One response, Knapp writes, is:
“To avoid self-condemnation and to lessen role strain, we may allow ourselves to accept that what counts as moral or immoral, as important or unimportant, is relative to the situation or role in which the distinction is made.” (76)
“The irony of this should not be lost on Christians. The more we wish to think of ourselves as faithful and moral people, the more prone we may be to rely on self-deception to maintain this preferred belief in the face of our own shortcomings. We may amplify anything that confirms a desired view of ourselves while giving little weight to evidence that we are falling short.” (76)
Knapp reminds us that at times the church has even unwittingly abetted role-based compartmentalization with things like misreadings of Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine. But surely the bigger challenge today is the church’s inability to articulate a narrative that shapes discipleship outside our private lives in a fragmented postmodern world. (Stay tuned.)
Finally, Knapp includes a quote in footnote 10, from Stanley Hauerwas’ A Community of Character:
“Christians are forbidden to despair in the face of dividedness of the world. On the contrary, we are commanded to witness to others that there is a God that overcomes our differences by making them serve his Kingdom. The task of the Christian is not to defeat relativism by argument but to witness to a God who requires confrontation.” (73)
As I read this footnote, a couple of things occurred to me. I think there are many church leaders who have correctly seen an uncritical accommodation of the church to society. Too often the church’s mission has collapsed into being a provider of religiosity services focused on therapeutic self-improvement. Thinkers like Hauerwas have called us back to a robust witness of Christ’s reign and Lordship. No argument there. But just how does this witness manifest itself?
Here is what I think I see emerging in my Mainline Presbyterian world. I see a new generation of pastors who are committed to challenging accommodation and to being bold witnesses for Christ. If older generations have been accommodationist, then the new generation is going to work for social justice. The energy now is toward churches creating programs and networks devoted to any number of justice concerns.
Still lost in all of this is that a significant majority of us spend most of our waking hours in some type of business environment. Switching the church’s identity from being a religiosity market to a social justice outpost does nothing toward reintegrating daily life with the missio dei … the mission of God. Both are exercises in extracting people from the primary locus of their vocation and diverting them to other tasks. Both send the subtle message that “real ministry” is what happens apart from our daily life. Both effectively leave the church as something supplemental to our “real lives.” Hauerwas’ charge is left unheeded in precisely the area where individual Christians have the greatest opportunity to fulfill it.
I’m not dismissing collective efforts to work for justice. They are essential. But to elevate justice work to the detriment of faith and work integration, of equipping people for the practice of everyday living, of sending disciples forth into their work environments, strikes me as “supplying” a religiosity product “marketed” to a new generation that has a “demand” for social action. Daily work life remains neatly in its own compartment, untouched by the Kingdom of God.
This concludes the first part of the book. In the next post we will begin to examine some ideas Knapp has about how me can work toward coherence in our lives.
This is a wonderful lecture!
Two great quotes. On the centrality of how we see "the gospel" and salvation. He has just been speaking about salvation being an invitation to enter the Kingdom of God here and now:
“Are we preaching a gospel that has a natural tendency to produce disciples or do we simply preach a gospel that generates consumers of religious goods and services. A gospel of mere forgiveness does not produce disciples. … We are now wedded to a gospel that does not produce disciples in any regular connection and that’s how we get a culture of Christians who are not disciples. And that’s where we are today. And if we’re going to deal seriously with this issue of taking theology and spiritual disciplines into the workplace we have to recognize where the problem is. And the problem is, what we get by grace through the gospel does not extend to the workplace. There’s no conceptual connection between being saved, as that is commonly understood, and taking our workplace for Christ.” Minute 36
What is discipleship?
“I’m learning from him [Jesus] how to lead my life in the Kingdom of God as he would lead my life if he were I.” Minute 37:50
“The church is for discipleship but discipleship is for the world, the world under God.” 58:30
“Salvation is participating in the life that Jesus is now living on earth.” 58:50
Pew Internet: Social networking sites and politics
Here are some interesting graphs about how liberals, moderates, conservatives deal with political differences they encounter on social networking sites (SNS). Seems liberals and conservatives or more likely than moderates to discover a friend has different political views than they expected. Liberals are a litlle more likely than moderates or conservatives to drop or block someone they disagree with. The more to the extremes you are the more likely you are to say that you agree with most posts by your friends, suggesting the presence of echo chambers.
I've never dropped a FB friend over political issues. I have dropped several twitter feeds from people (from both sides of the spectrum) who contiually tweet snarky political comments, and I've moved FB friends to categories in my feed where I see them less often. I enjoy discussing politics but echo chamber snarkiness is wearisome no matter which perspective it comes from.
Powerblog: How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist Joe Carter
... As the ancient Greeks used to say, when the gods want to punish someone, they give him what he prays for. That would certainly be true for anyone praying for a libertarian state. If such a request were granted the libertarian state would quickly be replaced by one in which freedoms were broadly curtailed. A prime example of what I mean can be found in the way libertarianism would have dealt with the recent housing crisis. Consistent libertarians would say that we must not separate choice from consequences, and so the proper response would be to let the banks fail and the mortgage holders lose their homes.
Let’s concede for the sake of argument that the libertarians are right and that this would have been the proper and preferable response. What would have been the effect of such a policy? The answer depends on whether you assume that America is secretly composed of 300 million libertarians. If it is, then we can expect that everyone would shrug and stoically accept their fate, even if it meant the annihilation of our economy. If it were not, then the result would be that few people would have the stomach to accept such consequences. The citizens would empower both progressives and the government to help them avoid the consequences of their actions. That is essentially what happened with the non-libertarian safety net that we already had in place. If Americans had endured the forced austerity required by pure libertarianism it would have lead to an even more empowered and intrusive government.
Libertarianism could be, in theory, the greatest political theory of all time. But in reality it suffers the fatal flaw shared by all utopian schemes: a failure to account for how humans actually behave.
This is why I believe conservatism (the non-ideological variety) is superior in reality to libertarianism. At its best, conservatism takes a realistic accounting of human nature before making policy proscriptions. It starts with what is possible in the earthly realm rather than what is merely preferable in the realm of pure abstraction. Conservatism recognizes that there are unchangeable and contingent variables that must be factored into every political equation. ...
Emma Edwards, 26, has no control over the fine motor muscles in her hands, which stay tightly and awkwardly clenched. She also can’t talk, walk or move her arms more than 20 inches at a time.
Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2001, can write e-mails, though, and she’s revisiting a favorite pastime, sketching, for the first time in a decade, thanks to her iPad and software applications that can cost as little as $7.
That’s a switch from the $15,000 communication device she had tried, a 9-pound machine approved by her insurer that tracks eye movement on a special grid corresponding to the alphabet. That device kept her tied to those in the room around her. The iPad, along with several other consumer-driven apps, has reopened the world to her.
“You see the joy on her face” when she’s using it, said her mother, Jill. “It represents freedom for her.”
Edwards, of Rochester, Minnesota, is part of a grassroots movement sweeping the $1 billion-a-year assistive-technology market. While Pittsburgh-based DynaVox Inc. (DVOX), closely held Tobii Technology from Stockholm and Prentke Romich GmbH of Kassel, Germany, dominate the field, the advent of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad and an open operating system that enables anyone to create software is changing the way thousands of disabled people communicate and take care of their daily lives. ...
New York Times: After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses
After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.
Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives said.
In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age — and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.
“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.” ...
I remember having a set (1960 eidtion as I recall) in our living room. From my earliest days I remember thumbing through a volume looking at pictures and, as I learned to read, reading entries that caught my eye. I especially spent endless hours studying the world atlas.
Wall Street Journal: A Field Guide to the Middle-Class U.S. Family
Anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles have studied family life as far away as Samoa and the Peruvian Amazon region, but for the last decade they have focused on a society closer to home: the American middle class.
Why do American children depend on their parents to do things for them that they are capable of doing for themselves? How do U.S. working parents' views of "family time" affect their stress levels? These are just two of the questions that researchers at UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families, or CELF, are trying to answer in their work.
By studying families at home—or, as the scientists say, "in vivo"—rather than in a lab, they hope to better grasp how families with two working parents balance child care, household duties and career, and how this balance affects their health and well-being.
The center, which also includes sociologists, psychologists and archeologists, wants to understand "what the middle class thought, felt and what they did," says Dr. Ochs. The researchers plan to publish two books this year on their work, and say they hope the findings may help families become closer and healthier. ...
(This is cross post with a post done earlier today at Jesus Creed.)
Henri Nouwen once observed that when people came to him for counseling, most of them would open up and readily discuss the most intimate details of their sex lives. But when he began probing about personal finances, body postures became closed and people would want to know why he was getting so personal. Money is important to us.
Today we continue our discussion of John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). We are looking at Chapter Three, “Uneasy Bedfellows: Money and the Church.”
How do you reconcile the historic ambiguity about wealth and money? Going back to at least Calvin we have the realization that we are not in a zero-sum game but that wealth can be grown. Does this matter for how we see wealth? Why do you think we in the church find it so hard to wrestle theologically with money and wealth?
Dr. Knapp believes the divide between businesspeople and the church is rooted in a related issue: the Christian community’s longstanding ambivalence toward money. This is important because work and money are inextricably connected in our culture. Money and wealth are the means by which we “keep score” in our society, not just in terms of how we rate possessions but, unfortunately, too often it is how we value people. Money and wealth have been a central concern of Judeo-Christian ethical teaching from the start. In this chapter, Knapp gives us a brief survey of “Money and the Church” over the ages.
Frankly, the Bible offers us a seemingly conflicted perspective. Wealth is presented as a blessing on some occasions while on other occasions we are warned not to desire wealth, even to renounce it. Knapp recounts several passages dealing with wealth in the Old Testament and sees three common themes:
As we come to the New Testament, things become more challenging. An ethic of selflessness, of taking care of other members of the Christian community, is central. There is teaching about forgiving debts. Jesus says that money may have spiritual power over us. We are told that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. How does one reconcile a modern pursuit of profit and loaning at interest with the Bible?
The Early Church: A Community of Sharing and Sacrifice
Knapp gives a quick sampling of teaching on money from the time of the New Testament on through to Constantine and on to Augustine of Hippo. There is some diversity of opinion but Knapp sees four common themes:
The Middle Ages: Greater Accommodation to Wealth
In the millennium between Augustine and Luther, Knapp sees greater accommodation to wealth. Pope Gregory I in his Book of Pastoral Rule (a work that guided bishops for centuries) suggests that the rich not be condemned simply for being rich. He generalizes the rich man in the “eye of the needle” parable to mean any proud person. The medieval church relaxed restrictions on money-lending. Care for the poor was reduced to almsgiving.
At the same time, the church was becoming a major multinational entity, owning as much as one third of the developed land in Europe by 900. By the Thirteenth Century the church was making loans, often with ruthless enforcement. Knapp concludes:
“Medieval teachings on money were limited almost exclusively to individual practice (micro-economics in today’s terminology). It is fair to say that the church had not developed a theology capable of informing its own exercise of vast institutional and macro-economic responsibilities.” (60)
The Reformation: Rethinking Work and Its Monetary Rewards
Concern about financial behavior of the church was one of the sparks of the Protestant Reformation. Selling of indulgences was of particular concern. Knapp notes that many of the reformers, including Luther and Calvin were revisiting theology and ethics in light of the rise of a mercantile economy.
“No longer was wealth seen as “zero-sum game” where one person’s gain was another’s loss. These theologians recognized that a growing economy could provide new financial opportunities for the poor, that almsgiving was not the only way to help them.” (61)
Luther wanted to recover the dignity of work but he felt people should remain in their ordained life station. Calvin took a more radical view, seeing profits through business and investments as an opportunity to expand service. He broke with church history and encouraged people to pursue greater wealth, not for superfluous luxury but to create more to give to the poor. Economic development would give the poor “… the opportunity to work hard and to demonstrate they are among the elect.” (62) Still, even as he opened the door for capitalism (which came later), Calvin also stressed that generated wealth was to be used for the benefit of others, not self-centered pursuits.
Our Contemporary Confusion
Liberalism in the Enlightenment broke with historic Church teaching, advocating pursuit of personal enrichment without regard for the achievement of just ends. It was in stark contrast to the church’s historical teaching. That departure has certainly expanded the work and faith divide.
Knapp writes at the end of this chapter:
“So it is that some churches embrace money-talk with gusto, while others tiptoe around the subject except when necessary to raise the annual church budget. In either case, little serious attention is given to the practical concerns of working people struggling to apply their faith to questions of money in their own lives.
More often, major church bodies have taken the easier route of critiquing the macro-economic system and it injustices. They issue studies and pronouncements on economic policy, the moral shortcomings of capitalism, the effects of globalization, and other important matters that are not easily connected by Christians to their daily lives. Almost never do these pronouncements offer much help for living and working with an imperfect and frequently unjust system. Too often, these macro-economic statements suggest to individuals that the church is hostile not only to the system but also to the people who participate in it by going to work. Where the pre-Reformation church concerned itself with the economic life of the individual but had little to say about economic systems, the opposite is largely the case today.” (66)
In short, ambiguity reigns. Dr. Knapp is indeed an ambitious soul to try to capture 2,000 years of church teaching in twenty pages but I think he gives us a useful summary.
In the next chapter we will turn to the socio-psychological impact of the divide between faith and wealth. In succeeding chapters we will explore Knapp’s suggestions about how we might achieve some coherence.
Blogs are sometimes overlooked as a significant source of online buzz in comparison to social networking sites, yet consumer interest in blogs keeps growing. By the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from 36 million only five years earlier in 2006. ...
... Bloggers: Who are they?
It’s no surprise that the growing number of blogs mirrors a growth in bloggers. Overall, 6.7 million people publish blogs on blogging websites, and another 12 million write blogs using their social networks.
So, who are blog writers and what else do they do online?
Salisbury Post: Willimon: Mainline is going to be sidelined
... It’s not that people are leaving mainline churches to join these other churches. Instead, they typically drop out of church-going altogether, Willimon said. “Mainline Protestantism was the last stop.”
Why? Mainline churches “had unknowingly given people a theology of godlessness,” Willimon said.
“We adjusted so much to the culture that the line between church and Rotary seemed rather thin.”
The theology of accommodation that served well during times of cultural satisfaction has proved unsuited to the modern-day dissatisfactions people are experiencing in their jobs, family and lives, he said. They’re looking for a faith that looks at what’s wrong with the world.
The people who remain in mainline churches tend to be older, he said, and some predict a “death tsunami” will decimate the congregations. ...
(HT: Alan Bevere)
New York Times: Hits, and Misses, in a War on Bribery
Until recently, federal prosecutors had won settlements in nearly every battle involving charges of foreign bribery by multinational corporations and their executives. But in late February — indeed, the very week that Mr. Stanley was sentenced — the Justice Department had an embarrassing setback: it abruptly withdrew the biggest case ever brought against individuals under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
It was an extraordinary turn of events. The F.B.I. had recorded 800 hours of video and audio as part of a sting operation involving supposed arms contracts in Africa. Twenty-two executives had been arrested.
Then the whole case fell apart. In a withering appraisal, the federal judge in the case, Richard J. Leon, called the government’s effort “a long and sad chapter in the annals of white-collar criminal enforcement.” Its approach to the law, Judge Leon said, had been “very, very aggressive.”
THE development opened the door for critics who assert that federal authorities have overstepped in trying to fight corruption overseas. They say that the crackdown, which began in earnest three years ago, has made it harder for companies to win legitimate business and that it has needlessly instilled fear among executives. Many companies would rather make any charges brought under the act go away with a quick settlement than try to fight them in court.
“We are seeing companies getting scooped up in aggressive enforcement actions and investigations,” said Lisa A. Rickard, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform, which is pushing to modify the law. “A culture of overzealousness has grabbed the Justice Department.”
“The last time I checked,” Ms. Rickard added, “we were not living in a police state.”
Such heated criticism aside, federal authorities say they are unbowed.
Lanny A. Breuer, the assistant United States attorney general who has stepped up enforcement actions under the act, said he saw no reason to change course. In fact, he is expanding his staff — and his range of potential targets. ...
... AS they pursue their overall campaign, federal authorities have their work cut out for them. As business has gone global, so has graft, particularly as companies in rich nations push into poorer regions. The World Bank estimates that $1 trillion in bribes is paid annually to government officials. In Africa alone, $148 billion is siphoned off annually, according to Transparency International, a global nonprofit group that tracks corruption. ...
... Leading the efforts to modernize the corruption act — or weaken it, in the eyes of the government — is the Chamber of Commerce. The group, in Washington, has been in discussions with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission about new guidelines on enforcement. That guidance, expected later this spring, would give corporations a better notion of what they need to do to stay on the right side of the law.
Corporate America clearly wants its views heard.
“You are dealing with criminal liability, and that strikes fear and terror through the heart of the corporate suite,” said Ms. Rickard at the chamber.
In a letter signed by more than 30 trade associations, the chamber asks that the guidance allow companies with strong compliance programs to use that as a defense against liability. It also asks that the definition of a “foreign official” be more limited and that companies not be held accountable for the past wrongdoing of foreign companies they may purchase, among other provisions. ...
... Mr. Breuer and other government lawyers have spoken out against the provisions. They have been joined by 33 human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Oxfam America and Transparency International. ...
The stern warning issued from the pulpit was directed at the tourists — most of whom had arrived late — a sea of white faces with guidebooks in hand. They outnumbered the congregation itself: a handful of elderly black men and women wearing suits and dresses and old-fashioned pillbox hats.
"We're hoping that you will remain in place during the preaching of the Gospel," a church member said over the microphone at this Harlem church on a recent Sunday morning. "But if you have to go, go now. Go before the preacher stands to preach."
No one left then. But halfway through the sermon, a group of French girls made their way toward the velvet ropes that blocked the exit. An usher shook his head firmly, but they ignored him and walked out.
The clash between tourists and congregants plays out every Sunday at Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the oldest black church in New York state. It's one of many Harlem churches that have become tourist attractions for visitors from all over the world who want to listen to soulful gospel music at a black church service. With a record number of tourists descending upon New York City last year, the crowds of foreigners are becoming a source of irritation among faithful churchgoers.
To preserve the sanctity of the service, pastors struggle to enforce strict rules of conduct. But the reality is that these visitors are often filling church pews that would otherwise remain empty — and filling the collection basket with precious dollar bills.
"Our building is in need of repair," church member Paul Henderson said after the service. "We need assistance. They're helping to sustain us." ...
... From a map like this, a player can quickly learn both where he should try to shoot during a game (the red spots) and where he should shoot during practice (the blue spots). A coach, meanwhile, could layer the equivalent map for each one of his players on top of one another and find in the visual data inspiration for new plays that lead each man to one of his sweet spots. And for the mere fan, such maps can not only lead to a greater understanding of the game, but also provide at least a hint of the aesthetic pleasure that makes basketball enjoyable in the first place. As Michael Scott might say, win-win-win.
From UNICEF: An Urban World.
This graphic depicts countries and territories with urban populations exceeding 100,000. Circles are scaled in proportion to urban population size. Hover of over a country to see how urban it is (percentage of people living in cities and towns) and the size of the urban popluation (in millions).
Dallas Morning News: Is the world getting better?
Centre College professor Beau Weston operates an interesting blog, the Gruntled Center. He put up a post last week that draws from a lecture he recently gave at his Kentucky college. In the post and lecture, Weston, a Presbyterian, makes the argument that the world has gotten better.
He notes how violence is down in most "competent" nations, authoritarianism is in retreat worldwide, various forms of discrimination have diminished, food production is growing exponentially, air quality has improved, the population bomb has been a dud and transportation costs are cheaper. He lists a number of other indices, which you can read about on this link.
So, here is the question for the week:
Is the world getting better?
We certainly read a lot in, yes, newspapers about things going awry. Republican candidates making the case against Barack Obama offer ample examples of the world being a mess. And many a book has been sold about the next coming crisis.
But are we looking at all this the wrong way. Is it indeed the case that the world is getting better? ...
The article goes on to list the responses by several religious leaders. Weston looked at a wide range of social indicators. While we can quibble about precise definitions of better, it is without question that on balance the overwhelming majority of manifestations of what social scientists generally associate with well-being are getting better for more people.
Now because I have written on this topic several times, and I know how determined people are to hear me (and people like Weston) say what was not said, let me be clear. "Better" is not a synonym for perfect. "Better" is not a synonym for the consummated Kingdom of God. "Better" is an adjective that speaks to the condition of something being in a more desirable state relative to another state. On most of the key measures of human well-being, things are getting better.
The profound reluctance by so many people in theological institutions to acknowledge that the world is getting better on a host of measures never ceases to amaze me. If you read some of the responses, people counter the claim that we are living in a period of rapid decline in worldwide violence by pointing to events in Syria. Imagine if there were 100 house fires in your city last year and this year there year there were only ten. Would you say there has been an improvement in the rate of house fires? And what would you say to someone who pointed to a neighbor's house (one of the ten that burned) as evidence that there was no improvement in house fires?
One of the respondents was Cynthia Rigby at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She writes:
In the year 2000, the United Nations made a "Millenium Goal" of eradicating extreme global poverty by the year 2015. This goal will not be reached, nor will any significant strides have been made toward reaching it.
The goal was not eliminate poverty but to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. From yesterday's New York Times: Dire Poverty Falls Despite Global Slump, Report Finds:
WASHINGTON — A World Bank report shows a broad reduction in extreme poverty — and indicates that the global recession, contrary to economists’ expectations, did not increase poverty in the developing world.
The report shows that for the first time the proportion of people living in extreme poverty — on less than $1.25 a day — fell in every developing region from 2005 to 2008. And the biggest recession since the Great Depression seems not to have thrown that trend off course, preliminary data from 2010 indicate.
The progress is so drastic that the world has met the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty in half five years before its 2015 deadline.
“This is very good news,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the United Nations’ special adviser on the Millennium Development Goals. “There has been broad-based progress in fighting poverty, and accelerating progress. There’s a lot to be happy about.” ...
Food production may be growing, but there are more undernourished people living on the planet than there were fifteen years ago (the Food and Agricultural Association of the United Nations reports that there were 824 million undernourished people in 1996 and 925 million in 2010). This is the case even though (according to statistics provided by the Word Bank), the number of people in the world making less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.94 billion to 1.29 billion from 2005-2008. The large number of natural disasters, in recent years, is one reason why there are more undernourished people even though there are fewer people who make less than $1.25 a day. There are roughly 100 million people, worldwide, who do not have homes (think: 12 times the population of New York City).
How should people of faith interpret these statistics?
Here is how this person of faith interprets those statistics. There were 5,766,435,620 people in 1996 and there were 6,840,423,256 in 2010. So lets do some math:
Percentage of the world population undernourished:
We have a modest improvement in the percentage of people that are undernourished. The growth in the absolute number of people who are undernourished is about to plateau and then begin to decline. In other words, the world is getting better! Responses like the ones in the newspaper article are indicative of the mindset in the Mainline theological establishment.
I routinely reflect on where this hyper-sensitivity to acknowledge improvement comes from. What I think I read between the lines is a fear that if improvement is acknowledged that this somehow is an invitation to stop pursuing an even better world. If I have a friend who is trying to lose 50 pounds and he tells be me that so far he has lost 35 pounds, then is acknowledging that his weight has gotten "better" a signal that he should stop trying? Can there can be no celebration until the fiftieth pound is lost? If anything, my friend will be motivated to press on. Celebration of milestones give us greater motivation just as those who are wrestling with human flourishing issues around the world get encouraged by improvement and want to see more of it, better and faster.
At any rate, Bill Clinton was right, "There is a lot of good news out there. We are going to have to learn to deal with it."
For some excellent resources I would recommend three interesting books:
Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
Upside: Surprising Good News About the State of our World by Bradley Wright
For the single best video that illustrates what is happening in the world you need to see Hans Rosling’s four minute video below. The Diamandis video just come out and it is very helpful as well.
New York Times: Dire Poverty Falls Despite Global Slump, Report Finds
WASHINGTON — A World Bank report shows a broad reduction in extreme poverty — and indicates that the global recession, contrary to economists’ expectations, did not increase poverty in the developing world.
The report shows that for the first time the proportion of people living in extreme poverty — on less than $1.25 a day — fell in every developing region from 2005 to 2008. And the biggest recession since the Great Depression seems not to have thrown that trend off course, preliminary data from 2010 indicate.
The progress is so drastic that the world has met the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty in half five years before its 2015 deadline. ...
... The report contained a raft of statistics showing broad declines in poverty throughout the 2000s. For the first time since the World Bank started keeping statistics in 1981, poverty fell in every region of the world on a three-year timeframe. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty fell below 50 percent for the first time. And between 1981 and 2008, poverty fell to just less than a quarter of the developing world’s population from more than half .
Much of the story was about China, which moved nearly 700 million people out of poverty between 1981 and 2008, with the proportion of its population living in extreme poverty falling to 13 percent from 84 percent during that period. The country’s annual pace of economic growth never dipped below 9 percent, even in 2009, when the world’s economy contracted.
But perhaps the most surprising success story is sub-Saharan Africa, where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty actually increased through the 1990s, before declining in the 2000s.
“People used to worry, ‘Is Africa going to be poor forever?’ ” said Mr. Kenny of the Center for Global Development. “Well, it doesn’t really look like it, does it?”
Extreme poverty in the Middle East and North Africa fell to just 2.7 percent in 2008 from 4.2 percent in 2002. And extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa fell to 47.5 percent in 2008 from 55.7 percent in 2002. ...
Christianity Today: The Best Ways to Fight Poverty: The Responses
Editor's note: February's cover package, "The Best Ways to Fight Poverty—Really" (part one, part two), received remarkable numbers of pageviews, praises, and protests. It also provoked responses from many organizations devoted to fighting poverty. Today, leaders of those ministries respond, including World Vision US president Richard Stearns, Samaritan's Purse president Franklin Graham, Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford, HOPE International president and CEO Peter Greer, World Relief president and CEO Stephan Bauman, Food for the Hungry workers Greg Forney and Lucas Koach, and TEAR Australia national young adults coordinator Matt Anslow. Also today, Christianity Today senior managing editor Mark Galli, whose article "A Most Personal Touch" led off the February cover package, replies to the ministry leaders.
The Church Is the Solution? Show Me the Stats
Why I haven't changed my mind on fighting poverty and the job of the church.
The Local Church's Neighbors Are Everywhere
The church isn't just a network of institutions trying to stretch across the globe.
Poverty Has Many Enemies
The solution does not require a choice between individuals and institutions.
The Biggest Poverty-Fighting Tool: Job Creation
Employment for the poor restores their dignity and keeps them off their knees.
We Can't Do Everything
But we can change systems to protect the poor, and that requires cooperation on all fronts.
What Do You Mean by Poverty?
Overcoming poverty is possible and proven. But superficiality has paralyzed the church.
Focus on Solving the Poverty of the Soul
Our aid to the poor should always address their area of greatest need.
Christians Really Do Reduce Poverty
Government change often can't get to the root of the problem of poverty. The church does.
(This is cross post with a post done earlier today at Jesus Creed.)
The business world frequently hinders our integration of faith with work but the church creates its own obstacles as well. We continue today with John Knapp’s How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it). The previous post looked at how the business world contributes to the divide between faith and work. Now we are looking at Chapter 2, “The World of the Church.”
Knapp begins this chapter by supplementing his survey findings with other research. In short: there is a deep divide between businesspeople and the church. He finds some businesspeople have internalized the idea that Christian ethics have little to do with work life. Work is accepted as a separate sphere of life. Quoting Helmut Thielicke, Knapp describes work for many as “… a temporal sphere in which the radical commandments of the Sermon on the Mount do not seem to apply, a sphere which consequently cannot be called into question.” (27)
Still, many businesspeople do seek integration of work and faith but they do so apart from pastors and the church apparatus. The widespread perception is that pastors don’t know their circumstances and don’t care (or frankly, pastors may even be hostile toward them). Furthermore, Robert Wuthnow believes that many pastors are fearful of addressing issues because they don’t understand peoples’ lives, or maybe because they feel that work is a “neutral zone” where they should not be meddling.
Knapp identifies three dualisms that contribute to the divide. The first is the sacred and secular split. A perceived hierarchy of occupations is pervasive in the church. At the top are sacred professions like clergy, missionaries, and church professionals. These are followed by the helping professions with nurses, teachers, and social workers. At bottom are businesspeople and a number of other professionals.
Yet we find no hierarchy in the New Testament. Knapp suggests the gradation emerged in the church in the generations after the New Testament era. Greek culture elevated contemplation above physical labor. As the church became more integrated with the Greco-Roman world, a hierarchy of work took hold. The Protestant Reformation pushed back against this idea with the “priesthood of all believers” but it left intact the idea of paid clergy as the “real” priesthood.
“We should ask ourselves what is being communicated when a church allots time on Sunday morning to commission a short-term mission team for ten days in Mexico, yet does nothing to commission new college graduates for their careers in business or government or education. The crippling and unambiguous message is that ten days of volunteer work are more important to the church - and, by implication, to God – than a Christian’s lifelong occupation.” (29)
(In fact, why not have periodic commissioning services for people as they take new jobs? As a bit of shameless self-promotion, I’ve written a sample commissioning liturgy for Presbyterians. Click here.)
The second duality is the eternal and temporal divide. For most of the New Testament era, Christians expected an imminent return of Christ. On balance, the New Testament is focused on how to live in the turbulent last days before Christ returns. Little focus is given to the “first great commission” of tending and caring for creation, “… real work that is at once both temporal and sacred.” (35) The bias is still in evidence today, particularly in evangelical and pietistic traditions, with an inordinate individualistic focus on personal salvation to the detriment of a more full orbed view of mission in the world that includes the first great commission.
The third duality is the public versus private divide. Here Knapp is critiquing the reduction of the church into a refuge for therapeutic healing in our private lives with no sense of equipping people for transformative work in the world.
Knapp rounds out the chapter with two more dynamics that contribute to the work and faith divide. He points first to theological education. He includes a quote by Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan summarizing their findings from a survey of 154 seminary students from 14 diverse seminaries about their preparation to minister to members of the business community:
“When we probed for a particularized connection between faith and work, the response showed little depth or experience. When asked what business books or journals they studied, very few had any experience at all. When asked, “Have you discussed or been given any scripture passages to study with the explicit purpose of understanding God’s message with respect to business or the responsibilities of businesspeople?” respondents offered a range of passages that tended toward portraying bad business behavior.” (37)
Knapp reviewed the 2008-2009 course catalogs of eighteen leading seminaries and divinity schools from across the Christian spectrum. He found:
“Only a few electives at a handful of the schools are described as addressing vocational or work-related issues. Several more focus on broader economic topics, such as social justice for the poor. Yet these institutions collectively offer dozens of courses on marriage, family, children, hospital visitation, psychological counseling, and other topics most relevant to the private sphere.” (38)
Theological scholarship, where it touches on business at all, is more oriented to macroeconomic critiques than to economic life at the micro (individual) or meso (organizational) levels. Here I would interject a quote from Miroslav Volf’s , “Work in the Spirit: A Theology of Work” (1991):
“Theologians are to blame for the former negligence [of studying work]. Amazingly little theological reflection has taken place in the past about an activity that takes up so much of our time. The number of pages theologians have devoted to the question of transubstantiation – which does or does not take place on Sunday – for instance, would, I suspect, far exceed the number of pages devoted to work that fills our lives Monday through Saturday. My point is not to belittle the importance of a correct understanding of the real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper but to stress the proper perspective on human work is at least as important.“ (69)
While there has been improvement in the last twenty years, Volf’s critique is still substantially true.
Some folks note the rising number of second career seminarians. Some of these people have come from business backgrounds. Might this help bridge the gap? Possibly with some, but Knapp notes that a majority of these folks are going into theology precisely because they disliked the business world and view their seminary experience as pursuit of a “higher calling.”
Another alternative is for seminaries to do continuing education classes or Doctor of Ministry programs that will help pastors bridge the gap. Knapp researched this option as well. Very few seminaries offered any options dealing with work, with Columbia Seminary (Decatur, GA), where he has been an adjunct, being an exception.
A final issue Knapp raises is the way churches conduct their own business affairs.
“Whether or not we are comfortable with acknowledging it, business management is an indispensable facet of ministry. Churches hire and pay staff, own and manage property, invest money, keep accounting records, file financial reports with government agencies, hire management and fund-raising consultants, comply with employment laws, own fleets of vehicles, purchase goods and services, and advertise their own services to the marketplace.” (41)
Larger churches may own recreational facilities, childcare facilities, or even for-profit businesses. Yet studies of accounting in church organizations consistently show resistance to well-accepted business practices for non-profit organizations. Somehow, bringing these practices into the church is perceived as bringing secular influences into sacred space. Personally, I have sat in board meetings for our denominational mission board where editorial amendments were made to reports that used language like “entrepreneurial leadership” or “stakeholders,” not because people disagreed with the underlying intent of the words, but because the specific words were language from the “corporate” world … they were not “spiritual” enough. And guess what each businessperson in such conversations hears indirectly (or maybe not so indirectly) being said about their work?
The net result is that businesspeople frequently see churches and church leaders who do not act with integrity and prudence with their own business affairs. Why would they seek out ethical advice for their own struggles from such people? Why would they take to heart whatever business/economic correction church leaders might preach to them?
A whole book could be written on portions of this chapter alone. What I present here is a condensation of an already condensed presentation of the issues. Yet taking the first two chapters together, I think Knapp has pointed us to the essence of the problem.
One thought came to my mind for further reflection. What does a healthy relationship between businesspeople and the church look like? It seems unrealistic to me that we could expect pastors to become experts in the world of business. So what is the pastor’s, or a congregation’s, role? Knapp will have more to say later but it is a critical question.
Do you agree that Knapp’s dualisms figure prominently in the life of the church? If so, what is the antidote for escaping them? For pastors, do you sense a divide from businesspeople or are these survey findings a surprise to you? Are there things you’ve found helpful in bridging the gap?
Washington Post: How to completely, utterly destroy an employee’s work life
... Over the past 15 years, we have studied what makes people happy and engaged at work. In discovering the answer, we also learned a lot about misery at work. Our research method was pretty straightforward. We collected confidential electronic diaries from 238 professionals in seven companies, each day for several months. All told, those diaries described nearly 12,000 days – how people felt, and the events that stood out in their minds. Systematically analyzing those diaries, we compared the events occurring on the best days with those on the worst.
What we discovered is that the key factor you can use to make employees miserable on the job is to simply keep them from making progress in meaningful work.
People want to make a valuable contribution, and feel great when they make progress toward doing so. Knowing this progress principle is the first step to knowing how to destroy an employee’s work life. ...
Step 1: Never allow pride of accomplishment. ...
Step 2: Miss no opportunity to block progress on employees’ projects. ...
Step 3: Give yourself some credit. ...
Step 4: Kill the messengers. ...
I love the quote at the end: “There is no morale problem in this company. And, for anybody who thinks there is, we have a nice big bus waiting outside to take you wherever you want to look for work.”
I just came across this fascinating website. What if we had something like this for Christian mission? The site is devoted to economic development failures. Want to read some case studies on stuff that didn't work? Click here. Below is how the website describes its purpose.
We’re all in this together, thousands of people working to eradicate poverty, inequality and unnecessary suffering around the world. It’s an incredible, global effort, but there is a problem. We aren’t sharing information. With that many people working independently towards the same goal, it’s inevitable that approaches will be duplicated. That’s wonderful if the idea works, but wasteful if it’s already been proven ineffective. Unfortunately, it happens all to often, and the results aren’t just financial. Lives are quite literally at stake every time a failure is repeated.
Admittingfailure.com aims to change that reality. At its simplest, it’s a space to publicly acknowledge that something didn’t work in order to ensure that the mistake isn’t repeated. But it also aims to be a catalyst for change within the development sector that goes well beyond simple information sharing.
Imagine field staff who have the freedom to publicly share results, good and bad, in order to ensure subsequent efforts are not simply repetitions of ideas that have already been proven ineffective.
Imagine project managers who create space for field staff to innovate, rewarding learning as much as success.
Imagine NGOs that adapt and adjust constantly to the stream of information coming from the field – always looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of their work and making real-time adjustments when possible.
Imagine donors who are willing to support intelligent innovation and experimentation, accepting the possibility of failure as a necessary step on the path to success.
Admittingfailure.com is an effort to make these ideas into realities, accelerating development by ensuring that we learn from failures instead of repeat them—that we are failing forward.
Captain James T. Kirk is one of the most famous Captains in the history of Starfleet. There’s a good reason for that. He saved the planet Earth several times, stopped the Doomsday Machine, helped negotiate peace with the Klingon Empire, kept the balance of power between the Federation and the Romulan Empire, and even managed to fight Nazis. On his five-year mission commanding the U.S.S. Enterprise, as well as subsequent commands, James T. Kirk was a quintessential leader, who led his crew into the unknown and continued to succeed time and time again.
Kirk’s success was no fluke, either. His style of command demonstrates a keen understanding of leadership and how to maintain a team that succeeds time and time again, regardless of the dangers faced. Here are five of the key leadership lessons that you can take away from Captain Kirk as you pilot your own organization into unknown futures.
1. Never Stop Learning
“You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there’s no such thing as the unknown– only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.” ...
2. Have Advisors With Different Worldviews
“One of the advantages of being a captain, Doctor, is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.” ...
3. Be Part Of The Away Team
“Risk is our business. That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.” ...
4. Play Poker, Not Chess
“Not chess, Mr. Spock. Poker. Do you know the game?” ...
5. Blow up the Enterprise
“‘All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’ You could feel the wind at your back in those days. The sounds of the sea beneath you, and even if you take away the wind and the water it’s still the same. The ship is yours. You can feel her. And the stars are still there, Bones.” ...
I'll add a sixth: Help frame the choices. "The choice is yours: Peace or utter destruction." ;-) Any other addendums?
Harvard Business Review: New Math Will Drive a U.S. Manufacturing Comeback
Making the United States an even more attractive location for factories and investments is critical for the health of our nation. More domestic factories would help create more balanced trade flows and a more stable global economy. But company decisions on what and where to place production facilities, while influenced by many factors, ultimately depend on the math.
Thankfully, the math these days is starting to work in America's favor again.
Our research last year suggested to us that changing conditions in China would bring home some of the manufacturing work that migrated overseas during the past decade. We originally saw this "insourcing" phenomenon, as the White House now refers to it, starting around 2015.
We were deliberately conservative in our estimates and made clear that the coming manufacturing renaissance would benefit some industries more than others, with seven sectors benefitting the most: vehicles and auto parts, appliances and electrical equipment, furniture, plastic and rubber products, machinery, fabricated metal products, and computers and electronics. These seven sectors currently account for nearly two-thirds of the more than $325 billion the U.S. imports from China.
We noted that several factors had combined to push these sectors toward a tipping point, when U.S. manufacturing becomes an attractive alternative to China. These factors include China's rapidly rising labor costs, which we discussed in an earlier HBR blog; the increased value of the yuan; the challenge of managing long-distance supply chains; the quality control concerns that continue to haunt many manufacturers that have offshored production; and the significantly higher productivity of U.S. workers. ...
Catholic News Service: Researcher's advice to pastors: Spend more time on church suppers
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Harvard public policy professor Robert D. Putnam has a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for pastors: "Spend less time on the sermons, and more time arranging the church suppers."
That's because research by Putnam and Chaeyoon Lim, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows that the more church friends a person has, the happier he or she is.
"Church friends are super-charged friends, but we have no idea why," Putnam told a Feb. 16 summit on religion, well-being and health at Gallup world headquarters in Washington. "We have some hypotheses, but we don't know for sure."
The researchers found that nonchurch friends do not provide the same benefit in terms of well-being and that other measures of religiosity -- belief in God or frequency of prayer, for example -- do not serve as a reliable predictor of a person's satisfaction with life.
"People who frequently attend religious services are more satisfied with their lives not because they have more friends overall (when compared with individuals who do not attend services) but because they have more friends in their congregations," the two researchers wrote in the American Sociological Review. ... | <urn:uuid:b80e3f77-dd3a-4db2-95ec-21c65eaac58f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.krusekronicle.com/2012/03/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961565 | 24,829 | 1.570313 | 2 |
It's time to turn out the lites
Miller's Clear Beer died, but its Amber Ale lives, giving us reason to hope
The date was 2 April, but this was not the report of a joke - just one of the more transparent topics of the past year. The Independent had, among more familiar concerns, a wholly new subject that seemed to require comment on its editorials page.
Underneath leading articles on Bosnia and proportional representation came what is known in the trade as a "third leader". Such mini-essays customarily ponder quirkier matters. This one took a worried lock at the fashion for domestic fluids as clear as water.
A clear washing-up liquid made by Palmolive entered the argument There was speculation as to the likelihood of "clear" pea soup or "white" black-currant juice. Crystal Pepsi was cited as an example of the trend. The notion of white wine being less boozy than red was mentioned.
These ruminations were prompted by the testing in some American markets of Clear Beer by Miller, the second biggest brewer in the United States. Clear Beer sounded like the brewing world's answer to fashionable vodkas with such names as Absolut - or to a question that had not been asked. It was one thing, mused the leader writer, to abstain from artificial colourings; quite another to remove a natural hue (Miller had killed the colour by intensive filtration).
Clear Beer was never available in the UK, but I encountered it in the United States, where it was presented in marketingspeak as "in the finest tradition of the Miller Brewing Company, full-flavored but without heaviness".
This curious product was a lager the colour of 7-Up, which formed little head and tasted like a sweetened seltzer with the faintest touch of oily, medicinal happiness in the finish. It looked like a soft drink, but contained 4.6 per cent alcohol by volume, a level found in many "premium" lagers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Miller has a history of trying to remove the character from beer. It popularised Lite Beer, memorably described as "wet air" by the native American writer William Least-Heat Moon; and it marketed a so-called Genuine Draft in a can long before Irish and British brewers developed their rather better approximation.
Such marketing may not be wholly a bad thing. Miller is sufficiently sophisticated to realise that, though some consumers may like colourless and tasteless beers, not all do. It introduces special products for these people, rather than fiddling with its existing brews. This point could be taken by those British brewers who feel that the only way to appease the unformed palates of the young is to beat even their best beers into a bland uniformity.
On occasion, Miller has tried to make beers for people who would prefer more taste. Last year, it introduced not only Clear Beer but also Miller Reserve Amber Ale.
The latter has a beautiful balance of malt and hop, and is made with a traditional ale yeast imported from Britain. The encouraging news, for those of us who savour flavour, is that Clear Beer has been withdrawn - and Amber Ale is doing well.
After decades in which ales and lagers alike have become ever more like fizzy, sweetened water with alcohol, the failure of Clear Beer and the success of Amber Ale may well mean that last year the tide turned.
Another of the world's largest brewers, Molson of Canada (the company is controlled by Foster's of Australia, which owns Courage of Britain), announced a volte-face. In eight-page, four-colour inserts in the Canadian press, it has been declaring in the past couple of months that it will "dare to be great" (marketing speak is rarely modest). "Starting now," say the ads, "every Molson beer in Canada will be naturally aged and free of preservatives. As we speak, our brewmasters are creating new recipes ... and bringing you some very distinctive beers."
Distinctive is not a word I would have associated with Molson's products, until the company offered me samples of a new, amber-red, malty, Vienna-style lager and a dryish Cream Ale of a similar colour.
A few weeks earlier, in the Netherlands, Heineken had told me that it had quietly reverted to the tradition of all-malt beer, rather than using cheaper, lighter "adjuncts" such as maize. This company also offered me tastings of its latest ideas: a malty (and hoppy) Vienna-style lager, and a fruity "Irish red" ale.
The similarity of the Canadian and Dutch changes is a coincidence, but that is not true of the shared notion that perhaps there was room for tastier beers. It is always tempting to make bland products for the lowest common consumer, but that is a blind alley.
If you train drinkers to believe that the less the flavour, the better the beer, how long before they prefer mineral water or soda-pop? If you keep making beer more like sweetened water, what happens when no one can tell the difference? If the drink looks and tastes like soda but contains 4 or 5 per cent alcohol, does it not mislead in a way that plays into the hands of those who would deem beer, wine or spirits socially unacceptable?
If it is beer, we should be aware of that. We can know only if we understand what beer is. I would define beer - be it lager, ale, stout or some other style - as a fermented product made wholly or primarily from grain, and seasoned with hops or other herbs and spices.
Brewing grains such as barley have deliciously nutty flavours. When they are malted, they begin the release of their fermentable sugars and have to be dried in a kiln: this imparts attractive colours, ranging from gold through amber, ruby and ebony, and even more luscious tastes. Hops add flowery, herbal, aromatic, resiny dryness.
To remove these colours and flavours is to despoil a product that offers sensuous pleasure and enlivens our social life and our table. Recent beers, tasteless or tempting, clear or richly coloured, have rendered me reflective. The brewers, too, I hope.
Published Online: MAR 1, 2000
Published in Print: JAN 8, 1994
In: The Independent
Search The Real Beer Library For More Articles Related To:
UNITED STATES, , Clear Beer | <urn:uuid:c00dee96-ef18-4aef-bd89-510e6cca6017> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-000728.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96577 | 1,356 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Top story: FBI agents, accompanied by Special Operations forces, arrived at the ruins of the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi on Thursday. The agents are reportedly specialists in evidence collection and will look for clues to determine how precisely the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans unfolded, but it's unclear how much they will be able to find as the site has been badly degraded over the past three weeks. The Washington Post and CNN, for instance, have already uncovered sensitive documents from the wreckage, which has also been picked over by looters.
Administration officials have blamed the delay on the Libyan governments, which they say was slow in granting approval for the mission. However, some officials say it took nearly three weeks for the State Department to request military protection for the agents.
The U.S. is said to be planning operations to capture or kill the militants involved in the attack. A Turkish television station is reporting today that two suspects tied to the attack were arrested at the Istanbul airport, but the report has not yet been confirmed.
Economy: World stock markets are rising on better-than-expected U.S. numbers ahead of a highly-anticipated jobs report this morning.
- Turkey's parliament authorized the government to take further military action against Syria.
- The U.S. has rejected a plan by Iran to defuse the country's nuclear crisis.
- The King of Jordan dissolved the legislature ahead of planned demonstrations on Amman, setting up new parliamentary elections.
- British judges are set to rule on the extradition of five men -- including cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri -- to the United States.
- Greece's prime minister says he can't manage beyond November without the next tranche of international aid.
- Members of the victorious Georgian Dream coalition are demanding a recount in a dozen regional elections in hopes of increasing their parliamentary majority.
- Pakistani political candidate Imran Khan is planning to stage an anti-drone rally in South Waziristan.
- India unveiled measures to open up more foreign investment.
- 18 students were killed when a landslide hit a school in China.
- Hugo Chavez and Henrique Capriles wrapped up campaigning ahead of this Sunday's Venezuelan election.
- Two people were killed by police during a protest over high fuel prices in Guatemala.
- Mexico launched a groundbreaking program to vaccinate 5th grade girls against HPV.
- Three Kenyans who were tortured during the Mau Mau uprising won the right to sue the British government.
- One person was killed in clashes between striking miners and police at a South African platinum mine.
- More than 60 inmates escaped from a prison in Liberia. | <urn:uuid:0fc5f751-b959-4f64-9a47-ecd19edb2cf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/1387516 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963923 | 549 | 1.554688 | 2 |
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