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Crystal:15 Years experience as a middle school teacher in the areas of Science and Reading. New York State Assessment Item Writer. Curriculum writing and district level assessment design. Thomas: 16 Years experience as a middle school and elementary teacher in grades 4-8 in all content areas. Curriculum writing and distict level assessment designing.
Creative, hands-on approach to teaching in a diverse setting. Many lessons incorporate inquiry strategies while still applying the necessary basic skills.
Who's Who Among America's Teachers
Crystal: EdD Education Leadership University of Rochester, BS Elem Education, MA Thomas: BS Psychology, MEd. in Education
This is a combined project for Crystal and Thomas Rende, a husband and wife team of NYS teachers. Together we write and publish children's literature studies and additional educational resources for homeschoolers and teachers. We have several writers that have joined us. They have many years of experience and have written exceptional resources. | <urn:uuid:5b84bdc3-026f-41bc-99a4-2e3328df34e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/New-Learning-Publishing?breadcrumb=1&category=3556 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948758 | 195 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The head of the UN climate change secretariat, Yvo de Boer, held a press conference yesterday to mark the halfway point of the Bonn talks. The meetings in Bonn are meant to make progress on a final global climate change agreement due to be signed in Copenhagen in December.
de Boer summed up the four points of “clarity” that he thinks are prerequisites for a final agreement:
Clarity on individual greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for industrialized countries
Clarity on what large developing countries (like China and India) will do to minimize the growth of their emissions
Clarity on financial support for developing countries on adaptation and mitigation
A governance structure for adaptation and mitigation aid that gives developing countries a voice in how money is spent.
It’s hard to disagree with de Boer’s analysis. At this point there is little clarity on any of these points, but perhaps as the week progresses some broad contours will be revealed.
Following my post last night on New Jersey’s Highlands Act and the impact it is having on growth in northwest New Jersey, I came across a new report published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy entitled Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of of Programs and Outcomes.
I look forward to reading the entire book, but with Jersey on my mind, I skimmed through the chapter dedicated to the Garden State. The chapter’s focus is more on state-wide initiatives, but the authors did observe that recent years have seen higher rates of growth in the state’s northeastern core counties in comparison to the exurban Highlands region.
Whether this is due to state planning initiatives or to other forces (such as market demand) is not clear, but the trend towards infill–rather than greenfield–development is encouraging.
According to the Morris County New Jersey Daily Record, regional planning efforts in the northwest part of the state have resulted in “stopping sprawl.” The article cites the fact that no new large subdivisions were constructed in the county as evidence of sprawl’s demise.
While the economic downturn, depressed housing prices, and the credit crunch may also have had something to do with halting development, the article emphasizes the power of a 2004 state legislative initiative– The Highlands Act–as being the primary reason.
The Act was established to protect open space and water quality in northern New Jersey. My understanding is that the seven counties and over 80 municipalities that are located in the Highlands area have to insure that their plans are in compliance with the regional Highlands Plan. Additionally, the Plan is governed by a regional council that has veto power over large development decisions.
This type of regional decision making power is essential to minimize the negative consequences that accompany the typical fragmented land use decisions seen elsewhere in North America. If it seems like the Highlands Plan is really influencing the trajectory of development in northwestern New Jersey, it might be a useful model for other states to follow in order to bring some coherence to metropolitan development.
Normally, governors or state officials who recommend regional planning with teeth meet significant levels of resistance from legislatures and municipalities. The Highlands Act seems to have been an exception.
Tomorrow US State Department climate change negotiator Todd Stern will head to Bonn to join the UN-sponsored climate change talks. The Bonn meeting is seen as a key step towards the goal of coming to an international agreement at Copenhagen in December.
On Wednesday Stern gave an address at the Center for American Politics that focused on China and the US-China relationship on the issue of climate change. During the Bush administration, the US essentially maintained that no global climate change agreement would be possible without China agreeing to significant emissions cuts. This position has basically been a non-starter with China given the fact that industrialized countries are responsible for the highest percentage of cumulative emissions and their current per capita levels of emissions outweigh those of developing countries such as China.
How the Obama administration is going to address the China issue, therefore, has been a matter of interest.
From Stern’s talk it is clear that the US is not going to demand absolute cuts from China. However, he pretty forcefully said that China can’t hide behind its old arguments, arguing that it is not in China’s interest to pursue a high-carbon form of development.
He was asked by reporter to clarify specific actions the US might be looking for from China and responded that whatever it is, it must be substantive and verifiable. To me this suggests that maybe there is some commitment on the table whereby China would reduce energy intensity or hit an emissions target below business-as-usual projections.
We probably won’t get too much clarification in the short term, but it is likely that there will be significant behind the scenes discussions in Bonn between Stern and his Chinese counterparts about ways to move forward.
UN-sponsored climate change talks began on Monday in Bonn. The negotiations will last two weeks and represent a step on the path towards a successor to the Kyoto agreement scheduled to be completed by December.
While the negotiations are underway many NGOs are highlighting the domestic positions of various countries. Yesterday, the Climate Action Network held a press conference to discuss the impending decision on levels of greenhouse gas emission reductions in Japan.
Prime Minister Taro Aso indicated that he would announce Japan’s midterm (2020) reduction target sometime in the next couple of weeks. The graphic above illustrates the various targets being debated in Japan–everything ranging from a 4% increase from 1990 levels to a 25% decrease.
Japan’s decision will undoubtedly influence where other big emitters set their own targets–particularly the United States.
Today a major Japanese business group suggested that domestic industry could meet a 15% reduction. Last month, Aso said that a 25% reduction would be hard to sell politically in the country given the recession. During the CAN press conference, Masako Konishi of WWF-Japan, however, cited a recent public opinion poll that suggested there was strong public support for significant reduction targets. | <urn:uuid:7ac1ce3f-7892-435b-a387-8d03404bd949> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hughbartling.com/?m=200906 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952157 | 1,229 | 1.84375 | 2 |
As the Bay State digs out from the monster blizzard that dumped more than 2 feet of snow in many cities and towns, officials warned residents Saturday about the potential for roof collapses.
“There are concerns about structural issues, given the warming temperatures and forecast for rain on Monday,” Gov. Deval Patrick said during an afternoon news conference. “To the extent folks can be safe, begin to remove snow from your roof. The rain will add to the weight of the snow, especially on flat roofs.”
Nearly 22 inches of snow fell in Boston by Saturday afternoon, bringing back memories of a February 2011 storm that caused dozens of roofs to collapse in what state officials described as unprecedented at the time.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said there were more than 100 roof collapses in the state during that week after a seemingly endless cycle of storms dumped more than 4 feet of snow over large swaths of the region.
The roof of a Holliston industrial building collapsed on Feb. 1, 2011, from the weight of the snow. Eighteen workers who were inside the building were able to escape.
Days later in Avon, 45 antique cars were destroyed when an 80-by-40-foot section of a warehouse roof came down.
School officials in some towns also canceled classes while inspectors determined if the school buildings were safe to enter. | <urn:uuid:c6a3a9b4-41f2-46ce-a4aa-518131a2739c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcvb.com/weather/Roof-collapse-concerns-Gov-urges-residents-to-remove-snow/-/9850416/18481676/-/lkfmxjz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969099 | 275 | 1.609375 | 2 |
For the second time in as many days, an unspecified threat forced a Chinese airline to divert a flight, raising public concern about aviation safety in one of the world's fastest-growing air travel markets.
A Shenzhen Airlines flight en route to southern boomtown Shenzhen from Xiangyang -- a medium-sized city in central Hubei Province -- was diverted Thursday night to the provincial capital, Wuhan, shortly after takeoff, the airline said.
"At 10:29 p.m. on August 30, 2012, flight ZH 9706 received threatening information after takeoff," the airline said in a short statement posted online. "To ensure safety, this airline diverted the flight immediately and the plane landed safety at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport at 11:22 p.m. Police have been called in to investigate."
The airline did not reveal the nature of the threat or the number of passengers and crew members on board. The aircraft type is listed as an Airbus A320 -- which typically seats 150 passengers in a two-class configuration -- in its timetable.
An anonymous call containing a threatening message prompted the diversion, the Wuhan airport authority disclosed in a statement released online. State media reported that passengers stayed in Wuhan overnight and would travel to their destination on a new flight Friday.
Retweeting the airline statement, many users on Chinese social media sites expressed rising anxiety about flying after two successive incidents and demanded more information from the airlines and authorities.
On Wednesday, an unspecified threat forced New York-bound Air China flight CA 981 to return to Beijing seven hours after takeoff, the Chinese flag carrier said.
Police found nothing suspicious in their investigation of the plane, the airport authority said in statements posted online. State media also quoted police as saying that the initial warning of the threat came from U.S. authorities, who warned China that dangerous goods that may harm the plane and passengers were on board.
The flight took off again at 12:31 a.m. Thursday after a change of crew and arrived in New York at 12:38 a.m. the same day, according to the airline's website.
Beijing-based Air China was also tight-lipped about the nature of the threat and other details. The aircraft involved, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, seats up to 344 passengers in the carrier's configuration.
Messages and photos posted on Chinese social media sites Wednesday night showed passengers and their luggage being rescreened at the Beijing airport upon landing.
One passenger on CA 981, whose online handle is Kejiwaijiao, said he noticed something was wrong when the flight map on board indicated the plane was headed back to Beijing. When he inquired, he said, flight attendants told him it was a map display error.
"The captain notified us (of the reason) after we safely landed," he wrote on Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.
Another passenger, whose Weibo name is Nataliebu, said crew members only told passengers to buckle up and sit tight due to strong air turbulence.
On June 29, passengers and crew members thwarted a hijack attempt on a short-haul flight within the far western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Authorities said six ethnic Uyghur men violently tried to take control of the plane before being subdued. The plane returned to its point of origin safely.
Security is usually tight throughout Beijing Capital International Airport, the world's second-busiest air hub after Hartsfield-Jackson International in Atlanta. More than 78 million passengers passed through the Beijing airport's three terminals last year. | <urn:uuid:54f178b4-b6f2-4728-b99e-ce765788322c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.localnews8.com/lifestyle/travel/Threat-forces-flight-diversion-for-2nd-day/-/461746/16429404/-/13k0ah0z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956946 | 734 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Hospice is not the end but a ‘new beginning' for some
Published: Sunday, February 24, 2013 at 8:10 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, February 24, 2013 at 8:10 p.m.
Gary Perry doesn't remember the day he came to Haven Hospice. It was sometime in December 2011, but he was having seizures and his body was riddled with pain from a rare form of genetic cancer that had already killed his daughter a few years before, just 18 days before her 21st birthday.
* Haven Hospice has five area care centers: in Gainesville, Lake City, Palatka, Chiefland and Orange Park. There are more than 6,000 Hospices in the U.S. and nearly 400 Hospice care centers. 90 percent of care is provided in homes and skilled nursing facilities.
* The average length of a patient's stay at Haven Hospice in Gainesville is 19 days.
* 32 percent of patients have cancer, 27 percent have dementia, 18 percent heart disease, 12 percent pulmonary disease, 10 percent other and 1 percent AIDS.
* Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurance plans cover Hospice care. Patients must qualify for the care by having a prognosis of six months of life or less, and their condition monitored every 90 days to continue receiving Hospice.
Perry's doctors had given up on him, he said. They sent him to Haven Hospice, a facility on peaceful grounds behind the Health Park off 39th Avenue in northwest Gainesville. Hospice, to many people, is viewed as a place to die, and Perry's mother was devastated.
But Perry told her, “Maybe it's not such a bad thing.”
And indeed, the day before Christmas Eve, Perry was ready to go home. His mother picked him up, and they went to dinner at Red Lobster, followed by Christmas shopping at The Oaks Mall.
“There's no stop sign on life at Haven,” Perry likes to say. “Hospice can be a new beginning.”
Perry is considered one of Haven's “graduates,” someone who gets well enough to leave the facility. According to Dr. Fernando Petry, Haven's chief medical officer, “Whenever I've had a patient graduate from Hospice, they come with a list of medications they are on, and interactions amongst those meds can sometimes be life-threatening; at most, they are life-altering, causing fatigue, nausea, dizziness,” Petry said. “When we stop, a lot of times, all those toxic side effects go away.”
Haven is often the alternative to an emergency room visit, and a place where patients can get back on their feet.
About 5-10 percent of patients at Hospice do actually graduate (roughly 80 percent die at care centers such as Haven), but many patients do get better, even if they are terminal, and this is owing to the holistic philosophy of care that Haven provides, Petry said.
“We are taking care of patients' spiritual, emotional and medical needs,” he said.
Patients' medications are carefully monitored — and often reduced (but pain medications are freely used) — their families are encouraged to stay at Haven; there is a fish pond and gardens, a chapel and spacious rooms with vaulted ceilings and fireplaces that resemble a lodge or your own living room.
“Hospice is truly about the person: how this person has come to this part of their life, and their journey through life with an illness,” Petry said. “It's really the culmination of truly patient-centered care.”
Gerald “JJ” Silcox, another Haven graduate, also came to Hospice after his doctors had given up on him, he said. He was in a congestive heart failure, with 30 pounds of fluid from his feet to his neck. At Haven, he rested, walked and had visitors every day. They made him one of his favorite meals: beef strips and rice, biscuits, lemon meringue pie and iced tea.
“I just thought, ‘Well, they sure know what they're doing,' ” Silcox said. “I just started getting better every day.”
While patient-centered care is now a movement in family medicine, Petry said, Hospice has been practicing it for years.
“There's a lot that we do in Hospice that other physicians would benefit from learning,” he said, adding, “Hospice is one of the few specialties in medicine where you can actually develop a good relationship with patients. A lot of times you hear that physicians are cold … in Hospice we are doing the opposite.”
Perry has noticed the difference in his doctors at Hospice. “Some doctors don't have a good bedside manner, but the ones here do,” he said. “I would suggest all doctors spend six months at Hospice before becoming doctors. If they want to be a doctor, they need to know this side of it.”
For Perry, “this side of it” means living with a disease that is incurable, even though he is now well enough to live at his home in Starke.
He has a pain pump with him at all times, which on the hour automatically shoots 5 milliliters of pain medication into his abdomen, and he can press a button if he needs more. A Hospice nurse visits him once a week, but otherwise, he spends his days fishing and shooting his guns, and fiddling with his latest hobby, building model helicopters.
“I smell the roses now,” he said. “I make sure I tell (my family) how much I love them every time I talk to them.”
Perry said he also feels guilty for passing on the disease, called Gardner Syndrome (also known as familial colorectal polyposis) to two of his three children, and his grandson — the son of his daughter who died from it.
Perry's parents tested negative for the genetic mutation that causes the disease, so it started with him.
Unlike most people with Gardner Syndrome, who have a lifespan of 35-40 years, Perry, who is now 48, found out that he had it when he was 40 years old. He had rectal bleeding, which was misdiagnosed as bronchitis and digestive disease before a specialist in Gainesville finally found polyps from one end of his colon to the other. Genetic testing revealed the rare condition, and three months later, his daughter developed a tumor in her neck.
She went quickly, and died at Haven. “She had enough consciousness to look me in the eye and tell me goodbye,” Perry said.
He tears up recalling his daughter, and the conversations they had, retracing her lifelong digestive difficulties to one insidious genetic mutation.
Perry is nowhere near immune to pain, but continues to appreciate what he has now. He wears a North Florida Bluegrass Association T-shirt and says he is learning to play the guitar. Sometimes he and his buddies spend two or three days at campgrounds playing music. He speaks softly, but his words are full of purpose: “This doesn't have to be the end.”
Contact Kristine Crane at 338-3119 or email@example.com.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:7e3c836f-b3b5-4ad1-829f-e29664fb84e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gatorsports.com/article/20130224/ARTICLES/130229729/0/ent | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985275 | 1,601 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Published: 09:40 GMT Daylight Time - Wednesday 04 July 2012
“Flood-affected Christians are heavily suffering. They are now temporarily staying at government school and flood shelter. But we need emergency help. Please help our Christian believers at this critical situation.”Barnabas Fund partner in Bangladesh
Barnabas Aid is providing emergency aid to Christian families in Bangladesh and India who have been hit by devastating flooding that has killed nearly 200 people and forced millions to flee their homes.
Thousands of homes have been
destroyed by the flooding
Heavy monsoon rains have submerged several districts in the south-eastern and north-eastern parts of Bangladesh, and also triggered severe flooding across India’s north-east; Assam state has been worst hit, with more than 2,000 villages affected, while the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur have also seen extensive flooding. Some villages have been completely cut off, with water levels reaching to about two metres, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded.
Landslides, collapsing walls, lightning strikes, surges of floodwater and capsizing boats have so far claimed at least 110 lives in Bangladesh and 79 in India, injuring many more. Thousands of homes have been destroyed and large areas of cropland damaged. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken shelter in relief camps.
Barnabas Aid is providing emergency aid to Christian families affected by this disaster. Our partner in Bangladesh said:
Many believers’ houses have been affected. Many of them evacuated from their houses and taken shelter to the government school and flood shelter. As soon as the flood water will go down, all of them will be back to their destroyed houses.
He said that the immediate need was to provide them with food, and treatment for diarrhoea. His team is distributing rice, dahl, oil, salt, sugar, saline and medicine. It costs around £18 to provide the supplies needed for one Christian family for two weeks.
In India’s Assam state, we are providing rice, dahl, nutritional supplements, medicine, clothing and utensils.
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, said:
Many thousands of lives in Bangladesh and India have been devastated by these floods, which have swept away houses and livelihoods in a matter of days. Our brothers and sisters who have been affected by this disaster need urgent help, and are likely to need support for some time as they will have to rebuild their lives from scratch.
If you prefer to telephone, dial: 0800 587 4006 from within the UK or +44 1672 565031 from outside the UK. Please quote project reference Disaster Relief Fund (00-634).
For a quick donation of £3.00 by SMS (see terms and conditions here) text Barnabas/634 to 70007 (Please note: This facility is presently only available to UK supporters).
- That the floodwaters will recede and that no further damage will be caused or lives lost.
- For all who have lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods; pray that they will be comforted and have the strength to face what lies ahead.
- For Christians who have been affected by this disaster, that they will know the Lord’s presence and peace, and that all their needs will be met. | <urn:uuid:6ca7dfcc-8aab-47f3-a334-a07c083a188a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://barnabasaid.org/US/News/Archives/Christians-hit-by-devastating-floods-in-Bangladesh-and-India-need-urgent-aid.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965592 | 693 | 1.789063 | 2 |
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) -- President Obama signed an executive order Friday to crack down on scams targeting veterans.
Veterans should feel welcomed when they return to the states and that's why former Army Soldier and UALR nursing student A.J. Moser can't imagine them being victimized.
"People go over there and serve and then come back to be victims and stuff like that and that's horrible," says Moser.
In 2003, Moser began a 14 month stint in Iraq -- then returned to school to study nursing. Both Moser and fellow classmate Krystal Clark realize how hard adjusting to civilian life can be.
"It can be difficult if you don't have a good foundation and a good family," says Clark.
Recently, President Obama addressed a growing issue of schools targeting veterans with misleading information and high interest loans.
"One of the worst examples was a college recruiter who visited a Marine barracks and enrolled Marines with brain injuries so severe that some of them couldn't recall the courses the recruiter had signed them up for," says President Obama.
Scammers are targeting veterans on bases but A.J. says he's being targeted online.
"Lately, I've been received stuff online and stuff like that as far as trying to recruit," says Moser.
President Obama's executive order will require veterans get a simple fact sheet outlining all financial and academic information. Krystal Clark says the Air Force provides assistance as well.
"They have finance officers and you can take any of your problems to them," says Clark.
Many schools provide help for veterans who want to take advantage of the G.I. Bill tuition assistance. Gail Siddell Nelson of the UALR Veteran's Center says the school does not target vets, but offers clear information to those who need it.
"Supporting the veteran when they come back and giving them all the information they need and help that they need to pursue their education," says Nelson.
Despite Moser's clear academic direction he says the President's order will help veterans who need time to adjust back to life in the U.S. The term "G.I. Bill" will now be regulated online, so fraudulent websites will have a harder time misleading veterans.
Right now, there is not a place for veterans to voice concerns over education scams, but President Obama is calling for an online complaint system to be created.
The executive order requires colleges to provide a simple, financial aid fact sheet called "Know Before You Owe." It will include tuition, fees, student loan debt and graduation rates.
This form provides students with critical information on tuition and fees, the availability of federal financial aid, estimated student loan debt upon graduation, and information about student outcomes like graduation rates.
The executive order also ensures the Department of Defense will set rules on college recruiters gaining access to military barracks. In the President's weekly address he said a college recruiter visited Marine barracks and "enrolled Marines with brain injuries so severe that some of them couldn't recall what courses the recruiter had signed them up for."
Soon, veterans will have a centralized system to send their complaints if they feel a school acted fraudulently. | <urn:uuid:6f956a39-cb60-476f-b2d6-6205764531db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thv11.com/news/article/209390/120/Cracking-down-on-vet-scams- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967698 | 659 | 1.789063 | 2 |
LISBON -Calling the fire department directly during an emergency instead of 911 is not something Columbiana County's 911 director would recommend.
Robert Emmons was responding to last week's suggestion by the Calcutta and Glenmoor fire chiefs that in the future the residents in their service area (St. Clair Township) call the fire departments directly when possible because of routing problems with the 911 system.
"I oppose that suggestion for emergency situations, because most often when people are experiencing an emergency their minds focus on the crisis and not their location ... When someone dials 911 from either a cell phone or landline telephone and screams 'fire' and then drops the phone, at least we know where to send the fire trucks," said Emmons, in an email response to the newspaper.
Several fire chiefs in the county have claimed that some 911 calls are going to other counties and then have to be rerouted back, losing precious minutes in the process.
The most recent alleged incident occurred 10 days ago, when 911 was called after a St. Clair Township resident's pickup truck caught fire at his home and it took 20 minutes for the notification to reach the fire department. The first call made by the person's neighbor reportedly went to another county, and when no fire truck arrived within 10 minutes, the truck owner called 911 on his cell phone and he does know where that call went.
Meanwhile, a call was made on a landline to the East Liverpool Police Department, and the first firefighters arrived six minutes later. The police department serves as the 911 dispatching center for East Liverpool and St. Clair Township under the county's system.
As a result of the problem, the Calcutta and Glenmoor chiefs recommended St. Clair Township residents add the fire department number to their cell phones so they have the option of calling them directly.
Emmons said the only 911 call he is aware of was placed by the truck owner and received by the East Liverpool Police Department at 11:42 p.m. Nov. 4. Records show the call was transferred one minute later to the fire department's dispatching service, and dispatchers were on the phone with another caller about the fire.
"I don't have any information on the time sequence for the fire department, I just know when the call came in," he said. "911 had nothing to do with whatever problems there were."
The wireless component of the county's 911 system was rolled out earlier this year and is still in the process of being implemented. At the 911 advisory committee's Oct. 24 meeting, Emmons estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of 911 calls made from cell phones are going to the proper dispatching center and need no rerouting. He said the rest are likely made from inside buildings or vehicles, which interfere with the system's ability to pinpoint the caller's location.
At the same meeting, an East Liverpool dispatcher said they were having problems pinpointing 911 cell calls that last 30 seconds or less. Some tweaks were to be made to reduce the amount of time needed for the system to pinpoint call locations.
Emmons conceded some calls are sometimes bounced to adjacent counties, mostly because of the terrain, but none are leaving the immediate area, as was alleged.
"Some calls are routed to an adjacent county, but they are far fewer now that we have activated enhanced 911 for cell phones," he said, adding when that happens the dispatchers can reroute the call immediately by the press of a button.
Emmons was unaware of the complaints and the action taken by the Calcutta and Glenmoor chiefs until he read about it the local newspapers. He urged residents to have faith in the county's 911 system.
"Our 911 system is incredibly reliable, extremely accurate and light years ahead of where we were just five short years ago. People in Columbiana County can be very proud of our 911 system and depend on it being there when they need it," he said. | <urn:uuid:5ce66334-7d42-4340-b819-ad3811808871> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://salemnews.net/page/content.detail/id/560286/911-director-responds-to-critics.html?nav=5019 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978255 | 810 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Although some protesters like to describe their campaign against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as a "cultural revolution," it might be more aptly described as a democratic civil war. The crowds and media organizations are firmly divided on the issue of whether to oust the president, and there is little common ground left between the two sides.
This has temporarily brought civilized dialogue, respect for diversity and legal process, rational thinking and democratic procedure to a standstill. People are becoming ever-more entrenched in their red and green opinions and have dug in for a long stalemate. In their excitement, they are set off by the slightest provocation to verbally attack their opponents, scream provocative and inflammatory slogans and even cause physical harm.
Each political faction has devised its own tactics in response to this new social divide. Some people are trying to ride the coattails of the anti-Chen bandwagon, some people are trying to suppress their angry outbursts, and some people are waiting patiently for the most opportune moment to attack. This situation is nothing if not absurd.
But there is more to this "democratic civil war" than the agitation of anti-corruption protesters. If the performance were not directed and supported by certain "facilitators" -- such as a biased media and its blatant efforts to back the anti-Chen camp -- the campaign could not have maintained its intensity for so long.
Many people have high expectations of the anti-Chen campaign -- they hope it will transform from a simple movement to depose the president to a broad-based effort concerned with protecting social values and a truly "new civic movement."
Their hope is that the movement will be able to transcend partisan divisions and bring civic thinking into people's daily lives instead of letting them be influenced by ethnic rifts manipulated for political motives. This kind of civil society wouldn't need to formulate an "exit strategy" or pre-establish a termination date as the current movement does.
At the same time, a democratic populace should also be able to tolerate differing opinions, have respect for others and be capable of self reflection. It should seek justice and embrace reconciliation through realization of an enduring civil society.
But right now the movement has entered a difficult stage and is running out of time. The problem is how to figure out how to get people to emerge from the "red trenches" that they have dug for themselves, return to normal life and begin a truly convincing civil movement instead of remaining hung up on their current narrow agenda.
As protesters become more set in their ideological positions, a resolution to the controversy seems to become more and more unlikely. Whether staging a sit-in in Taipei or traveling the country, this remains a problem for the red-clad protesters. Even though it may succeed in encircling Taiwan, that will still only be an extension of the red trenches.
The unfortunate consequence is that the red and green brigades become increasingly entrenched in their positions and their engagement with broader society has fallen by the wayside. As a result, the ideal of a "new citizenry" also becomes more difficult to achieve.
Up to this point, the "democratic civil war" has been "democratic" insofar as the protests have remained peaceful. Violence has been quickly condemned and contained, but the language used by some so-called "senior media workers" has been very provocative. They drop hints, fabricate stories, mis-report, take sides and rile up emotions -- actions that a professional and responsible media wouldn't even consider doing. This is probably the biggest setback for media ethics since the end of martial law. | <urn:uuid:4579390e-bd80-425c-9c20-00c394ff207f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2006/10/12/2003331459 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967917 | 735 | 1.734375 | 2 |
In New York Times, Adam Nagourney Ponders Whether Paul Ryan's Speech Could Hurt Mitt Romney
Leave it to former New York Times political correspondent (now Los Angeles bureau chief) Adam Nagourney to find bad news for Romney in his running mate's Paul Ryan's rapturously received convention speech. "With Speech, Ryan May Have Helped Himself More Than Romney," Nagourney nagged in a Thursday afternoon "Caucus" post.
By every measure – the cheers in the hall, the praise from commentators across the country, the elation among aides to Mitt Romney – Representative Paul D. Ryan’s speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination was a hit. He aggressively framed the campaign against President Obama, signaled that he, unlike some previous vice-presidential candidates, had no compunctions about leading the attack, and anchored Mr. Romney in a conservative school of thought that has come to define the Republican Party.
Then came the "but" paragraph:
The question now is what it might mean for Mr. Romney’s prospects of winning the White House. Could Mr. Ryan’s speech to the Republican convention here ultimately be remembered as doing more good for Mr. Ryan, the young Republican congressman from Wisconsin making his first foray into national politics, than for Mr. Romney, the 65-year-old former governor of Massachusetts making his second, and potentially final, bid for the presidency?
There seems little doubt, delegates and analysts said, that Mr. Ryan served himself well on Wednesday night. After a tentative start, he seemed in command of the room, drawing cheer after cheer as he made the Republican case against President Obama and presented the vision of greatly reduced government that he has championed on his rise to power in the House. At 42, several Republicans said, he had cemented his status – if he even needed to by now – as the leader of the generation of Republicans taking the stage as Mr. Romney’s generation begins its exit.
For one thing, Mr. Ryan’s sheer stage presence – his cool command of the stage, his crisp and sunny delivery of attack lines, his endearing invocation of biography -- has raised the stakes for Mr. Romney. Mr. Romney’s political strengths have not, for the most part, included delivering the kind of speech that moves a hall or captures a television audience. And until now, he has avoided the intimately personal discussion of his background that was so prevalent in the Ryan speech -- starting with the death of Mr. Ryan’s father when he was 16. The line has been drawn. | <urn:uuid:f092735a-b7cd-4aee-8106-5e564c98ecb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsbusters.org/blogs/clay-waters/2012/08/30/new-york-times-adam-nagourney-ponders-whether-paul-ryans-speech-could-h | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97877 | 526 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Dealing With Market Corrections: Ten Do?s And Don'ts
A correction is a beautiful thing, simply the flip side of a rally, big or small. Theoretically, even technically I'm told, corrections adjust equity prices to their actual value or ?support levels?. In reality, it?s much easier than that. Prices go down because of speculator reactions to expectations of news, speculator reactions to actual news, and investor profit taking. The two former "becauses" are more potent than ever before because there is more "self directed" money out there than ever before. And therein lies the core of correctional beauty! Mutual Fund unit holders rarely take profits but often take losses. Opportunities abound!
Here?s a list of ten things to do and/or to think about doing during corrections of any magnitude:
1. Your present Asset Allocation should have been tuned in to your goals and objectives. Resist the urge to decrease your Equity allocation because you expect a further fall in stock prices. That would be an attempt to time the market, which is (rather obviously) impossible. Proper Asset Allocation has nothing to do with market expectations.
2. Take a look at the past. There has never been a correction that has not proven to be a buying opportunity, so start collecting a diverse group of high quality, dividend paying, NYSE companies as they move lower in price. I start shopping at 20% below the 52-week high water mark, and the shelves are full.
3. Don?t hoard that ?smart cash? you accumulated during the last rally, and don?t look back and get yourself agitated because you might buy some issues too soon. There are no crystal balls, and no place for hindsight in an investment strategy.
4. Take a look at the future. Nope, you can?t tell when the rally will come or how long it will last. If you are buying quality equities now (as you certainly could be) you will be able to love the rally even more than you did the last time? as you take yet another round of profits. Smiles broaden with each new realized gain, especially when most folk are still head scratchin?.
5. As (or if) the correction continues, buy more slowly as opposed to more quickly, and establish new positions incompletely. Hope for a short and steep decline, but prepare for a long one. There?s more to Shop at The Gap than meets the eye.
6. Your understanding and use of the Smart Cash concept has proven the wisdom of The Investor?s Creed. You should be out of cash while the market is still correcting. [It gets less and less scary each time.] As long your cash flow continues unabated, the change in market value is merely a perceptual issue.
7. Note that your Working Capital is still growing, in spite of falling prices, and examine your holdings for opportunities to average down on cost per share or to increase yield (on fixed income securities). Examine both fundamentals and price, lean hard on your experience, and don?t force the issue.
8. Identify new buying opportunities using a consistent set of rules, rally or correction. That way you will always know which of the two you are dealing with in spite of what the Wall Street propaganda mill spits out. Focus on value stocks; it?s just easier, as well as being less risky, and better for your peace of mind. Just think where you would be today had you heeded this advice years ago?
9. Examine your portfolio?s performance: with your asset allocation and investment objectives clearly in focus; in terms of market and interest rate cycles as opposed to calendar Quarters (never do that) and Years; and only with the use of the Working Capital Model, because it allows for your personal asset allocation. Remember, there is really no single index number to use for comparison purposes with a properly designed value portfolio.
10. Finally, ask your broker/advisor why your portfolio has not yet surpassed the levels it boasted five years ago. If it has, say thank you and continue with what you?ve been doing. This one is like golf, if you claim a better score than the reality, you?ll eventually lose money.
11. One more thought to consider. So long as everything is down, there is nothing to worry about.
Corrections (of all types) will vary in depth and duration, and both characteristics are clearly visible only in institutional grade rear view mirrors. The short and deep ones are most lovable (kind of like men, I'm told); the long and slow ones are more difficult to deal with. Most corrections are "45s" (August and September, '05), and difficult to take advantage of with Mutual Funds. But amid all of this uncertainty, there is one indisputable fact: there has never been a correction that has not succumbed to the next rally... its more popular flip side. So smile through the hum drum Everydays of the correction, you just might meet Peggy Sue tomorrow.
About the Author: Steve Selengut http://www.sancoservices.com Professional Investment Portfolio Manager since 1979 BA Business, Gettysburg College; MBA Professional Management, Pace U. Author of: "The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read?, and ?A Millionaire?s Secret Investment Strategy? | <urn:uuid:dab0d484-446e-4d08-a762-b221c6227448> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roseindia.net/articles/dealing-with-market.page | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951901 | 1,116 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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How Good is Knicks Landry Fields?
The amazing Landry Fields is the subject of a Wall Street Journal article by David Biderman. For those who have not been paying attention, Fields was the 39th player chosen in the 2010 draft. Despite being drafted in the second round, Fields has started every game for the Knicks this season. He has also been the most productive player on the Knicks this season (by a fairly wide margin). Furthermore, he has been the most productive rookie (by a very wide margin).
As Biderman notes, Fields is not a productive scorer. As the following table indicates (above average numbers in red), though, Fields may be considered a classic Wages of Wins player.
The Wins Produced metric (detailed in both The Wages of Wins and Stumbling on Wins) argues that wins in the NBA are determined by shooting efficiency (the ability to put the ball in the hoop) and the ability to gain and keep possession of the ball (i.e. rebounds and turnovers). As I noted in my sports economics class this week, this observation about wins in the NBA should be fairly obvious. But because player evaluation in the NBA is dominated by scoring totals, it seems hard for many fans to accept the notion that a player like Fields – who has below average scoring totals – is producing wins in very large quantities.
The above table, though, should illustrate how good Fields has been. Relative to an average shooting guard, Fields has been amazing with respect to shooting efficiency and Net Possession (rebounds + steals – turnovers). Consequently, we should not be surprised that Fields is on pace to produce more than 16 wins this season.
What may be surprising is that Fields’ projected productivity eclipses the combined first year production of all players selected with the 39th pick in the draft since 1977 (as Biderman notes, these players combined to produce 4.0 wins since 1977). Furthermore – as the following table notes – Fields projected Wins Produced is only eclipsed by seven rookies since 1977.
Of course the big question is whether Fields can continue to produce at this rate. Again, Fields has only played 12 games, and that is a very small sample. Then again, Arturo Galletti has argued that small samples in the NBA do tell us something. So maybe Fields is for real. And if that is the case, the Knicks might have found the productive star they sought in the 2010 free agent market in the second round of the NBA draft.
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter | <urn:uuid:10e8e036-a936-4175-a9b8-1c37ab30ca1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opposingviews.com/i/how-good-is-knicks-landry-fields | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951195 | 581 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Exerpt from AboveTopSecret:
Here are some smoking gun photos I found that will make you slap your forehead in embarrassment. You will probably be too embarrassed to speak after this. Take a good hard look at these photos. This will be the clincher that will change your mind if you are on the fence or an Apollo believer.
5. Distinct line separating foreground from artificial backdrop
In many moon photos, you can see a distinct line between the foreground and backdrop, which consists of different textures, and indicates that the background is ARTIFICIAL, as in a movie set. Here is a clear example:
IMPORTANT! Here is a much larger version that I want you to open in a new window and look at closely, because it contains a BIG NEW SMOKING GUN! View this image at its original size, and notice that behind the astronaut the edge of a WHITE CLOTH SHEET can be seen placed over the dirt! This is a MUST SEE smoking gun that I discovered but don't see mentioned on any other sites yet!
4. Buzz Aldrin spotlight photo a smoking gun blunder
The famous photo of Buzz Aldrin standing in the spotlight is a giveaway in that he is being lit up in a spotlight from alleged sunlight while the ground around him is in darkness! How can the sun put a spotlight around a particular person like a stagehand pointing a spotlight on an actor or singer on stage?! This was obviously a major screw up, and NASA was reckless for thinking that no one would notice or that they could get away with it. In fact, it was such a blunder that NASA even tried to cover it up by brightening the rest of the surface in subsequent versions of it. Why would they do that if they had nothing to hide?
Here is the original version of it by NASA, which was released to newspapers in 1969:
Here is the edited version with the surface brightened up for the Lunar Surface Journal:
8. Sun image on moon turns out to be light bulb in enhanced image
Here is another smoking gun that will make Apollo believers feel foolish and embarrassed. An Apollo image of the alleged sun from the moon’s surface turned out to be a big light bulb upon image enhancement! See images and enhancement below: | <urn:uuid:e4dd7ba5-7c38-4d5f-8c01-5497711e26b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1122662-new-smoking-guns-in-apollo-moon-hoax/page__p__595355012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944764 | 464 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Front Page Titles (by Subject) BOOK II: WHETHER THE ROMAN PEOPLE RIGHTFULLY APPROPRIATED THE OFFICE OF MONARCHY - De Monarchia
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BOOK II: WHETHER THE ROMAN PEOPLE RIGHTFULLY APPROPRIATED THE OFFICE OF MONARCHY - Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia
The De Monarchia of Dante Alighieri, edited with translation and notes by Aurelia Henry (Boston and New York: Houghton, Miflin and Company, 1904).
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WHETHER THE ROMAN PEOPLE RIGHTFULLY APPROPRIATED THE OFFICE OF MONARCHY
1. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their yoke from us.’ ”1
2. We are wont to marvel at any strange effect when we have never beheld the face of its cause,2 and, when we have learned to know the cause, to look down with a sort of derision on those still lost in astonishment. I, in truth, at one time marveled that without resistance the Roman people had become sovereign throughout the earth; for, looking merely superficially at the matter, I believe they had obtained sovereignty not by right, but by force of arms alone.3 However, after the eyes of my mind had pierced to the marrow thereof, and I had come to understand by most convincing tokens that Divine Providence had effected this thing, my wonder vanished, and in its place rises a certain derisive contempt when I hear the heathen raging against the preëminence of the Roman race; when I see people, as I was wont, imagining a vain thing; when, more than all, I find to my grief kings and princes concordant only in the error4 of taking counsel together against their Lord and His one Roman Prince. Wherefore, on behalf of this glorious people and of Caesar I exclaim, in derision that is also sorrow, with him who cried aloud on behalf of the Prince of heaven, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed.”
3. Yet lasting derision is not compatible with natural love, but as the summer sun, rising splendid above the scattered mists of morning, sheds abroad its beams, so love, dispelling its derision, would send forth an amending light.5 To break asunder, then, the bonds of ignorance for those kings and princes, to prove the human race free from their yoke, I will exhort myself, as did that most holy prophet whom I follow, with the words that come in order after, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
4. These two things will be done well enough if I proceed with the second part of my main proposition, and reveal the truth of the question now pending. For when it is proved that the Roman Empire existed by right, not only will the clouds of ignorance be cleared from the eyes of kings and princes who usurp to themselves public guidance, falsely believing that the Roman people had done so, but all mortals will know that they are free from the yoke of usurpers. Nor will the truth be revealed in the light of human reason alone, but also in the radiance of divine authority. And when these two unite together, heaven and earth must together give approval.6 Resting, therefore, in that trust of which I have previously spoken,7 and supported by the testimony of reason and authority, I enter upon the solution of the second question.
What God wills in human society is to be held as right.
1. Now that the truth of the first question has been investigated as adequately as the subject-matter permitted, the second question urges us to investigate its truth as to whether the Roman people appropriated the dignity of empire by Right. The starting-point of this investigation is that verity to which the arguments of the present inquiry may be referred as to their own first principle.1
2. It must be understood, therefore, that as art exists in a threefold degree, in the mind of the artist, in the instrument, and in the matter informed by the art,2 so may Nature be looked upon as threefold. For Nature exists in the mind of the Primal Motor, who is God,3 and then in heaven, as in the instrument through whose mediation the likeness of eternal goodness is unfolded on fluid matter.4 When the artist is perfect, and his instrument without fault, any flaw that may appear in the form of the art can then be imputed to the matter only. Thus, since God is ultimate perfection, and since heaven, his instrument, suffers no defect in its required perfectness (as a philosophic study of heaven makes clear),5 it is evident that whatever flaw mars lesser things is a flaw in the subjected material,6 and outside the intention of God working through Nature,7 and of heaven; and that whatever good is in lesser things cannot come from the material itself, which exists only potentially, but must come first from the artist, God, and secondly from the instrument of divine art, heaven, which men generally call Nature.8
3. From these things it is plain that inasmuch as Right is good, it dwells primarily in the mind of God; and as according to the words, “What was made was in Him life,”9 everything in the mind of God is God, and as God especially wills what is characteristic of Himself, it follows that God wills Right according as it is in Him. And since with God the will and the thing willed are the same, it follows further that the divine will is Right itself. And the further consequence of this is, that Right is nothing other than likeness to the divine will. Hence whatever is not consonant with divine will is not right, and whatever is consonant with divine will is right.10 So to ask whether something is done with Right, although the words differ, is the same as to ask whether it is done according to the will of God. Let this therefore base our argument, that whatever God wills in human society must be accepted as right, true, and pure.
4. Moreover, that should be remembered which the Philosopher teaches in the first book to Nicomachus, “Like certainty is not to be sought in every matter, but according as the nature of the subject admits it.”11 Wherefore our arguments will advance adequately under the principle established, if we investigate the Right of this great people through visible signs and the authority of the wise. The will of God is in itself an invisible attribute, but by means of things which are made the invisible attributes of God become perceptible to the intellect.12 For, though a seal be hidden, the wax impressed therewith bears manifest evidence of the unseen signet;13 nor is it remarkable that the divine will must be sought in signs, for the human will, except to him who wills, is discerned no way else than in signs.14
The Romans as the noblest people deserved precedence before all others.
1. I say with regard to this question, that the Roman people by Right and not by usurpation took to itself over all mortals the office of Monarchy, which men call the Empire. This may first be proved thus: It was meet that the noblest people should have precedence over all others; the Roman people was the noblest;1 therefore it was meet that it should have precedence over all others. The major premise2 is demonstrable, for, since honor is the reward of virtue, and all precedence is honor, all precedence is a reward of virtue.3 It is agreed that men are ennobled as virtues of their own or their ancestors make them worthy. Nobility is “virtue and ancient wealth,” according to the Philosopher in the Politics;4 but according to Juvenal, “Virtue is the one and only nobility of soul.”5 These two definitions grant two kinds of nobility, one’s own and that of one’s ancestors.6
2. By reason of the cause inherent in nobility the reward of precedence is befitting the noble. And as rewards should be commensurate with merits, in consonance with that saying of the Gospel, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again,”7 the foremost rank should be to the noblest. As for the minor premise, the testimony of the ancients is convincing, since Virgil, our divine Poet,8 throughout his Aeneid testifies in everlasting remembrance that the father of the Roman people was Aeneas, the famous king; and Titus Livius, illustrious writer of Roman deeds, confirms this testimony in the first part of his volume which begins with the capture of Troy.9 So great was the nobleness of this man, our ancestor most invincible and most pious, nobleness not only of his own considerable virtue, but that of his progenitors and consorts, which was transferred to him by hereditary right, that I cannot unfold it in detail, “I can but trace the main outlines of truth.”10
3. As to his personal nobility, hearken to our poet in the first book of the Aeneid, introducing Ilioneus with the plea, “Aeneas was our king, than whom none other was more just and pious, none other greater in war and arms.”11 Hearken to him again in the sixth, when, speaking of the dead Misenus, Hector’s attendant in war, who entered the service of Aeneas after Hector’s death, he says, Misenus “had followed no lesser fortunes.”12 This compares Aeneas with Hector, whom Homer13 honors above all men, as the Philosopher affirms in that part of the writings to Nicomachus on “types of conduct to be avoided.”14
4. As to his hereditary nobility, it accrues to him from the three continents of the earth through his ancestors and his consorts.
5. Asia ennobled him through his most immediate ancestors, Assaracus and those who had ruled over Phrygia, a region of Asia, as our poet records in these lines of the third book: “After it had seemed good to the gods to overturn the might of Asia and the race of Priam unmeriting their fate.”15 Europe ennobled him through Dardanus,16 most ancient of his ancestors, and Africa through Electra, his most ancient ancestress, daughter of King Atlas of great renown. Concerning both of these facts our poet renders testimony in the eighth book, where Aeneas speaks thus to Evander: “Dardanus, the first founder of the city and father of Ilium, descended as the Greeks deem from Atlantian Electra,17 came among the Teucrians. Electra was sprung from Atlas the mighty, who sustains the heavenly orbs upon his shoulders.”18
6. The bard sings in the third book of Dardanus taking his origin from Europe, saying, “There is a place the Greeks have named Hesperia, an ancient country powerful in arms and fertile in soil, where dwell the Oenotrians. Rumor has it that later generations called the country Italy from the name of their leader. Here is our fatherland; from hence came Dardanus.”19 That Atlas came from Africa, the mountain is witness which there bears his name. This mountain Orosius20 locates in Africa in his description of the world, where he says, “Now its uttermost bound is Mt. Atlas and the Islands which they call the Fortunate.” “Its” refers to Africa, of which he was speaking.
7. I find also that nobility accrued to Aeneas through marriage. His first wife Creusa, daughter of Priam, was from Asia, as may be gathered from the facts quoted above. And that she was his wife our poet implies in the third book, when Andromache thus questions Aeneas concerning his son Ascanius: “What of the boy Ascanius, he whom Creusa bore to thee while Troy was yet smoking? Lives he still? Breathes he the vital air?”21 His second wife was Dido, queen and mother of the Carthaginians in Africa, of whom as Aeneas’ wife the poet sings in the fourth book: “Nor longer Dido dreams of secret love; she calls it marriage, hiding her sin beneath a name.”22 His third wife was Lavinia, mother alike of Albanians and Romans, daughter and also heir of King Latinus, if the testimony of our Poet be true in the last book, where he introduces Turnus conquered, supplicating Aeneas with this prayer: “Thou hast triumphed; and the Ausonians have beheld me vanquished lifting up my hands. Lavinia shall be thy wife.”23 This last consort was of Italy, most excellent region of Europe.
8. With these facts pointed out in evidence of our minor premise, who is not sufficiently convinced that the father of the Roman race, and therefore the race itself, was the noblest under heaven? Or from whom will still be hidden divine predestination in the twofold meeting in one man of blood from every part of the world?
Because the Roman Empire was aided by miracles it was willed of God.
1. Furthermore, whatever is brought to its perfection by the help of miracles is willed of God, and therefore comes to pass by Right. The truth of this is patent from what Thomas1 says in his third book against the Heathen: “A miracle is that which is done through divine agency beyond the commonly instituted order of things.”2 Here he proves that the working of miracles is competent to God alone, and he is corroborated by the word of Moses, that when the magicians of Pharaoh artfully used natural principles to bring forth lice and failed, they cried, “This is the finger of God.”3 If a miracle, then, is the immediate operation of the First Agent without the coöperation of secondary agents,4 which Thomas himself proves clearly enough in the book just cited, then when portents are sent in favor of anything, it is wicked to deny that that thing comes to pass foreseen of God and well pleasing to Him. Hence piety accepts the contradictory, that the Roman Empire gained its perfection with the approval of miracles, that it was therefore willed of God, and consequently that it was and is by Right.
2. And it is established through the testimony of illustrious authors that God revealed His will in miracles in order that the Roman Empire might be brought to completion. For Livy states in the first part of his work that when Numa Pompilius, second king of the Romans, was sacrificing according to the religious rite of the Gentiles, a shield fell from heaven into the chosen city of God.5 Lucan recalls this miracle in the ninth book of the Pharsalia in describing the incredible violence which Libya suffers from the south wind, where he says, “It was thus, surely, that to Numa as he sacrificed dropped the shield which the chosen youth of the patricians bears upon his neck in solemn march; south wind or north wind had robbed the peoples wearing our shields.”6
3. And when the Gauls, having taken the rest of the city, trusted in the darkness of night to move stealthily to the Capitol, which alone stood between them and utter annihilation of the Roman name, Livy and many other distinguished chroniclers agree that the guards were awakened to defend the Capitol from the approach of the Gauls by the warning cry of a goose, unseen there previously.7 This was remembered by Virgil when he described the shield of Aeneas in the eighth book: “On the summit of the Tarpeian citadel, before the temple, Manlius stood guard and held the heights of the Capitol, while the newly builded palace of Romulus was rough with thatch. And here a silver goose flying through golden portals sang the presence of the Gauls on the very threshold.”8
4. Also Livy tells among the gests of the Punic Wars that, when the nobility of Rome, overwhelmed by Hannibal, had sunk to such depths that nothing remained for the final destruction of the Roman power but the sacking of the city by the Carthaginians, a sudden and intolerable storm of hail made it impossible for the victors to follow up their triumph.9
5. Was not the flight of Cloelia a miracle? A woman, and captive during the siege of Porsenna, by the wonderful aid of God she rent her fetters asunder and swam the Tiber, as almost all historians10 of Rome’s affairs remember to that city’s glory. Truly it behooved Him so to do, who through eternity foresees all things in the beauty of order.11 Invisible He wrought wonders in behalf of things seen, in order that when He should be made visible He might do likewise in behalf of things unseen.12
The Roman people in subduing the world had in view the good of the state and therefore the end of Right.
1. Whoever contemplates the good of the state contemplates the end of Right, as may be explained thus. Right1 is a real and personal relation of man to man, which maintained preserves society, and infringed upon destroys it.2 That account in the Digests3 does not teach what the essence of Right is; it simply describes Right in terms of practice. If our definition truly comprehends what Right is and wherefore, and if the end of all society is the common good of the individuals associated, then the end of all Right must be the common good, and no Right is possible which does not contemplate the common good. Tully justly notes in the first book of the Rhetoric that “The laws should always be interpreted for the good of the state.”4 For if the laws are not directed for the benefit of those under the laws, they are laws merely in name, they cannot be laws in reality. Law ought to bind men together for general advantage. Wherefore Seneca5 says truly in his book on the Four Virtues, “Law is the bond of human society.” So it is clear that whoever contemplates the good of the state contemplates the end of Right. If, therefore, the Romans had in view the good of the state, the assertion is true that they had in view the end of Right.
2. That in subduing the world the Roman people had in view the aforesaid good, their deeds declare. We behold them as a nation holy, pious, and full of glory, putting aside all avarice,6 which is ever adverse to the general welfare, cherishing universal peace and liberty, and disregarding private profit to guard the public weal of humanity. Rightly was it written, then, that “The Roman Empire takes its rise in the fountain of pity.”7
3. But inasmuch as external signs alone manifest to others the intention of all agents of free choice, and inasmuch as statements must be investigated according to the subject-matter, as we have said before, we shall have evidence enough on the present point if we bring forth indubitable proofs of the intention of the Roman people both in corporate assemblies and in individual persons.
4. Concerning corporate assemblies, in which individuals seem in a measure bound to the state, the solitary authority of Cicero in the second book of Moral Duties is sufficient. “So long,” he says, “as the dominion of the Republic was upheld by benefits, not by injuries, war was waged in behalf either of allies or dominion, for a conclusion either beneficent or necessary. The Senate was a harbor of refuge for kings, peoples, and nations. Our magistrates and generals strove for praise in defending with equity and fidelity the provinces and the allies; so this government might rather have been called a defense than a dominion of the whole world.”8 So wrote Cicero.
5. Of individual persons I shall speak briefly. Can we say they were not intent on the common weal who in sweat, in poverty, in exile, in deprivation of children, in loss of limbs, and even in the sacrifice of their lives, strove to augment the public good?
6. Did not the renowned Cincinnatus leave to us a sacred example, when he freely chose the time to lay aside that dignity which, as Livy says, took him from the plough to make him dictator?9 After his victory, after his triumph, he gave back to the consuls the imperial sceptre, and voluntarily returned to toil at the plough handle behind his oxen. Cicero, disputing with Epicurus in his volume of the Chief Good, remembered and lauded this excellent action, saying, “And thus our ancestors took great Cincinnatus from the plough that he might become dictator.”10
7. Did not Fabricius11 give us a lofty example of withstanding avarice, when, in the fidelity which held him to the Republic, though living in poverty he scorned with fitting words the great mass of proffered gold, repudiated, and refused it? Our poet has made the memory of this deed sure by singing in the sixth book of “Fabricius powerful in penury.”12
8. Was not the example of Camillus memorable, valuing as he did laws above individual profit? According to Livy, while condemned to exile he liberated his harassed fatherland, restored to Rome what the Romans had been despoiled of in war,13 and left the sacred city, though called back by the whole people; nor did he return thither until, by the authority of the senate, was sent to him his permit of repatriation.14 And the poet commends this large-souled man in the sixth book, where he calls him “Camillus, the restorer of our ensigns.”15
9. And did not Brutus first teach that the love of sons and of all others should be subordinated to the love of national liberty? When he was consul, Livy says, he delivered up to death his own sons for conspiring with the enemy.16 In the sixth book our Poet revives the glory of this hero: “In behalf of beauteous liberty shall the father doom to death his own sons instigating new wars.”17
10. Has not Mucius persuaded us that all things should be ventured for one’s country? He surprised the incautious Porsenna, but at the last his own hand, which had failed of its task, he watched as it burned, with a countenance one might wear who gazed upon an enemy in torture. To this Livy also bears testimony, marveling.18
11. Now we name those most sacred martyrs of the Decii, who dedicated their lives an offering for the public good, as Livy recounts, extolling them to the extent not of their worth but of his power.19 And next that ineffable sacrifice of Marcus Cato, the most austere defender of true liberty.20 Because of their country’s safety the darkness of death had no terror for the former two. The latter proved what liberty meant to him, when, in order that the love of freedom might blaze up in the world, he chose rather to depart from this life a free man than without freedom to abide therein. The lustre of all these names shines renewed in the words of Cicero in his writings of the chief Good. Here Tully says of the Decii: “When Publius Decius, chief of his house, a consul, devoted himself to liberty and charged at full speed into the Roman ranks, thought he at all of his own pleasure, when he should take it, and where? Or when, knowing he must die forthwith, he sought his death more ardently than Epicurus believed men should seek pleasure? Had his action not been justly lauded, his son would not in his fourth consulship have followed his example; nor afterwards his son’s son waging war against Pyrrhus21 have fallen in that battle, a consul, offering himself to the Republic the third sacrifice in uninterrupted succession.”22 And in the Moral Duties he said of Cato: “The cause of Marcus Cato was one with those who in Africa surrendered themselves to Caesar; and perchance with them it had been judged a crime had they taken their own lives, seeing that life was a lighter thing to them, and rules of conduct easier. But Cato, who had been endowed by nature with incredible seriousness, who strengthened this with unremitting constancy, and who persevered to the end in any resolution made or purpose undertaken, such a one must rather meet death than look upon the face of a tyrant.”23
He who purposes Right proceeds according to Right.
1. We have then demonstrated two things: one, that whoever purposes the good of the commonwealth purposes the end of Right; the other, that the Roman people in subduing the world purposed the public good. We may now further our argument in this wise: Whoever has in view the end of Right proceeds according to Right; the Roman people in subjecting the world to itself had in view the end of Right, as we plainly proved in the chapter above;1 therefore the Roman people in subjecting the world to itself acted with Right, and consequently appropriated with Right the dignity of Empire.
2. That this conclusion may be reached by all manifest premises, it must be reached by the one that affirms that whoever purposes the end of Right proceeds according to Right. For clearness in this matter, notice that everything exists because of some end, otherwise it would be useless, which we have said before is not possible.2 And just as every object exists for its proper end, so every end has its proper object whereof it is the end. Hence it cannot be that any two objects, in as far as they are two, each expressing its individuality, should have in view the same end, for the same untenable conclusion would follow that one or the other exists in vain. Since, as we have proved, there is a certain end of Right, to postulate that end is to postulate the Right, seeing it is the proper and intrinsic effect of Right. And since, as is clear by construction and destruction,3 in any sequence an antecedent is impossible without its consequent (as “man” without “animal”), so it is impossible to attain a good condition of one’s members without health; and so it is impossible to seek the end of Right without Right as a means, for each thing has toward its end the relation of consequent to antecedent. Wherefore it is very obvious that he who has in view the end of Right must proceed by the right means. Nor is that objection valid which is generally drawn from the Philosopher’s words concerning “good counsel.” He says indeed, “There is a kind of false syllogism in which a true conclusion may be drawn by means of a false middle.”4 Now if a true conclusion is sometimes reached through false premises, it is by accident, because the true conclusion is conveyed in the words of the inference. Of itself the true never follows from the false, though symbols of truth may follow from symbols of falsehood.5 And so it is in actions. Should a thief aid a poor man with stolen goods, he yet could not be said to be giving alms; rather is his action one which would have the form6 of alms had it been performed with the man’s own substance. Likewise with the end of Right. For if anything calling itself the end of Right be reached other than by means of Right, it would be the end of Right, that is, the common good, only as the offering made from ill-gotten gains is an alms. Since in this proposition we are considering the existent, not the apparent ends of Right, the objection is invalid. The point we are seeking is therefore established.
The Roman people were ordained for Empire by nature.
1. What nature has ordained comes to pass by Right, for nature in her providence is not inferior to man in his; if she were, the effect would exceed the cause in goodness,1 which cannot be. Now we know that in instituting corporate assemblies, not only is the relation of members among themselves taken into account, but also their capacities for exercising office. This is a consideration of the limit of Right in a public body or order, seeing that Right does not extend beyond the possible. Nature, then, in her ordinances does not fail of this provision, but clearly ordains things with reference to their capacities, and this reference is the foundation of Right on which things are based by nature.2 From this it follows that natural order in things cannot come to pass without Right, since the foundation of Right is inseparably bound to the foundation of order.3 The preservation of this order is therefore necessarily Right.
2. The Roman people were by nature ordained for Empire, as may be proved in this wise.4 Just as he would fail of perfection in his art who, intent upon the form alone, had no care for the means by which to attain to form; so would nature if, intent upon the single universal form of the Divine similitude,5 she were to neglect the means thereto. But nature, being the work of the Divine Intelligence, lacks no element of perfection; therefore she has in view all media to the ultimate realization of her intent.6
3. As the human race, then, has an end, and this end is a means necessary to the universal end of nature, it follows that nature must have the means in view. Wherefore the Philosopher well demonstrates in the second book of Natural Learning that the action of nature is governed by its end.7 And as nature cannot attain through one man an end necessitating a multiplicity of actions and a multitude of men in action, nature must produce many men ordained for diverse activities.8 To this, beside the higher influence,9 the virtues and properties of the lower sphere contribute much. Hence we find individual men and whole nations born apt for government, and others for subjection and service, according to the statement of the Philosopher in his writings concerning Politics; as he says, it is not only expedient that the latter should be governed, but it is just, although they be coerced thereto.10
4. If these things are true, there is no doubt but that nature set apart in the world a place and a people for universal sovereignty;11 otherwise she would be deficient in herself, which is impossible.12 What was this place, and who this people, moreover, is sufficiently obvious in what has been said above, and in what shall be added further on. They were Rome and her citizens or people. On this subject our Poet has touched very subtly in his sixth book, where he brings forward Anchises prophesying in these words to Aeneas, father of the Romans: “Verily, that others shall beat out the breathing bronze more finely, I grant you; they shall carve the living feature in the marble, plead causes with more eloquence, and trace the movements of the heavens with a rod, and name the rising stars: thine, O Roman, be the care to rule the peoples with authority; be thy arts these, to teach men the way of peace, to show mercy to the subject, and to overcome the proud.”13 And the disposition of place he touches upon lightly in the fourth book, when he introduces Jupiter speaking of Aeneas to Mercury in this fashion: “Not such a one did his most beautiful mother promise to us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; rather was he to be the man to govern Italy teeming with empire and tumultuous with war.”14 Proof enough has been given that the Romans were by nature ordained for sovereignty. Therefore the Roman people, in subjecting to itself the world, attained the Empire by Right.
The decree of God showed that Empire belonged to the Roman people.
1. For hunting down adequately the truth of our inquiry, it is essential to know that Divine judgment in human affairs is sometimes manifest to men, and sometimes hidden. And it may be manifested in two ways, namely, by reason and by faith.1 To certain of the judgments of God human reason can climb on its own feet, as to this one, that a man should endanger himself for his country’s safety. For if a part should endanger itself for the safety of the whole, man, being a part of the state according to the Philosopher in his Politics, ought to endanger himself for the sake of his fatherland, as a less good for a better.2 Hence the Philosopher to Nicomachus: “To act in behalf of one alone is admirable; but it is better and more nearly divine to act in behalf of nation and state.”3 And this is the judgment of God; in any other case human reason in its rectitude would not follow the intention of nature, which is impossible.
2. But to certain of the judgments of God, to which human reason cannot climb on its own feet, it may be lifted by the aid of faith in those things which are related to us in the Holy Scriptures. Such is this one, that no man without faith can be saved, though he had never heard of Christ, and yet was perfect in moral and intellectual virtues, both in thought and act.4 While human reason by itself cannot recognize this as just, aided by faith it can do so. It is written to the Hebrews: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”5 And in Leviticus: “What man soever there be of the house of Israel that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat in the camp, or out of the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle, an offering unto the Lord, blood shall be imputed to that man.”6 The door of the tabernacle is a figure for Christ, who is the entrance-way to the eternal mansions,7 as can be learned from the Gospel; the slaying of animals is a figure for human deeds.8
3. Now that judgment of God is hidden to which human reason cannot attain either by laws of nature or scripture, but to which it may sometimes attain by special grace. This grace is gained in various ways, at times by simple revelation, at times by revelation through the medium of judicial award. Simple revelation comes to pass in two ways, either as the spontaneous act of God, or as an answer to prayer. The spontaneous act of God may be expressed directly or by a sign. It was expressed directly, for instance, in the judgment against Saul revealed to Samuel;9 it was expressed by signs in the revelation to Pharaoh of God’s will concerning the liberation of the children of Israel.10 It came as an answer to prayer, as he knew who said in Second Chronicles: “When we know not what we ought to do, this alone we have left, to raise our eyes to thee.”11
4. Revelation through the medium of judicial award may be first by lot, and secondly by contest (certamen). Indeed, “to contend” (certare) is derived from “to make certain” (certum facere). That the judgment of God is revealed sometimes by lot is obvious from the substitution of Matthias in the Acts of the Apostles.12
5. And the judgment of God is made known by contests of two sorts—either the trial of strength between champions in duels,13 or the struggle of many to come first to a mark, as in contests run by athletes for a prize. The first of these modes was represented among the Gentiles in the strife of Hercules and Antaeus, which Lucan recalls in the fourth book of the Pharsalia,14 and Ovid in the ninth of the Metamorphoses.15 The second was represented among them by Atalanta and Hippomenes, in the tenth book of the Metamorphoses.16
6. Likewise, the fact must not be disregarded that in the former of these two sorts of contests the combatants—for instance, champions in a duel—may impede each other without injustice, but in the latter they may not. Indeed, athletes must put no impediment in one another’s way, although our poet seems to think otherwise in his fifth book, when he causes Euryalus to be rewarded.17 Tully, following the opinion of Chrysippus, does better to forbid this in the third book of Moral Duties, where he says: “Chrysippus, wise in this as in most matters, declares that ‘Whoever runs a race should endeavor with most strenuous effort to come off victor, but in no way should he trip up the one with whom he contends.’ ”18
7. From the distinction drawn in this chapter we may grant two effective modes by which the hidden decree of God is revealed: one, a contest of athletes; the other, a contest of champions. Both of these modes I will discuss in the chapter immediately following.
The Romans were victorious over all contestants for Empire.
1. That people, then, which was victorious over all the contestants for Empire gained its victory by the decree of God. For as it is of deeper concern to God to adjust a universal contention than a particular one, and as even in particular contentions the decree of God is sought by the contestants, according to the familiar proverb, “To him whom God grants aught, let Peter give his blessing,”1 therefore undoubtedly among the contestants for the Empire of the world, victory ensued from a decree of God. That among the rivals for world-Empire the Roman people came off victor will be clear if we consider the contestants and the prize or goal toward which they strove. This prize or goal was sovereign power over all mortals, or what we mean by Empire.2 This was attained by none save by the Roman people, not only the first but the sole contestant to reach the goal contended for, as will be at once explained.
2. The first man to pant after the prize was Ninus, king of the Assyrians, who, as Orosius records,3 together with his consort Semiramis, through more than ninety years gave battle for world-supremacy, and subdued all Asia to himself; nevertheless, the western portion of the earth never became subject to him or his queen. Both of these Ovid commemorates in his fourth book in the story of Pyramus: “Semiramis4 girded the city with walls of burnt brick;” and below: “They are to meet at the tomb of Ninus, and hide beneath its shadow.”5
3. Vesoges, king of Egypt, was the second to strain after this prize, but though he harassed the South and North of Asia, as Orosius narrates, he never achieved the first part of the world.6 Nay, between umpires7 and goal, as it were, he was turned back from his rash undertaking by the Scythians.8
4. Next Cyrus, king of the Persians, undertook the same thing, but after destroying Babylon and transferring Babylonian sovereignty to the Persians, before he had tested his strength in western regions, he laid down his life and ambition at once before Tomyris, queen of the Scythians.
5. Then after these Xerxes,9 son of Darius and king among the Persians, invaded the world with so vast and mighty a multitude of nations that he spanned with a bridge between Sestos and Abydos that passage of the sea separating Asia from Europe. This astonishing work Lucan extols thus in the second book of the Pharsalia: “Such roads, fame signs, did haughty Xerxes build across the seas.” But at last miserably repulsed from his enterprise, he failed to reach his goal.10
6. Beside these and in later times, Alexander,11 the Macedonian king, came nearest of all to the palm of Monarchy, through ambassadors forewarning the Romans to surrender. But, as Livy recounts, before their answer came, he fell as in the midst of a course in Egypt.12 Of his tomb there Lucan renders testimony in the eighth book, in an invective against Ptolemy, king of Egypt: “Thou last offspring of the Lagaean line, swiftly to perish in thy degeneracy and yield the sceptre to thy incestuous sister, while for thee the Macedonian is guarded in the sacred cave.”13
7. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God,”14 who will not pause in amazement before thee? For thou, when Alexander strove to entangle the feet of his Roman rival in the course, didst snatch him from the contest, lest his rashness wax more great.
8. But that Rome gained the palm of so magnificent a prize is confirmed by many witnessings. Our Poet says in his first book: “Verily, with the passing of the years shall one day come from hence the Romans, rulers sprung of the blood of Teucer called again to life, who shall hold the sea and land in undivided sovereignty.”15 And Lucan in his first book: “The kingdom is apportioned by the sword, and the fortune of the mighty nation that is master over sea, over land, and over all the globe, suffers not two in command.”16 And Boethius in his second book speaks thus of the Prince of the Romans: “Nay, he was ruler of the peoples whom the sun looks on from the time he rises in the east until he hides his rays beneath the waves, and those whom the chilling northern wain o’errules, and those whom the southern gale burns with its dry blasts, as it beats the burning sands.”17 And Luke, the scribe of Christ, who speaketh all things true, offers the same testimony in the part of his writtings which says, “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”18 From these words we can clearly see that the jurisdiction of the Romans embraced the whole world.
9. It is proved by all these facts that the Romans were victorious among the contestants for world-Empire; therefore they were victorious by divine decree; and consequently they gained the Empire by divine decree, that is, they gained it with Right.
That which is acquired by single combat is acquired with Right.
1. Whatever is acquired by single combat is acquired with Right. For when human judgment fails, either because it is wrapped in the darkness of ignorance or because it has not the aid of a judge, then, lest judgment should remain forsaken, recourse must be had to Him who so loved her that, by the shedding of His own blood, He met her full demands in death. Hence the Psalm: “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness.”1 This end is accomplished when, with the free consent of the participants, in love and not in hatred of justice, the judgment of God is sought through a mutual trial of bodily and spiritual strength. Because it was first used in single combat of man to man, this trial of strength we call the duel.
2. But always in quarrels threatening to become matters of war, every effort should be made to settle the dispute through conference, and only as a last resort through battle. Tully and Vegetius both advance this opinion, the former in Moral Duties,2 and the latter in his book on The Art of War.3 And as in medical treatment everything is tried before final recourse is had to the knife or fire, so when we have exhausted all other ways of obtaining judgment in a dispute, we may finally turn to this remedy by single combat, compelled thereto by the necessity of justice.
3. There are obviously two fixed rules of single combat, one of which we have just now spoken, and another of which we made mention above, that not in hatred, nor in love, but in pure zeal for justice, the contestants or champions should enter the field by common consent. Touching this matter Tully well said: “Wars engaged in for the crown of Empire should be waged without bitterness.”4
4. Provided that in single combat these rules are observed without which single combat ceases to be, and that men necessitated by justice and in zeal for justice meet by common consent, are they not met in the name of God? And if they are met in the name of God, is not God in the midst of them, as He Himself promises in the Gospel?5 And if God is present, is it not a sin to imagine that Justice6 can fail—Justice, which we have shown He so greatly loved? And if Justice cannot fail in single combat, is not that which is acquired by single combat acquired by Right?
5. Even before the trumpet-call of the Gospel, the Gentiles recognized this truth, and sought judgment in the fortune of single combat. Pyrrhus, noble in the virtues as well as in the blood of the Aeacidae, answered nobly the legates of the Romans sent to him for redeeming their captives: “I demand no gold, nor shall you render me a price; we are not barterers in war, but fighters; with steel, not with gold, let each decide the issue of life. Whether Hera wills that you or I shall reign, or whatever fate may bring, let us determine by prowess. And at the same time know this: to those whose valor the fortunes of war has preserved, it is my will to grant liberty. Receive them as a gift.”7 So Pyrrhus spoke, referring by “Hera” to fortune, that agency which we more wisely and rightly name Divine Providence. Let combatants, then, forbear to settle disputes for a price, for that would not be a single combat, but a game of blood and injustice; nor would God then be present as arbiter, but rather that ancient enemy who had been persuader to the quarrel. And let those who desire to be champions, and not hucksters of blood and injustice, have ever before their eyes in entering the field that Pyrrhus who in fighting for Empire, as we have said, held gold in such contempt.
6. If to contradict the truth thus manifested, the usual objection be raised concerning the inequality of men’s strength, it may be refuted by the instance of David’s victory over Goliath.8 And if the Gentiles seek another instance, they may refute it by the victory of Hercules over Antaeus.9 It is the height of folly, indeed, to fear that the strength which God confers may be weaker than that of a human antagonist.
7. By this time it is demonstrated clearly enough that whatever is acquired by single combat is acquired with Right and Justice.
The single combats of the Roman people.
1. That the Roman people acquired Empire by single combat is confirmed by witnesses worthy of belief. In citing witnesses, not only shall we prove this, but we shall show that, from the founding of the Roman Empire, the decision of all questions whatsoever was reached through contests of man to man.
2. At the very outset, when contention arose in regard to the colonization of Italy by father Aeneas, who was first parent of the Roman people, and Turnus, king of the Rutilians, stood out against him; finally, as is sung in the last book of the Aeneid, both kings agreed to seek the good pleasure of God in a combat singly between themselves.1 The closing verses of our Poet testify how great was the clemency of Aeneas, victor in the contest, and how as vanquisher he would have bestowed life and peace at one time on the vanquished, had he not espied on Turnus the belt stripped by him from Pallas slain.2
3. And when two peoples, the Romans and Albanians, had grown up in Italy from the same Trojan root, and when they had long striven for the ensign of the eagle, the household gods of the Trojans, and the honor of supreme command, at length with mutual consent they determined the question by a combat between the three Horatian and the three Curiatian brethren, in the view of the kings and people waiting anxiously on either side. The three champions of the Albanians and two of the Romans fell, and the victory went to the Romans, in the reign of Hostilius. And to this, which Livy narrates in detail in his first book,3 Orosius also bears witness.4
4. Livy tells that they then strove for Empire with their neighbors, Sabines and Samnites, observing every rule of war, and preserving the characteristics of contests man to man, although the contestants were a multitude. During the struggle carried on in this wise with the Samnites, Fortune seemed, as it were, almost to repent of her undertaking. And this Lucan uses as an example in his second book, saying: “Or how many heaps of slain choked up the Colline Gate, what time the headship of the world and authority in earthly things were well-nigh transferred to other realms, and the Samnites overtopped the Caudine Forks with Roman dead.”5
5. After these troubles with Italy were quieted, but the decree of God was not yet certain in regard to the Greeks and the Phoenicians aspiring to Empire, Fabricius for the Romans and Pyrrhus for the Greeks contended with a multitude of soldiery for the glory of sovereignty, and Rome was triumphant. Then Scipio6 for the Italians and Hannibal for the Africans did battle in the form of single combat, and Africa succumbed to Italy, as Livy and other writers of Roman affairs endeavor to show.
6. Who is then so dull of wit he fails to see that this splendid people gained the crown of a world-wide realm by right of single combat? Verily, a Roman might say with the Apostle addressing Timothy, “There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness”7 —that is to say, laid up in the eternal providence of God. Now let presumptuous jurists behold how far they stand beneath that watch-tower of reason whence the human mind looks out upon these principles, and let them be silent, content to give counsel and judgment according to the import of the law.
7. And now the main proposition of the present book is proved, that the Roman people attained imperial power through single combat, and that therefore they attained it by Right.
8. Thus far the argument has progressed through reason based chiefly on rational principles, but from now on it shall be re-demonstrated through the principles of Christian faith.8
Christ in being born proved that the authority of the Roman Empire was just.
1. And especially those who call themselves zealots for the Christian faith1 have “raged” and “imagined vain things” against Roman dominion; they have no pity for the poor of Christ,2 but defraud them in the church revenues, even stealing their patrimony daily, and render the Church destitute;3 pretending to Justice, they yet permit no executor of Justice to do his duty.
2. Nor is this impoverishment accomplished without the judgment of God, for the church revenues are neither given to relieve the poor whose patrimony they are, nor are held with gratitude to the Empire which bestowed them. Let them return whence they came. They came justly, they return unjustly, for though they were rightly given, they are wrongfully held.4 What should be said of such shepherds? What, if with the depletion of the Church’s substance the estates of relatives wax great?5 Belike it were better to follow out the argument and await our Saviour’s aid in pious silence.
3. I affirm, therefore, that if the Roman Empire did not come to be with Right, Christ in His birth authorized an injustice. This consequent is false; therefore the contradictory of the antecedent is true, since contradictory propositions are of such a nature that the falseness of a statement argues for the truth of its opposite.6
4. The falsity of this consequent need not be proved to those of the faith; for he who is of the faith will concede its falsity; if he does not do so, he is not of the faith; and if he is not of the faith, this argument concerns him not.
5. I demonstrate the consequent7 thus: Whoever of his own free will fulfills an edict urges its justice by so doing; and since deeds are more persuasive than words, as the Philosopher states in his last book to Nicomachus, he is more convincing than if his approbation were verbal.8 Now Christ willed to be born of a Virgin Mother under an edict of Roman authority, according to the testimony of Luke,9 his scribe, in order that the Son of Man, made man, might be numbered as a man in that unique census. This fulfilled the edict. It were perhaps more reverent to believe that the Divine Will caused the edict to go forth through Caesar, in order that God might number Himself among the society of mortals who had so many ages awaited His coming.10
6. So Christ in His action established as just the edict of Augustus, exerciser of Roman authority. Since to decree justly presupposes jurisdictional power, whoever confirms the justice of an edict confirms also the jurisdictional power whence it issued. Did this power not exist by Right, it would be unjust.
7. And observe that the argument employed to disprove the consequent, though it holds to a certain degree, nevertheless, if reduced,11 shows its force in the second figure,12 just as the argument based on the assumption of the antecedent shows its force in the first figure. The reduction is made as follows: Every unjust thing is established unjustly; Christ established nothing unjustly; therefore Christ established no unjust thing. And thus by the assumption of the antecedent: Every unjust thing is established unjustly; Christ established an unjust thing; therefore Christ established things unjustly.
Christ in dying confirmed the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire over all humanity.
1. And if the Roman Empire did not exist by Right, the sin of Adam was not punished in Christ. This, however, is false; so the contradictory from which it follows is true. The falsity of the consequent is apparent in this. By the sin of Adam we are all sinners, according to the Apostle: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”1 If satisfaction had not been given for this sin through the death of Christ, we, owing to our depraved nature, should still be children of wrath. But this is not so, for the Apostle speaks in Ephesians of the Father “having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption by His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, wherein He has abounded toward us.”2 And Christ Himself, suffering in Himself the punishment, says in John, “It is finished.”3 And when a thing is finished, nothing remains to be done.
2. For greater clearness, let it be understood that punishment is not simply penalty visited upon the doer of wrong, but penalty visited upon the doer of wrong by one having penal jurisdiction. Wherefore unless punishment is inflicted by a lawful judge, it is no punishment; rather must it be called a wrong. Hence the man of the Hebrews said to Moses, “Who made thee a judge over us?”4
3. If therefore Christ did not suffer under a lawful judge,5 his penalty was not punishment. Lawful judge meant in that case one having jurisdiction over the entire human race, since all humanity was punished in the flesh of Christ, who, as the Prophet says, “hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”6 And Tiberius Caesar, whose vicar was Pilate, would not have possessed jurisdiction over the entire human race had not the Roman Empire existed by Right. Herod, albeit as ignorant of what he did as Caiaphas7 of what truth he spake concerning the heavenly decree, for this reason sent Christ to be judged by Pilate, as Luke8 writes in his Gospel. For Herod was not an official of Tiberius under the ensign of the eagle or the Senate, but a king appointed by him to a particular kingdom, and governing it under the ensign of the kingdom committed to him.9
4. Wherefore let those who pretend they are sons of the Church cease to defame the Roman Empire, to which Christ the Bridegroom gave His sanction both at the beginning and at the close of His warfare. And now, I believe, it is sufficiently obvious that the Roman people appropriated the Empire of the world by Right.
5. O people, how blessed hadst thou been, O Ausonia how glorious, had he who enfeebled thy sovereignty never been born, or never been deceived by the piety of his purpose!10
[1. ]Ps. 2. 1-3. Cf. Acts 4. 25-27. The same language of the Psalm is used in Letter 6. 2: “To the infamous Florentines within the city.”
[2. ]Conv. 4. 25. 4: “The sight of great and wonderful things . . . make those that perceive them desire to know them.”
Purg. 28. 90: “I will tell how by its cause proceeds that which makes thee wonder; and I will purge away the cloud which smites.”
Par. 1. 83: “The strangeness of the sound and the great light kindled in me a desire for their cause never before felt with such keenness.”
[3. ]Conv. 4. 4. 3: “Some may demur, saying . . . the Roman power was not acquired by reason, nor by decree of a universal convention, but by force.”
Conv. 4. 4. 5: “Force was not the active cause; . . . not force but law, and that Divine, was the beginning of the Roman Empire.”
[4. ] Reading “in hoc vitio” (in the error) and “unico suo” (His one) with Moore and Witte, rather than “in hos unico” and “uncto suo” with Giuliani. See Toynbee, Dante Studies, p. 302, for his interesting support of Giuliani’s reading and its bearing on the date of the De Mon. If, as he believes, “uncto” definitely refers to Henry VII as the Lord’s “anointed,” there would be strong reason for dating the treatise at a time shortly after Henry’s coming to Italy.
The whole of par. 2 is interesting for the information it contains concerning the change of political opinion that came upon Dante at some time in his life and made him one of the most enthusiastic and idealistic of Ghibellines, so idealistic indeed that in Purg. 27. 69 Cacciaguida rightly prophesies of the poet, “It shall be honorable to thee to have made thee a party by thyself.”
[5. ] This figure is found again Conv. 2. 14. 3: “Labor of study and strife of doubt . . . are dissipated almost like little morning clouds before the face of the sun.”
[6. ]Par. 25. 2: “The sacred poem to which both heaven and earth have set a hand.”
[7. ]De Mon. 1. 1. 2.
[1. ]De Mon. 1. 2. 2; 3. 2. 1.
[2. ]Gen. Anim. 5. 8. Conv. 3. 6. 2: “Motive Powers . . . cause . . . all general forms.”
[3. ]Letter 5. 8: “From the motion of the heavens we should know the Motor and His will.”
Par. 2. 131: “The heaven which so many lights make fair, from the deep mind of Him who revolves it takes the image.” L. c. 30. 107; 33. 145: “The Love which moves the sun and all the stars.”
Cf. De Mon. all of chapter 1. 8, and note 1.
[4. ] “In fluitantem materiam.”
Par. 29. 22: “Form and matter in conjunction and in purity came forth to an existence which had no erring, as from a three-stringed bow three arrows.” Cf. De Mon. 1. 3. 2, and note 10.
S. T. 1. 46. 2: “The angels are pure form; form conjoined with matter appears in the visible creation; pure matter is not perceivable by the senses, but must be held to exist, and to have been created.” Also S. T. 1. 105. 4.
[5. ]Inf. 11. 97: “Philosophy . . . notes . . . how nature takes her course from the understanding of God, and from His workmanship.”
[6. ]Conv. 3. 6. 2: “And if this perfect form, copied and individualized, be not perfect, it is from no defect in the example, but in the matter of which the individual is made.”
Par. 1. 127: “Form many times accords not with the intention of the art, because the matter is deaf to respond.”
Par. 13. 67: “The wax of these and that which moulds it stands not in one manner, and therefore under the seal of the Idea more and less thereafter shines through.”
[7. ] “Praeter intentionem Dei naturantis et caeli.”
[8. ] For the mediaeval account of creation and the part of the heavens therein see S. T. 1. 66. 1-3; 1. 110. 2; 1. 115. 3-6. Cf. Bacon, Nov. Org. 1. 66.
Conv. 4. 9. 1: “Universal Nature . . . has jurisdiction as far as the whole world extends.”
James 1. 17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.”
[9. ]John 1. 3, 4: “Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum.” Moore says that Augustine twice quotes from these verses as Dante does here; “Quod factum est, in ipso vita erat.”
[10. ]Par. 32. 61: “The King through whom this realm rests in so great love and in so great delight that no will dares aught beyond, creating all the minds in the joy of His countenance, as His own pleasure endows with grace diversely.”
Par. 19. 86: “The primary Will, which is of itself good, never has moved from itself, that is the highest Good.”
[11. ]Eth. 1. 7. 18. Used again in Conv. 4. 13. 3: “And in the first of the Ethics he says that ‘the educated man demands certainty of knowledge about things, in so far as their nature admits of certainty.’ ”
[12. ]Rom. 1. 20: “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”
Conv. 3. 12. 3: “It is convenient to treat of things not perceptible by the senses by means of things perceptible.” See also Conv. 4. 10. 3; 4. 16. 7; 4. 22. 6: “The intellect . . . cannot have its perfect use (which is to behold God, who is Supreme Intelligence) except in so far as the Intellect considers Him, and beholds Him in His effects.” L. c. 3. 8. 8: “All things which so overcome our intellect that we cannot see what they are, it is most fitting to treat by their effects.”
Letter 5. 8: “Through those things which have been created by God the human creature sees the invisible things with the eyes of the intellect; and if from things better known those less known are evident to us, in like manner it concerns human apprehension that from the motion of the heavens we should know the Motor and His will.”
[13. ] The following are the more important of the many examples of Dante’s use of the figure regarding the wax and seal. Conv. 1. 8. 7: “Utility stamps upon the memory the image of the gift, which is the nutriment of friendship, and the better the gift the stronger this impression is.”
Conv. 2. 10. 5: “If wax had the sentiment of fear, it would be more afraid to come under the rays of the sun than stone would; because its nature makes it susceptible of a more powerful impression therefrom.”
Inf. 11. 49: “The smallest circle stamps with its seal Sodom and Cahors.”
Purg. 10. 45: “And she upon her action this speech imprinted—Ecce ancilla Dei! as aptly as a figure is made on wax by a seal.”
Purg. 18. 39: “Not every seal is good, even though good be the wax.”
Purg. 25. 95: “Here the neighboring air puts itself in that form which the soul that has remained by its virtue stamps upon it.”
Purg. 33. 79: “As wax by a seal, which changes not the figure impressed, so is my brain now stamped by you.”
Par. 1. 41: The sun “to its own fashion moulds and seals the wax of the world.”
Par. 2. 130: “And the heaven which so many lights make fair, from the mind of Him who revolves it takes the image, and makes thereof a seal.”
Par. 7. 69: “That which from It immediately distils has no end thereafter, because when It seals, Its impress is unmoved.”
Par. 8. 128: “The nature of the spheres . . . is seal to the mortal wax.”
Par. 13. 67 ff. See note 6 of this chapter.
[14. ]Conv. 4. 5. 1: “It is no wonder if Divine Providence, which transcends all human and angelic perception, often proceeds in a way mysterious to us; since it often happens that human actions have for men themselves a hidden meaning.”
[1. ]Conv. 4. 4. 4: “And because a nature more gentle in governing, more powerful in maintaining, and more subtle in acquiring, than that of the Latin people there never was and never will be, . . . therefore God elected them for this office.” The nobility of Rome has special consideration Conv. 4. 5; Par. 6. 19, 20.
[2. ] “Adsumpta,” the major premise. In paragraphs 2 and 8 the word “subadsumpta” is used for minor premise.
[3. ]Eth. 4. 3. 15.
[4. ]Pol. 4. 8. 9. So we find in Conv. 4, Canz. 3. 2: “This very false opinion among men, that one is wont to call him noble who can say, ‘I was the son or grandson of a truly noble man,’ though he himself were worthless.” In Conv. 4. 7 hereditary nobility is proved to be a thing impossible.
[5. ] Juvenal, Sat. 8. 20. Cf. Conv. 4. 29. 4, where the satire is discussed at some length. Dante speaks again of Juvenal in Purg. 22. 13. His relation to Dante is considered by Moore, Vol. 1, in Studies, pp. 255-258.
[6. ] All of Book 4 in the Convito is given up to an exposition of the nature of nobility, according to the definition of Juvenal rather than that of Aristotle.
Canz. 3. 6: “Nobility exists where Virtue dwells, not Virtue where she is.” Conv. 4. 18. 1: “All the virtues . . . proceed from nobility as an effect from its cause.”
Par. 16. 1: “O small nobility of blood that is ours.”
[7. ]Matt. 7. 2.
[8. ] “Divinus poeta nostra,” or “poeta nostra,” as Virgil is called throughout the De Mon., is but one of the numberless evidences of the affection and reverence Dante felt for the Latin poet. Most beautiful is the well-known tribute in Inf. 1. 79:
For Virgil’s place and influence in the Middle Ages see Comparetti, Virgil in the Middle Ages; Sellar, Virgil; and Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 166-197.
[9. ] Livy 1. 1. As will be seen later in the De Mon., Dante uses Livy freely as an historical authority. Moore writes of Dante’s relation to the Roman historian in Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 273-278.
[10. ]Aen. 1. 342: “Sed summa sequar vestigia rerum.” All modern editions have “fastigia” for “vestigia.”
[11. ]Aen. 1. 544.
[12. ]Aen. 6. 170. For the death of Misenus see Conv. 4. 26. 6.
[13. ] Homer, Il. 24. 259, quoted Eth. 7. 1. 1. Three different times Dante uses these Homeric lines: in the Vita Nuova, § 2; in Conv. 4. 20. 2: “There are men most noble and divine . . . Aristotle proves in the seventh of the Ethics by the text of Homer the poet;” and in the passage of the De Mon. here being considered.
In regard to Dante’s knowledge of Homer see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 164-166; Toynbee, Studies, pp. 204-215.
[14. ] In Inf. 11. 79-83 Virgil asks, “Hast thou no memory of those words with which the Ethics handle the three dispositions which Heaven brooks not,—incontinence, malice, and mad beastliness?”
[15. ]Aen. 3. 1.
[16. ] Dardanus was son of Jupiter and Electra of Arcadia, founder of the city Dardania in Troas, and ancestor of the royal line of Troy. Cf. Conv. 4. 14. 9.
[17. ] “Electra, ut Graii perhibent, Atlantide cretus.” Dante inserted an “et” before “Atlantide,” thereby blurring the sense. Moore was the first editor to correct the error. See Toynbee, Studies, p. 280.
Inf. 4. 121: “I saw Electra with many companions, among whom I was aware of Hector and Aeneas; . . . and I saw King Latinus, who was sitting with Lavinia his daughter.”
[18. ]Aen. 8. 134-137.
[19. ]Aen. 3. 163-167.
[20. ] The fourth-century historian, Paulus Orosius, wrote the Historiae Adversum Paganos, one of the chief historical and geographical authorities of the mediaeval centuries, and the source of many of Dante’s statements regarding these two subjects. See Toynbee, Studies, pp. 121-136, and Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 279-282. The reference here is to Hist. 1. 2. 11.
[21. ]Aen. 3. 339-340. From the latter line, “quem tibi iam Troja peperit fumante Creusa,” modern editors omit the last three words as spurious.
[22. ]Aen. 4. 171-172.
[23. ]Aen. 12. 936-937. In Par. 6. 3 Aeneas is called “the ancient who carried off Lavinia.”
[1. ] Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 ad), the greatest of Dominicans, the pupil of Albertus Magnus, the friend of St. Bonaventura, and the author of the Summa Theologica, Contra Gentiles, and many other works. Moore points out the extent of Dante’s debt to him in Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 311-318. The treatise Contra Gentiles here quoted was written to prove that Christian theology is the “sum and crown of all science.”
[2. ]Conv. 3. 7. 8: “The very foundation of our faith is in the miracles done by Him who was crucified, who created our reason and willed it to be less than His power.” L. c. 3. 14. 5: “Every miracle may be reasonable to a higher intellect.”
[3. ]Exod. 8. 19.
[4. ]Letter 5. 8: “If there is time to survey the affairs of the worlds even to the triumph of Octavian, we shall see that some of them have completely transcended the heights of human valor, and that God has worked somewhat through men, just as through the medium of the new heavens.”
[5. ] Liv. 1. 20. 4; 5. 52. 7.
[6. ] Lucan, Phar. 9. 477. Lucan, to whom Dante is indebted “for a considerable amount of poetic material of different kinds,” and Dante’s relation to him, is discussed by Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 228-242. It is strange that Dante in this place cites as an instance of supernatural intervention a story which Lucan explains so rationally.
[7. ] Liv. 5. 47. So in Conv. 4. 5. 4: “And did not God put forth His hand when the Gauls, having taken all Rome, stole into the Capitol by night, and only the voice of a goose made it known?”
[8. ]Aen. 8. 652-656.
[9. ] Liv. 26. 11; Oros. 4. 17.
[10. ] Liv. 2. 13; Oros. 2. 5; Aurel. Victor, De Viris Illust. c. 13.
[11. ]Par. 8. 97: “The Good which sets in revolution and contents all the realm which thou art scaling, makes its foresight to be virtue in these great bodies.”
[12. ] That is, before the birth of Christ the invisible God worked for the visible things of the world. Later, Christ, the visible God, worked for the invisible things of heaven. Cf. the argument at the end of De Mon. 2. 2.
[1. ] “Jus” is not adequately translated by “right,” for Dante makes the word include what we mean by justice, law, and at times duty.
[2. ]Eth. 5. 6 concerns itself with political justice or right, the justice which should be practiced by men in society toward one another.
[3. ] The Digests of the Roman law were originally drawn up by Justinian. The “descriptio” or account spoken of here is mentioned in Conv. 4. 9. 3: “It was written at the beginning of the old Digests, ‘The written law is the art of goodness and equity.’ ” The reference may be found in the Dig. de Justitia et Jure 1. 1: “Jus est a justitia appellatum: nam ut eleganter Celsus definit, jus est ars boni et aequi.”
[4. ]De Invent. 1. 38. 68.
[5. ] Seneca is not the author of De Quatuor Virtutibus, but Martin, abbot of Dumiens and Bishop of Braga, who wrote in the latter part of the sixth century two works, De Remediis Fortuitorum and Formula Honestae Vitae sive Quatuor Virtutibus Cardinalibus. In the latter book, c. 4, is the reference: “Justitia non nostra constitutio sed divina lex est, et vinculum societatis humanae.” Cf. Conv. 3. 8. 5, where “the book of the Four Cardinal Virtues” is again used as authority.
[6. ] See note 12 of De Mon. 1. 11.
[7. ] The same sentiment is found in Letter 5. 3: “He is Caesar, and his majesty flows from the font of pity.” The source of this quotation has recently been ascertained by Toynbee to be the Legend of St. Sylvester in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (Archbishop of Genoa, 1292-1298). See Toynbee, Studies, p. 297. Dr. Albert S. Cook suggests comparison with the Dies Irae of Thomas of Celano, l. 24: “Salva me, fons pietatis.”
[8. ]De Off. 2. 8. 26, 27. From this work of Cicero’s Dante quotes again in the last paragraph of this chapter and in De Mon. 2. 8. 7; 2. 10. 2. It is to the same book Dante owes the idea of sins of violence and sins of fraud as distinguished Inf. 11. 22-60. For an account of Dante’s obligation to Cicero, see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 258-273.
[9. ] Liv. 3. 26, 29; Oros. 2. 12. 8. In Conv. 4. 5. 4 the examples of Roman nobility are almost exactly the same as here, though cited in a different order. Moore calls attention to the similarity of this account, and that of Conv. 4. 5. 4, with Augustine’s De Civ. Dei 5. 18. See also Par. 6. 46 for the names of illustrious Romans cited by Justinian as names worthy of being remembered.
[10. ]De Fin. 2. 4. 12. This Ciceronian work Dante always calls De Fine Bonorum. The philosophy of Epicurus is considered by Dante, Conv. 4. 6. 6.
Inf. 10. 14: “In this part have their burial place with Epicurus all his followers, who make the soul dead with the body.”
[11. ] For Fabricius see De Mon. 2. 12, and Purg. 20. 25: “O good Fabricius, thou wouldst rather virtue with poverty than to possess great riches with crime.”
[12. ]Aen. 6. 844.
[13. ] That is, what the Gauls had taken from them.
[14. ] Liv. 5. 32 and 43.
[15. ]Aen. 6. 825.
[16. ] Liv. 2. 5; Oros. 2. 5; Valerius Maximus, Memorab. 5. 8. 1; Aurel. Victor, De Viris Illust. c. 10. Brutus is referred to as the man who in Conv. 4. 5. 4 “condemned his own son to death for love of the public welfare.”
[17. ]Aen. 6. 820.
[18. ] Liv. 2. 12; Val. Max. 5. 12. Mucius has mention, Conv. 4. 5. 4, and Par. 4. 84: “Mucius stern to his own hand; . . . so stout a will is too rare.”
[19. ] Liv. 8. 9; 10. 28, 29; Val. Max. 1. 3; 5. 6; Aurel. Victor 26, 27. These men have a place, Conv. 4. 5. 4, and Par. 6. 47: “Decii and Fabii had the fame which I with good-will embalm.”
[20. ] Cato of Utica, great-grandson of Cato the Censor. Dante’s reverence for this man found expression in many ways. He is made guardian of the gate of Purgatory, and type of the soul liberated from sin by annihilation of the body. See Purg. 1 and 2. In Purg. 1. 73 Virgil recommends Dante to Cato thus: “He goes seeking freedom, which is so dear, as he knows who for it renounces life.”
Conv. 4. 5. 4: “O most sacred heart of Cato, who will presume to speak of thee? Certainly nothing greater than silence can be said of thee.” See also Conv. 3. 5. 8; 4. 6. 5; 4. 27. 2; 4. 28. 2.
[21. ] Pyrrhus is mentioned Par. 6. 44, etc. Cf. De Mon. 2. 10. 5.
[22. ]De Fin. 2. 19. 61.
[23. ]De Off. 1. 31. 112.
[1. ] See chapter 5.
[2. ]De Mon. 1. 3, note 3.
[3. ] “Construendo et destruendo.” The first of these logical terms designates a refutation which proceeds from the antecedent to the consequent; the second, one that proceeds from the consequent to the antecedent.
[4. ]Eth. 6. 9. 5. For “good counsel” Dante uses the word “eubalia,” i. e. εὐβουλία.
[5. ] “Signa tamen veri bene sequuntur ex signis, quae sunt signa falsi.” “Signa” I take to mean “words;” Dante would say that words may be ambiguous, but not the ideas that they stand for.
[6. ] No line in the De Mon. shows better the change in usage that has been undergone by this word “form,” and how, from meaning the vitalizing, internal principle of a thing, it has come to be the symbol of externality.
Conv. 4. 27. 7 makes use of the thief again for demonstrative purposes.
Par. 5. 33: “Thou art desiring to make a good work of a bad gain.”
[1. ]Conv. 2. 5. 4: “No effect is greater than its cause; because the cause cannot give what it does not possess. Whence, seeing that the Divine Intelligence is the cause of all things, and above all of human intelligence, the human cannot exceed the Divine.”
[2. ]Conv. 3. 15. 4: “The natural desire of everything is regulated according to the capacity of the thing desiring; otherwise it would oppose itself, which is impossible, and nature would have made it in vain, which is also impossible.” Cf. De Mon. 1. 3, notes 2 and 3.
[3. ]Par. 1. 103: “All things whatsoever have an order among themselves; and that is form, which makes the universe in the likeness of God.” Cf. De Mon. 1. 6, and notes.
[4. ] See Conv. 4. 4. 4, and 4. 5, all the chapter.
[5. ] See De Mon. 1. 8.
[6. ]De Mon. 1. 3, notes 2 and 3; 2. 7, note 2. Also Par. 8. 97 ff., and Conv. 4. 24. 7: “Bountiful nature . . . never fails to provide all necessary things.”
[7. ]Phys. 2. 2.
[8. ]Par. 8. 122: “It behooves that divers must be the roots of the effects in you; wherefore one is born Xerxes, another Melchisedec, and another he who flying through the air lost his son. . . . A nature begotten would always make its course like its begetter, if the divine foresight were not stronger.”
[9. ]Conv. 4. 21. 2: “The soul . . . as soon as produced, receives from the motive power of heaven its possible intellect, which creates potentially in itself all universal forms as they exist in its producer.”
Purg. 30. 109: “By coöperation of the mighty wheels which direct every seed to some end according as the stars accompany.”
[10. ]Pol. 1. 5. 11.
[11. ]Inf. 2. 20: “He [Aeneas] was in the empyrean heaven chosen for father of Rome our parent and of her empire, both which, if one say the truth, were established for the holy place where sits the successor of the sovereign Peter.”
Conv. 4. 5. 2; 4. 5. 5: “A special origin and special growth, thought out and ordained by God, was that of the holy city. And certainly I am of the firm opinion that the stones which form her walls are worthy of reverence; and the ground on which she stands is worthy beyond all that has been preached and proved by men.”
[12. ] Note 6 above.
[13. ]Aen. 6. 847 ff.
[14. ]Aen. 4. 227 ff.
[1. ] Dante in various places dwells on the two means of knowledge given to man. Conv. 4. 9 concerns itself with the functions of reason. In Par. 24 St. Peter questions Dante as to the nature of faith, of its matter, and he calls it “This precious jewel whereon every virtue is founded.” In one aspect the Divine Comedy may be interpreted as the picture of a man climbing by the help of reason and faith to a sight and knowledge of God. Reason and faith; Virgil and Beatrice; philosophy and theology. Cf. De Mon. 3. 16. 5.
[2. ]Pol. 1. 2. 14.
[3. ]Eth. 1. 2. 8: “To discover the good of an individual is satisfactory, but to discover that of a state or a nation is more noble and divine.”
[4. ]Par. 4. 67: “That our justice should appear unjust in the eyes of mortals is argument of faith, and pertains not to heretic pravity.”
Par. 19. 70: “A man is born on the banks of the Indus, and none is there to talk of Christ, nor to read, nor to write; and all his volitions and acts are good, so far as human reason sees, without sin in life or in converse. He dies unbaptized and without fault; where is this justice which condemns him?”
[5. ]Heb. 11. 6.
[6. ]Lev. 17. 3, 4.
[7. ]John 10. 7, 9: “I am the door of the sheep.”
[8. ] Witte quotes from Isidore: “With a moral significance, we sacrifice a calf, when we overcome pride of the flesh; a lamb, when we correct irrational impulses; a kid, when we conquer lust; a dove, when we preserve purity of morals; unleavened bread, ‘when we keep the feast, not in the leaven of malice, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ ”
[9. ]1 Sam. 15. 10, 11.
[10. ]Exod. 7. 9.
[11. ]2 Chron. 20. 12 (Vulg.).
[12. ]Acts 1. 23-26.
[13. ] The word “duellum” is translated by Wicksteed as “ordeal,” and by Church as “duel.” To prevent misunderstanding, I have thought best to translate the word by “single combat,” or “combat man to man,” in almost every case.
[14. ] Lucan, Phar. 4. 609 ff.
[15. ] Ovid, Met. 9. 183. The Metamorphoses are generally called by Dante as here, de Rerum Transmutatione. For Ovidian references in Dante see Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. pp. 206-228.
[16. ]Met. 10. 560.
[17. ]Aen. 5. 335 ff.
[18. ]De Off. 3. 10. 42.
[1. ] “The saying expresses the Ghibelline view of the relation of the Empire to the Pope; it may have originated with the coronation of Charles the Great.” Church.
[2. ]De Mon. 1. 2. 1.
[3. ] Oros. Hist. 1. 4. 1, 4.
[4. ]Inf. 5. 58: “She is Semiramis, of whom we read that she succeeded to Ninus and was his wife. She held the land which the Sultan rules.”
[5. ]Met. 4. 58, 88.
[6. ] Oros. Hist. 1. 14. 1-3.
[7. ] “Athlothetas” were the judges or umpires in the Greek games, whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. See Smith’s Dict. of Antiquities. Aristotle in the Ethics, 1. 4. 5, says: “Plato also proposes doubt . . . whether the right way is from principles or to principles; just as in the course from the starting-post to the goal, or the contrary.”
[8. ]De Mon. 1. 14. 2; 2. 9. 4; 3. 3. 1.
[9. ]Purg. 28. 71: “Hellespont, there where Xerxes passed, a bridle still to all pride of men.”
[10. ]Phar. 2. 672.
[11. ] Dante puts Alexander among the tyrants and murderers in the river Phlegethon, Inf. 12. 107. In Inf. 14. 31 the flakes of fire fall “As Alexander, in those hot parts of India, saw falling upon his host flames unbroken even to the ground.” In Conv. 4. 11. 7 Dante seems to esteem him highly, at least in one regard: “And who has not Alexander still at heart, because of his royal beneficence?”
[12. ] This reference to Livy is an error on Dante’s part, for the Roman historian nowhere recounts this story of the ambassadors or of the conqueror’s death. Livy says (9. 18. 3) of Alexander and the Romans: “Quem ne fama quidem illis notum arbitror fuisse.” Toynbee solved the problem of the origin of the ambassador story by tracing it to the Chronicle of Bishop Otto of Freising. See Toynbee, Studies, pp. 290 ff. Of Dante’s belief concerning the place of Alexander’s death Moore says: “This error probably arose from the confusion of Babylon in Assyria with Babylon (i. e. old Cairo) in Egypt. As Dante probably knew (1) that Alexander died at Babylon, and (2) that he was buried (according to Lucan) in Egypt, he might naturally have inferred that his death occurred at the Egyptian Babylon.”
[13. ]Phar. 8. 692.
[14. ]Rom. 11. 33. This verse is again quoted Conv. 4. 21. 3.
[15. ]Aen. 1. 234.
[16. ]Phar. 1. 109, 111.
[17. ]De Consol. Phil. 2, Metr. 6. 8-13 (Temple Classics trans.).
[18. ]Luke 2. 1. This reference is used in the letter to King Henry, Letter 7. 3; Conv. 4. 5; De Mon. 2. 12. 5.
[1. ]Ps. 11. 7 (Vulg. 10. 8).
[2. ]De Off. 1. 11. 34.
[3. ] Vegetius, De Re Militari 3. 9. This book on the Art of War is a compilation from many sources, dedicated by its author, of whom nothing is known, to Emperor Valentinian II (375-392). Dante refers to it but this once. This fact, together with Moore’s discovery that the context does not bear out the application of the quotation in question, has led Moore to conclude that Dante knew of Vegetius only through a mediaeval handbook or Florilegium. See Moore, Studies, Vol. 1. p. 297.
[4. ]De Off. 1. 12. 38. Church calls attention to the fact that Cicero’s word is “Imperii gloria,” not “corona.”
[5. ]Matt. 18. 20.
[6. ]De Mon. 1. 11.
[7. ] These lines are from Ennius, quoted De Off. 1. 12. 38.
[8. ]1 Sam. 17. In Letter 7. 6 Dante addresses Henry as a second David come to overthrow a new Goliath.
[9. ] Hercules and Antaeus, used as an example in De Mon. 2. 8. 5. In Inf. 31. 132: “The hands whence Hercules once felt a mighty constraint.” The story of the combat is told in detail in Conv. 3. 3. 7.
[1. ]Aen. 12. 942.
[2. ]Aen. 12. 948. Par. 6. 35: “Pallas died to give a kingdom to the Roman ensign,” seeing that his death was the real cause of Turnus’ death.
[3. ] Liv. 1. 24, 25.
[4. ] Oros. 2. 4. 9.
[5. ]Phar. 2. 135-138: “Romanaque Samnis ultra Caudinas superavit vulnera furcas.” Modern editions have “speravit” or “spiravit” instead of “superavit.”
[6. ]Par. 27. 61: “The Providence on high, which with Scipio guarded for Rome the glory of the world.”
Par. 6. 49: “It [the ensign] brought to earth the pride of the Arabs, who in Hannibal’s train passed the Alpine cliffs. . . . Under it in their youth triumphed Scipio and Pompey. . . . Afterward, hard upon the time when the heaven wholly willed to bring back the world to its tranquil order, Caesar by the will of Rome bare it.”
[7. ]2 Tim. 4. 8.
[8. ]De Mon. 2. 8. 1. For the chapter as a whole read as its best commentaries Par. 6 (Justinian to Dante) and Conv. 4. 5.
[1. ] Witte points out that these same men are referred to in Purg. 6. 91: “Ah, folk that ought to have been at prayer, and to let Caesar sit in the saddle.” They are the clergy who wrongly wish a controlling hand in the world of temporal things. In this chapter Dante is again making use of the language of Ps. 2. 1, and calling attention once more to the opening argument of Book 2.
[2. ]Conv. 4. 27. 4: “Those which do belong to your profession . . . take a tenth part and give it to God, that is, to those miserable ones to whom Divine favor alone remains.”
Par. 12. 93: “Not the tithes which belong to God’s poor.”
Par. 22. 82: “Whatsoever the Church guards belongs all to the folk who ask in God’s name.” Cf. De Mon. 3. 10. 6.
[3. ] Cupidity in the Church, as in men’s minds (De Mon. 1. 11. 5), was the source and root of evil. Inf. 1. 49 uses as the figure of Avarice, or the Church grasping for temporal domain, a “she-wolf, that with all ravenings looked fraught in its leanness, and has already made much people wretched.”
[4. ] The donation of Constantine is meant. See De Mon. 3. 10. Par. 20. 56, the eagle speaks of Constantine’s gift as “a good intention which bare ill fruit.”
[5. ] This was more true of Boniface VIII than of any other Pope, for he furthered the interests of his family and friends by all means in his power. Milman says of him in his Latin Christianity, Bk. 11, ch. 7: “Of all the Roman Pontiffs, Boniface left the darkest name for craft, arrogance, ambition, even for avarice and cruelty.”
[6. ]Par. 6. 21: “All contradictories are both false and true.” That is, one is false and the other true, for contradictories are pairs of propositions so related to each other that both cannot be false. Wicksteed further explains that “They are of the form either of ‘All A is B’ and ‘Some A is not B,’ or ‘No A is B’ and ‘Some A is B.’ These four terms were usually arranged at the corners of a square in the logic books.
The contradictories are at opposite ends of the diameters, the source of the phrase ‘diametrically opposed.’ ”
[7. ] That is, “Christ in his birth authorized an injustice.”
[8. ]Eth. 10. 1. 3. Cf. De Mon. 1. 13. 1. So also Thomas Aquinas says, “Concerning human actions and passions words are to be trusted less than deeds.”
[9. ]Luke 2. 1.
[10. ]Purg. 10. 34: “The angel that came on earth with the decree of the many years wept-for peace . . . opened heaven from its long interdict.”
Par. 26 contains the computation of time from the fall to the redemption. Cf. l. 118: “From that place whence thy Lady moved Virgil, for four thousand three hundred and two revolutions of the sun did I long for this assembly, and I saw him return to all the stars of his road nine hundred and thirty times whiles that I was upon earth.” According to this, Adam makes the number of years 5232 from creation to crucifixion.
[11. ] That is, to a syllogism.
[12. ] The second figure has the middle term for predicate in both premises.
[1. ]Rom. 5. 12. In De Mon. 1. 16 Dante dates “all our errors” from the fall of Adam. In Par. 7 Beatrice explains to Dante the nature of human redemption. Cf. l. 85: “Your nature, when it all sinned in its seed, was removed from these dignities as from Paradise; nor could it recover them, . . . by any way without passing through some one of these roads; either that God alone of his clemency should have put away, or that man should have made satisfaction for his folly.”
Purg. 32. 37. Here in the vision of the Church and the Empire Dante symbolizes the fall and redemption of man, the errors of avarice in the Church, and the universal jurisdiction of Monarchy. “I heard all murmur ‘Adam,’ then they circled a plant despoiled of flowers and of leafage too on every branch. Its foliage, which spreads the wider as it is the higher up, would be wondered at for height by the Indians in their forests. ‘Blessed art thou, Grifon, that thou tearest not with thy beak of this wood sweet to the taste, since ill was the belly griped therefrom.’ ” As Plumptre remarks, the apostrophe to the grifon is the thought developed in the second book of De Mon.
[2. ]Eph. 1. 5-8.
[3. ] The work of redeeming the human race is finished. John 19. 30.
[4. ]Exod. 2. 14.
[5. ] “Sub ordine judice.”
[6. ]Is. 53. 4. Quoted Letter 6. 6.
[7. ]John 18. 14: “Now Caiaphas was he which gave counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.”
[8. ]Luke 23. 11.
[9. ] Pilate was the real Roman regent. Cf. Par. 6. 86, where Tiberius is called “the third Caesar,” and read all the canto for Justinian’s account of the Roman Empire.
[10. ] That Constantine’s purpose was high Dante always insisted on. See De Mon. 2. 12. 1; and 3. 10 and notes. Par. 20. 58: “Now knows he how the ill, deduced from his good work, is not harmful to him, albeit that the world be thereby destroyed.” | <urn:uuid:ba2f2e98-1fce-45e1-96ea-1c1c62d6d976> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2196&chapter=203219&layout=html&Itemid=27 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956461 | 22,256 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The Daily Princetonian
March 22, 2005
By Neir Eshel
Growing up in the small port city
of Alton, Ill., Tom Haine '08 never expected to attend an Ivy League
school. A lifelong Catholic, he considered the University of Notre
Dame, St. Louis University and various state schools - but Princeton
was far from his mind.
That changed one day junior year
when he received a flier promoting a Plato seminar at Princeton.
The event was hosted by a chapter of the international Catholic
group Opus Dei. A week of events at the group's home on Mercer Street
convinced Haine to apply to the University - "the only reason
I even thought about it," he said.
It was another successful effort
by Opus Dei members to forge closer spiritual and intellectual ties
with University students and faculty. Today, Haine attends prayer
sessions and Friday dinners at Mercer House, the Opus Dei residence,
and uses its chapel and study room.
Haine is also a junior fellow in
the University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.
The group, which studies constitutional law and political thought,
has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from
organizations linked to Opus Dei.
Some of those multi-million dollar
organizations, which until recently were housed in an office building
across the street from the University, were created explicitly to
support Opus Dei. Others have given to a range of academic programs
at the University and around the world, from Princeton's Council
of the Humanities to schools in Latin America. But they are all
tied together by Luis Tellez, who sits on the boards of many of
those organizations and serves as the director of Opus Dei in Princeton.
Critics, including some former members,
charge that these organizations represent veiled attempts by Opus
Dei to spread its influence in elite academic circles. They say
the group - which was depicted in Dan Brown's bestseller, "The
Da Vinci Code," as a murderous cult - relies on secretive and
aggressive recruiting techniques.
Indeed, Opus Dei's Princeton chapter,
which is not officially recognized by the University, has a spotted
history. Fifteen years ago, an Opus Dei priest affiliated with the
University was dismissed because of concerns about his recruiting
tactics and overbearing relations with students.
Interviews with more than 20 students,
faculty and individuals close to the group at Princeton and elsewhere
suggest that over the past six to eight years, relations between
the University and Opus Dei have improved.
Members say they have put their
troubled history behind them and seek only to support the faith
of willing students.
"People try to create this
dark aura of conspiracy," Tellez says. "And it's just
That view is bolstered by former
critics of the group. And despite the financial links, University
officials say the donations to Princeton programs come with no strings
attached and have nothing to do with spreading Opus Dei's influence.
The money path
Founded in 1928, Opus Dei - a Latin
phrase meaning "Work of God" - has 85,000 members worldwide
and 3,000 in the United States. In Princeton, about a dozen students
attend events at Mercer House, a white clapboard building behind
the U-Store's parking lot that has been home to Opus Dei for 15
It is also home to Tellez, a priest,
two graduate students and several others. The house is a hub for
Opus Dei activities in the area, from morning mass to circles on
Christian doctrine and dinners with University professors.
The group is distinguished by its
emphasis on rigidly following Catholic doctrine - including good
deeds, prayer and self-denial - in everyday life.
This approach appeals to Haine's
basic beliefs. Opus Dei leaders "don't tell you what to believe,"
he says. "They help you see why their beliefs are correct -
why the truth is the truth."
Like many of the students who attend
activities at Mercer House, Haine participates as a junior fellow
in dinners and lectures sponsored by the James Madison Program,
created in 2000 by politics professor Robert George.
The program's recent activities
included a conference on "Bridging the Racial Divide: Evangelical
Christians in Contemporary Politics" and lectures titled: "Lawrence
v. Texas: The Worse Supreme Court Opinion in History?" and
"Religious Liberty: The Political Claim." The program
has invited to campus such prominent conservatives as Supreme Court
Justice Anthony Scalia and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Haines said that he participates
in the Madison Program and other Princeton groups - such as Princeton
Pro-Life and Aquinas - to "bolster my faith and provide a support
and basis group of people who feel the same way."
"But Princeton's students overall
also make me feel comfortable, because they are all open to new
ideas, knowledgeable, and fun to discuss such things as God and
life with," he continued.
During the past five years, the
organizations affiliated with Tellez and Opus Dei have contributed
more than $500,000 to University professors and programs, according
to a review of tax records. The bulk of the money has gone to the
Madison Program. Tellez is also on the program's advisory council.
The money has sometimes taken a
In 2002, a nonprofit with $50 million
in assets called the Association for Cultural Interchange (ACI),
which Tellez leads, received $40,000 in contributions from a Harvard
alumnus and a Princeton alumnus. That money was then transferred,
Tellez said, to another nonprofit called the Higher Education Initiatives
Fund (HEIF), which in its turn gave the money to the Madison Program.
ACI mainly - though not exclusively
- supports Opus Dei initiatives, Tellez said, adding that HEIF was
created to support all kinds of scholarship and will close soon.
Tellez said he asked the donors,
whom he and the University declined to identify, to give to ACI
with the understanding that the money would shift to HEIF. This
would secure HEIF's status as a public charity for tax purposes
because the money was coming from ACI, an established charity. This
is a common practice among nonprofits known as fiscal sponsorship.
From 2000 to 2002, HEIF gave more
than $330,000 to the James Madison Program. But other foundations
Tellez has run also have supported University programs.
The Clover Foundation, a $25 million
foundation that sponsors Opus Dei programs, gave $180,000 to the
University's Humanities Council to support its yearlong sequence
tracing Western civilization from ancient Greece to the present.
In 2000, Clover gave $30,000 to
George to help launch the Madison Program. Two years later, Clover
gave another $30,000 to HEIF to support the program.
Other major donors to the program
include the John Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation,
publisher Steve Forbes '70 and Donald Drakeman GS '88, president
of Medarex Inc. and chair of the program's advisory council. In
its first two years, the Madison program raised $8 million.
Tellez said he raised all the money
from his friends - some but not all of whom are in Opus Dei - and
that the Clover board authorized the grants as a "gesture of
gratitude for my work" instead of an interest in specific Princeton
A group of outside observers, long
critical of Opus Dei, is wary of such donations. They charge that
Opus Dei tries to recruit members and spread its intellectual conservativism
by creating clusters of foundations around prestigious colleges,
including Harvard, Columbia and the University of California at
"Opus Dei is not what it seems
to be," says Dianne DiNicola, who co-founded a watchdog group
called the Opus Dei Awareness Network after her daughter reported
having a harrowing experience with Opus Dei in college. "Underneath,
there's a whole web of activity that they don't reveal. Everything
they do is to increase their own power."
ODAN's website lists dozens of foundations
like Clover and ACI that DiNicola maintains support academic programs
at universities to furtively expand the influence of Opus Dei.
But Tellez suggested links between
his scholarly contributions and Opus Dei is a "bunch of baloney."
The foundations he's affiliated with, which total about $75 million
in assets, are structurally independent from Opus Dei, he said.
They give money to the University and other academic programs because,
he says, it's the right thing to do.
"We help people who are not
even Catholic," Tellez said. "We support scholarship that
has a specific thelos and that is honest about the pursuit of truth.
That will narrow the scope of what we support."
"I'm trying to be a good member
of Opus Dei and the Catholic Church," said Tellez, who recently
founded a new initiative, the Witherspoon Institute [link
to website], to support scholars nationwide. "That doesn't
make me a peon of Rome. That doesn't make it a conspiracy."
Program officials, too, say that
Tellez's involvement is unrelated to Opus Dei.
"With respect to fundraising,
Luis Tellez has helped the Madison Program, just as, I understand,
he has helped other university programs," program associate
director Bradford Wilson said in an email. "He is not on the
board to represent any religious view or organization, nor is his
religion counted for or against him in any way."
At the Humanities Council, chair
and history professor Anthony Grafton says the program takes no
money that has strings attached.
"We're always delighted to
receive donations," he said. "There's never enough money."
Regarding Opus Dei's efforts to
support scholarship, Grafton said that "there's an old connection
there. Princeton was always humanistic, but who founded it? The
Since coming to the United States
in 1949, Opus Dei has faced scathing criticism nationwide. That
criticism tends to raise suspicion, at ODAN and elsewhere, about
what Opus Dei is trying to do with its affiliated foundations.
Some former members have accused
the group of being a secretive sect with sometimes violent practices.
Critics also say Opus Dei harbors a political agenda, with ties
to former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and Chilean leader Augusto
At the University, the group was
involved in the stormy, publicized departure of the associate chaplain
of Princeton's official Catholic group, Aquinas Institute, in 1990.
Students and faculty accused Father C. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei
priest who arrived in town in 1985, of being overly aggressive in
recruiting and impinging on academic freedom by warning against
anti-Christian books and classes. [See
"Princeton Catholics Divided."]
"Put simply, McCloskey was
a very controversial, very polarizing man. He rubbed everyone the
wrong way," said politics professor Paul Sigmund, who petitioned
Aquinas to dissociate from Opus Dei at the time.
Though McCloskey denied the charges,
Father Vincent Keane, then Aquinas director, dismissed him as associate
chaplain in 1990. McCloskey has since become a high-powered figure
in Washington, D.C., converting syndicated columnist Robert Novak,
Senator Sam Brownback, Judge Robert Bork and others to Catholicism.
The pattern of concern about Opus
Dei activities is echoed at college campuses around the country.
In the early 1990s, for example, student complaints at Stanford
University led the director of ministry to ban all Opus Dei activities
DiNicola's daughter, Tammy, said
she joined Opus Dei as a sophomore at Boston College in 1988. During
her two years with the group, she said she was required to keep
a list of 12 to 15 friends who were thinking of joining and report
monthly on her progress in persuading them. If the friends seemed
unlikely to join, she said she was required to drop the friendships.
She also had to hand over her salary
to Opus Dei, sleep on boards in a nearby Opus Dei residence and
refrain from leaving without permission, she said. She decided to
quit the group in 1990, and then spent two weeks attending a treatment
facility in Ohio for people who believe they have been abused by
"The bottom line is that Opus
Dei has these houses near Universities so that they can find idealistic
young recruits," Tammy said. "Anything that's a good thing
they're doing is a way to find and recruit the people they want."
Since founding ODAN, Dianne DiNicola
said she has received hundreds of calls from parents who have run
into trouble with Opus Dei. The ODAN website includes testimonies
by dozens of former members criticizing Opus Dei's approach.
While Tellez acknowledged problems
in the past, he said Opus Dei is now more careful.
"I can't think of a single
incident since 1998 [when McCloskey officially left the area] when
any student has felt we're not trying to help them," he said.
"In no way am I saying that everything Opus Dei members do
is right. But in a generalization, I think Opus Dei members are
more honest, thoughtful and careful about avoiding mistakes. We're
only interested in helping students."
For Tellez, lingering criticism
of Opus Dei stems from objections to the Catholic Church.
"Opus Dei is morally conservative,
and we live in a secular culture," he said. "We follow
the same line as a church, and therefore we are a threat to those
who are more secular."
Tellez accused critics of distorting
the truth by focusing excessively on the mistakes - the "human
frailties" - of Opus Dei members.
"Of course members of Opus
Dei can do wrong. Of course I have made mistakes. But they only
apply this kind of scrutiny to Opus Dei, not themselves, not other
institutions. It's hypocritical," he said.
As for recruiting, Tellez said,
the situation at Princeton is different.
"Nothing I do is a recruiting
tool," he said. "None of that happens on my watch. I'm
interested in people joining Opus Dei, but I know that the only
way that's going to happen is if God wants it and if they want it.
So there's no pressure."
"The process starts with the
person," Tellez added. "People make up their minds on
their own; I'm simply a facilitator."
Close observers seem to agree on
Opus Dei's helpful role on campus.
"Relations between Aquinas
and Opus Dei have been very positive," Aquinas chaplain Father
Tom Mullelly said. "I've been impressed by their hard work,
their commitment. I've seen them as being helpful to Catholics in
Sigmund, the professor, said: "Opus
Dei wasn't operating quite by the rules [in McCloskey's era], but
now it is."
Indeed, Juan Velez, who has been
the Opus Dei priest in Princeton since 2001, said he is aware of
the group's history and takes care not to repeat it.
"Once I learned that there
had been some conflict, some heated debate, I made a mental note
to avoid that," he said. "I'm always trying to avoid confrontations,
and that's very much in keeping with the spirit of Opus Dei. Our
approach is not to push something on people."
Students affiliated with Opus Dei
say their experience with the group is positive and powerful.
Nic Teh '05, an astrophysics major,
said he began visiting Mercer House in his freshman year. Since
then, he has regularly attended masses, circles and the Friday night
"I see Opus Dei as a great
aid to the church," Teh said. "Anything that helps promote
holiness, the message of the Gospel, I see it as a good thing."
Teh sees Opus Dei as analogous to
other organizations in the church - such as the Franciscans or Jesuits
- but with greater emphasis on "holiness in the world and workplace."
"We learn the most human of
things - how to be a good friend, how to be virtuous," he said.
"Opus Dei helps people understand their faith better, helps
people become better Catholics. It's a matter of education."
Posted April 14, 2005 | <urn:uuid:75ce14f3-b327-4b99-820a-cd65cf7c361f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.odan.org/media_spotted_history.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959051 | 3,660 | 1.734375 | 2 |
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Raspberry Pi: Turbo – Warranty safe overclocking
Raspberry Pi’s can now shift into turbo by changing some configuration settings and getting a 50% power boost, all without voiding the warranty
Since the Raspberry Pi’s release, it hasn’t been uncommon for people to overvolt and overclock their Pi’s to get a little extra oomph for day to day tasks. Linux User’s Editor Russell Barnes has even had a look at it, reporting that there was no discernable heat increase on his board. Now this unofficial power boost is becoming official, with newer distro images coming with the ability to let you turn on turbo mode.
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Updating should get you the updated config file, but if not you can grab an image from the RPi website. | <urn:uuid:cce5e6b2-3840-4445-93ef-2eb5f0ea919f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/news/raspberry-pi-turbo-warranty-safe-overclocking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942403 | 245 | 1.609375 | 2 |
yeah, if its blocked by a security suite then wouldn't all the shortcuts just be intercepted since they are basically the same thing as right clicking? i would think they would all call the same function, and the function would just be blocked? and i would think it would be the same thing for control panel, no? thats what the computers at my school do, any way you try to get to control panel it just says something to the effect that you have to have administrator rights. i don't know about for you but at my school if you really need to get to control panel or right click you can logon to the local computer and not the network as
and then the third box select the local computer
i dont know if the password is generated or if it was set. not sure though. | <urn:uuid:9764ccea-904e-40f4-863e-4a03ec9507c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.undergroundnews.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/15377/no%20right%20click.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97306 | 162 | 1.523438 | 2 |
A very small country that could easily be invaded if they had oil. More powerful than the United States.
Was invaded by Switzerland for fifteen minutes in March, 2007, when the Swiss Army convoy had to make a u-turn in Liechtenstein territory.
By the time the UN composed a strongly worded letter, the convoy had finished their maneuver and were on their way back home.
Greatest triumph in world affairs came with a 0-0 draw in a soccer game with Ireland | <urn:uuid:748fb63c-59c3-4fba-8926-7fdad9b4f6e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wikiality.wikia.com/Liechtenstein | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985201 | 100 | 1.75 | 2 |
PC upgrades: Processor and motherboard
Intel's second generation of Core-series processors (aka 'Sandy Bridge') wipes the floor with all other chips in performance terms. Each processor includes an updated version of Intel's integrated graphics solution, providing accelerated graphics encoding and VGA and HDMI outputs. This means non-gamers can potentially save some cash by omitting a discrete graphics card, and will still be able to watch full-HD (1920x1080-pixel) video.
Several members of the Sandy Bridge processor family have been specifically designed for overclocking, denoted by a 'K' at the end of their product name. These chips are slightly more expensive than their non-K variants but are multiplier-unlocked, allowing for easy overclocking in the Bios. They demand a P67-chipset-based motherboard, however, which won't support the processor's integrated graphics. Also note that if you do wish to overclock your CPU, the standard processor cooler fitted by Intel may need to be upgraded, and you'll require at least a 750W-rated power supply unit (PSU).
For non-K Sandy Bridge processors, an H67-chipset-based motherboard is a cheaper alternative. These motherboards are not compatible with first-generation Core-series chips, so buying into the technology now will future-proof your PC.
The fastest processor in the new series is the 3.4GHz Core-i7-2600K. At 3.3GHz, the Core i5-2500K offers a slightly lower specification. It has no support for hyperthreading and 6MB rather than 8MB of level 3 cache. Both chips are also available in cheaper non-K versions that don’t offer the same overclocking potential.
Turbo Boost technology allows a processor to overclock a single core (or all four when used with a 'K' processor and a P67 motherboard) when the system is under load.
The more cores a processor has, the more able it is to multitask and run intensive multithreaded applications such as video editing. All the chips in the Sandy Bridge family are quad-core, as are the older Core i5-700-, -800- and -900-series CPUs. Of the older chips, dual-core processors such as the i5-600 series tend to have higher clock speeds, and thus will perform better when working with single-threaded applications. Single-core processors will be noticeably slower.
PC upgrades: Memory
If a fast processor speeds up your PC, a large bank of memory stops it from slowing down. Don't fit a Windows 7 PC with less than 2GB of system RAM. Most are fitted with at least 4GB, although we've seen £1,000-plus systems offering as much as 16GB. Sandy Bridge PCs should come with at least 8GB. For the PC to access more than 4GB of memory, and for systems running dual-graphics setups, you'll also need to be running a 64bit operating system.
Sandy Bridge processors and the Core i5-700- and 800-series chips require DDR3 RAM, while older chips can use less expensive DDR2. The triple-channel architecture of the Core i7-900-series processors requires you to install memory chips in threes (3GB or 6GB, for example), but Core i7-800- and -2000-series CPUs use a two-channel system. DDR3 memory is getting cheaper and bodes well for performance.
If you plan to upgrade the memory, check how many slots are free on the motherboard. If, for example, a PC vendor has installed four 1GB sticks of RAM, thus occupying all four of the motherboard's memory slots, an upgrade will be more expensive than if it had installed two 2GB sticks - in our example you would need to replace your existing memory rather than add to it.
PC upgrades: Storage
Adding a second hard drive is one of the simplest upgrades you can undertake. If you wish to do so internally, check the system case has a spare drive bay available. Some system cases offer a top-mounted SATA port for fast docking of a hard drive, while external drives can quickly and easily be added via USB.
For compatibility with the latest high-speed storage, check that the motherboard offers support for USB 3.0 and SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gbps).
Flash-based storage provides a noticeable boost to bootup times and system responsiveness. Solid-state drives remain expensive for now, but prices are starting to come down.
PC buyers' guide: Optical drives
Get a drive that can write to the DVD+/-R formats at 16-speed or better. If you want to get 8.5GB on to one disc, get a drive that can write to dual-layer discs at eight-speed (DVD+R DL).
Blu-ray drives are too expensive to be found in budget PCs, but where they are specified you'll also want a large full-HD (1920x1080-pixel) screen and a set of external speakers to complete the multimedia experience. PC vendors often offer DVD/Blu-ray combo drives; expect DVD speeds to be slower here.
PC buyers' guide: Display
The display is often overlooked by PC vendors wanting to curtail costs. However, it's the component you'll spend most of your time looking at, and is even more important if you do a lot of photo or video editing. Quality varies hugely among screens, and it's not only the size and resolution you need to consider. Also investigate viewing angles, whether the screen offers height, tilt and pivot adjustments, the pixel pitch, the response rate (8ms or below will minimise blur on fast-moving action), brightness and contrast. Where possible, it's a good idea to see the screen in person before you buy.
Aim for at least a 21.5in model. A 25in full-HD screen will not only provide a better experience when watching videos, playing games and working with spreadsheets than a 21.5in model, but it will also render text and icons slightly larger.
If you want to hook up a games console or projector, look for a screen with dual analogue and digital inputs. VGA is an analogue connection, while DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort are three types of digital connection.
Models with LED backlighting aren’t necessarily better, but can offer improved contrast, lower power consumption and a thinner, more desirable design.
PC upgrades: Graphics card
Decent graphics cards get cheaper all the time, and budget PCs can now handle games that were unthinkable a few months ago.
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 5450 is a popular choice for a budget machine. It doesn’t offer a great speed advantage over Intel GMA integrated graphics, but it adds support for DirectX 11.0. If you really want to play games, nVidia’s GeForce GT 240 will provide some extra speed. Be prepared to lower your graphics settings to achieve smooth gameplay, however.
If gaming is important to you and you're prepared to spend a little more on your PC, look for an ATI Radeon HD 6870 or Geforce GTX 460. In a gamer-friendly system costing £1,000-plus, aim for an ATI Radeon HD 6970 or nVidia GeForce GTX 580.
nVidia cards offer support for realistic object interactions in games supporting PhysX and are able to display 3D content. Recent ATI cards can also be connected to multiple displays. Look out for pre-overclocked graphics cards, as well as those that come with custom cooling solutions.
Many nVidia and ATI graphics cards can be upgraded to dual-card setups later. To take advantage of this, your motherboard and power supply must be compatible. However, the current crop of motherboards which support the new Sandy Bridge processors have only limited support for multiple graphics cards, so buy the fastest single card you can afford. A single-card setup leaves more space for sound cards or TV tuners.
PC buyers' guide: Power supply unit
With no power-hungry components installed, a budget PC needs only a basic PSU. A 450W or 500W model is a good starting point.
For all other systems, the level of power you require will depend on the graphics card you want to use. Look for at least a 500W unit or 750W-plus if you plan to add another card or overclock the CPU.
Get a model with a full set of SATA and PCI Express connectors to make later upgrades easier.
PC buyers' guide: Sound
Most desktop PCs come with onboard sound rather than a separate sound cards, and budget machines tend to rely on the tinny speakers built into the monitor for playback. However, if you're buying a system with a large screen and a Blu-ray drive, you'll also want a decent set of external speakers. For the best playback, get a set that includes a subwoofer. | <urn:uuid:3f3cbd58-8e9b-48a7-9fe4-a18e06772cd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/buying-advice/pc-components/3267070/pc-upgrades-buying-advice-what-components-should-i-buy/ | 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 | 0.937515 | 1,860 | 1.828125 | 2 |
NEW YORK, (PRWEB) October 02, 2012
Animal Aid USA and Take Action announced today the formation of a strategic partnership to lobby against the use of gas chambers to euthanize shelter animals across the U.S. The partnership combines forces from both organizations to provide considerable leverage in the growing effort to outlaw the use of gas chambers in at least 38 hold-out states.
Led by Animal Aid USA co-founders Prince Lorenzo Borghese and Karen Talbot, and Take Action co-founder Chrissi Roberts, the newly formed coalition also asked for supporters in gas chamber states to start building awareness by educating others in their communities about the cruelty of gas chamber euthanasia. Borghese, Talbot and Roberts encouraged animal advocates to raise their voices, attend community meetings, coordinate outreach efforts and contact their local and state lawmakers to ban the practice in their communities.
Roberts says that her Take Action organization has been working tirelessly to rally the anti-gas chamber movement, making the alliance with Animal Aid USA a natural one for both organizations.
"Take Action is thrilled to partner with Animal Aid USA,” Roberts says. “We see this as an important step in our efforts to galvanize the entire anti-gas chamber movement and have our two organizations' supporters come together in a unified effort.
"To date, Take Action has seen so many groups working on this issue independently, and while we applaud their efforts, we hope this is the first of many alliances that will bring focus to our energies in a more integrated way."
Borghese echoed Roberts’s sentiments, calling theirs an ideal alliance for strengthening the cause and reinforcing the need for awareness-building, education, and coordinated efforts to end the practice of gas chamber euthanasia in every corner of the U.S.
“It’s a fact that most Americans aren’t aware that pets are being killed in gas chambers daily,” Borghese says. “When they are made aware, they are shocked and want it to stop.
“Our job is to raise awareness to this cruel method of slaughter because with awareness comes power. Combining Animal Aid USA and Take Action creates the perfect team to spread such awareness and put an end to the gas chamber once and for all.”
About Animal Aid USA:
Created in January of 2012 by a group of volunteer animal lovers who receive no monetary compensation, Animal Aid USA members drive more than 1,600 miles each month in order to relocate animals from high-kill shelters to receiving rescues and homes. Besides finding homes for animals that face an uncertain future, Animal Aid USA raises money to fund spay and neuter programs in low income communities and raise awareness of the legal cruelties happening daily in the U.S., such as the gas chamber. In July, Animal Aid raised awareness of the cruelty of gas chamber euthanasia through the Amazing Grace Caravan. This caravan also saved 144 shelter animals. In total, the volunteers of Animal Aid USA have rescued more than 2,200 animals.
About Take Action:
With leadership across the country and internationally, Take Action is comprised of volunteers with a wide range of experience in animal welfare issues. Take Action participants organize rescues, volunteer at shelters, foster adoptable dogs and cats, and are committed to making the world better and safer place for all shelter pets.
Ending the use of the gas chamber across the nation’s shelters and replacing it with the more humane method of lethal injection is Take Action’s number one priority. | <urn:uuid:a5ef19a0-4123-4483-a2eb-9d232679dd70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb9972112.htm | 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 | 0.940476 | 726 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Late last week, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials announced that they had preliminarily approved Sacramento International Airport to begin moving forward with privatizing their screening workforce.
The move is part of TSA’s Security Partnership Program (SPP), the nearly eight-year-old program allowing U.S. airports to opt out of federal screening and instead privatize their security forces. If Sacramento receives final approval from TSA, it would become the third major airport to participate in the SPP program.
In all, 16 airports currently participate in the SPP program. This small number of participants is partially due to long-standing TSA resistance to the program, which culminated early last year when TSA head John Pistole said the agency would no longer expand the program to additional airports. Pistole justified this decision by claiming that he did not see “any clear or substantial advantage to doing so at this time.”
Thankfully, many in Congress were of a different opinion. In this year’s Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill, Congress passed a provision requiring that TSA consider all SPP applications in a fair, timely, and transparent manner. The legislation further dictates that any application that does not threaten to “not compromise security or detrimentally affect the cost-efficiency or the effectiveness of screening” must be approved.
TSA has long tried to argue that use of privatized screening costs anywhere from 3 percent to 9 percent more than use of federal screening, while other opponents have argued that the SPP program threatens security by reducing TSA flexibility and cohesion. According to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, however, U.S. taxpayers would save “$1 billion over five years if the Nation’s top 35 airports operated as efficiently as [San Francisco International Airport] does under the SPP model.” This same study also concluded that SPP screeners are 65 percent more efficient than federal screeners.
Even better, all of this comes at no apparent cost to security. In fact, privatization of the airport security workforce is likely to enhance security by allowing TSA to get out of the personnel business and truly focus on protecting our nation’s airports.
It may still take over a year for Sacramento Airport to fully bid TSA screeners adieu. Nevertheless, TSA’s preliminary approval of Sacramento’s SPP application represents an important step forward for the program. | <urn:uuid:3f2d7a24-cad7-49f9-b0e5-b94fd8a46fda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/01/sacramento-airport-to-bid-tsa-adieu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95102 | 486 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Quentin Tarantino’s idea of American slavery pictures Jamie Foxx riding horseback and spinning a pistol on his index finger while wearing a ridiculous blue getup with white ruffles, spewing corny-if-rebellious catch phrases like, “I like the way you die, boy.” Yes, the godfather of motion picture vengeance’s latest, Django Unchained, reverts to a significant era in history to swap victim with victor (much like 2009’s Holocaust-based Inglorious Basterds). Instead of a group of Jewish soldiers vengefully plotting against Nazi leaders, Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave turned bounty hunter, guns down any white man who impedes in the rescue of his enslaved wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Despite Tarantino being an equal opportunity history books trivializer, the problem with Django Unchained is it’s being presented as the “hip-hop generation’s Roots” as opposed to the feel-good revisionist history it is.
Per usual, Tarantino wanted to make his audience uncomfortable. I cringed as I sat through an early December screening of Django amongst a predominantly white audience in New York City’s School of Visual Arts Theatre watching horrific, graphic scenes that included freshly welted black backs and canines eating an enslaved man alive. Even more unbearable, though, were the snickers heard during such a visually intense movie that makes light of centuries of injustice. Jonah Hill’s three-minute cameo scores cheap laughs off an amateur racist sect’s poorly constructed masks (“I can’t see sh*t!” one Klansman blurts). The word “nigger” is spat more than 100 times through the film’s two-hour-and-45-minute span.
To save you the $13 cost of admission, here’s a rundown of the plot: Two years before the Civil War in the antebellum south, German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) purchases Django to identify three murdering thieves known as the Brittle brothers who have price tags on their heads. In exchange, Dr. Schultz mentors Django in the art of murder, playing Batman to Django’s Robin in the pursuit of his lady. They take off for Mississippi when they learn of Broomhilda’s whereabouts, at Calvin Candie’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) vast Candyland plantation deep in the racism-rich South. It’s like the King of Diamonds of plantations—female house slaves dress in fine bouffant dresses and his right-hand house slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), gives insight on business matters, and even sasses white visitors. Candie himself is a sarcastic, slick-talking overseer who indulges in violent Mandingo fights while his slave mistress watches, cocktail in hand. As the film nears its end, Tarantino’s signature twists lead to an expected bout of bloody, gory action.
All trigger-happy abolitionist fun, right? A good ol’ spaghetti western complete with Rick Ross and a James Brown/2pac mash-up on the soundtrack. You’ve got to wonder how many moviegoers will watch, munching on nachos and popcorn, and depart their seats thinking, “Slavery wasn’t too bad after all,” or worse, “Why didn’t all slaves just revolt?” Let’s get real. Django’s opportunity to shoot down slavemasters one-by-one would’ve never happened—he’d be hung after the first white man he killed, but most likely would’ve never sought revenge at all. The institution of slavery was deeper than whips and chains; it was a deep-rooted mental oppression that psychologically suppressed its sufferers.
Sure, Django Unchained is not a documentary intended to inform. But even though Tarantino has stated that he was “uncomfortable” presenting the slave experience, the whipping scenes and BS phrenologist comparisons of a slave’s skull to that of a free man don’t always play that way on screen. I wish that he would have put the same level of thought into developing Jackson’s well-acted role, which hardly surpasses the “house nigger” caricature. Or avoiding the Great White Hope meme (see: Glory, Dangerous Minds, Blind Side, The Help) that finds Foxx playing sidekick and Washington as a voiceless damsel. In reality, there was no nice German savior swooping in to emancipate the enslaved. Freedom was an impossible task seldom achieved by slaves making ultimate sacrifices.
Tarantino lauded himself for being familiar enough with the subject of slavery and black culture to critique Roots, Alex Haley’s thorough cinematic exploration of American slavery. “When you look at Roots, nothing about it rings true in the storytelling, and none of the performances ring true for me either,” he told The Daily Beast of the film adapted from literary fiction masterpiece Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The enslavement of Africans in the U.S. for more than 400 years was much worse than could ever be portrayed on screen, yet Roots is still the closest depiction of the often-closeted atrocity. Django Unchained is no Roots. The problem, however, is Tarantino’s packaging of his latest effort as some type of eye-opening, thought-provoking, progressive piece of art.
Slavery has long been America’s dirty little secret that’s often left untouched. Most Americans aren’t versed enough on the effects that unfortunately linger today. Any film, entertainment or not, has a responsibility to address the topic with a certain level of information—and acknowledgement of slavery’s lasting effects—presented.
Jamie Foxx told VIBE magazine that “Every two, three years there is a movie about the holocaust because they want you to remember and they want you to be reminded of what it was.” He argued African-Americans should recall slavery with the same urgency, and that’s why this film must be supported. Difference is, America doesn’t wish to forget the Holocaust. And Django Unchained may very well remind America of its dark twisted past, it does so by misinforming and making the masses feel good about it first. | <urn:uuid:4c5bc1e7-c58e-4ff3-80e0-0eeaf7ca88d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/utag/artist/james-brown/3643/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934482 | 1,354 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Family History >
USS Neosho >
USS Neosho Veteran's Forum
Neosho Veteran's Forum
This section is
devoted to the veterans of the U.S.S. Neosho
(AO-23). I'm also including stories here about veterans who served on the
destroyer U.S.S. Sims (DD-409), the Neosho's valiant escort during
the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Approximately 293 men served on the U.S.S. Neosho at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Of these, only 111 survived the attack and returned to Australia. The
fatality rate of the U.S.S. Sims was even higher, with only 14 of the
252 men surviving and returning to Australia. Altogether, only 124 men
aboard the Neosho and Sims survived the attack, while 421 men
gathered stories about
Neosho veterans and have posted them below. If you know a veteran who
served on either the U.S.S. Neosho or the U.S.S. Sims and would
like to share his story, please contact me
and I'll be happy to post it here.
On separate pages, I've posted in-depth
stories and photos about the following Neosho veterans:
About U.S.S. Neosho Veterans
December 7th marks the anniversary of Pearl Harbor and my
great-uncle, Lorenza McNair (1921-2005), was in the military during this
time of war. I’d always heard from my mother that after he returned, he told the
family that if they had any questions about what happened, they’d better ask
then because he was never going to talk about it again. To the best of my
mother’ s knowledge, he never did.
about Lorenza McNair's service on the U.S.S. Neosho and in WWII is posted
My brother, Audress Casey Dunn, Fireman 2nd Class, was killed aboard the Neosho
during the Coral Sea Battle. He was from Mounds, Illinois. As I understand, his battle station was in the
ammunition lockers for the 3-inch 50-caliber AA guns. I saw him once after he
was assigned to the Neosho, his only berth. Those poor sailors were worked
to the bone delivering aviation fuel to Pearl before the war. His hands
were so grimy he couldn't get them clean from boiler work and not even time
for a shore haircut.
- Ralph Dunn, formerly S1CL USNR
William Hardwick, known as JW, was a Seaman 2nd Class on the USS Neosho
served on her the entire time from when they took possession at the US Naval
Receiving Station at Puget Sound until her demise in the Coral Sea. I even
have letters he wrote from the Receiving Station. He was listed as MIA and
no one heard anything about him after the day they were attacked. I can't
tell you how many times I wished he would have survived the war. I would
have really liked hearing his stories but I guess it wasn't to be. I was
told by my Dad (his brother) that his battle station was on a forward gun.
That's about all I know.
I have a great desire to find out as much as I can
about my Uncle JW. His name is inscribed on a monument in the Philippines.
I intend to try and get a copy of his Navy records. I just finished copying
all his letters and cards he sent home during World War II to preserve
My father, Tony Bustos, was on the Neosho and survived.
If he was in water for a long period of time (e.g., a swimming pool) he
would start to smell oil. Also, he could not eat canned pears.
They reminded him of eating while they were floating. He said that
they would dive under the water and swim into the ship to try and get food
and supplies, and ended up with a lot of canned pears.
- Jim Bustos
My first cousin, Wallace F. (Frank) Quillin,
Seaman 1st class, was a survivor, not only of the Neosho, but of the
Arizona. Here is his story: Frank survived the attack on the Arizona
by being on shore leave that Sunday morning in order to go to church
services on the island. When he returned to the beach after church, he found
it under attack and his ship sinking.
He was reassigned to the Neosho, and told of his escape
from the ship during the Coral Sea battle.
The Neosho was on fire and sinking. The boys on board were diving or jumping
into the burning oil covering the water. Some of the boys were injured in the
attack and bleeding as they bailed out into the shark infested water. Their
screams as they were attacked by sharks rang in the ears of their escaping
shipmates, who were helpless to try and rescue them.
Frank was one of the lucky ones who was unhurt and was quickly picked up by
another American ship. He did sustain some hearing loss as a result of getting
oil in his ears. After the war, he arrived back in the states in
California, where he married and settled down. He was originally from
Florence, AL, where his mother (my aunt) Cora Quillin lived for many years.
Frank's name appears in the National Park Service historical statistics as a
survivor of the Arizona. - Nancy (Mrs. James)
I was in
the Navy during Vietnam, and served aboard the Gearing Class Destroyer,
"Henry W. Tucker" (DD-875). Henry W. Tucker was a Pharmacist's
Mate aboard the USS Neosho, and died while swimming from life raft to life
raft giving first aid at the time of her sinking, until he just disappeared.
The Tucker also has a website and
every two years has a reunion. I have been to two reunions and they
were wonderful experiences. The Tucker was a very tight and proud ship
and served admirably in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
- John Gross
I am the
great niece of Clifford Christopher Tatge, the young second class
seaman and radio operator on the tanker Neosho that was attacked by the
Japanese in the Coral Sea battle. Christopher was the youngest of
seven brothers and sisters. Being a minor, his parents had to consent for
him to enlist in the navy. Christopher was visiting his sister's home in
California on December 7th when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He was carrying the signed papers around in his pocket and that very day he
mailed his papers in.
My mother has a copy of a letter that Christopher had
typed (not written) to my mothers' parents (her father was Christopher's
brother). The letter is dated April 2, 1942 and in the letter he mostly talks
about the family, his motorcycle that he missed (he said upon his return he was
going to "ride the wheels off of it"), and the 16 pounds he had put on since he
had been in the navy. Apparently his parents came to California to see him off
on his tour as he briefly mentions their visit. The only thing he mentions about
the ship is that he is a radio operator on the ship and he liked it fine. -
list of survivors you list Loren B. Parkhurst. This was my father.
He was 19 at the time and a Fireman third class. My father was in
the boiler room when the ship was hit. He told the tale of having to stay
put in a listing, sinking ship. He said they thought she was going
down at the time, until the steam lines finished spilling out steam. Of the
crew in the boiler room he said the only deaths were two guys who panicked
and tried to make it through the steam. His best friend from boot camp was
Vernon Zeddies, killed in action that day. Dad stayed in contact with
Vernon’s parents and they were like grandparents to me. The bonds that were
made between them only faded in death. I am in contact with Vernon’s
brother via email to this day. - Loren
Survivor Contact List for the
If any Neosho survivor should remember
Herbert L. Bennett (Fireman 1st Class on AO-23, later served on
USS Neosho (AO-48), died in 1990), please contact his son,
If any survivor should
remember Harry F. Bradshaw (Bud) who served on the USS Neosho
contact his sister
Marian Bradshaw. He had been
stateside on leave and hitched a ride back to
Pearl Harbor on the
Neosho and arrived on Dec. 6, 1941. He did not have time to rejoin
the Arizona, before the
attack December 7. He remained on the Neosho until it was lost in
the Battle of
the Coral Sea in May
1942 when he was reported Missing in Action. We have never known
My uncle was Robert Lee Peterson,
seamen second class, and just 17 and joined the Navy and was one of
the many killed on the Neosho. He was from a small town (Broadland
Illinois) the son of Grover and Mamie Peterson, brother to 5 other
siblings. There was also another Peterson who served alongside my
Uncle. Until the day my grandmother passed in 1990 she always
believed Robert was not dead and that it had been another Peterson
on the Neosho. If there is anyone who is yet alive and remembers my
Uncle could they please contact me,
Connie (Peterson) Ruggles.
Table of Contents:
The current page is shown in | <urn:uuid:eb6e52b7-2512-40c5-b314-f028154000f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.delsjourney.com/uss_neosho/forum/neosho_forum_home.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984413 | 2,110 | 1.6875 | 2 |
There might be many ways of treating bipolar disorder. The best result would be that the person affected feel better and have a well functioning life. Even though there are standards, treatment will always be based on a complex set of personal factors - what works for me might not work for you, and vice verse.
On a regular basis we get posts here in r/bipolarreddit about alternative ways of treating bipolar disorder. Some think that we are the new branch of evolution and that medicine only disturbs our natural abilities. Others think that the moderators of the forum are representatives of “big pharma” and that this causes us to block all posts about alternative treatments. Others again feel that everybody should smoke a lot of weed and that this will fix all our problems. After a discussion, the moderators have decided to make a stand against alternative medicine as a treatment for bipolar disorder.
We wish to address suggestions to treatment of bipolar disorder through various supplements that can be defined as alternative medicine. We, the moderators, believe this forum should try to be based around reason, science and facts. If there are activities, food, herbs or other things people believe people can benefit from - we will accept a debate around this as long as these posts can be backed up by science. If yoga helps you - good! If exercise helps you - great. If smoking weed helps you - ok - but for all cases – if you suggest it as treatment you need to show us some proof that it might help others. This proof should be delivered through references too peer reviewed
articles. But – in the case you suggest that people switch their Lithium with vitamins or sugar pills - your post will be moderated and your account will be followed by the moderators. Why? We think Bluesatin said it well: “If your bipolar was suppressed with multi-vitamins, as far as I'm concerned you were misdiagnosed.” And if you are not even bipolar you should surely not be giving any advice about treatment here in r/bipolarreddit.
“Public acceptance of alternative medicine has been fuelled by a sense of disillusionment many have come to feel toward all authority figures in these troubled times. The rush to dethrone physicians is born of an odd mix of social envy, nostalgia, and disappointment, the latter arising from a number of admittedly over-reaching promises upon which biomedicine has yet to make good. Disaffection has also been prompted by a growing feeling that medical care has become too rushed, overly-technical, and depersonalized. Other detractors are unhappy at the lack of cures for certain chronic conditions which biomedicine does not always manage as well as sufferers might wish. This disenchantment has been intensified in some quarters by a renewed willingness to entertain grand conspiracy theories. An anti-science and anti-physician backlash has resulted from this need to believe that secret plotting on the part of powerful self-serving cabals underlies society’s shortcomings. As a powerful institution with political aims of its own, medicine has filled the role of villain for various conspiracy mongers. Proponents of alternative medicine have been quick to capitalize on this climate of suspicion because it supports their claim that their rejection by orthodox practitioners is merely a ploy to protect the influence and earnings of the medical establishment. Unfortunately, many in their audience seem incapable of separating whatever misgivings they might have about the socio-political activities of doctors as a powerful, self-regulating profession from the question of whether the treatments biomedicine has at its command are genuinely better than those of the “alternatives.” Barry L. Beyerstein, Ph.D.
“Holistic medicine tends to fill the void some feel has been created by the technocratization and depersonalization of orthodox medicine. Alternative healers provide comfort and possibly add to the quality of life for those for whom neither they nor orthodox physicians can offer a cure. Its emphasis on interpersonal relations, healthy lifestyle and disease prevention, and its advocacy of using the least invasive effective remedy are worth encouraging. Alternative practices should continue to be carefully combed for those that can pass scientific scrutiny. However, the “alternatives’” tendency to divert patients from more effective, scientifically proven therapies are costs to them, and its popularization of pseudoscience and magical thinking are costs to us all. The burden of proof remains on the proponents—our demand should always be for objective evidence, for as Francis Bacon warned, “...what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.” Barry L. Beyerstein, Ph.D.
TL:DR r/bipolarreddit demands that you post links to peer reviewed articles if you are suggesting some way of treating bipolar disorder. Any suggestions that the moderators define as “alternative medicine” will be deleted and the user posting this will be banned.
(Please excuse any bad language as I am not from an English speaking country) | <urn:uuid:15c91eb7-780a-43d4-b786-b6915da40fe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reddit.com/r/BipolarReddit/comments/m4pm2/psa_references_to_alternative_medicine_as/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963518 | 1,017 | 1.625 | 2 |
PG&E sharply questioned at hearing on San Bruno explosion
There was lots of anger from victims and legislators but very few substantive answers from regulators or Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials during an Oct. 19 hearing at the state capitol on the Sept. 9 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people, injured at least 50 others, and destroyed 37 homes in San Bruno.
State senators grilled PG&E executives and officials from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), demanding to know why an aging segment of the San Bruno pipeline had been neglected despite having been flagged several years ago as high-risk and in need of repair.
Residents from San Bruno, including some who lost loved ones in the catastrophic incident, recounted their terrifying experiences of that night. Five San Bruno residents filed suit Oct. 19 against PG&E in San Mateo County Superior Court.
The complaints allege that the utility didn't do enough to maintain the pipeline: "Investigation has revealed that the pipeline that exploded was a ticking time bomb," one of the complaints states. "The San Bruno pipeline explosion was completely preventable."
WHAT IS "SAFE"?
A central focus of the California Senate committee hearing was Line 132, the gas line that ruptured. PG&E installed the 30-inch, high-pressure steel pipeline in San Bruno some 50 years ago.
In 2007, the company approached the CPUC as part of an annual rate-setting process and asked for higher rates, justifying its request with a list of repairs that needed funding. A segment of Line 132, several miles from the epicenter of the explosion, was on the list. The CPUC granted a $5 million rate increase to complete the upgrade, but the work was never done. The money presumably went toward a different project deemed a higher priority.
In 2009, PG&E was back at the CPUC again with a second request for additional funding and a new project list in hand. Line 132 was included again, coupled with a document noting, "The risk of a failure at this location [is] unacceptably high."
But even though the upgrade was never scheduled and the project never completed, Line 132 vanished from the repair list by the time PG&E returned to the CPUC as part of the rate-setting process in 2010. By then, an engineer had determined it would not have to be replaced for several more years.
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Safety and Security
The Residence Life office knows that safety and security are important issues. We believe it takes a partnership among Residence Life procedures, our staff and students to maintain our reputation as a safe campus. Below are highlights of the multiple security measures in the residence halls.
- Most front doors are locked at 9 p.m., but some halls are locked 24/7. In order to enter the hall after the front doors lock, a resident must use his or her hall security key or a student ID for card-access halls.
- Interior hallway doors leading to residential areas are locked 24/7 and require a key or student ID for access.
- After 9 p.m., all guests must be signed in at the front desk.
- Staff is accessible 24 hours a day.
- Each hall has two resident assistants on duty every night. During the evening they walk the building to be attentive to safety and security concerns.
- Each night there are four hall directors/graduate assistants on duty for campus. They are there to consult with resident assistants on duty and assist with major events.
- Each room is equipped with a smoke detector that is checked in August, December and April.
- Fire extinguishers and fire alarm pull stations are located in multiple locations in each hall.
- On the back of each room door is a schematic showing the nearest exit and identifying the reassembly location for residents should they need to evacuate the hall.
- Unannounced fire drills are conducted eight times per year.
- Video cameras are located in elevators, the lobby and in some hallways and stairwells.
- Tornado shelters are located throughout the residence hall system.
- We maintain a close working relationship with the Department of Public Safety, the campus police.
How Students Can Do Their Part
- Lock your room door when not at home and at night while sleeping.
- Keep your keys with you at all times.
- Do not loan your keys to others.
- Report lost room keys immediately.
- Report suspicious people to hall staff.
- Use designated entrances when entering the hall.
- Do not prop doors.
- Do not let individuals you do not know into the building.
- Read and understand hall and University policies.
- Look out for one another. | <urn:uuid:5d058551-a0cc-45c2-9a0a-7a52ba913943> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmich.edu/housing/info/security.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941867 | 472 | 1.585938 | 2 |
A federal jury began deliberations on Friday in the trial of a Somali man accused of being a pirate negotiator involved in an attack on a U.S. yacht in which all four Americans on board were eventually shot and killed.
Mohammad Saaili Shibin faces piracy, kidnapping and hostage-taking charges in connection with the 2011 hijacking of the Quest off the coast of Africa, although he never boarded the sailing vessel.
Prosecutors said Shibin was responsible for researching the American hostages online to decide how large of a ransom to seek and to negotiate their release once they reached Somalia. U.S. authorities consider Shibin the highest-ranking pirate they have ever captured.
The 53-year-old former oil company translator is also charged with piracy in the 2010 hijacking of a German merchant vessel in which crew members were tortured while he negotiated their release. Prosecutors said Shibin earned between $30,000 and $50,000 for his role in securing a $5 million ransom for the Marida Marguerite and its crew.
Nearly two dozen crew members, most of whom were from India, had been held in captivity for about eight months before their release.
Shibin attorney James Broccoletti said Shibin was merely acting as a mediator for the hostages aboard the German ship and that it was a mistake that he accepted payments from pirates for his services.
He saod Shibin shouldn't be convicted of piracy because he never boarded the yacht and didn't commit robbery at sea in either case. That line of defense took a significant blow when U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar sided with prosecutors in defining piracy. When reading instructions to jurors, Doumar said that inciting or facilitating piracy was enough to secure a guilty plea.
The definition of piracy has been in dispute since Shibin's indictment. That's because two other federal judges in the same courthouse have issued different rulings in other piracy cases involving attacks on U.S. Navy ships. Doumar waited to rule on whether to dismiss the piracy charges until he heard all the evidence in the case, ultimately deciding to allow the charges to go to the jury.
At issue is whether piracy is defined solely as robbery at sea. U.S. law refers to piracy only "as defined by the law of nations." Shibin's case is unique from other pirates the U.S. has tried because he wasn't part of the raiding parties that sought out and attacked ships.
The 4th U.S. District Court of Appeals heard arguments on the definition of piracy in September but has not indicated when it might rule.
"Piracy doesn't end when you take the ship," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph E. DePadilla told jurors Friday. "Piracy finishes when you get the ransom. That's the whole idea behind piracy."
If convicted of piracy in either case, Shibin faces a mandatory life sentence. Of the 14 others charged in the case of the Quest, 11 have been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to piracy. Three others await trial on murder and other death-penalty eligible charges. | <urn:uuid:96700551-8d58-4e24-808e-70c160bebc78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/apr/27/us-jury-begins-deliberations-in-somali-piracy-case/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977697 | 632 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Offering a European perspective on retail baking, Europain 2005, to be held in Paris, April 16-20, expects about 600 exhibitors. The trade show, which occurs triennially, will be the largest international baking event of the year.
Bread is a way of life for the French. They consume more than 10 billion baguettes a day, and each person consumes an average of 160g of bread daily, according to UFFEB, the bakery equipment association that hosts Europain. The craft boulangerie-pâtisserie remains the favorite local store for the French. Two thirds of households visit their local baker an average of four times a week, more often than nearly any other retail business.
To learn more about France’s deep-rooted baking traditions at Europain 2005, visit www.europain.com, and click on the British flag for the English version. | <urn:uuid:b45dfba1-28b4-4bec-a320-bc5a8ab3c0ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://modern-baking.com/mag/mb_imp_7583 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933066 | 188 | 1.75 | 2 |
Looks good but will it deliver?
10 June 2011
The report by Richard MacDonald's "Farming Regulation Task Force" is a comprehensive and fascinating review of the regulatory problems faced by farmers and food processors. It even seems to supply answers to those problems.
The proposed effect should be to reduce paperwork and bureaucracy. However, we are not being invited to return to a "golden age" when individuals were left to their own devices. The reality is that public opinion and EU legislation demand that there is regulation. What is proposed is that the government delivers "better regulation", not liberalisation.
In order to do this, the Report recommends a change in the relationship between the regulatory authorities and farmers. The authorities should concentrate on achieving the purpose of the law (the "outcome"), not the creation of new processes; the farming or food processing business will face less box ticking in return for adopting a more thoughtful and responsible approach. Instead of endless forms, there should be a strategic overview from the authority, and proportionate punishment if the desired outcome is not achieved.
The Report does seem to be a genuine attempt to listen to and assist landowners, farmers and others in food production. The proposals to allow small agricultural buildings to be erected without prior approval from the planning authority and the Report's opposition to the capping of SFP claims are examples of this attitude.
But how realistic are the proposals? Attractive solutions to "red tape issues" will be tested strenuously, and many of them will fall victim to other pressures, the most significant of which will be European legislation. The idea that entitlements might be abandoned can only be within the gift of Europe. When it comes to cross compliance the test in Europe will be whether proposed changes bring greater benefit (including social benefit) to the general public, and the potential reduction in time consuming processes for farmers is not high on that list.
It is certainly welcome to find that the government is listening to the voice of agriculture, but let us not assume that everything the MacDonald Committee wishes for will actually come to pass.
For further information contact William Neville on (0117) 939 2202 or email firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:8c15e07b-b706-4347-bdfa-267410143a86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.burges-salmon.com/Sectors/Food_Farming_Land/News/9269.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944975 | 448 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday endorsed an upgraded U.N. status for the Palestinian Authority, despite intense opposition from the United States and Israel.
The resolution elevates their status from "non-member observer entity" to "non-member observer state," the same category as the Vatican, which Palestinians hope will provide new leverage in their dealings with Israel.
Its leaders had been working with dozens of supporting nations to develop a formal draft, enlisting the backing of European countries such as France and Spain.
The vote was 138 delegates in favor of the measure, nine against and 41 abstentions, including Germany.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the move, which many call symbolic, represents a "last chance to save the two-state solution."
It comes on the heels of an eight-day conflict that raged between Israel and Hamas fighters, where a series of airstrikes and rocket launches drew international attention and threatened regional stability.
"We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel; rather we came to affirm the legitimacy of the state that must now achieve its independence, and that is Palestine," he said.
But Israel's U.N. ambassador Ron Prosor said the move largely ignores the specifics of longstanding issues, such as settlements in disputed lands, and cannot substitute for direct negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
This resolution "doesn't pursue peace," Prosor said, criticizing Abbas for being unable to represent the Gaza Strip, where a Hamas-controlled government presides.
"It pushes it backwards," he said.
The effort stalled last year when it became apparent that the bid could not get the necessary support in the Security Council. Observer state status does not require Security Council approval, unlike full membership recognition.
The observer status resolution needs only a majority of the U.N.'s 193 members to approve.
The United States and Israel have remained steadfast in their opposition, saying the move will not advance the cause of Middle East peace.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said American leaders could not support a measure that circumvents direct talks and cautioned that Thursday's decision did "not establish Palestine as a state."
Rice urged both sides to the resume direct negotiations without preconditions.
"Israel is prepared to live in peace with the Palestinian state," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday. "But for peace to endure, Israel's security must be protected, the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state and they must be prepared to end the conflict with Israel once and for all."
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev called the resolution "political theater."
But Palestinian leaders have said they had the right to go to the U.N. because Israel failed to comply with agreements signed more than two decades ago.
"It's about a contract. Our contract is that in five years, we should have concluded the treaty of peace and all core issues. This did not happen, and we're talking about 20 years later. And going to the U.N. is not a unilateral step," Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said in September.
The last round of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority was in 2010.
Erakat said the new status would eliminate Israeli justifications for building settlements in the disputed areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
But Israeli officials disagreed.
"No decision by the U.N. can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel," Netanyahu said.
Meanwhile in Washington, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak addressed his country's relations with Iran and expressed doubt about sanctions against that country. The United Nations' nuclear watchdog has said Iran is cooperating enough in a review of its nuclear programs.
"I don't believe that these kinds of sanctions will bring them to a moment of truth where they sit around a table and look at each others eyes and decide that the game is over, they can't stand it anymore, they are going to give up their nuclear intention," Barak said. | <urn:uuid:f19b910f-ee70-4676-a077-fa4e589c8486> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.krdo.com/news/UN-upgrades-Palestinian-Authority-s-status/-/417220/17597636/-/item/0/-/13916g8z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967014 | 838 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Today’s Sun newspaper makes uncomfortable reading for Labour supporters. Mike Smithson at Political Betting asks whether the Sun is “using polling to help undermine Brown”. Sifting through the underlying data certainly reveals a more nuanced position on public services and the economy.
Asked “In general, how do you rate your child’s school?”, 89 per cent gave an overall score of “good”. This contrasts with 57 per cent giving the quality of education in primary schools the same rating and 50 per cent for state secondary schools. Meanwhile, just 26 per cent believe that the quality of education in Britain’s state schools overall is better than it was when Labour came to power in 1997. The discrepancy appears to derive from voters without children in state schools providing a more negative view of schools in general.
On the NHS, The Sun outlines that “voters complained about postcode lotteries, poor management and superbugs”. What The Sun don’t mention is that those polled were asked to pick from a list of loaded statements about Labour’s 12 years:
- Patients in many parts of Britain suffer from the ‘postcode lottery’ and fail to obtain treatment given to other NHS patients
- Hospitals, and the NHS more generally, are managed less efficiently
- The NHS failed to tackle the scourge of ‘superbugs’
- There is a shortage of midwives which is affecting maternity services
Only three positive statements were offered including a technocratic statement: “Spending on the NHS has risen to match the European average.” On the back of this loaded question, 34 per cent thought that the quality of health care in the NHS overall was better than it was when Labour came to power compared to 31 per cent who thought it was worse.
And while the economic picture is bleak with 67 per cent blaming the British government for “the recession and recent rise in unemployment in Britain”, 88 per cent blame British banks. Although 46 per cent believe that Gordon Brown is at fault for the “sharp rise in public borrowing”, 37 per cent agree with the statement that “It is not mainly Gordon Brown’s fault. All, or almost all, the rise in borrowing can be explained by the need to keep the recession as short and shallow as possible”. Liberal Democrat supporters back Brown by 44 to 40 per cent on this question.
The answers on Afghanistan provide a warning for all political parties that support the conflict and for the paper’s own editorial stance. Only 37 per cent agree that “British troops in Afghanistan are making our lives safer here in Britain” while 50 per cent disagree. | <urn:uuid:57f3df25-f79e-4284-a28f-ed0bf870bcdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/01/what-the-sun-wont-tell-you/ | 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 | 0.957438 | 557 | 1.625 | 2 |
Egypt bans YouTube over anti-Muslim film Innocence of Muslims
- From: AFP
- February 10, 2013
A COURT in Egypt ordered that video-sharing website YouTube be blocked for a month for hosting an anti-Islam film that triggered deadly outrage across the Muslim world last year.
The court ruled the authorities must take measures to block access to the site for a month, after a complaint by an Egyptian who accused YouTube of being a "threat to social peace" by putting the US-made film on line.
The crudely made Innocence of Muslims depicted the Prophet Mohammed as a buffoon and paedophile, and sparked a wave of angry anti-American protests across the Middle East in which more than 30 people were killed.
There was no immediate comment on the ruling from the government spokesman in Cairo.
YouTube, a subsidiary of US internet giant Google, has been blocked in Pakistan since December for refusing to heed Islamabad's call to remove the controversial video.
The site simply decided to restrict access to the film for Internet users in several countries, among them Egypt, Libya, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
On January 29, a Cairo court upheld death sentences passed on seven Egyptian Coptic Christians in absentia for their involvement in making the film.
The accused, including the movie's director, are currently living in the United States.
THE family of murdered Seacliff pensioner Anne Redman clapped, cheered and wept as the state's highest court today refused to shorten her killers' sentences.
WHY do window shutters have to be open and seats upright upon landing? Is diet cola harder to pour in the skies? Here are 10 things you just have to know about air travel.
A FAKE doctor who organised a gay orgy at Richmond star Alex Rance's family home because Rance rejected his affections has been jailed for a year.
A FOODLAND supermarket failed the public and breached the trust of South Australia by selling food 40 days after its use-by date, a court has heard. | <urn:uuid:1dd9c41d-351d-44a5-a91c-13f7116ef998> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/world/egypt-bans-youtube-over-anti-muslim-film-innocence-of-muslims/story-fnd11ay0-1226574631642 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954096 | 417 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Milestones: African Americans in Comics, Pop Culture and Beyond
Geppi's Entertainment Museum to Stage "Epic" New Exhibit
(Baltimore, Maryland) February 29, 2012 - Up until now there has been no serious attempt to showcase African Americans in the world of comic books, and the impact of their creative excellence, which has been a mainstay of the industry for as long as comics have been an American art form. That will change during Black History Month 2013 as Geppi's Entertainment Museum (GEM) presents Milestones: African Americans in Comics, Pop Culture and Beyond, a major special exhibit developed and curated by Michael Davis, co-founder of Milestone Media.
The special exhibit will run from February 1, 2013 until March 1, 2014 and it will feature not only the work of mainstream Black creators, but also that of those who consider themselves outside the mainstream, and even those who want nothing to do with the mainstream. | <urn:uuid:66639f24-821a-4fd0-846e-8e5330f73f9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toymania.com/taxonomy/term/253 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965878 | 192 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Four Bluffton civil engineering projects are in the works to reduce fecal coliform levels in the May River and, if they and others succeed, oyster beds will be reopened.
Ron Bullman, director of the town engineering department’s stormwater management division, last week gave an overview of the projects to Town Council.
The projected total cost is $1,176,685.
All but $85,000, for the fourth project on the list, is funded. “It’s a good start,” said engineering director Bob Fletcher.
They will be the first major projects to come out of the May River May River Watershed Action Plan, which as adopted Nov. 9 by council includes a host of recommendations for restoring the river’s headwaters for safe oyster harvesting. At the November meeting, council asked staff to give a projects update with specifics in January.
They include building a New Riverside stormwater pond, Stoney Creek wetlands restoration, a Hampton Lake pond retrofit and a Hampton Hall Pond retrofit. Details need to be worked out with all of the property owners, Bullman said.
Officials have attributed the headwaters’ quality downgrade, measured by fecal coliform counts exceeding federal safety standards for oyster consumption in recent years, to Bluffton’s rapid development.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control began closing the beds in 2009, allowing harvesting in only the most optimal conditions in about a 900-acre headwaters area — a four-mile stretch with beds leased by the Bluffton Oyster Co.
It has since completely shutdown harvesting in the stretch, but safe harvesting continues in downstream areas.
Town Manager Anthony Barrett said there is “no magic pill,” and no one should think harvesting in the closed areas will resume in a year.
Restoration efforts will take an undetermined amount of time, and water sample readings by DHEC need to meet standards averaged over a three-year period, with the three year averages updated yearly.
Preventive measures — such as septic system cleanups, public education and program to transfer development rights away from the watershed — are also under way, Bullman said.
But, “as outlined in the Action Plan the primary restorative solutions involve retrofit and engineering projects that are aimed at reducing the existing level of fecal coliform that reaches the headwaters,” he said.
The action plan outlines about 14 prospective projects.
“These are all ‘boots on the ground’ solutions that are specifically designed to ‘turn back the clock’ on fecal loading to the May River,” Bullman’s written overview said.
Bullman said staff identified four initial, “low-hanging fruit” projects to pursue. “These are ones that have the highest potential for success with respect to feasibility and pollutant load reduction.”
Also, he said the four projects will use three different technologies. They include one new wet stormwater pond, one wetlands restoration project, and retrofits of two existing ponds.
Bullman said some of the projects are cutting edge, and measuring the various outcomes will help determine future projects.
He added that “there’s no real smoking gun” for the increase in fecal coliform, a measure for when bacteria levels become unhealthy for human consumption.
Although town and county stormwater management and environmental officials think volume of stormwater runoff is a major component, they are not sure. With the projects, engineers want to test different technologies and begin building a data base to direct which work best, he said. | <urn:uuid:77a98979-b218-4b31-9731-f1ff4ac3a5aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blufftontoday.com/bluffton-news/2012-01-15/council-gets-may-river-cleanup-projects-outline | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949374 | 755 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Here are links to lists of school supplies that students will need for the upcoming school year:
Jeff Davis Elementary
North Bay Elementary
Popp's Ferry Elementary
Students in Grades 6 through 12 will be given their supply lists by their individual teachers during the first few days of school.
News and notes
Registration info: Biloxi Public Schools conducts Registration on Monday and Tuesday, July 23-24 at the school your child will be attending. Do you know what documentation you'll need at registration? There's a host of information on the Registration page, along with a handy fomr you can fill out online, print and bring with you. Visit the Registration page by clicking here.
The calendar: August 6 is the first official day of school for those who register on time. To see the school board-approved calendar for the 2012-2013 school year, click here.
Football seats: Have your purchased your season tickets for the upcoming Indian football campaign? For information on the schedule and tickets, click here. | <urn:uuid:5c3fb011-aa2c-4300-bd68-4f83123eb28a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://biloxischools.net/NewsDetail.asp?ID=1209 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952294 | 207 | 1.765625 | 2 |
My friend Rene Madsen is from Denmark, and every now and then we discussed
European political events, our views on the process of European integration,
what we like and dislike about living in the USA, etc. I have told him
repeatedly how I feel very hopeful about the future of the European Union,
but never gave him a detailed list of reasons as to why I am so excited about
it. Well, here it is.
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 20:41:59 -0500
From: Jesus Ortega
To: Rene Madsen
Subject: EU: new Constitution and foreign policy document
Not sure how closely you follow European news, but you may have heard about
the final draft of the EU Constitution as well as the document on a common
foreign policy. You know, I am getting more and more hopeful about the
future of the EU by the day. I understand there are many different views
on the proposed Constitution, and we are a long way before we see any of
that implemented. However, my point is not so much that I like or dislike
this or that document. What fills me with hope is to see an Europe that
is taking the lead again. Heck, we are slowly but surely getting to the
forefront of political and economic innovation without nearly noticing.
Let me explain myself.
First of all, the euro has been a tremendous success so far. I know, it
may go up and down, and the dollar may become more valuable than the euro
again. It doesn't really matter. The common currency has demonstrated
that it can compete with the dollar and, even worse (for the Americans),
prove more attractive than the dollar to foreign investors. What does
this mean? Capital, which is something we have lacked in the past when
compared to the Japanese or American economies. Capital that can be used
to reinvest and boost domestic consumption. Keep in mind that one of the
reasons why the American economy has been able to sustain the high levels
of debt it has had in the recent past was precisely this. An attractive
currency brought foreign capital to the country and the Government could
afford to have a higher deficit or debt because it didn't drain the
financial markets. Well, now there is a currency that is competing head
to head against the dollar in the international markets. Pop. The bubble
bursted. Time for a reality check in the USA.
Second, in the pure political front, the process of European integration is
perhaps the most innovative since the foundation of the US itself back in
the 18th century. It is the first time that several independet nations
agree to come together and share parts of their own sovereignty in the
name of a common interest and, by doing so, also for the first time in
centuries many other people are looking to us as an example to follow.
The "American model" has expired. There are no nations in the making
anymore. All countries are already there, and their borders are more or
less clear. Yet, there is an obvious need in many regions of the world
for a model that helps them bridge their differences and teaches them to
come together as separate nations in order to improve their economies
and lifestyles. Did you notice how all these countries (in Latin America,
but also in Africa or Asia) are not looking at the US as an example to
follow anymore? They are looking at the EU. They don't want to lose
their national identities, but at the same time are fully aware that they
need to transcend their own borders. The US does not offer any solution
to that. The EU does. Heck, they even tried to copy us unsuccessfully
with their half-hearted NAFTA project. That tells you a lot. Political
innovation is on the other side of the Atlantic these days, and not here.
Third, our economic and social model is also far more attractive to the
developing nations than that of the US, and for a good reason. The American
model of "unfettered capitalism" does lead to deep social divisions that
those countries cannot afford. Their social gap is already too large as
it is. They cannot afford an economic model that deepens those divisions.
A model like the European, based on a market economy tempered by the
Government, offers both social as well as economic growth to those nations,
which is precisely what they are looking for. To be fair, we still have
to tweak the system quite a bit in order to control the cost, but in the
long term it offers a much healthier society than the American model.
Finally, we are starting to see some serious attempts to build a real
common foreign and security policy that also includes a common rapid
action task force. The document just released yesterday actually calls
for a EU that is not afraid of military involvement to defend its
interests, fight terrorism or stop the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. However, it also acknowledges that this can only be done
in a multilateral way, respecting International Law and within already
existing institutions such as the UN. I am also convinced that in this
field the EU will become more respected than the US, simply because our
attitude is not so arrogant, unilateral and blindly nationalistic (as a
matter of fact, the EU itself cannot be nationalistic because it is not
So, these are the main reasons why I am so excited about the process of
European integration. I believe I told you this a few times already, but
never took the time to explain the reasons why I have so much faith in
the project. These are also the reasons why I don't want to become a
US citizen. I have my faith and my hopes on the other side of the
Atlantic. It seems clear to me that while the "American way" showed the
path to follow during the whole 20th century, it is the "European way"
that will show the path during the 21st century although it will still
take a couple of decades to settle down and become evident. The reason
is clear: while the world becomes more and more globalized, the US keeps
clinging to outdated notions of national sovereignty. The future is in
a concept that melds together the national identities with supranational
interests, but the Americans are unable to come up with answers to that
conundrum because their model, based on pure nation-state, has brought
them to where they are now. It's too difficult to change one's ways until
something happens, everything is shaken and the inevitable downfall comes.
In the meantime, the EU is coming up with an answer that appears to work
and solves the puzzle. That's why I have faith in the future of Europe.
Sure, there will be ups and downs, but I am firmly convinced the future
is very bright. | <urn:uuid:af95003e-4463-4bf3-81a7-81b225e0806e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sacredchaos.com/rants/emails/eu_hopeful.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966519 | 1,443 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Margolin, Winer & Evens LLP (MWE) of Garden City, New York, created the Long Island College Accounting Challenge as a way to encourage Long Island accounting students to become more aware of the professional opportunities available.
Using a quiz show format, the competition for senior accounting students from local universities provides bragging rights for the winning team, and shows them that accountants can have fun. The third competition was held earlier this month.
Each team has four senior accounting students who have taken the core classes of ethics, auditing, accounting, and tax. The questions come from Becker CPA Review, which is one of the sponsors of the event.
“We also have two partners, a tax partner and a quality control partner, serve as judges on the spot to determine if an answer is complete and accurate,” Tracey Segarra, director of marketing, told AccountingWEB.
The competition already is generating a lot of interest, with local universities showing up to watch. Competing universities have increased from four to five this year. Molloy College came to watch last year's event and asked to be included. The other four schools are C.W. Post, Adelphi University, New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), and The State University of New York (SUNY) at Old Westbury.
The College Accounting Challenge also is a recruiting tool for participating schools, and organizers are considering plans to hold the competition at different schools each year to give them an opportunity to showcase their campus. This year's event was held at Adelphi University.
“I think it has been very solid press for us. We are already known but it has highlighted our presence in Long Island. It automatically puts us on the map. It is good public relations and highlights the firm,” said Robert Micera, MWE director of human resources.
“One of the people that participated has since come to work with us,” said Segarra. “It has helped as a recruiting tool and getting people to know the firm. We are the second largest firm on Long Island. It helps to differentiate us. It shows we are an innovative firm. We hope to video the event and upload it to YouTube.”
Micera told AccountingWEB that schools are "coming out of the woodwork" to participate. "It is celebrating working and living on Long Island. We are active in our community and this is a great way to do something fun and interesting for the college students,” he said. | <urn:uuid:5809706d-496b-42bb-878a-6fd86c7d7b10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accountingweb.com/print/205071 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97256 | 523 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Technology is now a part of our life more then ever – so why not make the most of it and personalize it to our own unique style. I love the Apple products because you can do just that.
I recently purchased my first iPad2 and I have had a lot of fun organizing and decoration it to my liking. I plan on taking my new iPad2 with me as I travel Europe in the Fall. Unlike a lot of Americans, I have never been a huge Apple fan. I dedicated myself to HP; but, recently I have become fond of iPods, iPhones, and now iPads. They are quite handy.
1. You will know how to; set a personalized background on your Home Screen and your Lock Screen,
2. You will know how to brighten and lighten your background,
3. You will realize the importance of personalizing your hand held devices.
1. iPad2 – If you have a iPad or an iPad3 you can still follow these steps but know that they might differ a small bit here and there,
2. a picture that you love (Internet if wanting to get one from Pinterest or Google),
3. and a sense of adventure with some strong fingers built for pressing and sliding.
Apple is a multinational corporation that sells consumer electronics, personal computers, and consumer software since 1976 in California, created by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. There most profitable Software is the Macrosoft line of computers – this is where the iPad, iPhone, and iPods come from. The iPad, a media tablet, was introduced to the public on January 27th 2010. Since then they have made two more versions with faster processors and new features to keep up with the want and need of the consumers (Wiki). Since I have a iPad2, all of my pictures and instructions come from that version.
Apple is just growing in popularity; it is not faulting. When asked about the increase in sales of iPads Tim Cook, CEO of Apple replied “To put it in context, It took us 22 years to sell 55 million Macs, … It took us about 5 years to sell 22 million iPods, and it took us about 3 years to sell that many iPhones. And so, this thing is, on a trajectory that’s off the charts” this shocked the readers of the article Apple: 316 Million iOS (iPhone, iPad) Devices Sold in 2011
Even though I am not talking about buying or using applications in this module I want to mention the huge increase in their development. There is a huge social trend for applications that are easily down-loadable to your mobile device; whether a iPad or iPhone or a lot of other devices as well. There is a huge demand for Social Networking Applications, such as Facebook and Twitter. An article called IPad Social Networking Apps: Trends Show Use Huge Demand , says that “all these applications carry a lot of importance as these have opened a new dimension of communication” (Williams, 2012). This connects with the fact that our decade has been transformed into a technology obsessive culture and each human being wants to old that technology in the palm of their hand. In the same article they give a fantastic quote about applications and their impact on our minds, “reaches out to your minds and create nerve wrecking, heart wrenching and mind boggling games and other social networking apps that will keep you enticed anytime of the day, craving for more of that scintillating experience” (William, 2012).
I agree with everything written above. People like to be with people so social networking apps – especially Facebook – tend to be very popular. I am not going to lie, I love Facebook just as much as the next person; might even say I am addicted – so the Facebook app is definitely one of my top picks. When it comes down to the iPad2 that I have now there was no real desire for me to get one at first. My mom really wanted one and my roommate had one but I never felt a real want to own one. That all changed when I was accepted into my Study Abroad program and realized I was going to be walking to school 30 minutes to an hour everyday. I needed something light and that would work for my needs. I started thinking about the iPad because it is very trendy and sleek but also because it works just like my iPhone which I seemed to have down pretty well. There would be no learning needed when I bought this bigger version of my phone, this was my logic, I was wrong. It is a lot different, so I have a lot to learn before I make it my singular computer around the world. So, I am starting here. The place where everyone starts when they first get something new and exciting – they personalize it. So I am learning as well as teaching how to personalize and organize the desktop of the iPad2.
Personalizing your iPad2 Step by Step —
1. When personalizing your iPad2 the first step is to turn it on. You can find your on switch if you turn it over, it is on the back on the top (black arrow). The volume buttons are back there as well(pink arrow).
2. On the front of your iPad2 you have the home button (red arrow); no matter where you are in your iPad all you have to do is push the home button and you go straight home. There is also the spot where you plug in your charger (Orange arrow).
3. On my iPad2 I have already personalized it to my liking – as you can see with the adorable smiley faces . Here you can see the sliding locking mechanism (pink arrow). All you have to do to unlock your iPad is slide that arrow to the right. This screen is called your Home Screen (remember that for later).
4. Once you have unlocked your iPad2 it’s time to change your back ground image for both your Lock Screen and your Home Screen. Here is my Home Screen already personalized with an image of my favorite animal. The red arrow is pointing towards what is called your Shelf; this is a place where you put your most used applications, such as, Facebook, E-mail and Internet. The green arrow is showing you where your Settings is. You will be continually using this to change almost everything you want to customize on your iPad.
5. Open your settings using the tip of your finger and tapping it. Once opened this is what you will see (down below). There are a lot of things you can do through settings but we will just focus on the wallpaper aspect of it. Click on Brightness and Wallpaper (purple arrow).
6. You will be given the choice to either brighten your screen (yellow arrow) or change your wallpaper(maroon arrow). Changing the brightness is pretty much self explanatory so I am not going to go into detail about that. Click on Wallpaper.
7. Then you are of course given another set of options; you can either choose an image for your wallpaper from a set of pictures that came with the iPad2(maroon arrow) or choose from your Camera Roll (pictures you have taken with the iPad2 or saved from other sources (blue arrow). For this purpose – since my background that I want is in my Camera Roll – we will choose that option.
8. Once you have chosen Camera Roll it will take you into your library of photos. I have a bunch of pictures for this Module so they are not all that interesting. I have decided to use my adorable little fuzzies for my new wallpaper (yellow arrow).
9. After clicking the perfect picture for your wallpaper it will show up big, kind of like a pre-visual of what it will look like. Then at the top it will ask you if you want this image to be your Lock Screen background(red arrow), your Home Screen background (blue arrow), or both (yellow arrow).
10. If you are satisfied by the way the image looks in its larger state, you have chosen how you want this image to lay as your wallpaper, and where to put this new wallpaper, then it will take you back to the Camera Roll after you click which ever one you prefer. I chose Set Home Screen. Now, simply push the home button at the bottom of your iPad2 and it will take you back to your Home Screen with your new wall paper. Here is my new Home Screen.
Congratulations! You have made step to having your iPad2 fit your style and personality! You can repeat these steps with different preferences as well. Such as, if you want to pick a photo from the sample wallpapers instead of your camera role, or if you want to set your lock screen instead of your home screen.
Thank you for participating and I hope you get everything out of your iPad2 that you want and need.
One last thing, I added some Youtube.com videos for you to watch if you would like some extra knowledge on this subject. They are in a page connected to this one on the panel to the left.
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People Of WFIT
Sat June 23, 2012
Norman Lear: 'Just Another Version Of You'
Originally published on Sat June 23, 2012 5:42 pm
When legendary TV producer Norman Lear was young, his father gave him a do-it-yourself radio kit. Lear built it, turned it on and remembers one day hearing a fiery broadcast that spoke kindly of the Nazi movement and ranted against Jews.
"It scared the hell out of me," Lear, who is Jewish, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "It was the first time that I learned that I was, quote, 'different.' I started to pay a lot more attention to people who were even more different."
Lear says his political interest and sensitivities started there. He grew up and produced some of the 1970s' most iconic TV sitcoms, including All in the Family, The Jeffersons and Good Times. In those shows, he helped Americans laugh and see the similarities they all share — regardless of race or religion.
Lear also founded a civil liberties advocacy group, People for the American Way. He turns 90 next month.
On his relationship with his father
"I was a kid of the Depression. I saw my father's brothers go belly up. My father was always belly up. It's very difficult for me to call my father what he was, so I use 'rascal.' He served time. He was in trouble a lot with the law. He sold some bonds that were fake bonds and went to prison for three years when I was 9 years old. But I can't overstate how much I loved him. You hear me talk about him lightly because I cannot make him a villain. I loved him."
On how his iconic sitcoms represented African-Americans
"As a kid, when I learned I was different, I was also learning other people were considered far more different, like black people in America. When Esther [Rolle] and John [Amos] became very well known as their characters in Good Times, they felt they were representing black people to America, as indeed they were. But they became extremely sensitive to that. So when I wanted to do an episode about Thelma who was 16 and very beautiful, the daughter, having to think about boys that wanted to go to bed with her — just to talk about the subject, we had terrible fights. At one point, I found myself saying around the table, 'Look, we can't argue about these things anymore. The patina of black life I'll never know like you people. But I'm a father, I'm an uncle, I'm a brother, I'm a cousin, I'm all the things you are as a human being.' And what we got out of that was some better understanding that we're really all the same people."
On being a lightning rod because of his political activism
"I've received a lot of death threats. I never intended to be a lightning rod. Somebody asked me in an interview, if I had a bumper sticker, what would my bumper sticker be? And I said, 'Just another version of you.' And that's what I think we all are — versions of each other because we have to come to the understanding that we are one." | <urn:uuid:4046b6f2-eec1-45dd-9bee-fc4b21e93ad8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wfit.org/post/norman-lear-just-another-version-you | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991931 | 676 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The New York Times has a whole anxiety column? I just discovered this today.
The below is an elegant description of anxiety, as I see it through the rear-view mirror, although the latest column by Alexandra Heather Foss as a whole is not reflective of my experiences:
This is what anxiety does, the anxiety that comes from being a sensitive being in an insensitive world. We are taught when we are young that life will be fair, good guys will win, that if we are well behaved we won’t suffer, that out there for each of us is some perfect stranger who will swoop in with armor and save us, some fictional man or woman who will make everything — all the assaults and sorrows, traumas and disappointments — O.K. But it is painful to be born, to literally be pushed out from a tiny canal, crushed so that we can live.
When we arrive the world is bright and harsh and loud. Strangers fondle our bodies as though we asked them to and then we are given to one, maybe two, people, our parents, who are supposed to love one another and us. Often some part of that equation is lacking and that becomes confusing because when the blind trust between child and parent gains sight and we see things as they really are, when we see the disappointed tears of one parent, hear the screams of another, when the reality starts to come into focus and we realize that what we believed was real never was and that trust is a candy peddled by strangers, it becomes too much to bear.
When this happens we have to look elsewhere for the picture of happiness we formed before we saw clearly the underlying thread of sadness inside those we love, all the while doling our light and love out to those lacking as if our supply were endless. Soon we are tired, our lights are dim, but still we give, we try to make things we cannot change different so that the people we love are happy, but the burden becomes great, the task Sisyphean, and those we try to fix are never satisfied.
And, an equally elegant description of our society:
Our culture is not nurturing. We ask each other, “How are you doing?” but we do not really want to know. We do not really want that person to say anything other than “fine,” because that would mean we would have to listen, to really care, something that most of us have not even done with ourselves. We want form responses, people who check all the right boxes, who say all the right things, whether they mean them or not. A résumé for a culture puffed up with lies, that is what we want. And as a result, we have a “fine” culture that is everything but fine. Medicated smiles, robotic responses, whole lifetimes that pass under the guise of “fine” when all we really want is for someone to ask and care.
We want nourishment, not only for our bodies but for our souls. That is what we need to flourish, to feel less anxious. Environments that are safe, loving, relationships that are honest and nurturing. Nobody wants to fight, not really. We are taught to fight ourselves and others, we are taught to be defensive and aggressive, so that we may survive another day. But it seems it should be different.
When I look at nature — the way a seagull spreads its white wings wide as it hovers just above a meal, the way the tide rushes in bringing shell sparkles and lost treasures, the way the sun rises every morning even when it is cloudy, the way a tree stands proud even when it is wounded, it’s roots deeper than the trials it endures — I see truth, a truth where there is no need for anxiety because things are as they should be. People should stand strong and say what they really feel not what they think others want to hear. They should flow with their emotions, like the tide, whether they be happy or sad. They should rise bright with possibility into every day and hover gently near what they want instead of aggressively taking.
I wish I had written this. Well-done. | <urn:uuid:2feae79e-f30a-4c5f-a20f-4965c5545b18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jenver.tumblr.com/tagged/quoted | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974882 | 865 | 1.757813 | 2 |
1. Have jars washed and dried before you begin.
2. If you have small children to young to help give them something new to keep them busy i.e. new movie etc.
3. If someone in your house does not like bees extract honey while they are gone(my husband was on a fishing trip)
4. Bees will get in the house.
5. If you have long hair put it in a pony tail.
6. Buy more then one bucket
7. Use rubber bands to put around paint strainers
8. Serated knives work well for uncapping i.e. long bread knife/ ginsu knife
9. Buy an uncapping fork there are places the knife won't work, but in a pinch a table fork works
10. Rubber spatulas are your friend have several, short, long, big, small
11. No matter how far away you put equipment the bees will find it
12. Just because your extractor can go super fast doesn't mean you should make it go super fast
13. You will still find sticky spots days later after you extract even though you thought you wiped down everything especialy door knobs.
14. If you have a colony of feral cats that you feed, feed them before extracting your honey as they get in the way of you going in and out of the house and scramble around your feet because they see you carrying something and think it is food and trip you.
15. Never spit while wearing a veil!! | <urn:uuid:63113d58-1151-4d1c-8166-1a257d1f374c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=38932.0 | 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 | 0.952421 | 312 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Graphis scripta - elven script lichen on yellow birch bark
Fairies or elves have taken up residence near me, and keep a small home in the roots of a hillside
maple. It has a sturdy door I've never dared to open. I see signs of them everywhere in my woods,
including this curious writing found on the bark of yellow birch trees. For centuries people have
mistaken this script for the lirelliform fruiting bodies of a bark-loving lichen. Linnaeus and those
other fools think that the lichen actually shoots fungal spores from the little black gashes. Pshah.
I'm sticking with my version of the story. | <urn:uuid:1832b909-e6af-4393-b9ad-540345c0d6fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.plantpath.cornell.edu/PhotoLab/Boroscope/1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934664 | 146 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Stock Market Crash Imminent: Major Crisis Indicators Such As Savings Deposits inflows, Capital Spending, And Household Debt Just Hit Recessionary Level While Derivative Markets Starting to Crack
November 20th, 2012
Is The Largest Weekly Inflow Into Bank Savings Accounts On Record, A Flashing Red Alarm?
When one thinks of America, the word “savings” is likely the last thing to come into a person’s head, for the simple reason that the vast majority of Americans don’t save: recall that in September the personal savings rate dipped to 3.3%, the lowest since 2009 save for one month.
On the surface this makes sense: the average US consumer, tapped out, with more spending than income, has no choice but to max out their credit card, and eat into whatever savings they may have.
This is usually as far as most contemplations on savings go. And this is a mistake, because at least according to official Fed data reported weekly as part of the H.6, which lists the data on the various components of M1 and, more importantly, M2, the real story with US savings is something totally different.
When was the largest ever inflow into Savings Deposits at Commercial banks, at $131.9 billion in one week? This past week. | <urn:uuid:c59c0985-77a4-4bb6-99b4-3265cee3e1ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://revolutionradio.org/?p=40777 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942521 | 277 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Flights to Denver will also put you in close proximity to the city zoo. Unlike other zoos in the U.S., this one is different and should be visited under all circumstances. It has an array of exhibits and animals that you must see along with your children. Some of the notable attractions in the zoo include African jungle exhibit, African savannah exhibit, Primate Panorama exhibit, Tropical Discovery exhibit and the Bird World.
Another place of interest is the Colorado State Capital Building. The structure is famous for its shiny large dome. You can climb up the building to reach the observation decks, which will give you a breathtaking view of the city. There are guided tours of the building also available, which will allow you to see many other attractions within the State Capitol.
Children will enjoy a visit to the Downtown Aquarium. The aquarium houses 500 different marine species. There is also a restaurant in the building that is lined with see-through glass, so that visitors can enjoy marine life while they are relaxing and eating. A must-see exhibit at the aquarium is the Aquarium Adventure.
Just like most other big cities in the U.S., even Denver has its own botanic gardens. There are more than 30 gardens, and some of the most popular are the Rock Alpine Garden, Xeriscape Demo Garden and the Winnie the Pooh Garden. You can be certain that your kids will love the latter garden a lot and you will find it difficult to drag them away!
People visiting the city in winter can indulge in winter activities, such as snowboarding, sledging, skiing and ice skating. Children can have a whale of a time going snow tubing or riding ski bikes. There are many ski resorts close to Denver, with the most popular ones being Breckenridge and Keystone.
Once you finish enjoying the attractions of the city, you can head to the numerous shopping malls here. Some of the most popular are Cherry Creek, Flat Iron Crossing, 16th Street Mall and Park Meadows. You will surely find souvenirs and items to take back home. Perhaps all the money that you have saved on cheap tickets can be spent during an afternoon of shopping. | <urn:uuid:bec70794-2adf-49ec-8a64-31de52453a59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickcolorado.com/blog/enjoy-your-family-holiday-in-denver-colorado/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963482 | 440 | 1.539063 | 2 |
ELI DOURADO recently wrote that he thought America's economy was no longer in the short run, within which unemployment could be chalked up to weak demand. Lots of people, including me, wrote to disagree, and Mr Dourado has now responded. I have to say I find his dismissal of much of the criticism unduly breezy, but rather than go around again on old points let's address his key claim head on. He says:
The empirical point is summed up in the graph below. NGDP grew around 5 percent per year until around 2008, and then it fell, and then it grew at around 5 percent—or slightly less—per year again beginning in mid 2009. These facts are well known, but I bring them up here because they do constrain the kind of stories we can tell about the economy. Any story you tell has to contain a one-time shock that ended years ago, and it has to be consistent with NGDP that has grown at about the same rate over the last 3 years as it did before the shock arrived...
NGDP is almost 10 percent higher now than it was at the pre-crash peak. The number of people employed, even with population growth, is still below the pre-crash peak. Even assuming that insider nominal wages are totally inflexible, nominal output per worker has grown fast enough that insider real wages have probably adjusted. Furthermore, in five years, a non-trivial fraction of insiders retire or change jobs.
Let's look at some charts. First, here is the year-on-year change in NGDP since 1990:
So, the first thing to note is that NGDP growth is clearly not back to the trend rate for recent expansions. Nominal output routinely grew above 5% per year during the boom of the 1990s (with an average closer to 7% than 5% during the latter, stronger half of that period). Nominal growth decelerated slightly during the 2000s expansion but was clearly and persistently above 5% during the period of meaningful employment growth. Nominal output then shrank at a pace matched only in the postwar period by demobilisation before settling at a rate persistently below 5%. Average year-on-year growth over the whole of this period, including recessions, is 4.7%. Average growth since the end of this recession has been 3.1%. Average growth since the beginning of 2010 has been 3.9%.
Now let's add the change in employment:
The first thing that jumps out is just how closely linked these two series are. They move with each other, of course, but it also looks as though the steady downshift in NGDP growth from the 1990s to the 2000s to the 2010s is matched by a downshift in employment growth. This isn't always the case, of course. Here's what it looks like when the central bank attempts to raise demand above potential output:
The two lines still rise and fall together, but a steady shift upward in NGDP growth is not matched by a steady shift upward in employment growth. Instead, you simply get more inflation. Mr Dourado's contention is that we're now in this sort of world. I believe he's suggesting that there has been ample time for workers to adjust their wages downward, that if they remain unemployed now it is because they're unemployable, and that further increases in NGDP growth will therefore lead to more inflation than employment growth.
I don't agree. After the recession, NGDP growth settled at a rate below the pre-crisis norm. Put differently, growth in spending in each quarter rose by less than everyone had become accustomed to. To maintain employment growth rates at a lower NGDP growth rate, an economy has to squeeze more incomes into the same rise in spending. That implies a need to reduce nominal incomes, which is difficult to do, as wages are sticky.
But it's more complicated than that. The economy isn't simply trying to maintain job growth rates at a lower rate of nominal growth. It's also trying to reabsorb all those millions of workers that were shunted into unemployment during the recession. To do that, the economy would need to fit a lot more incomes into a given rise in nominal spending, and that would require big declines in nominal incomes, which are very hard to achieve, as wages are sticky.
But it's more complicated than that. Even in tough times, some people get raises. Those people capture some of the growth in nominal incomes, leaving a smaller chunk available to go to new incomes. And the problem arises from the truncation of wage changes at the bottom end:
That chart, which you can find here, uses data from 2011 (not that long ago!). Binding nominal rigidity, unsurprisingly, is strongly countercyclical; it rises as the economy tanks. During this cycle, the share of all workers experiencing flat year-on-year pay spiked to 16%. As of last year, that rate had retreated slightly from the peak but remained well above the pre-crisis level. Return of that figure to a "normal" level might well be one useful way to date the end of the short run, and America's economy is obviously not there yet.
(One interesting aside: wages appear to have been stickiest in the construction sector, perhaps because the complete collapse of the industry meant that wage reductions were unlikely to have any effect on employment prospects. Workers may instead be waiting for the industry's inevitable recovery. To the extent that that recovery has been delayed by insufficient NGDP growth, and will be accelerated by QE3, new easing may have a strong positive effect on employment growth.)
So far we have established that the level of NGDP tumbled in the recession and growth recovered to a rate below the pre-crisis norm. That has forced nominal wage reductions on much of the workforce. Data indicate that wages are slowly adjusting downward, but that this adjustment is by no means complete. But there is one other thing to consider.
The Federal Reserve's choice to allow only a slow recovery in NGDP has essentially created a bottleneck in the economy, behind which a large crowd of would-be workers is swelling. That crowd complicates the process of finding a job, even for well-qualified workers. A given open position will attract hundreds of applications, greatly reducing the odds of an individual getting the position and greatly raising the average time to find a job. It may take an unemployed worker a while to perceive this dynamic and to understand that aggressive action might be necessary to attract attention: a willingness to work for free (or "intern") for long periods of time, for instance, or a decision to invest in new traning and education, or a creative application strategy. Even then the strategy may go unnoticed for some time. And all the while, the worker is becoming "stale"; employers increasingly suspect that long-term unemployment may signal a worker's flaws. Such workers would need to drop wage demands even lower to find a job match.
But workers may be slow to perceive this dynamic and to lower wage expectations enough to find work. Or they may perceive it perfectly well and conclude that there is little sense in trying to find work until the backlog is reduced. These workers, and especially the young people that fall into this category, don't necessarily represent victims of hysteresis. They may opt to stay in school longer. They may perceive that at entry-level positions on-the-job training accounts for most of the requisite human capital, and so there is little harm in living with parents and goofing off until the labour market tightens. If unemployment is concentrated among young workers with only fledgling networks of connections to labour markets, erosion of those connections isn't much of a threat, either. These individuals are, at worst, semi-structurally unemployed; they are quite likely to rejoin the labour force and the ranks of the employed as soon as the queue for work shrinks.
In my view, it doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that three years of recovery is way too little time for wages to either adjust entirely or for the long-term unemployed to fall completely and permanently out of the labour force. We can't be entirely sure of this unless the Fed actually allows a burst of much faster NGDP growth and the result is a disappointing increase in employment. Given the way the two variables have moved in recent years, that would shock me.
One final note: Tyler Cowen expresses some discomfort with this view of NGDP, that it is a tangible and scarce thing that can only be spread around so thinly. He writes:
My framing is different. My framing is that the private sector can manufacture its own ngdp. It can do so by trade and it can do so by credit and of course velocity is endogenous to the available gains from trade. Most of the major central banks are, today, not obsessed with snuffing out recovery and increases in real output.
To say “ngdp is low,” or “ngdp is on a low growth path,” or “ngdp is below trend,” and so on — be very careful! Those claims do not necessarily have causal force. Arguably they are simply repeating, in a new and somewhat different language, the point that the private sector has not seen fit to engage in more trade, credit creation, velocity acceleration, and so on.
That's a fair point. But it's one I was trying to get at in my post on negative demand externalities. The Fed's role can be viewed not as turning on the NGDP machine and creating more NGDP to distribute to private firms and households but as coordinating expectations across the private sector in order to arrive at a better equilibrium. If the Fed fails to play this coordinating role, the market may not be able to clear on its own. Firms are now building more and selling more, but we need them to build and sell a lot more if the stock of unemployed workers is to return to normal levels. But right now, firms are doing the equivalent of standing around saying to each other, "Well, I'll build a lot more if you buy a lot more", "Well, I'll buy a lot more, if you hire a lot more", and around and around. The Fed can and should put out word that now is the time for everyone to take the leap. | <urn:uuid:4a46c45c-936f-4c79-b084-8e275836b9f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/09/short-runs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974254 | 2,129 | 1.640625 | 2 |
(Monterey Video; $26.95)
- Written by Henry Cabot Beck
- Published October 01, 2012
In the winter of 1862, robber Moroni Clawson tried to escape capture and ended up shot dead by a Salt Lake police officer. When Clawson’s grave was moved to a different plot, folks discovered his corpse was naked.
Jean Baptiste, one of the first gravediggers of the Salt Lake City Cemetery, had stolen, cleaned and sold, or worn, the clothes of at least 300 cadavers—men, women and children alike. The locals convicted him and reportedly gave him a head tattoo that read, “Branded for Robbing the Dead.”
Based on this true story, this film
is really the tale of lawman Henry Heath and his wife, whose young daughter dies in the beginning. Despite his anger and revulsion, Heath brings his prisoner food and water, and looks after Baptiste’s wife, Marlys, who is three wheels short of a buckboard.
Heath is played by PRCA cowboy John Freeman, who would have done a fine job playing Walt Longmire, the grief-stricken sheriff of fictional Absaroka County. But the real scene stealer of the picture is Margot Kidder (the original Lois Lane), as Marlys. Kidder is incredibly brave, playing a much older frontier woman who wanders in and out of lucidity. By the end of the film, Marlys brings the story into focus emotionally for the other characters.
If director Tom Russell continues to make movies as intelligent and thoughtful as Redemption: For Robbing the Dead, I’ll make a special effort to see all of them. | <urn:uuid:b93b0166-5dfa-4192-a9fb-b621524eaec7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truewestmagazine.com/jcontent/entertainment/entertainment/dvd-reviews/4784-redemption-for-robbing-the-dead | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971126 | 355 | 1.515625 | 2 |
James Lloyd Kennedy
Year Inducted: 1990
A veteran contributor to the founding and building of the Glengarry Highland Games since they were launched, July 31, 1948, James Lloyd Kennedy will be enshrined in the Glengarry Sports Hall of Fame, Wednesday, September 12, at the induction ceremony in the Maxville and District Sports Complex.
Lloyd Kennedy is a son of the late William Kennedy and his late wife the former Flora “Sandy Angus” McDonell. He is a typical Glengarry “farm boy” having spent the nearing four score years of his life at the Kennedy family pioneer home, Lot 10, Third Kenyon.
During the spring seeding, 1948, walking behind the plow and spring tooth harrow, Lloyd’s thoughts centered on the approaching, July 31, Highland Games in Maxville that included the famed revival features of tossing the caber and throwing the hammer.
Despite his age, 34, when most athletes are heading to retirement, Lloyd was still an agile box lacrosse goal keeper with Alexandria Maroons in Glengarry Gardens. Still debating the challenge, Lloyd recalled that Loch Garry’s “Big Alex MacIsaac” (MacDonald) won the world’s caber toss championship at the British Empire Forces “Games” in England after World War One, 1919, and he was in that age bracket, so why not accept the challenge?
That is exactly what the six foot, 185 pounder of brawn, athletic skills and desire did, ably assisted in the decision by the same “Big Alex MacIsaac.”
Unknown to most of us (neighbors) Lloyd Kennedy six weeks before the Highland Games became a caber tossing protege of the now again world champion “Big Alex MacIsaac,” living in retirement at the “Ranald MacIsaac” (MacDonald) homestead across the fields from historic Loch Garry.
The training began with a shorter and much lighter caber than standard size, one that Lloyd hewed from a cedar tree. Technique was stressed by the master.
Lloyd demonstrated his natural adaptability from the beginning and a second caber, longer and heavier, was required thus maintaining steady progress towards eligibility for Highland Games competition.
By this time Lloyd was mastering the technique of picking up a caber, posture; balance; run and toss. He was told to go to the “bush” and get about a 20 foot, 120 pound caber. In the sport jargon, “Lloyd Kennedy never looked back.” In the advance revival publicity of the approaching Glengarry Highland Games there was a sports story confirming that two members of the Toronto Police Athletic Association would compete at the Maxville Games and they were rated in the champion class of tossing the caber at Highland Games in Toronto and area.
The thought of meeting such experienced athletes would crumble the enthusiasm of any novice competitor for the first time in highland heavy events. But not Lloyd Kennedy.
There was considerable program confusion at the July 31 first Highland Games, after many dormant years, due to the estimated crowd of 17,000 that was 10,000 more than expected.
Late in the day the infield was cleared for the feature sports event - tossing the caber. The Toronto police entries were dressed in the latest style track and field uniforms.
Then, for a moment, the encircling crowd wondered about the identy of the tall, brush cut athlete, flashing a relaxed grin, in casual slacks and blending sports shirt. Why, that is Alexandria’s box lacrosse goal keeper, Lloyd Kennedy. The response was instant acclaim, evidence of the crowd’s delight that a native son was competing. That wave of welcome applause gained momentum to a rousing cheer that could be heard beyond historic Christie’s Pitt as Lloyd Kennedy defeated the Toronto police in each of the three distance tosses.
The rest is 43 years of contributing to the history of Glengarry Highland Games Scottish heavy events. At least 10 years successive champion from that great opening “Games.” Continuity as an instructor and official.
Lloyd Kennedy has deservedly earned the honor of enshrinement in the Glengarry Sports Hall of Fame along with mighty men of Glengarry’s pioneer track and field heritage, especially world champions “Big Rory” McLennan, hammer throw and “Big Alex MacIsaac” MacDonald, the caber toss. | <urn:uuid:d72ac4e9-79c8-45bf-be21-f08d5bbbdad4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glengarrysports.com/inductees/146-james-lloyd-kennedy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95396 | 939 | 1.695313 | 2 |
updated 02:00 am EDT, Wed July 6, 2011
15-year-old Georgian typed in English
Eduard Saakashvili, the 15-year-old son of the president of the country of Georgia, has been awarded a Guinness Book of World Records certification as the fastest typist on an iPad, correctly typing the entire English alphabet in just 5.26 seconds -- with one hand, Cult of Mac reports. The record was set at a resort on the Black Sea often used for high-level diplomatic conferences, and beat the previous record by over a second.
The previous record-holder was another teenager, a Charlie McDonnell of the UK, who had done the feat in 6.31 seconds a year ago. President Mikheil Saakashvili and his wife Sandra Roelofs were said to be "very proud" of their son's accomplishment, which was limited to using the on-screen iPad keyboard only (although the iPad can also utilize a Bluetooth keyboard).
Numerous videos on the web show techniques and demonstrations of fast typing on an iPad, where even casual but accomplished touch-typists can often equal the speed they can achieve on a conventional "tactile" keyboard (example below). [via Cult of Mac] | <urn:uuid:3ccb6b54-6f1f-4c25-be72-77b3f9f536ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/06/15.year.old.georgian.typed.in.english/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958648 | 258 | 1.5 | 2 |
By Josh Richman
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 5:03 pm in 2010 election.
There’s quite a to-do today about this ad, launched in English and Spanish versions by a Republican Latino organization:
More on Latinos for Reform here. Univision, which says it “prides itself on promoting civic engagement and our extensive national campaigns encourage Hispanics to vote,” already has pulled the plug on this ad in Nevada.
“It is the height of irresponsibility to use the Latino community as a ping pong ball between parties,” Lillian Rodríguez-López, chair of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, said in a news release. “The Latino community is not a spigot that can be turned on or off to meet a partisan agenda. Voting is a civic responsibility and privilege. Generations of Americans, women, blacks, and others fought for this right for decades – no one has the right to send this message.”
What do you think? Is it appropriate for an organization with clear partisan leanings to urge minority voters to stay home rather than cast votes for its opponents? At what point does electoral gamesmanship become voter suppression? | <urn:uuid:3aa28c95-58ee-48e4-8793-141413e675c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibabuzz.com/politics/2010/10/19/gop-tied-group-to-latinos-dont-vote/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951019 | 251 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Photo: REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
South African prosecutors have provisionally dropped murder charges against 270 miners whose colleagues were shot dead by police.
The charges cannot be dismissed formally until the end of the inquiry, but prosecutors said all detained miners would be freed.
Local authorities used a controversial apartheid-era law to accuse the miners of provoking police to open fire.
Miners were demanding a huge pay rise and recognition of a new union.
The killings, at the Marikana mine, owned by Lonmin, shocked the nation.
State prosecutors charged 270 miners with murder under the “common purpose” doctrine.
The rule was used by the white-minority apartheid regime to crack down on its black opponents, and at the time was opposed by the now governing African National Congress.
Lawyers had asked President Jacob Zuma to reverse the decision.
But he said in a statement earlier that he would not intervene in the case.
Acting national director of prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba held a news conference on Sunday to announce the charges would be scrapped.
“Final charges will only be made once all investigations have been completed,” she said.
“The murder charges against the current 270 suspects will be formally withdrawn provisionally in court.”
She said those whose addresses have been verified by police would be released on Monday, and the rest would remain in custody until their next court appearance on Thursday.
The BBC’s Nomsa Maseko in Johannesburg says public anger, already high over the shootings, was exacerbated by the charges.
On Friday, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said the charges had “induced a sense of shock, panic and confusion” in the public and demanded a report from state prosecutors to explain their rationale.
Police said they opened fire on the strikers at Marikana after being threatened by a crowd of protesters who advanced towards them, armed with machetes.
The 270 miners, six of whom remain in hospital, were arrested during the protests.
They were charged on Thursday, with the prosecutors arguing they were part of the crowd whose actions provoked the police into opening fire.
No police officers have been charged over the deaths because a judicial inquiry and an internal police review are under way, but these are expected to take several months to complete.
The strike turned violent before the police shooting, with the deaths of 10 people including two police officers and two security guards who were hacked to death.
The protests were triggered by demands for a huge pay rise and recognition of a new union.
Talks are continuing to resolve the dispute, which has shut the mine for the past three weeks.
April 17, 2013 //
A child passes portraits of former president Nelson Mandela depicted in various stages o...
April 3, 2013 //
by Associated Press AJU, South Korea (AP) — North Korea warned early Thursday that its mili... | <urn:uuid:c8651bb4-baf7-49d0-af2a-2dacb924f027> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.communityjournal.net/sa-to-drop-miner-murder-charges/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976882 | 598 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Find Out If Your ISP Is Throttling Your Internet Service
Is the speed of your company's Internet connection being throttled back by your ISP? Unless you're using a cable modem for your business Internet connection--and have Comcast or Cox as the provider--probably not. But, wouldn't you like to know, just to be sure?
By offering new tools to measure broadband network performance, developers at a Google-backed venture called Measurement Lab are putting pressure on all ISPs to stop limiting customer bandwidth, or at least to not do it in secret.
While I don’t know of any small businesses that have run into throttling issues--in which your ISP slows your Internet traffic because they think you're overusing bandwidth--it is surely possible. Particularly if you actually do occasionally download large files in the course of your daily business.
If it's happening, a new tool called Glasnost will ferret it out. Should you find you're being throttled, please drop me a note and I'll investigate. It's possible, even likely, that there is a whole lot more of this going on than people think.
The ISPs' real targets aren't businesses, but people playing bandwidth-intensive games and doing huge uploads/downloads using things like BitTorrent. Some ISPs appear to be slowing these bandwidth hogs' traffic to protect the network for everyone else. The ISPs don't like to talk about throttling, so we aren't sure how common it is or what the thresholds are for setting it off.
I think the ISPs ought to be up-front about what they are doing--surely a new experience for telcos and cable providers--and offer customers a way to buy the bandwidth they need for a reasonable price. Customers should be told if their traffic is being throttled and given options to have the block removed.
Business users probably don't run into bandwidth throttling very often. Most small businesses don't generate all that much Internet traffic and, when we do, it is likely directed at a hosted Web or commerce site, not our small office network.
However, as businesses embrace VOIP telephony, video conferencing, and other bandwidth hungry apps, the possibility of finding a governor placed on your traffic might increase. Especially if you're not purchasing a premium business package from your ISP.
For example, many small businesses have fairly large numbers of people sharing what is probably a too-limited Internet pipeline. If all these folks pick up their VOIP handsets or join a two-way video conference at once, there could be trouble.
For those reasons, it's probably a good idea for small businesses to run Glasnost at least occasionally, especially during peak network loading.
It isn't clear to me how serious a throttling problem that home-based workers face, except that they seem more likely to be dealing with the ISPs associated with throttling.
I don't have a problem with ISPs charging bandwidth hogs for the privilege. But, I think it should be done in the open based on usage limits that are published. Usage data, likewise, needs to be available to customers in real time so they can either be aware some of their traffic is being blocked or reduce their usage before throttling occurs.
After 25 years covering technology, David Coursey is, at different times during the day, a writer, radio talk show host, animal rescue volunteer, ham radio operator, and small business owner. Write him at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:9b011dc4-9b47-43dd-9aa1-2a3de6fe1c9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcworld.com/article/158951/internet_throttling.html | 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 | 0.964228 | 716 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Friday, April 20, 2012
Michael B. Prystowsky,Department ChairUnique opportunities abound in Clinical and Experimental Pathology at the Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Our mission is to deliver the highest quality of medical care through the use of state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures and the translation of new knowledge into the practice of Pathology. This mission is supported by a commitment to excellence in integrating research, education, clinical care, and community health to advance the field of knowledge in Medicine and Biology, and to train professionals who are prepared to meet existing, as well as future challenges to Medicine and Society
Montefiore Medical Center is the University Hospital for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has been its primary teaching affiliate since 1963. This long-standing academic relationship between two of the nation’s leading institutions attracts leaders in the world of medicine, promotes significant research programs investigating the mechanisms of disease and offers exceptional learning opportunities for students, residents and faculty.
In 1993, the Pathology faculty, staff and researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore’s two teaching hospitals – the Henry and Lucy Moses Division and the Jack D. Weiler Hospital – were brought together to lay a foundation for the future. Today, the unified department stands proudly among the leaders of pathology within the United States.
Thanks to its unique collaboration with the Sue Golding Graduate Division the Department of Pathology has blazed a new path in medical, resident and graduate education.
The department is home to approximately 21 residents, 8 clinical fellows, 15 postdoctoral scholars, and 15 graduate students from various Ph.D. programs.
Our faculty members receive approximately $6,000,000 of federal funding to conduct basic, translational and clinical research in the mechanisms of disease. Our major programs include: Alzheimer’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, NeuroAIDS, Parasitology, Cancer Biology, Immunology, Vascular Biology, and Cytology and Cytogenetics.
The faculty works hard to foster genuine collaboration between basic and clinical investigators, inspire creativity, and facilitate the path of potential new treatment methods from laboratory to bedside. Many of our alumni continue to fulfill the founders’ dream.
Our clinical program provides outstanding care while fulfilling the needs of our referring doctors and their patients. We performed over 10 million tests in 2010.
Our laboratories provide services to diverse settings throughout the Bronx and lower Westchester County including acute care academic medical centers, large medical groups, schools, shelters, nursing homes, hospices, emergency departments and solo practitioners.
The campus is minutes from outstanding parks, marinas and recreational facilities, a stone’s throw from the new Yankee Stadium and a 20-minute subway ride from Times Square. Welcome to the Department of Pathology at the Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. | <urn:uuid:f424d49e-0997-4b7a-855d-30d0e42de6f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://einstein.yu.edu/departments/pathology/news/event-details.aspx?id=44 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93675 | 587 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Gun Control: A Matter of Health?
The unfathomable tragedy in Newtown, Conn., has made millions of Americans sick at heart. It has also brought a national gun control discussion back into the scope of conscience. So it seemed a great irony to me that just about 3 miles from my home there was a gun show on Saturday. You'd have thought they were giving away bags of money, the way folks were lined up, just clamoring to pay their $10 admittance. At the end of the event, hundreds of new gun owners poured out into the streets of my own community. And I have to admit, the thought made me ill.
Surely the American uptick in wounds and deaths from gunshots - intentional or accidental -- is cause for concern, even outcry, from healthcare workers who are dedicated to saving lives.
In the last few days I've seen all the objections to stricter gun control splattered across social media. For example: "The Second Amendment was written to allow us to protect ourselves from an overbearing government." Does that mean that in 2013 we should all be armed with nuclear warheads to even the playing field between citizens and our government? I hardly think so. We are no longer a nation of muskets and slow-fire weaponry. We have armed our people with AK47s, and the results are tragic. Technology has changed since the writing of the Second Amendment. It's time for thinking and rhetoric to reflect the reality of the world we live in.
Another complaint: "Why should law-abiding citizens who use guns for hunting be punished for the irresponsible acts of criminals?" Weren't the guns used in the Connecticut killing actually purchased by a "law-abiding citizen" who unwittingly allowed lethal access to her disturbed son? That's the rub. One never knows whose hands -- or whose contorted mindset -- a gun will fall into.
And then there's the one that goes: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people. People can use lots of things as weapons -- from box cutters to automobiles -- so why don't we outlaw those things too?" I'd suggest that box cutters and automobiles were created with a solid utilitarian purpose in mind. Guns, however, were created for the sole purpose of shooting someone or something. There's a big difference. Furthermore, if that's the argument one really wishes to promote, shouldn't we at least make it as tough to get a gun as a driver's license? The people pouring out of that Saturday gun show were not taking competency tests or jumping through hoops.
There are those who suggest that if private citizens all carried guns, it would thwart ill-doers from their deeds. But imagine what would have happened had all the people in that recent Aurora, Colo., movie theater attack pulled out their personal protection arms and started firing across a blackened theater. How many more deaths would we have seen?
I don't expect to change minds by my thoughts and observations. But I do ask every one of you to really think about the "benefits" of a Wild West mentality; packing heat too often leads to Death Valley. | <urn:uuid:f46ce0b6-3e24-4fcd-a46e-c2a7cf267058> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.advanceweb.com/blogs/mt_1/archive/2012/12/18/gun-control-a-matter-of-health.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979979 | 635 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Pa. not ready for health care law
President Barack Obama's re-election, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, means that the signature law of Obama's first term will be implemented rather than repealed. It will join Medicare and Medicaid as cornerstones of the American health care system.
But in Pennsylvania, where majority Republican lawmakers bet against the president and for the repeal of "Obamacare," the state government is not prepared to meet deadlines to implement the law.
Gov. Tom Corbett said more than a year ago that he wanted to be prepared to establish insurance exchanges, as required by the law, but the Legislature declined to pass the necessary legislation.
State-operated insurance exchanges are the mechanisms by which about 30 million uninsured Americans will obtain coverage, regardless of whether they have pre-existing medical conditions. Open enrollment in those exchanges is scheduled to begin next October and the law is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2014.
States are supposed to tell the federal government by Nov. 16, next Friday, how they plan to implement the exchanges. Pennsylvania will not be able to do so. That abdication of responsibility means that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, rather than the state government, will operate an exchange to serve Pennsylvanians.
States also must decide whether to participate in the health care law's expansion of Medicaid, one of the principal mechanisms to cover the uninsured. Medicaid will expand to cover millions more people, primarily low-income adults with no children at home. The federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs from 2014 until 2016, when states will pick up 10 percent of the costs. Even though that is a good deal for the state government, Republican lawmakers who have been rooting for the demise of expanded health coverage have not yet decided whether the state should participate.
The Obama administration has raised the prospects of running insurance exchanges as state-federal partnerships, an opportunity that the Corbett administration should seize if it is offered.
Meanwhile, the Legislature should restart work on a state insurance exchange and accept the Medicaid expansion offer. Lawmakers should stop placing politics above access to health care. | <urn:uuid:baaf97be-c4c0-40a7-bd95-1461c81ec3cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://citizensvoice.com/opinion/pa-not-ready-for-health-care-law-1.1400757 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957637 | 441 | 1.796875 | 2 |
In one of the past articles of “Postal Notes,” I wrote about the need to be vigilant against scam artists. Although I don’t like the term ‘artists,’ when it comes to these low down scoundrels, it is somewhat of an ‘art’ that they can steal money from trusting people. So, I hope you don’t mind another article about protecting yourself and your money from getting into the wrong hands.
There is a reason for today’s article – it is National Consumer Protection Week. This is a federal program, led by the Federal Trade Commission, to draw attention to issues and ideas that will help customers become smarter consumers of products, materials and services and how to combat fraud.
This year, the Postal Inspection Service is working to educate customers about foreign lottery schemes and provide information to combat these illegal activities.
For the past 26 years, I have seen countless folks get caught up in these scams. Anyone can be a victim of lottery fraud. Scammers often seek out those whom they see as vulnerable. Their victims are often older Americans who may be at the end of their ropes.
Here is something I found fascinating — during the past three years, victims have lost more that $42 million of their hard-earned savings to crooked operators. These criminals talk a good game. They ask victims to pay to play — by wire, check, money order or cash. They also try to get folks to send money that’s just for ‘taxes and fees.’ Some scammers even provide a check or money order as an ‘advance’ on their winnings, with instructions to cash and return the proceeds to receive their winnings. That is the scam that I have seen the most.
Last year, I had a customer bring into the post office three $900 money orders. She was instructed to cash the money orders at her local post office and to keep five hundred dollars for her ‘advance’ of her lottery winnings. When I told her what she had were fake money orders, she nearly fainted.
“They are so convincing,” she told me. The money orders looked real, but they, of course, were not.
It also got very serious for this lady. She did the unthinkable — she gave the scammers her cell phone number. So, not only do the scammers have her home address, but they have her cell number, as well. And the calls started coming in. The scammers started to call and they left threatening messages on her phone demanding their money.
This woman was in her mid-40s and very intelligent. She simply answered an email and gave all her personal information. It just goes to show you that these scammers are ‘artists’ — they were able to get this customer to volunteer her personal information to enter a foreign lottery.
The Postal Inspection Service wants consumers to understand that when it comes to foreign lotteries, remember this: It’s more than just the odds against you. The Inspection Service suggests these tips if contacted to play a foreign lottery by mail, phone or email:
◆ Hang up the phone, don’t respond to the email or shred the solicitation, if it comes by mail;
◆ Don’t give out personal or financial information to anyone over the internet or phone;
◆ Never send money to anyone who says you have won a foreign lottery;
◆ Don’t let anyone pressure you into making an immediate decision.
An educated public is the first line of defense against these lawbreakers. By following the tips above, you can protect yourself and your loved ones against fraud.
Robert Wakefield is the postmaster for the Mt. Pleasant Post Office. He can be reached by email at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:621a43cb-280e-440a-bc01-56b5e478a1be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://columbiadailyherald.com/sections/news/local/getting-scammed-odds-are-against-you.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97733 | 804 | 1.796875 | 2 |
As humans, we consider this a set-back, and often prefer in our vanity to be “far along” the road, albeit in the wrong direction, then to be merely at the beginning but facing the “right” way. Thus we continue on our journey, never quit at peace, yet willing to seek the glory of others who can witness “how far we have come” and who we continue to invite to follow us for a small fee – call it "2 and 20".
It is subtle but important to note, that because the path is at once one and the same road, it is only the direction which matters. Because of this simplicity it is much easier to allow others to be misled, by simply pointing out how far we have travelled, without mentioning that we are facing the wrong direction. It is often easy to make this argument because of the fact that we have trouble accepting things which are so simple - we expect complicated answers. The argument goes something like this:
“Our road must be the right one, because we have been able to travel very far along this path. You will discover this by examining the other roads – you will find others studying those roads as well. If you lose your way, for the other roads are many and complex, simply return and we will gladly allow you to follow us”
Allowing others to look for roads, where none exist, will allow the traveler (dealer), headed in the wrong direction, to be free of challenge. For the other “seekers” will forget all about asking about the right “direction” or even the conception that direction is a factor. However, the traveler/dealer will pause often to commend the hard work, high activity, and difficult task of the other seekers in carefully scrutinizing the other “roads”, which he knows do not exist. Often this advice and praise has only a “small” fee attached to it. Those looking also know on some fundamental level, if only in their hearts, that they are on a fools quest, but because of the praise they receive for embarking on the “difficult” task of examining other roads (something akin to “The Emperor’s New Clothes”), and because the activity is so wide spread and common, they are reticent to listen to their own heart until they have successfully stifled their own consciousness. Oddly, as in the fable by Hans Christian Anderson, it is often the most intelligent and able who are most susceptible to this sometimes life-long pursuit of seeking admiration rather than truth.
So a great many who would lead on the road come and go. They have many complex words and charts but are barren of ideas, they mesmerize those who can be kept ignorant of the game, and gain their confidence through the most basic of human desires.
The right direction on the road is wise investment policy oriented in wisdom and truth. The traveller headed in the wrong direction is a great many “investment managers” (they are like the “Dealers” in Three Card Monte), even some at very high levels, and who are widely esteemed. The other seekers are those who work hard but who for some reason would freely entrust their wealth to perfect strangers and are easily distracted from the road (they’re called “the mark” in 3CM). The other “roads” that are not real, are financial innovations such as derivatives which distract our gaze from realizing the most simple of truths; that there is only one road (in 3CM cards are used). You cannot win at 3CM, because there is no prize for “The Mark”. The other apperent “Seekers” are the media and commentators to who we finally acquiesce, “must know something that we don’t”, although there incantation and redundancy at some pure and early stage in our life seems absurd, we tell ourselves, “it must all makes sense somehow” (in 3CM, these actors are called the “the shills”). The “Dealer” and “The Shills” act as if they do not know each other, but in reality they share the spoils. The Shills make the “the Mark” feel either smart or lucky. They often act as if they have themselves placed a bet on the game of finding the right “road” or card in this case. Although in reality, they’re own money is never really at stake. So we know the counterpart of the “Dealer”, the “Shills”, and the “Cards” – you know who “the Mark” is.
The players are not all equally accountable, for where an imbalance of knowledge (and parenthetically power) exists, so too does an imbalance in accountability. Is it possible that the activities of countless players in great impressive financial metropolis’ may largely be involved in an activity no more creative than that which can be played on a street corner with a box and three playing cards?
Investing wisely is important. No matter how many permutations and “innovations” take place in financial markets, the fundamental principles don’t change any more than human nature changes and it is not at all clear that human nature evolves as much as we might like to think. Financial innovations then serve only to distract us from contemplating the seriousness of going in the wrong direction on the right road. For example, upon close examination, it is not verifiable that there exist real enhancements in the quality of life of the average human person in our society, over say, two thousand years ago, despite all the shiny new gadget that we think make things better. While indeed, we seem to have mitigated many a barbaric act, or at least recognized them as undesirable from what we considered “primitive” societies, it not the same as saying we have evolved . What’s more, the apparent reduction in acts we consider “primitive” or “barbaric” may not have been reduced at all, but rather simply taken on a different form, perhaps one more subtle, to that end we may have actually succeeded at making things worse. In other words, street players with a box and three cards might be chased away by the police, yet the fifty story sleek glass building housing an “investment bank” we’ll call the fictional name “Sachsman Gold”, in front of which they plied their trade, will go completely unnoticed, although they utilize precisely the same means, and produce the same results as the common street player. Have we evolved?
When someone achieves great wealth, it is assured it comes from somewhere. The French poet Balzac correctly maintained that “behind every great fortune there is a great crime”. Disbelieving this could possibly be true; we carefully scrutinized many stories of the creation of great wealth. Sadly, we found no exceptions, and had to conclude that his pros are true. However, many of great wealth will deny this, pointing to the legitimacy of their operation. But very often this is nothing more than a sin of omission, for the fault lie not in the quality of their operation, but rather in the scope of their definition of “crime”. This is no different than protesting that you are on “the right road”, but failing to mention not only that there is only one road, but that you are facing the wrong direction.
For example, a man may by all accounts have amassed a great fortune through complete fidelity to only the highest standards of fair and honest conduct in his business dealings. However, if along the way he neglected his wife and children in the single-minded pursuit of this endeavor, then indeed he has committed an offense, though he will not include this failure to act in the preferred and finite definition of the term, for there is no law which measures or defines it. But because this law is written on his heart, he knows. He definitely knows.
In another example a man might build a large enterprise, which generates endless excitement for investors, and the banks selling his stock. The issue will be rushed from inception to “public offering”. He will know he is capitalizing off the ignorance or greed of the masses as part of the “spirit of the times”. The firm will sell endless promise in some new “technology” or other interesting aspect of the economy, but its share price will quickly rise to a level that can not be justified by its real asset backing or earnings. This operator will innovate nothing, but is quick to incorporate the innovations of others with far less resources – the justification for this involuntary intellectual property transfer will be “meeting consumer demand” or some other rationalization. When the stock price is sufficiently high, he will gradually have his “Shills”, (the underwriting investment bank), slowly and discreetly sell his ownership stake. This was the preferred manifestation of the card game during the internet boom years. However it’s a misconception that an overwhelming number of these operators just “disappeared”. They did not disappear any more than the wealth they appropriated from shareholders "disappeared". They now operate using a slightly different iteration of the same game – they like to call it “Venture Capital”, and they’ve traded in their “dot com” playing cards for other varieties which reflect a new vogue. The common one today is the “social networking” brand.
As far as we know there is no shipments of “wealth” from outer space, and in like fashion, wealth does not simply “disappear” on a return flight. Rather “Wealth Destruction” is a euphemism for “Wealth Transfer”. When there is an acute imbalance in the accounts of a few, against that of many, usually something spurious is at hand, though many will deny it rigorously either out of fear or perhaps deeply rooted self-deception. Humans are experts at putting out of mind unpleasant thoughts, particularly when it jeopardizes the foundations upon which their “comforts” rest. The achievement of this imbalance is about as valuable as lead to the spirit of the people of our society, but as the alchemists of old, it has been made to appear as if it were Gold. Unfortunatly Alchemy will never be true science or religion, no matter what outward appearances may hold.
Approaching the markets with the belief that one is playing in a “fair” game, is about as accurate as believing “Three Card Monte” is a fair game. There are many participants; many will appear to be on your side. Many will falsely indicate ignorance, while others will portend to have “special” or “secret” knowledge – just as in true science and religion there are many false prophets. This is no different than the basic psychology used in all gambling bets. It is designed to confuse, tire, coerce, inspire fear or greed, and finally fragment the mind. Under those circumstances a great many, including highly intelligent people, will hand over their money freely, as a participant in a sort of crime, without ever allowing themselves to see what they were truly involved in. Why is this reluctance so stubborn? Because nobody wants to admit they were “the mark”. They will simply walk away telling themselves they lost at an “honest” bet, in which they “knew” the risks – but this is far from the truth, whether they accept it or not.
The deck is in fact so “loaded” that it plays on another basic weakness of the human condition; denial. Denial is most dangerous, when it involves something so enormously wrong, as to simply negate contemplation, for it will seems to us outside the bounds of comfort and reality as we like to think of it in our efforts to preserve our view of the world. St. Thomas (could not believe) and Bernard Madoff (others could not believe) come to mind as examples of two very different sides of the same coin that illustrates our point. To his credit at least St. Thomas acknowledged the evidence once presented with his confession. It would be nice if we could say the same for those around Madoff, or the Wealth Transfer Operation commonly known as “Wall Street”.
The mind is as powerful as the tapestry of lies and denial it is capable of weaving. This is why many would choose to live in this matrix, even if foregoing the truth and selling out your friends is the price of admission. Although the illusion may be clear, and the experience of regression unkind, the rationalization invariably has something to do with "forgetting" in time and the comfort of thinking things will just go back to "the way they were”. Many of those who would give in to this path do not consider that while the direction is a choice, forgetting is not.
There are two reasons the human mind has this proclivity a) it is more palatable to tell ourselves that we are acting responsibly (even when we are not), especially if we can rationalize it in some way – it helps preserve a map of the world, or a world view which may have taken years to draw and create and which would otherwise require a great deal of energy to discard and remake – although the time requirements for this “redrawing” is typically exaggerated in our mind and b) a general absence in the knowledge of one’s meaning, calling or destiny in life; the result of perpetual distraction, noise, and general hyper activity which lends itself to a radical under-calculation of one’s true worth. It is because of this that for some, there is no noise so loud and uncomfortable as “silence”. So the process is surprisingly modest and goes something like this:
Step 1: “load” the deck. Make the truth so overwhelming and unbelievable that most will just laugh it off even if it is presented clearly to them (kind of like suggesting that the game played on the street corner is really no different than the operation carried out in the tall sleek high rise in front of which the street game is played). Could it possibly be true?
Step 2: Keep “the Mark” so busy and distracted that that they become confused about their purpose (this will keep them working long hours for no real remuneration, and indeed they’ll even pay for the honor). The hoped for outcome, is that eventually, “the Mark” will even forget what they were looking for in the first place and resort to mindlessly following the “slight of hand” of the seasoned dealer or traveller on the road, who knows “all the right words” and their cryptic meaning.
In more structured terms it serves to move the seeker from the beauty, symmetry and logic of deductive reasoning (the solitary intellectual pursuit where abstraction reigns supreme) where he can gain knowledge, into the murky waters of “inductive reasoning” (or in popular expression “Pattern Recognition”) that cannot be rationally justified. The means becomes the end, and the seeker, not able to find or know his perfection is left frustrated. The exercise designed to uncover the truth becomes the object, and the truth is forgotten. The result is a preference for action over thought, transactions over ideas and activity over contemplation. To the practitioner of inductive reasoning, sadly, the force and frequency of the activity lends nothing to its truthfulness.
It is a reason to marvel at how those close to the truth have a way of providing simple answers to simple questions, and which set the questioner free. While, blind guides give lengthy and complex answers to the same simple questions, leading only to further questions and ultimately confusion. The later of the two conversations usually conclude with a prescription for a follow up visit for “further clarification” for a small fee of course. There is no easier way to make money than to have others just give it to you “no strings attached”. So would you like to play a simple game of cards? The odds look pretty good and everyone else is playing. | <urn:uuid:9b2cb57e-ac79-4e0b-b743-bd8683e46488> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://amvona.com/featured/finding-alpha/item/12-three-card-monte-and-other-efficient-ways-of-parting-with-your-money | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971787 | 3,394 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Early voting in Iowa will set a record for 2012.
Officials said absentee ballot requests are up 40 percent over the last presidential election in 2008.
In Polk County, an average of 200 people are lining up each day at the election office downtown to cast their vote early.
"When you do it early, you don’t have to stand in line that long. It's a lot faster, and you just get it out of the way, you don’t have to worry about it later," said voter Brandi Campbell.
Election officials said Election Day is no longer a day -- it's a 40-day process, and 2012 will be an early voting record breaker for Polk County.
"We've seen an increase in early voting. It's usually about 33 percent in Polk County. We firmly believe we'll get to 35 or 40 percent before this is all over with," said Polk County Auditor Jamie Fitzgerald.
Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz said early voters will easily break records across the state.
"We think it could be through the roof," Schultz said.
Schultz said some of the credit goes to celebrities swamping the state during the past few weeks, asking voters to get out early. The tight presidential race also lights a fire under passionate Iowa voters.
"There's a lot of interest in this race. And so we're seeing the political parties driving turnout and driving their voters to vote early," Schultz said. | <urn:uuid:9f2b9883-3852-47f2-9ffe-af1a88b605e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kcci.com/news/politics/Early-voting-in-Iowa-to-set-record/-/9356970/17123780/-/mailjrz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973886 | 296 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Polydor / Republic Records / Innovative Leisure
Released March 5, 2013
We might not want to admit it, but there is certainly a gender bias when it comes to music tastes. It is quite rare to hear someone label music as “too manly”, but it is not so uncommon to hear it called “too girly” in one way or another. For example, the singer might be too showy, the video’s choreography might be too bombastic, the song might be too cheesy, or it might just have “too much pop” to handle.
In the last several decades, many artists have confronted these opinions by switching gender roles, creating on-stage alter-egos and changing the lyrical and instrumental content of their music to the point where gender labels don’t make sense anymore. From Grace Jones and David Bowie’s androgyny and flamboyancy, to Freddie Mercury’s eccentric performances and Michael Jackson’s philanthropic lyrics, new qualities have been introduced into popular culture, which serve to show that music exists not to classify people, but entertain and unite them.
In the last couple of years, musical groups such as Planningtorock, The Knife and Fever Ray started using vocal distortions to amplify a feeling of gender fluctuation. This year, a new Danish-Canadian duo, Rhye, released their debut album Woman, which builds on these concepts and incorporates some innovative features.
Rhye is a collaboration between Danish Robin Braun (a.k.a. Robin Hannibal) and Canadian Mike Milosh (a.k.a. Milosh). Both of them were already established in the music industry before making this album. Milosh had already released three solo albums, and Hannibal was involved in various music projects — his best-known collaboration is probably Quadron with Coco O. Hannibal and Milosh originally met up to work on a remix, but the one-time collaboration flourished into an entire stage persona and a full album.
Woman is a 10-track album that is only about 35 minutes long, but is an intriguing and entertaining collection. The album name itself is somewhat of an oxymoron, since both people in the duo are male. The gender game does not stop there — once the album opens with the first two tracks, “Open” and “The Fall,” the most notable features that envelop listeners’ ears are the softness and vulnerability of Milosh’s voice. These add a distinct touch of sensuality to the album and create a very playful and soothing atmosphere. The catchy melodies complement his voice but they never overshadow it — in fact, they never become particularly loud. Instead, the music flows subtly from one song to another, with different instruments coming and leaving like in some sort of child’s game.
However, this does not mean the arrangements lack quality. Some songs, such as “The Fall” and “Last Dance”, have such exquisite instrumental parts that it’s almost impossible not to smile and swing along. Other tracks, like “Hunger”, take a step further by combining brass instruments with light disco beats, which makes for phenomenal sing- and hum-along jams. The lyrics are not groundbreaking, but the gender-ambiguous emotionality expressed in lines such as “Tell me lies and lullabies, but don’t tell me to change” and “Don’t call me love unless you mean it” certainly gives listeners a spoken expression of the album’s sensibility.
The only downside to this album is that it loses some of its liveliness towards the end, but the shortness of the songs successfully compensates for this.
Woman does a good job of escaping the chains of gender labeling, but it is not a jaw-dropping or revolutionary album – which is fine because it doesn’t try to be. The music on this album comes naturally, gives you enough to hear but always leaves you wanting for more. So, if you are looking for an easy, yet rich and entertaining, listening experience, then this gem might well be the right album to lighten up the first days of spring for you.
Highlight tracks: “The Fall”, “Last Dance”, “3 Days”, and “Hunger”. Check out the music video for “The Fall” at http://youtu.be/F6yfFWvoygY. If you like The xx or Quadron, you might like this! | <urn:uuid:d5fddef2-bc71-4e0d-be5d-a8b7b30fd9b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N14/rhye.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953945 | 950 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Washington, D.C., circa 1910. "Pennsylvania Avenue west from the Old Post Office." Landmarks here include the Washington Post newspaper, the Willard Hotel between 14th and 15th, the U.S Treasury, a bit of the White House, and the State, War and Navy building. Detroit Publishing glass negative.
| Click image for Comments. | <urn:uuid:d9726d1c-5494-4d86-9ce7-0e084679d71b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shorpy.com/node/9967?size=_original | 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 | 0.933683 | 74 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The name "Etymotic" means "true to the ear" and is pronounced "et-im-oh-tik." Mead Killion founded Etymotic Research in 1983 to design products that accurately assess hearing, improve the lives of those with hearing loss, and protect hearing. His first in-ear headphone designs--the ER-1, 2, 3--were used for diagnostic testing and precision auditory research. The company's first noise-isolating in-ear earphone, the ER-4, debuted in 1991. I remember hearing an early ER-4 and it was radically better than any other portable headphone at the time.
The original ER-4P, which was designed for use with portable cassette and CD players, came out in 1994, long before the iPod catapulted the headphone market into the stratosphere. It was priced at $330, making it a very expensive headphone for the time. The current ER-4 models go for a little less, the ER-4PT runs $299, but Etymotic also offers a broad range of less expensive headphones.
ER-4 headphones are still made in Etymotic's Elk Grove Village, Ill., factory, and the left and right drivers are hand-matched to within 1 dB of each other. The headphone comes with a two-year warranty, double the length of most high-end headphones. If an ER-4 is returned for service, factory technicians confirm the left and right channels still match within the original tolerances before the unit is returned to its owner. Also noteworthy: each ER-4PT is shipped with a "channel-matching compliance graph," signed by the Etymotic engineer who precision matched and custom tuned the balanced-armature drivers.
The ER-4PT is very similar to the ER-4P, but the new model comes with extra mobile adapters, a large plastic storage case, a small travel pouch, and accessories for travelers. The braided cable and earpieces look slightly different than my old ER-4P. I have unusually shaped ear canals and don't always have the easiest time getting a good, air-tight fit with many in-ear headphones, but Etymotic's Triple Flange ear tips work like a charm. True, they must be deeply inserted into my ear canals, but they never accidentally fall out. … Read more | <urn:uuid:7b561f02-02d2-4798-92a2-ab9b5aae9abb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8300-5_3-0.html?keyword=etymotic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954167 | 488 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Stimulus bill includes battery of accountability measures
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill, touted by President-elect Barack Obama and introduced in the House on Thursday, would contain $275 billion in tax cuts and $550 billion in spending. The package is designed to create as many as 4 million jobs and jump-start the larger economy as the Troubled Asset Relief Program resuscitates the financial sector.
The stimulus spending would be conducted through "thoughtful and carefully targeted priority investments with unprecedented accountability measures built in," said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
The historic level of transparency, oversight and accountability will help guarantee taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and Americans can see the results of their investment, he said.
Accountability provisions include:
- In many instances, distributing funds through existing formulas to programs with proven track records and accountability measures already in place;
- Posting all announcements of contract and grant competitions and awards, and formula grant allocations, on a Web site created by the president;
- Posting the names of program managers;
- Publishing a description of all investments, their purpose, total cost and why the activity should be funded with recovery dollars;
- Requiring governors, mayors or others making funding decisions to certify that the investment has been fully vetted and is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars. Posting this certification on the recovery Web site;
- Creating a Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board to review management of stimulus dollars and to provide early warning of problems. This seven-member board would include inspectors general and deputy Cabinet secretaries;
- Providing the Government Accountability Office and inspectors general with additional resources and access for reviews of recovery funding;
- Protecting state and local whistleblowers who report fraud and abuse;
- Keeping earmarks out of the stimulus package.
"POGO is pleased that, in the expressed spirit of openness of the new Congress and the new administration, the very first provisions listed in the bill concern 'unprecedented' and 'historic' measures to assure transparency and oversight so the taxpayer can easily see where the funds are going and why," the watchdog group stated.
The National Taxpayers Union, an organization that advocates lower taxes and smaller government, said the measures were a step in the right direction, but expressed concern that waste would persist. "It's hard to control the nature and final destination of expenditures once they've left the Treasury," said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the group. "I agree with POGO that the oversight provisions will help, but bureaucrats at the federal and state levels have proved adept at finding ways around the rules."
POGO also noted that the legislation failed to include federal whistleblower protections.
"What this means is that while [the] bill sets a precedent for disclosure and transparency, the only people in the entire country left without protections will be federal employees," POGO stated.
Sepp said NTU and POGO are working together to ensure that all the elements of the 2007 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act are included in the stimulus. This is necessary because existing whistleblower protections have been undermined by judicial decisions, he said.
The legislation also attracted some congressional critics, despite the stringent accountability provisions. Detractors argued the focus should be on whether the spending is necessary and targeted, not on how the money will be accounted for after it is spent.
"This legislation appears to blanket government programs in spending with little thought toward real economic results, job creation, or respect for the taxpayer," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. "I'm scratching my head trying to determine how items like $50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts will create jobs or provide relief for families across the country."
The stimulus bill will be considered by the House Appropriations Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee next week. The Senate is expected to introduce its own version of the bill. | <urn:uuid:52e83a29-d825-4847-a776-099cf6a1d070> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/2009/01/stimulus-bill-includes-battery-of-accountability-measures/28376/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949345 | 811 | 1.835938 | 2 |
With interest rates at rock-bottom levels and equity markets enduring severe fluctuations, low-volatility income streams are scarce. Consequently, investors have resorted to unconventional income investments to boost their yields, especially in the realm of exchange-traded products (ETPs).
Consider the popularity of UBS E-TRACS 2X Wells Fargo Business Development Company (BDCL), a leveraged exchange-traded note (ETN) that delivers twice the monthly performance of the Wells Fargo Business Development Company Index.
This index tracks a basket of 26 business development companies (BDCs), publicly traded private-equity firms that invest in or lend to start-ups or small companies. Investing in BDCs is a dicey proposition in the current economic environment, but UBS E-TRACS 2X Wells Fargo Business Development Company’s trading volume has surged since it launched in April. In fact, the ETN’s volume is seven times that of the unlevered UBS E-TRACS Wells Fargo Business Development Company (BDCS).
Although there’s an investment case for BDCs, these are speculative plays even before leverage enters the equation. In these fraught times, why would investors purchase levered shares of a fund that holds positions in companies with unpredictable earnings? The allure of a 20 percent yield is too difficult to resist.
The interest in high-yielding ETPs is understandable; these instruments generally offer broad diversification at a low cost. But like every investment, these ETPs entail risk. And these risks are magnified when a fund employs leverage.
A number of ETPs offer attractive yields with acceptable levels of risk–though investors should resign themselves to yields that are less than 20 percent.
SPDR S&P International Dividend (DWX) currently yields 7.4 percent, largely because of its broad exposure to Europe. About 58 percent of this exchange-traded fund’s (ETF) $554 million in assets are devoted to the region. Investing in European equities may seem ill-advised given the Continent’s ongoing sovereign-debt crisis. But Europe’s policymakers have already begun to take actions to right the region’s economic ship. Furthermore, SPDR S&P International Dividend’s focus on quality names provides investors with a measure of security.
Although the fund tracks 100 of the highest yielding common stocks in its coverage universe, it doesn’t blindly invest in the companies with the highest yields. Portfolio companies must have a market cap greater than USD1.5 billion and positive earnings growth over the trailing five-year period. The shares of these companies must also be extremely liquid. The economic turmoil of the past few years has narrowed the fund’s European exposure to defensive sectors such as utilities and consumer staples. Although the fund currently allocates 10.8 percent of its assets to the financial sector, Asian and Australian names account for the bulk of that exposure. European financial stocks represent only 0.7 percent of the ETF’s portfolio.
The ETF is slightly more volatile than the S&P 500. But I believe Europe will stabilize eventually, which justifies the fund’s slightly elevated risk.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. | <urn:uuid:0519e258-13c6-4153-b6a4-feab5ab9e3e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/article/307998-reasonable-yields-in-etfs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931539 | 693 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Freakonomics summarizes some experimental results showing that people are willing to pay for future predictions even when it is obvious that the predictions are useless.
Canadian Financial DIY tears a strip off Labour-Sponsored Investment Funds.
Million Dollar Journey did an interesting comparison of the costs of top universities in the U.S. and Canada.
Canadian Capitalist looks at two new ETFs, HUT and HUS.U, and asks whether black swan protection is worth the cost.
Big Cajun Man sits at his daughter’s graduation ceremony and reflects on how much money her degree cost him.
Preet Banerjee says that if your financial advisor jumps from company to company, it could be a red flag.
Retire Happy Blog explains what you’re giving up if you have no will.
My Own Advisor is planning for low interest rates for more than another year. I’m sure that I don’t know where interest rates are going, but Mark’s plan to avoid adding new debt sounds pretty safe even if rates rise.
Rob Carrick commiserates with one of his readers who is unhappy about the difficulty of making a positive real (above inflation) return safely. | <urn:uuid:db998eb3-7e56-48a4-ac76-6354b952f36e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.michaeljamesonmoney.com/2012/06/short-takes-paying-for-useless.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944996 | 252 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Cousins get transplant go-ahead
A man who has polycystic kidney disease has been told he can receive a kidney from his US cousin.
Andy Williamson, 44, who lives in Ashburton, Devon, has to have dialysis every day after a donated kidney failed in 2011.
His cousin John Williamson, from Michigan, US, offered to give him one of his kidneys after learning about his plight through updates on the social networking site Facebook.
The 41-year-old recently came to England for tests, which took place at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, and now the pair have been told the transplant can go ahead.'Tip-top' kidney
Andy Williamson said: "It's fantastic news, I'm really happy. It turns out that we're a perfect tissue type-match.
"They would still go ahead even if we weren't, but it means it's less complicated for anti-rejection drugs, and also less complicated if I need another transplant one day in the future, it makes things easier.
"John's kidney function is all tip-top. In fact, most of the tests are to make sure that the risk of any long-term consequences for John is extremely low, as far as anyone can tell.
"We're all really excited and his flights are booked for November."
The medical and surgical teams will now get together to work out when the transplant will happen, although it is anticipated to be in November.NHS payment
Andy Williamson said: "It's a timetabling thing. One of the advantages of living donation is that we have time to be organised, we can be prepared and plan carefully."
His cousin will fly to England for the operation from his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the NHS will reimburse him for some of his costs.
The 44-year-old said: "It's discretionary; it works in different ways in different parts of the country, but yes, the NHS is going to pay for his travel costs and also a certain amount of lost earnings.
"It's a good economy for the NHS, because in the long run it's cheaper for me to have a transplant than to be kept on dialysis, which is anything between £20,000 to £40,000 a year.
"This is more expensive than a transplant which costs about £17,000 for the first year and then a few thousand pounds a year for drugs after that." | <urn:uuid:c6522a67-2c79-4253-9b76-74c90a993a43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-18853272 | 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 | 0.983724 | 502 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Fracking opponents are continuing to apply pressure on Gov. Bev Perdue to veto legislation intended to create a natural gas production industry in the state.
The Sierra Club and Clean Water for North Carolina delivered 77 signatures to the governor last week, releasing the letters today. Forty-four are local business owners and 33 are elected officials.
"Shale gas development offers little prospect of real economic gain here," the business petition states. It's signed by owners of Asheville Geothermal, Southern Energy Management of Morrisville, Sage Cafe of Chapel Hill, Merge Records of Durham, Carolina Gymnastics Academy of Wilmington, Invest for Change of Raleigh, Jordan Lake School of the Arts in Apex, Legacy Paddle Sports in Greensboro, Bish Enterprises in Siler City and Raleigh Cary Realty, among others.
The letter from elected officials say the fracking legislation is flawed because it does not explicitly grant local officials power to ban fracking in their towns and counties. It contains representatives from Butner, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Creedmoor, Durham, Pittsboro, Raleigh as well as Chatham, Durham and Orange counties. | <urn:uuid:d3d8458a-0f80-4f6f-a3bc-79f46b08963b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.newsobserver.com/category/tags/Sierra-Club | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9374 | 227 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Religion of Friday, 20 July 2012
The National Hilal Committee on Thursday night announced the sighting of the new moon in Kumasi, which is the 29th Shaban, marking the commencement of the Ramadan fasting period for 2012.
This was contained in a statement issued by Sheikh Mahmoud Mohammed Gedel, Chairman of the Committee and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra.
It said: “On the authority of the National Chief Imam of Ghana and the Ameer and Missionary in charge of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission, the National Hilal Committee, Ghana wishes to announce that Muslims throughout the country are to start the Ramadan fasting at dawn of July 20.
“The committee wishes all Muslims in Ghana a successful Ramadan fasting,” the statement concluded.** | <urn:uuid:828a803f-a32f-4c03-bde0-bcf99d33e77c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/religion/artikel.php?ID=245286 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938597 | 160 | 1.734375 | 2 |
In this new post to his blog Rob Allen shows you how to access the view variables from another ViewModel.
Unlike Zend Framework 1, the view layer in Zend Framework 2 separates the variables assigned to each view model. This means that when you are in the layout view script, you don't automatically have access to variables that were assigned the the action's view model and vice versa.
He includes snippets of code with an example controller and a sample view that fetches a value from a child ViewModel instance. He also shows how to access layout and configuration values in the view. | <urn:uuid:5ef853d5-4296-4bc0-a1e1-2cfa19be6572> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phpdeveloper.org/tag/other | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942246 | 119 | 1.6875 | 2 |
"Passenger rail has received only a tiny portion of the annual federal transportation budget," Boardman reminded the committee. "To give just one example, in the past four years the federal government has appropriated $53.3 billion from the General Fund of the Treasury to bail out the Highway Trust Fund. That's almost 30% more than the total federal expenditure on Amtrak since 1971 [$39.3 billion]."
Boardman also told the committee: "Federal expenditures on Amtrak during the past 41 years pale next to what "virtually every one of our European and Asian competitors has spent on passenger rail. But Amtrak has provided a high return on the limited Federal investment we've received. Our aim is to continue to do that in the years ahead."
In releasing Boardman's testimony, Amtrak pointed out that 30.2 million passengers traveled in FY 2011 on more than 300 daily trains—at speeds up to 150 mph— that connect 46 states, the District of Columbia and three Canadian Provinces. Amtrak noted that it operates intercity trains in partnership with 15 states and contracts with 13 commuter rail agencies to provide a variety of services. | <urn:uuid:3b6b9819-900a-4c90-8d83-47a7707f5928> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/passenger/intercity/congress-hears-of-amtraks-high-return.html?channel= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966988 | 228 | 1.679688 | 2 |
You’re more likely today to find yuppie bikers and artist studios than cattlemen in Cave Creek, but the town manages to retain more of its Old West character than any other Valley community.
This hardscrabble outpost, first settled by miners and ranchers in the 1870s, has changed significantly. In the 1920s, tuberculosis camps first popped up in Cave Creek, as those suffering from lung ailments thought the dry desert air would cure them. By the 1940s and ’50s, dude ranches took over old homesteads, and the visitors have been coming ever since.
You can get a sense of Cave Creek’s Old West past and have a little tourist fun at Frontier Town (6245 E. Cave Creek Rd., 480/488-3317, www.frontiertownaz.com ), an “1880s-style theme town.” Sure, it’s a little hokey, but you can’t help but smile while walking the wooden boardwalks and dodging hitching posts and antique wagons on your way to grab a beer.
In the 1930s and ’40s, the WPA set up camp, providing living quarters for workers building Bartlett Lake and Horseshoe Dams. Today, Frontier Town is home to restaurants with live music on the patio, gift shops, and even an old-time barber shop. The Leather Mill gift shop is housed in one of the original WPA cabins.
For an authentic slice of the Old West, the Cave Creek Museum (6140 E. Skyline Dr., 480/488-2764, www.cavecreekmuseum.com , 1–4:30 p.m. Wed.–Sun.) is just down the street from Frontier Town. You can see the last tuberculosis cabin in the state of Arizona, one of 16 cabins originally found in a 1920s camp. | <urn:uuid:fe38dc43-708d-4e92-b117-d7aaef558fdd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moon.com/print/87051 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930103 | 401 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Cha Jung Hee was a fellow orphan at the Sun Duck Orphanage in South Korea in the 1960s. She and I had nothing in common and I did not know her personally. And yet, at age 8, just before I was sent to the U.S. to be adopted by the Borshay family in California, my identity was switched with hers without anyone’s knowledge. I was given Cha Jung Hee’s name, birth date, and family history and told to keep the switch a secret. Simultaneously, through a bureaucratic sleight of hand, my previous identity was completely erased. For years, Cha Jung Hee was, paradoxically, both a stranger and also my official identity — a persona unknown, but always present, defining my life. In In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, I search for Cha Jung Hee to finally put her erstwhile existence to rest by meeting her in real life and finding out how she has fared.
In the course of searching for Cha Jung Hee, I meet and interview a diverse selection of Korean orphans and adoptees, each with their own quests and extraordinary stories to tell. A biracial Korean-black war orphan, shunned by Korean society, who as an adult meets potential biological siblings; twins adopted and raised in France, who speak only the French language, on their way “home” to Korea to visit their birth mother; an orphan from the North who was sent with several thousand Korean War orphans to Romania who recalls the painful post-war years and what it was like to grow up in a boarding school in Eastern Europe; and many others.
These stories are contextualized within a history of adoptions from Korea starting with the Korean War. Together, they illuminate how adoptions from Korea are closely associated with U.S. military involvement on the Korean peninsula, the prosperity and optimism of American society following World War II, and Cold War politics, all of which have led South Korea to become the number one “exporter,” and the U.S. the largest “importer,” of adopted children in the world.
— Deann Borshay Liem
Deann Borshay Liem, Producer/Director
Deann Borshay Liem has more than 20 years experience working in development, production, and distribution of educational and public television programming. She was producer/director/writer for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (Sundance, 2000; Grand Jury Award, Best Bay Area Documentary, San Francisco Intl. Film Festival), and co-executive producer for Spencer Nakasako’s Kelly Loves Tony (PBS, 1998), and AKA Don Bonus (PBS, 1996, Emmy Award). She served as co-producer for Marianne Teleki’s Special Circumstances which follows Chilean exile, Hector Salgado, as he attempts to reconcile with former interrogators and torturers in Chile.
She is the former director of the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) where she supervised the development, distribution and broadcast of new films for public television and worked with Congress to support minority representation in public media. Deann is a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship for her new feature-length documentary, Precious Objects of Desire, which is currently in production.
Charlotte Lagarde, Producer
Charlotte Lagarde's documentary Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka'ehukai (2002) about Hawaiian legend Rell Sunn was broadcast internationally. In the US, it won PBS Independent Lens Audience Award 2003, the Audience Award at both the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival, and Best Documentary Award at the Ashland Independent Film Festival.
Lagarde's productions Voting in America (2004), Every Child Should Have a Chance (2001), Tribal Sovereignty: Unplugged (1998), and Juvenile Justice: Unplugged (1997), are distributed in public schools throughout the United States, and the latter was screened at the White House for public policy makers. Lagarde's documentaries Swell (1996), about four generations of female surfers in Santa Cruz, California (Gold Apple from the National Educational Media Network) and Zeuf (1994), a documentary about a woman surfer's struggle with breast cancer (Directors' Choice award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival) were broadcast on PBS stations and the Sundance Channel, and are currently in distribution on home video. Lagarde is the executive producer of 2005’s Reporter Zero, directed by Carrie Lozano (The Weather Underground).
Lagarde holds an MA in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University, and a BA in Political Science. She founded Swell Cinema in 1996 and teaches media studies in high school. | <urn:uuid:04bb7da3-1df7-469d-b30e-b97dd9e9db2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://itvs.org/films/in-the-matter-of-cha-jung-hee/filmmaker | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953422 | 993 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Just yesterday, I predicted to a fellow travel writer that no other airlines would follow US Airways in awarding actual flown miles for shorter flights, rather than the industry-standard practice of awarding a minimum of 500 miles.
US Airways announced its policy change on Valentine's Day, with a May 1 effect date. At the time, I characterized the move as boneheaded, and went so far as to express cautious optimism that other carriers were too smart to follow suit.
And two months later, that faith seemed justified.
Unbeknownst to me, even as that conversation was taking place, United was matching US Airways, proving that there's no percentage in betting on the airlines' intelligence.
Here's the relevant portion of United's announcement distributed yesterday via email:
To ensure that Mileage Plus miles earned toward elite status and award travel on United are aligned with actual miles flown, we are revising our base accrual policy. Beginning July 1, 2008, for flights of less than 500 miles, passengers will earn redeemable miles equal to the actual miles flown. Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) will also be awarded based on actual miles. Elite Qualifying Segments (EQS) are not affected.
This new mileage accrual structure will apply to travel on or after July 1, 2008, regardless of when the travel was ticketed. Flights of less than 500 miles flown on or before June 30, 2008, will accrue Mileage Plus miles under the previous policy of a minimum mileage accrual per individual segment flown.
United's logic is flawed at best. The insistence that flown miles and earned miles be "aligned" suggests that flight distances and ticket prices are aligned. The opposite is the case: In most case cases, short flights are disproportionately expensive. And indeed, that's part of the reason consumers feel that the 500-mile minimum is fair and appropriate.
The underlying logic is murkier still. The Mileage Plus members likely to be most affected by the policy change will be business travelers flying regularly on short-haul routes to make sales or service calls. That's a highly profitable segment of United's market, and some of those customers will certainly shift their business to other mainline carriers that maintain a 500-minimum mile policy, or to airlines with segment-based programs like Southwest. So the change is penny-wise, pound-foolish.
The policy change won't sink Mileage Plus. But the accumulation of such setbacks—increasingly onerous rules, more fees, etc.—is gradually stripping value from the program.
These are tough times for the airline industry. But it's also a period of enormous opportunity. Carriers that can resist the knee-jerk impulse to cut benefits and nickel-and-dime customers are in a position to gain long-term competitive advantage and reinforce the loyalty of existing and new customers.
Instead, United has joined US Airways as a co-leader in the race to the bottom. | <urn:uuid:e2d8ad29-9725-421e-bd24-d9ecc091be48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smartertravel.com/blogs/up-front-with-tim-winship/united-nixes-500-mile-minimum-for-short-flights.html?id=2567462 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94804 | 607 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Within every major Church or ministry are founding and guiding principles based on the word of God. These principles, or as some would say doctrinal statements, are the guiding statements for that church or organization. It is the same with World Prayr; these statements reflect the cornerstone upon which World Prayr has been built.
The Holy Scriptures. We believe that the Bible in its original documents is the inspired Word of God, the written record of His supernatural revelation of Himself to man, absolute in its authority, complete in its revelation, final in its content, and without error in its statement. All including the Holy Spirit are personal identities and not spirit essences. 2 Tim. 3:16-17; John 10:35; 2 Peter 1:20-21; Luke 24:25-27, 44, 45; 2 Peter 3:16.
The Trinity. We believe there is one God who eternally exists in three Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, coequal in power and glory, having precisely the same nature, and attributes, and worthy of the same worship, confidence, and obedience. Matt. 28:18-19; Mark 12:29; John 1:1, 14; Acts 5:3-4; 2 Cor. 13:14; Heb. 1:1-3, Rev. 1:4-6
Jesus Christ. We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, became a Man, without ceasing to be God, and was born of a Virgin that He might redeem sinful men (John 1:2,14; Luke 1:35). We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished our redemption through His death on the cross as our substitute and assured us of our justification through His literal, bodily resurrection from the dead (Rom. 3:24-25: 1 Pet. 1:3-5; 2:24). His death provided a payment for the sins (past, present, and future) of all men and, therefore, made eternal life available as a gift to all those who believe.
The Sovereignty of God. We believe that God is absolutely sovereign and, in His sovereignty, It is God’s will that all would be saved and that none should perish. 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Thes. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2; 2 Pet. 3:9; John 6:64-65; Acts 10:34; 1 Cor. 1:21; Eph. 1:5-14; Rom. 8:29-30; 9:30-32.
The Total Depravity of Man. We believe that each member of the human race is fallen, sinful, and lost; and regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential for the salvation of man. The moment a person receives Christ as Savior, he is immediately regenerated, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and sealed until the day of redemption. Rom. 3:23; John 3:7; 1 Cor. 6:19; Eph. 1:13-14; Luke 24:49; Titus 3:5.
Salvation. We believe that salvation is on the basis of God’s grace and is received through faith. There is nothing man can do to merit salvation; it is a free gift. Man’s efforts, before or after salvation, regardless of how good or well intended, have nothing to do with gaining eternal life. Our salvation is accomplished by the finished work of Christ, and nothing can be added to it. Eph. 2:8-9; Gal. 2:16; Rom. 11:6; Col. 2:13; Titus 3:5; Rom. 3:22.
The Christian Life. We believe the child of God has the privilege of walking in fellowship with God (1 John 1:6-7). Spirituality, of which fellowship is a part, is sustained by the Christian’s yieldedness to the will of God, and obedience to the Word of God. Sin in the Christian’s life interferes with his fellowship with God. 1 John 1:9, which promises forgiveness and cleansing when we confess our sins, does not deal with salvation, but with the restoration of a child of God to that position where he may again walk in fellowship with God. 1 John 1:6-9; 2 Pet. 1:5-8; Col. 1:10; John 15:8; Gal. 5:22; 1 Cor. 11:31-31.
Eternal Reward or Punishment. We believe there will be a resurrection of the saved and of the lost; of the saved unto eternal life, and of the lost unto eternal conscious punishment. These two resurrections are separated by at least 1,000 years. 1 Thes. 4:13-18; Dan. 12:2; Rev. 20:5-15; Matt. 25:41.
Satan. We believe that Satan is a person and the author of sin; and he and his angels shall be eternally punished. Ezek. 28:15,17; Isa. 14:12; Rev. 20:10; Matt. 25:41.
Grace. We believe the true child of God is not under the law, but under grace; he is saved by grace and disciplined by grace. Rom. 6:14-15; 11:6,11; 2 Cor. 3:17.
Physical Healing. We believe that God can heal, but physical healing is not in the atonement. God heals miraculously today when it is His perfect will to do so. Healing cannot be claimed through the guarantee of the atonement. At times, it is God’s will for sickness not to be removed. 2 Cor. 12:8-10; James 5:14-16. | <urn:uuid:16049fba-4ad8-4a2f-82b8-e7af61a412a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldprayr.org/what-we-believe/ | 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 | 0.938579 | 1,205 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Our world is being turned upside down by the Big Shift. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) emerged in part to cope with the growing power of customers, but Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) flips this equation and anticipates that customers will increasingly take the lead in managing their vendors.
Doc Searls, the key architect of the VRM movement and a co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto," has written a powerful new book, "The Intention Economy," analyzing the reasons for this shift and its implications for companies that want to continue to create economic value. His book is a graphic demonstration of the shift from push to pull that is disrupting our business world (not to mention all of our other institutions).
We've long known that customers are gaining power in markets around the world as they tap into the twin forces of digital technology and economic liberalization. They are able to access more and more information about products and vendors and to more readily switch from one vendor to another in a world of expanding choice. This has become a truism, so much so that our eyes begin to glaze over when we hear it, yet few of us have thought through the profound implications that this power will have. We’re not just talking about mounting pressure on companies, but also the emergence of what I have called reverse markets.
Most of us think of markets in conventional terms – it is about vendors seeking out customers and persuading them to buy more of their products and services. A reverse market flips this dynamic – it’s about customers seeking out the most relevant vendors and extracting more and more value at lower and lower cost. It’s a fundamentally different mindset. It turns much of what we know about business on its head. Framing it in these terms can create a zero sum view – either vendors win or customers win. As Doc persuasively argues, though, a customer driven market actually generates significant growth in demand that will serve both vendors and customers well.
Doc lays out the basic premise of the book as follows:
“. . . rather than guessing what might get the attention of consumers – or what might “drive” them like cattle – vendors will respond to actual intentions of customers. Once customers’ expressions of intent become abundant and clear, the range of economic interplay between supply and demand will widen, and its sum will increase. The result we will call the Intention Economy.”
To achieve the potential of the Intention Economy, Doc is an evangelist for the tools, practices and business models that can support Vendor Relationship Management. Doc came up with the concept of VRM in 2006. It began to gather momentum when he joined Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and launched ProjectVRM. As Doc reports, this initiative was built on two basic theses: “Free customers are more valuable than captive ones” and “Free markets require free customers.”
Many executives still express their goal as “owning the customer.” As Doc reminds us, another word for owning another human being is slavery. A key theme throughout the book and a driving force of ProjectVRM is the notion of customer captivity and continued efforts by companies to restrict customer choice. For Doc, providing us with greater choice among captors is not sufficient:
“Improving slavery does not make people free. We need full emancipation. That’s the only way we’ll get free markets worthy of the name.” Perhaps one way to think about ProjectVRM is as a new Abolitionist movement, bent on providing customers with the tools that will free them once and for all from the efforts of vendors to keep them in bondage.
Of course, this overstates the plight of customers since the Internet and associated technology tools have already gone a long way toward empowering customers in their relationships with vendors. Nevertheless, Doc is right to point out that additional tools will be required for customers to become more effective in managing their relationships with vendors.
Tools for liberation
Rather than relying on a few vendors to develop these tools, Doc has been intent on catalyzing a distributed innovation system that extends well beyond ProjectVRM itself. The few development efforts that ProjectVRM has led itself are all open source to minimize intellectual property barriers and to encourage others to build on the software. This has spawned a truly global movement, extending far beyond the US. There are now dozens of development efforts and hundreds of individuals seeking to provide customers with the tools necessary to make VRM a reality.
As Doc freely admits,
“The VRM tools in development today are still at the hammer and screwdriver stage. But the nail guns and power saws are not far behind, because even primitive VRM tools will prove that free customers are more valuable than captive ones – to themselves, to vendors, and to everybody else.”
These tools will be supported and amplified by some broader technology developments on the Internet discussed by Doc. In particular, he points to the importance of the spread of application programming interfaces (APIs) that help to connect applications and provide a foundation for what Phil Windley (one of the key drivers of this movement) calls the Live Web in contrast to the Static Web. These APIs will help to move beyond short-term transactions that define much of the commercial activity on the Internet today into complex cascades of activity that build upon each other to seamlessly deliver more value to participants.
The business and tech press today is inundated with stories about “Big Data” but Doc draws attention to the need to develop tools to manage small data, your own personal data. He observes that
. . . the end result is that the “small data” that’s yours will be more important than the “big data” behind marketing’s guesswork. The two in the long run will dance together. But for now the small data side needs to get its act together. And it will.
In seeking to expand the freedom of the customer, Doc rightly draws attention to contracts of adhesion as a key tool of suppression. Contracts of adhesion are basically standardized contracts that vendors use to set the terms of their transactions with customers on a “take it or leave it basis.” Think of those “terms of services” tucked away on websites, written in incomprehensible legal jargon and presented in tiny font designed to give an intense migraine to anyone who is foolish enough to attempt to read through them. Doc observes that these contracts of adhesion “nail down the submissive party while the dominant party is free to change whatever it wants.” It is “Velcro for the vendor and Super Glue for the customer.”
It’s pointless to challenge these contracts so long as three conditions persist: (1) only one side gets to write the agreements, (2) the agreements need to cover all conceivable possibilities, and (3) the other side’s only choice is to agree or walk away . . .
Doc is optimistic that freedom of contract can be leveraged to challenge these contracts of adhesion as long as tools can be put in the hands of customers to define and enforce their own terms. More generally, Doc is optimistic that generative technologies like the Internet and generic access devices “invite, run on, and support a boundless variety of other standards, technologies, and uses, for both hardware and software.” This technology becomes a highly adaptive form of infrastructure that has the potential to transform markets.
But Doc is right that technology alone cannot accomplish the vision behind the Intention Economy and VRM. We also need innovative new services and business models to harness and amplify the potential of the technology. In this context, it is worth pulling out two big implications of Doc’s vision – the emergence of customer agents and the shrinking of advertising revenue as a fuel to drive advertising supported business models (namely, most of Internet businesses today).
The rise of fourth parties
Doc points out that business today is largely a three party affair. We of course have the vendor and the buyer, but we often have third parties that get involved in a transaction, usually by supporting the supply side of the transaction. As an example, he cites the third party app vendors that populate Apple’s online store.
As we pursue the opportunity for VRM, though, Doc anticipates that there will be growing opportunities for fourth parties, those “whose interests are aligned with those of the customer or user or that act as an agent or fiduciary for the customer or user.” These fourth parties can provide a range of services, including substitutability, service portability, data portability, independence and accountability, in dealing with vendors.
We have early examples of these kinds of fourth parties in other domains, ranging from personal financial advisors to personal shoppers, but so far these fourth parties have generally been a luxury available only to the very affluent. The Internet and a host of VRM tools offer the potential to make these fourth parties more broadly available to customers. While these fourth parties may be paid by customers themselves, Doc suggests that they might also generate revenue from vendors who will now be able to target intentions much more effectively.
I wrote about the potential for these fourth parties over a decade ago in my book "Net Worth: Shaping Markets When Customers Make the Rules," which focused on the opportunity to create infomediaries, essentially customer agents who would help us to collect and manage data about ourselves so that we could maximize the value of that data for ourselves. A lot of entrepreneurs were inspired by the vision and formed companies seeking to become infomediaries.
This early wave of infomediaries failed to gain traction because they misunderstood how to maximize value for the customer. On the one hand, many of them thought that privacy was the big concern and that it was simply a question of limiting access to personal data. In fact, relatively few of us are that concerned about privacy in terms of denying access to information about ourselves. But we do want to ensure that we are getting value in return for the data.
Other entrepreneurs, though, came at this from the perspective of maximizing cash payments to the customers in return for access to their data. Once again, this was misguided – the cash value of our data is actually relatively small, with the further paradox that those who might be motivated by cash for their data had the least valuable data. The affluent individuals who could generate more cash for their data found that it was not enough cash to really motivate them.
The key to unlocking the potential of fourth parties like infomediaries is to understand that the real value locked in our personal data is the ability to significantly strengthen convenience, relevance and discovery in our quest for products and services that are most useful and engaging to us. By having a holistic profile of our own activities, an infomediary can truly become a trusted advisor, helping to suggest new vendors or products and services that we might not even be aware of. Thanks to the efforts of the VRM movement, we are finally developing the technology standards and tools that can make this business opportunity feasible.
Implication for advertising
If we think through the implications of VRM in terms of advertising, the impact could be very disruptive. As Doc points out, advertising “flourishes in the absence of more efficient and direct demand-supply interactions.” As VRM achieves its vision of making the intentions of customers more visible and connecting customers to relevant vendors, the “advertising bubble deflates.”
Doc is quick to add that advertising will certainly not go away, but it will likely play a smaller role in the marketplace. This has significant consequences for any business that is heavily advertising supported, which includes most Internet businesses. While there is still time, it may be useful to start re-thinking advertising supported business models and defining products and services that customers might actually be willing to pay real money to obtain.
Doc is emphatic throughout the book that VRM is still in very early stages of emergence and there is much to be done to make it a reality. Invoking Heisenberg, Doc suggests that “Searls’s corollary for the future is that you can know neither position nor momentum, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying to influence both. Or don’t be the pinball. Be the machine."
In this context, Doc is performing the classic role of a shaper as I've written about in the context of shaping strategies: he's articulating a compelling shaping view, helping to define a viable shaping platform and pursuing a set of acts and assets that demonstrate both conviction and capability to pull this off. Fasten your seat belts; this is going to be a very interesting and disruptive ride. | <urn:uuid:814bc505-1d4d-4b1e-8154-bb6e8a020f08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/edge_perspectives/2012/06/the-rise-of-vendor-relationship-management.html?awid=8077551124622750624-3271 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955934 | 2,621 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Niyato Industries, a compressed natural gas (CNG) and electric vehicle manufacturing company, has completed its first compressed natural gas conversion “N150″, a light duty truck based on the Ford F-150 platform. The company says truck was converted using Ford approved components and warranty conditions are honoured. The V8 N150 meets or exceeds all United States Department of Transportation and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements and has received an EPA Certificate of Conformity.
The N150 is set up for bi-fuel operation, able to operate on either CNG or gasoline, and has a combined fuel range of approximately 800 miles (nearly 1300 kms); approximately 400 on gasoline and 400 on CNG with optional capacity included. Standard CNG fuel capacity is equivalent to 12.2 gasoline gallons, with an option to double capacity to 24.4 GGE.
The company explains CNG vehicles are just starting to gain popularity because of the huge savings when switching from gasoline to CNG prices — currently running at about half that of gasoline.
James Gaiser, Chief Marketing Officer for Niyato Industries, told NGV Global News: “We currently have a 10-year contract in place to produce 200 N150 per month; our roll-out plans include the installation of 174 CNG stations within our dealer network within the first year. This number will double during the second year, and so on until we hit 500 Niyato stations at 500 Niyato dealers. Since we started this fantastic voyage, the volume has increased from 12,000 in five years to 6,000 vehicles the first year and doubling the year after. A much anticipated roll-out date is scheduled to begin later this year.”
The company anticipates demand will come from federal, state and local governments and company fleet operators.
(This article compiled using information from Niyato Industries Inc.) | <urn:uuid:22b51bf0-d930-47ef-9aa5-ab26108d2a18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ngvglobal.com/niyato-enters-ngv-market-with-n150-ford-conversion-0523 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95051 | 385 | 1.625 | 2 |
Gingrich will point out the lack of left-wing outrage over our involvement in Libya. As a senator, Obama insisted that the President needed congressional approval to send troops into harm’s way — unless the country was under imminent threat. Yet for the joint bombing of Libya, a mission the Obama administration called “humanitarian,” Obama sought no congressional approval.
Gingrich will stand up against explicit or implied charges of racism. He scored by not backing down from Fox’s Juan Williams, who accused him of racial callousness for saying poor urban children lack working role models, and for calling Obama a “food stamp president.” Gingrich stood his ground and engaged in a needed, if uncomfortable, national discussion about the damage done to the family by the welfare state. This resonates with voters who are tired of being accused of racism for questioning whether the welfare state now hurts the very people it purports to help.
The White House narrative of why Obama should be re-elected is this: Obama rescued the country from destruction — and Republicans stand in his way from doing even bigger and better things for the country. Obama insists that “every economist” agrees that TARP, the bailouts and stimulus rescued an economy headed for Armageddon.
Gingrich will forcefully argue that in the early ’80s, Reagan saw higher unemployment, inflation and interest rates. But no one calls that period The Great Recession. Unlike Obama, Reagan cut taxes, slowed down the rate of domestic spending and continued deregulation. And the economy took off, averaging — by this stage in the Reagan recovery — between 6.5 and 7 percent quarterly growth vs. the current anemic 2 percent.
The media will not properly scrutinize Obama’s narrative. Count on them, however, to examine and reject Gingrich’s narrative that Obama’s policies place a dangerous and hard drag on the economy.
Gingrich has declared war on the anti-Republican media pro-liberal bias and double standard that give Democrat candidates a built in 8- to 10-point advantage. It’s about time. We’ve got a country to save.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Pages: 1 2 | <urn:uuid:332e6397-b900-44cf-8095-a1a29ad32a10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frontpagemag.com/2012/larry-elder/gingrich-declares-war-on-the-anti-republican-media/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940041 | 462 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Audi quattro® all-wheel drive has more than a 30 year tradition. The idea was simple enough: Transfer power from front to back and side to side as needed. After all, a wheel spinning is wasted motion. Along with better performance, quattro® provides high levels of active safety and improved traction on virtually all surfaces. On cars with longitudinally installed engines, a differential distributes power and compensates for differences in wheel rotation when cornering; if the car has a transverse engine, these tasks are performed by a Haldex® clutch. | <urn:uuid:50b312d0-ae8e-417b-ba84-92cb33d51302> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.audi.ca/ca/p_4991429/home/tools/advice/glossary/quattro_.browser.filter_list_b.filter_i_b.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945697 | 117 | 1.625 | 2 |
Welcome to the 1%! Yes, you who fought hard for the rights of the 99% are actually part of the 1%… how is this possible? Did you know that to be considered in the top 1% of the world, your household family income has to be above $34, 000… As a global university, had it ever…
“if you can survive here, you can survive anyone, and those who can’t get left behind… welcome to the world. “
Your lack of skill in writing aside, I’m sorry, but stats would need to be provided. Don’t just throw out a number, you lazy fuck. Here’s something I found:
Which states that the minimum (minimum - reminder: many, if not most are above that!) income to be considered the 1% is around $344,000. I think you left some numbers off. And, by the by, I don’t know anyone at NYU who isn’t loaning money from banks in order to do it. Some people value a great education in an even more splendid location and think that it’s worth something, although perhaps not $200,000 dollars in student loans. In fact, how am I ever going to be in the 1% with loans like that goddamnit!?
Point is, some of the most detrimental causes to our economy were those pesky NINA loans which provided people with mortgages for houses they simply could not afford. Does that imply that those people were apart of the 1%, too?
So I don’t know what you’re saying, really. Should we all have just forsaken college and worked at the Acme around the corner? Or, should we use what we’ve learned to try and better ourselves, the government, the economy, and the future for our children?
Also, I’m certainly not the 1%, but I will have my Starbucks coffee (and proudly, for that matter) because I enjoy working there before class. This movement isn’t about trying to destroy corporations; it’s about trying to lessen the income gap, attempting to keep corporations honest, and forcing the government to think about the People again since democracy was a cool idea and all. And fuck me and my opinions to hell: Starbucks should still exist, but their CEO’s should probably not get paid so much for making mediocre coffee. | <urn:uuid:4e8337bd-2a6e-4f3b-a69e-a4dcfc9e1c30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theonlygirlontheinternet.tumblr.com/archive/2011/11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970598 | 502 | 1.625 | 2 |
The Olive Tree Initiative
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" George Orwell
The anti-Israel coalition has effectively been focusing on and adversely affecting the vital generation on the campuses and especially the Jewish students there. They know that the the Jewish students on US campuses are the Jewish community's future, future leaders, and are the ones who will determine the American Jewish community's future attitudes toward Israel. They also realize that the immense number of Jewish students on US campuses could potentially become a pro-Israel force that could completely undermine and neutralize their anti-Israel delegitimization campaigns.
So their strategy has been to systematically penetrate the mainstream Jewish organizations on university campuses and co-opt impressionable, young, and uninformed Jews. One of the most effective methods that the delegitimization coalition has been using in its efforts to indoctrinate Jewish students has been creating "honey traps," front groups with deceptively attractive names and mission statements. This insidious effort has been one of the most effective tactics that the delegitimization coalition has been utilizing in its efforts to indoctrinate Jewish students.
At UC Irvine they promoted the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI which has been closely collaborating with the pro-Hamas International Solidarity Movement - (ISM) an organization that the ADL placed on its list of the top 10 anti-Israel groups in the US. Hillel students have been encouraged to participate in the OTI programs termed "student trips"(including Hillel students, non-Jewish students, and MSU - founded by the Muslim Brotherhood) to "Israel/Palestine." On these trips, the student have been meeting with ISM leaders and other anti-Israel speakers. Most the Palestinian speakers who addressed the students on the most recent OTI trip (Sept. 2010), have expressed an overt animus towards Israel, advocating for its elimination or for "non-violent" measures to harm her, such as the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement (Also see video), or by allying with terrorist groups that perpetrate violence against Jews. Some of the Israel speakers represent organizations which engage in relentless Israel bashing. Breaking the Silence (BTS), the Israeli NGO that demonizes the Israeli army as committing war crimes (Richard Goldstone cited BTS 27 times, in his infamous UN report libeling Israel as committing war crimes). Ir Amim, another Israeli NGO, bashes Israel relentlessly, and promotes the Palestinian narrative. The International speakers included "neutral" ones such as a representative of Human Rights Watch (HRW), the anti-Israel organization, whose anti-Israel bias was even criticized by its founder. Richard Bernstein. Another "neutral" speaker was the Director of UNRWA in Gaza. He has promoted political warfare targeting Israel, including supporting the "Free Gaza flotillas" and the demonization of Israel.
The OTI is indeed an insidious initiative. It transforms students in ways that are hard to expose because the public is so uninformed as to what happens on these trips to "Israel/Palestine." Although it's easy for the public to become angry about Michael Oren being shouted down, it's considerably more difficult for it to comprehend what really happens when students are routinely exposed to ISM manipulations over and over again. It is similar to stealth jihad. The result is an erosion of our students' commitment to, and support for, Israel.
The Jewish Federation of Orange County lamentably fell prey to these insidious tactics. Through its Rose Project, it contibutes funds to the Olive Tree Initiative.
2010.--- George Rishmawi ( tour guide) meets with the community on OTI trip
Dear Friends of Israel.
A few years ago, I personally witnessed George Rishmawi (yes, this George Rishmawi) tell a group of well meaning Christians in Chicago that the Israelis have developed a gas that slows down Palestinian people so that the Israelis can shoot them in their backs. Allyson Taylor and Gary Ratner were with me. Allyson went up to the microphone and publicly asked him what kind of gas he was talking about, to which he responded that the Israelis are very smart, they pick up the canisters of gas before anyone can see them. Rishmawi engaged in a dangerous modern form of blood libel to prepare the audience for the "call" to punish Israel with boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Thank you all for taking the time to read this report, and for caring about what is being taught to young people about Israel.
Roz Rothstein, CEO
George Rishmawi (co-founder ISM) Is the " tour guide" for OTI.
George S Rishmawi, Co-Founder of the ISM, brought to speak at the UCI campus by the Olive Tree Initiative. | <urn:uuid:5287c5da-5426-4267-b693-062ae2af3cd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ha-emet.com/oti.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959635 | 990 | 1.648438 | 2 |
This post was written yesterday, Thursday, May 19, 2011. We haven’t seen the sun in a week now and they say it will be several more before we see any :::sigh:::
When the rain keeps pouring out of the sky, day after day, night after night, eventually you just have to say “screw it” and go jump in the puddles… or, as in our case, slosh through the grass.
By the time these two came inside four hours later, they were covered in dirt, mud, and water, and a complete change of clothes was in order. Yet they had SO much fun making mud pies and washing play dishes in sandy water they played right through lunch, and then some!
We’re quite through with all this rain and we would be very happy if it would go away for a while, but I know I shouldn’t complain. Families in the south have to leave their homes and watch them wash away in the flood. At least we had time to move before the “flood” of foreclosure.
There are also some uses for all the water soaking our land. Papa lowered one corner of our camper awning and is letting the rain run into barrels. A hose connected to a water filter and drill pump then draws the rain water into the camper water tank and is used for washing dishes, flushing the toilet, and taking baths and showers! We are not into water conservation for the purpose of “saving the earth”, but it does feel good knowing we are using the resources we have available to save time, effort, and money.
At the same time, Papa has been digging a well out back, by one of the springs on the land. So far it’s just about five feet deep. Once he’s happy with the depth, he’ll drive the point in and attach the hand pump from which we can pull water directly from the ground. Until then we only have to be concerned with keeping the kids away from the hole filled with water. A heavy piece of plywood to cover it is in order I think…
What else to do on a rainy day? How about a science project? Girlie and I filled a shallow tray with water and sprinkled it with pepper. What happens when you dip a bar of soap in the middle? What happens when you add a sprinkling of sugar? Such simple ingredients offer an interesting few minutes of entertainment and exploration!
Or, another flower project. We don’t have our holiday tree anymore, so we decorated the living room curtain rod with colored foam flower shapes. The kids drew and cut out their own shapes or helped cut out the shapes I made. A hole punch and snippets of string later and you have something colorful to lighten up the dusky view.
I heard sunshine is in the forecast, I hope to be waking up to it warming my face tomorrow! | <urn:uuid:7d031a0c-21e9-4c22-9094-1547f4aa0468> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanfamilynow.wordpress.com/tag/indoor-activities/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963023 | 610 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Writer Scott Timberg always has an interesting take on the overlap between literature and film. Today, on the cover of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar, he looks at Hollywood’s bid to bring back the most famous creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who was born 150 years ago this month). Here’s an excerpt of the excellent article, which I’m sure you’ll want to read in its entirety. — G.B.
He’s probably the most adapted literary character in history — and perhaps the only nonexistent person with an honorary degree from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Upward of 70 actors have portrayed him in more than 200 films, since the early days of silent movies.
But there’s not been a major cinematic adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in decades. The classic films of the ’30s and ’40s, starring Basil Rathbone as Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal detective, shut down the production of Holmes films for years, and the Jeremy Brett-starring series on Britain’s Granada Television, broadcast in the ’80s and early ’90s, has likely intimidated would-be filmmakers as well.
But heading our way are two very different films starring the Victorian detective
The first, “Sherlock Holmes,” stars Robert Downey Jr. as the sleuth with Jude Law as sidekick John Watson. Though these are two respected actors, the Warner Bros. film will not be a thesp-fest but an action movie based on a graphic novel by Hollywood executive Lionel Wigram, who spent years trying to get the project taken seriously.
The film has finished shooting — with most of the exteriors in London, Manchester and Liverpool — and is scheduled to open Christmas Day. “I didn’t want deerstalkers and pipes,” Guy Ritchie, the film’s director, said of the sleuth’s famous hat and favorite hobby. “They’re typical iconic images of Holmes, but we’re starting from scratch.”
The second, still untitled and in pre-production, will go for a comic tone, with “Borat” star Sacha Baron Cohen as detective and Will Ferrell as associate. (Etan Cohen, who co-wrote “Tropic Thunder,” will write the screenplay, with lad-film demigod Judd Apatow as executive producer.)
Columbia executives — who chose not to contribute to this story — have said that their movie will be as different from the Downey film as “Austin Powers” was from James Bond. “Just the idea of Sacha and Will as Sherlock Holmes and Watson makes us laugh,” the studio’s co-president, Matt Tolmach, told Variety last year.
The films will be scrutinized, of course, by both general audiences and the millions of rabid Holmes fans the world over. “We’ve had to rely on our parents’ or grandparents’ Holmes,” said Barbara Roden, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars fan group who runs Calabash, a press in British Columbia for Sherlockian research. “I’m hoping we get a 21st century Holmes, one for our generation.”
Holmes himself was a morphine and cocaine addict, a formidable martial artist and a self-proclaimed bohemian who’d gladly stay up all night to puzzle out a case.
As described in Conan Doyle’s 56 stories and four short novels — written mostly between the 1880s and 1910s — the sleuth also played by his own rules. “I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments,” Holmes says to Watson while auditioning him as a potential roommate. “Would that annoy you?”
But he’s been domesticated by the years and come to be seen as what Roden calls “a Victorian fuddy-duddy.” As Michael Chabon points out in his essay “Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes,” Conan Doyle’s stories have been met with condescension for more than 100 years, the suspicion that their popularity came not from quality but from “the bourgeois thirst for a tidy adventure, or nostalgia for a vanished age (Victorian, or adolescent).”
The bias against Holmes crystallized in Raymond Chandler’s manifesto “The Simple Art of Murder.” Though not quite naming the detective, Chandler champions the hard-boiled tradition over writers who rely on “hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.”
Some of his condescension came from Conan Doyle himself: He once described having written so many Holmes stories that he felt like he’d eaten too much foie gras. Still, for more than a century, these stories have drawn admirers…
RECENT AND RELATED
Sherlock Holmes photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Photo of Basil Rathbone as Sherlcok Holmes from the Los Angeles Times archives. | <urn:uuid:60b9eda1-32f8-4de4-a0f2-751822b88505> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/holmes-for-the-holidays-an-early-look-at-decembers-sherlock-holmes-film/ | 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 | 0.956437 | 1,061 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Yosemite is a national landscape treasure. One can only imagine what early explorers must have thought as they rounded the river bend and saw the towering granite cliffs, and waterfalls plunging thousands of feet over the edge into the valley below. Those early settlers spread the word about the beauty of the park and decades later it has become one of the most heavily visited and photographed parks in the world.
For photographers, there is so much to see that it's hard to know where to begin. What should I see? What time of day should I go? Lucky for photographers, the Aperture Academy has taken the mystery out of Yosemite and created a workshop to put them in the right places at the best times! If you need help with the settings and making the camera do what you want it to, then we're here to help with that, too!
On a spring-like evening, a group of 12 eager photographers met instructors Brian Rueb and Alicia Telfer in Yosemite View Lodge for our customary orientation. During the orientation, we got a chance to reconnect with students from past workshops, meet new students, and go over what the students have in terms of experience, equipment, and learning goals for the weekend.
Brian and Alicia went over the weekend itinerary and weather, and even though the winter had bypassed Yosemite for the most part, the temperatures were still below freezing in the morning, so they also talked about the proper attire needed to make sure the day was comfortable for everyone while they photographed.
:: DAY ONE ::
The first morning the group assembled at 5:15am, and after some coffee from the lobby, it was time to load up the ApCab and head into the park. Our first stop for the day was a lovely little section of the Merced River with sweeping views and reflections of three different valley peaks, including the mighty El Capitan.
Brian and Alicia worked with students at the river to use the graduated and polarizing filters to help achieve balanced and interesting compositions using the peaks, reflections, and interesting frozen foliage. The scene was amazing and the class quickly spread out to find their own interesting versions of the beautiful granite monoliths. Students got low, and even lay down on the bank to try to get the best reflection and make use of some of the ice patterns along the river's edge.
When the sun had come up and lit the tops of the peaks and the photographs were made, it was time to head to our second stop, a lovely little river view of upper Yosemite Falls. This spot allowed us to really work with our polarizing filters to bring out the great reflections of the falls, and it was one of the spots where a flat blue sky really helped add some extra vibrancy to our images....plus the mix of warm tones in the granite made great complimentary color schemes with the blues in the sky and reflection. Some students took abstract shots of the water and reflections that were really nice.
After the class had taken shots from the banks along the bridge, we walked down the trail a bit to utilize some of the rocks and trees as interesting elements, to change up the compositions. Alicia and Brian worked with the newer photographers on working to master their manual settings, and learn the "WHY" behind the creation of nice images.
After three hours of morning shooting, it was time to get those frozen toes and fingers to the lodge for a cup of coffee and brief period of recovery. Once at the lodge, the class enjoyed warm drinks, and many a bowl of oatmeal to warm the system before we set back out for a couple views of Half-Dome from some of the majestic meadow areas of the park.
Yosemite is an amazing place for photography, and as made popular by the great Ansel Adams, can be really wonderful for shooting in monochrome. Brian and Alicia helped the students change their camera settings to monochrome, and accordingly changed the way they saw the park in terms of composition. The class all came away with some really nice and unique images using their monochrome settings. Some played with the textures of the foreground foliage, while others played with depth of field and photographed parts of the foliage leaving Half-Dome blurred.
We then spent over an hour in the meadows lying down, crouching and really working with what the conditions gave us. We came away with really interesting images!
Lunch break was in the park, and afterwards we headed back to the hotel for a bit, to let people charge their batteries...literally and figuratively.
After lunch, we made a brief stop along the Merced River to work on some moving water images, where Brian and Alicia worked with the class on the different techniques to capture water blur and action in the river. The location was fun; several photographers scrambled on the rocks to get a different vantage point, and for others, it was a good lesson in the art of capturing moving water.
While driving in the park, we noticed that the seasonal Horsetail Falls was flowing quite nicely due to some recent high elevation snow melt, and was lit up wonderfully with the setting sun. While the best times for photographing this "lava like" phenomenon had passed, the waterfall still gets some very nice light in the evening this time of year, so the class eagerly agreed to give it a shot and we found we had a really nice set of water flow and conditions to photograph.
When the best of the light on Horsetail Falls had passed, we quickly loaded back into the ApCab and made haste to try and capture the last bits of light on the peaks from the iconic Valley View turn out. Not many people can say they shot Horsetail Falls AND Valley View in the same sunset...but we can! The class spread out and Alicia and Brian worked with the class for everyone to get good position for compositions and the best use of their graduated filters and polarizers to make the best exposures.
What a productive first day! We photographed seven different locations and spent over eight hours in the park. It was time to head back for some much earned rest and relaxation. A large percentage of the class met in the hotel restaurant for drinks and dinner before heading back to grab some rest before another early start.
:: DAY TWO ::
Day 2 began at the wonderful Lower Yosemite Falls. The area is all but void of people at this time of day and our class really had the run of the rocky areas around the base of the falls. Brian and Alicia helped with composition and exposure to ensure every student's vision was able to be realized. When the light crested the peaks to the east of the falls, the rainbows began to dance in the mist.
Brian worked with the class to put on larger lenses and really focus in on the details and abstractions of the scene. It was rapid fire for the class as they reeled off numerous images, each with different colors and textures. Some of the mist looked like faces in the shots...it was fun to hear the class talk about what the different shots looked like.
On our way out, we stopped to photograph the iconic vista along the walkway to the falls, where both the upper and lower sections of the waterfall are visible, which is framed nicely by the tall ponderosa pines that line the path.
The morning break allowed folks time to eat, nap, and get checked out of the hotel. We reconvened after noon, and set off to spend the entire rest of the day in the park. The first stop was the scenic and very iconic little Yosemite Chapel. Some of the higher elevation snow had melted and contributed to some nice pools, where the students enjoyed working on reflections of the church, and the upper portion of Yosemite Falls.
A few students noticed reflections of the falls in the church windows and got some great shots of them. In spite of some bright light, a lot of really nice shots were captured because we switched our cameras into manual mode and worked on creating interest with texture, shape, and light.
The next stop was the Sentinel Bridge and the wonderful view of Half-Dome. It wasn't a long stop, but it's great to come away with some iconic post-card shots of locations like Half-Dome. Convert it to monochrome and you add a bit of Ansel Adams into the shots as well!
We also made a brief stop at the deli in the park to grab some food to tide us over while we waited for sunset, and then it was back to the photography.
The Pohono Bridge is a classic stone bridge with some great reflections from the afternoon sun on the trees. We worked with polarizers to capture reflections and moving water along the rocks that flanked the bridge. Another park visitor, with too much time on his or her hands, had taken a lot of river rocks and balanced them precariously on top of other boulders. While it didn't do anything to preserve the serenity and natural aspects of the location, it was interesting to view...and wonder how long it had taken to set them up like that.
Just up the road from there we made a brief stop and hiked up to the base of the mighty Bridal Veil Falls. Even though it was fully lit by the sun, students were learning how to compensate and got some nice images of the details in the granite as the wind blew mist across the rock surface.
Our ultimate goal for the night was possibly the most iconic vantage of the park - Tunnel View, which offers a chance to photograph the entire park and most of Yosemite's icons from one spectacular location. El Capitan, Half-Dome, Cathedral Peaks and Bridal Veil Falls can all be seen and included in one magnificent image. The class ate their sandwiches and waited with camera at the ready for the last bits of sunset glow to hit the peaks. Alicia and Brian offered last minute suggestions on composition and exposure to help the weekend's photography end with awesome images.
Even though we never saw a cloud the entire weekend, the class successfully made the most of this national treasure known as Yosemite, with all its wonderful locations. We photographed for over 7 hours each day; memory cards were filled, batteries depleted, and the class had a great camaraderie all weekend -- everyone learned something new and came away with some really great images!
Until next time,
Brian, Alicia and the rest of the Aperture Academy team
If you'd like to join us at one of our workshops, you can find the schedule/sign up here.
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In between heavy dollops of sentiment, Christine Quinn cemented some specific plans to combat the affordable housing problem and the facilitation of upgrading the City’s landlord maintenance code in her State of the City address last week.
Ms. Quinn outlined how the Housing Preservation and Development Department is extending affordability to 60 years for some of the biggest developments. Affordability agreements currently stand at just the 30-year mark.
How affordability agreements work is, the City provides incentives to developers and in exchange they make units affordable, but the current 30-year watermark is seen as too short in the face of the steady march to urban gentrification and the unceremonious shoving out of decade-long residents. The issue of affordable housing has turned into a weighty one recently, becoming a go-to subject for many would-be Mayoral candidates.
“Sixty years isn’t permanent,” said Ms. Quinn, “but it’s a critical first step”. She is championing a move toward what she called “permanent affordability.” She is going to work on correcting what she finds as archaic legislation, which sees veterans’ tax exemptions inexplicably linked to how much the City spends on schools. “Is that a classic government kick in the pants, or what?” Ms. Quinn said.
In a speech that was laden with wistful recollections of a New York of days of yore, full of kinship and camaraderie, Ms. Quinn also urged the City to create a new program to help get the some 10,000 homeless families into long-term housing. She wants to prioritize homeless families for NYCHA apartments. “This isn’t just the right thing to do,” said Ms. Quinn, “it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do. The average cost of a rental subsidy for a family of four is $800 a month. To house that same family in a shelter? $3,000.”
The theme of rehousing the homeless offered a nice segue into her next topic: the state of housing maintenance. She criticized landlords at large, and the City’s own NYCHA, for taking “years for repairs that take less than an hour to make.” Ms. Quinn called for modifications to be made to the City’s housing maintenance code that would compel landlords to fix the root cause of building problems, and not just the short-term issue.
“Instead of just fixing water damage, landlords will have to repair the hole in the roof that’s causing it,” Ms. Quinn said. “Slumlords will have to spend real money and fix the real problem or we’ll haul them into housing court.” She reiterated her urgency on the timeliness of repairs: “Not in a year. Not in a month. Today”.
“‘How will the NYCHA be able to scale to this level of productivity,’ you say? Well funnily enough the Council are upping the funding for NYCHA for this year and in doing so creating 175 new jobs.”
Yes, before you know Ms. Quinn will have us back to those glory years she speaks of: Kick the can games on every street, suffocating smell of cabbage from every kitchen and the hanging of laundry out every window.
Follow Stephen Duffy via RSS. | <urn:uuid:4bce0988-4493-4e4c-9560-67911f859095> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://observer.com/2012/02/quinn-tackles-affordable-housing-and-maintenance-problems-in-state-of-the-city-address/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954166 | 718 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Fascinating watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (hereafter HFW) with his attempts to make the town of Axminster “free range” as far as chickens go - particularly when you read it in conjunction with the pieces in Monday’s and Tuesday’s Guardian by Michael Pollan (extracted from his new book In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating) about how rubbish our food is now.
Pollan’s thesis is very interesting: that the power of the food processing companies and the supermarkets has simply separated us from the way we ought to eat food, rather than just thrust “nutrition” into our mouths.
Pollan’s five rules of eating are simple:
because she would distrust all those extra “ingredients”
because only BigFoodProcessingCos can afford to get the trials done to be able to make such claims, which means it’ll be the sort of stuff inside that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise - see #1
because that’s where all the processed crap is
because that’s what we used to eat, in between the occasional animal
like we used to…
because they’re pretty much indivisible
you’ll live longer - studies show it. Even if it’s difficult:
Brian Wansink, a professor of marketing and nutritional science at Cornell University in the US, once rigged up bowls of soup in a restaurant so they would automatically refill from the bottom. Those given the bottomless bowl ate 73% more soup than the subjects eating from an ordinary bowl; several ate as much as a two pints. When one of these hearty eaters was asked his opinion of the soup, he said: “It’s pretty good, and it’s pretty filling.” Indeed.
Americans have added to the traditional big three “eating occasions” - breakfast, lunch and dinner - an as-yet-untitled fourth that lasts all day long: the constant sipping and snacking while watching TV, driving, and so on. One study found that among 18- to 50-year-old Americans, roughly a fifth of all eating now takes place in the car.
“No, a desk is not a table”
This is precisely why so much food marketing is designed to encourage us to eat in front of the TV or in the car: when we eat mindlessly and alone, we eat more.
To reclaim this much control over one’s food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts. And what these acts subvert is nutritionism: the belief that food is foremost about nutrition and nutrition is so complex that only experts and industry can possibly supply it.
We’ve got chickens. They range about as freely as you can imagine. Their eggs are fantastic. (We’re not really into the eating them process though.)
Personally, I think that if you were to heavily tax added sugar and salt used as an ingredient, you’d see prices of processed food rocket - and people would start eating much healthier food. (And making their own jam.)
Interesting too how in HFW’s piece many of the supermarkets were scared of appearing in front of the cameras. Defending food processing is tough. The strange thing is that we’ve been here before, to some extent, with BSE. That turned out to be lethal. But still we go on…
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Ryanair's "ban" on phone chargers: not really staff bullying, but very subtle PR (23 April 2005; score: 48.28%)
- Yes, but our other lunch guests didn't poo on the table (28 November 2007; score: 46.13%)
- Do medics like House? (3 April 2007; score: 38.99%) | <urn:uuid:db13c18f-23b8-4f41-a3c0-c25833d2b778> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php/2008/01/09/chickens-and-food-and-hugh-f-w-and-the-supermarkets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966781 | 850 | 1.640625 | 2 |
with video: U-M solar car team in 3rd place after 2nd day of World Solar Challenge
University of Michigan photo
The race started Sunday in Darwin, Australia. The four-day, 1,864-mile race will end in Adelaide later this week.
Team Tokai, of Japan was in first place and the Nuon Solar team from the Netherlands was in second, according to a press release. Minutes separated the leaders.
U-M hopes to win the race for the United States, breaking a 24-year drought for U.S. teams in the World Solar Challenge. The team racing its vehicle, Quantum, was also in third place after the first day.
The U-M team is ranked the No. 1 solar car team in America, U-M said in a press release. The team has been around for two decades, during which it has won the North American Solar Challenge six times and finished third in the world race four times, including in 2009.
The 16-member team, a product of the University of Michigan School of Engineering, has been preparing for this year’s race for two years, building a car that is 200 pounds lighter than its predecessor, Infinium. | <urn:uuid:3324fca3-03d7-4924-801c-b8ad1c9b3acd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.annarbor.com/news/u-m-solar-car-team-in-3rd-place-after-first-day-of-world-solar-challenge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974697 | 250 | 1.71875 | 2 |
|CONVO: On the road together|
by Tara Lamont Eastman
By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Exodus 13:21 (NIV)
Youth and adults have gathered for another year of CONVO! This year we have been learning and living the Exodus story. We have been using a nine by twelve foot walkable labyrinth, creating personal travel labyrinths, and our “family” shirts feature a seven-circuit labyrinth as a reminder that God goes with us wherever we go.
Labyrinths are prayer tools that allow the walker to move towards the center—closer to God—and move out being renewed by God’s continual presence. According to an article written by the Sisters of Providence, Christian labyrinths may have arisen as a substitute for pilgrimages to the Holy Land. People who could not travel imitated the real journey, but they were also engaged in a spiritual journey that was still very real. The cathedrals at Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres had labyrinths, all located in the nave. Moving out of the labyrinth has traditionally been a symbol of rebirth or resurrection.
Saron Lutheran Church, a ELCA church in Ashland, Wis., describes the process of walking a labyrinth to be a threefold process:
Release: walking into the labyrinth is a time to release your troubles, clear and quiet your mind. Open your heart to whatever it might feel.
Receive: reaching the center. This can be a place of meditation and prayer. Pause and open yourself to the Holy Spirit. Listen to that small inner voice.
Return: reconnecting with the outer world. As you follow the path out, experience the sense of well being, healing, excitement, calm or peace.
It is with a thankful heart that I have been serving as chaplain for this awesome group of youth and adults. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we gather alongside you. If you would like to pray and walk our labyrinth while attending the assembly, just ask people wearing the labyrinth pattern t-shirts and we’d be happy to show you the way. Connected in prayer, we travel this journey together! | <urn:uuid:23da6025-0538-4414-b203-770a9c663f61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://upstatenysynod.org/lyo/579-convo-on-the-road-together | 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 | 0.957629 | 484 | 1.726563 | 2 |
State police are attempting to determine who pulled the trigger in a shooting that left one man dead and three others wounded in a small coastal town in Maine last weekend. Gunfire erupted early Sunday morning, as gunfire will. Oddly enough, residents reportedly were not shaken. Maybe that's because these kind of incidents are becoming commonplace in the upper right hand corner of our nation. Especially since Maine records about twenty-four homicides per year.
Twenty-four. For the whole state. Why aren't the residents shaken? Here in Oakland we have had months with twenty-four homicides. One city. Not the biggest city in the state. The shooting that took place in Lamoine, Maine was news that made the papers and was splashed all over Al Gore's Internet. Murder in Maine. That same story would be met with utter disregard here in the Bay Area. Comments like, "New day, same story," and "Do they just copy the story and put in different names?" meet these kinds of events in Oakland. We are resigned to it.
"The death of one is a tragedy," wrote the poet, "The death of a million is just a statistic." The blur that becomes urban living is precisely the distinction between feeling the suffering of others and tuning it out. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember that every life has value. Many moons ago, a friend of mine suggested that it would be entirely appropriate for video games to include video game funerals for all the video game victims of video game violence. If we were all asked to reflect on the loss of life in Maine, in Oakland, in Afghanistan. Not statistics. Tragedies. | <urn:uuid:4b908e89-0694-4b09-80eb-eba4520c62a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://entropicalparadise.blogspot.com/2012/03/another-saturday-night.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976808 | 334 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Back to Table of Contents
Organizer: Colin Hawes, University of British Columbia
Chair: Xiaoshan Yang, University of Notre Dame
Discussant: Alice W. Cheang, University of Notre Dame
No writer escapes his or her antecedents. In the Chinese tradition, past literary practices and practitioners are understood to loom particularly large. Overwhelmed by their cultural inheritance, runs the common assumption, classical Chinese authors, far from straining for originality, eagerly sought to "transmit" the received wisdom of their forebears and "return to the ancients."
What if this identification with the pastfor some authors, or in certain periods, at leastis regarded as a mainly superficial gesture which masks real intentions to clear creative space by subverting powerful predecessors? To what extent can resistance to the pressure of established models, or the anxieties of influence endured by late-born "talents" striving to prove themselves, be gauged?
This panel addresses the problem through specific cases of imitation or appropriation in classical Chinese poetics. Minru Li details Tang and Song poetic appropriations from Tao Yuanming (c.365427); Mark Francis and Colin Hawes demonstrate how Li He (791817) and Ouyang Mu (10071072), respectively, sought to outdo the style of a strong poet forebear; and Lydia Francis discusses how Ji Yun (17241805) explores the nature of originality itself in a self-referential text that strives to outdo its literary predecessors and ultimately to undo itself
The panel also assesses on the theoretical level the relevance in the Chinese context of such Western perspectives as Harold Blooms concept of the "anxiety of influence," and whether the Chinese tradition offers a viable alternative to Freudian-inspired terms.
The Humble Challenger: "Peach Blossom Spring" Poets in the Tang and Song Dynasties
Minru Li, University of Auckland
Since Tao Yuanming (c. 365427) composed the preface and poem "Peach Blossom Spring," a good number of "belated" poets have followed him and written on the same topic. Unlike the literary figures mentioned in Harold Blooms work (including Oscar Wilde, Goethe, Nietzsche, Emerson, Blake and Lawrence) who denied any poetical influence of their predecessors in order to claim their own creativity and originality, these Chinese poets readily admitted Taos influence, voiced high respect for him, and appropriated his words and ideas without display of the anxieties of indebtedness.
This paper examines the phenomenon in light of Chinese concepts of originality and creativity, and explores the relationship between the precursor, Tao Yuanming, and four belated and acclaimed poets, Wang Wei (701761) and Han Yu (768824) of the Tang Dynasty, and Su Shi (10371101) and Wang Anshi (10211086) of the Song Dynasty. The paper attempts to reveal that, despite their humble attitude, the four poets, consciously or unwittingly, were challengers of Taos legacy and, eventually, produced their own highly individualized works. Moreover, the paper will treat the framing concept of the anxiety of influence from a Chinese perspective by employing terms and concepts from traditional Chinese poetics, and comparing them with Blooms terms of six revisionary ratios that are central to the Western tradition.
Daemonizing Li Bo: Li Hes Counter-Sublime
Mark Francis, University of Auckland
Harold Bloom, in his Anxiety of Influence, suggests a method of intertextual study which investigates the works of "late" poets by interpreting their innovationsor strangenessesas strategies aimed at overcoming the enervating "power" of influential poet-predecessors. Bloom describes one such strategy, "Daemonization, or the Counter-Sublime," which has striking relevance to the case of the Mid-Tang poet Li He, particularly if we set the works of Li He (the reputed "Demonic Genius" of Chinese poetry) against those of the more illustrious, and canonical, Li Bo (the "Banished Immortal," or "Divinity of Poetry") who first established a literary reputation for piling "strangeness upon strangeness."
With Blooms concept as a framework, this paper considers how Li Hes poems may be read as an attempt "to generalize away the uniqueness of the earlier work" and thereby forge for their author a more distinctive poetic identity. It first identifies the style and specific poems of Li Bo most responsible for that poets reputation for literary marvelousness (qi), then, in close readings, sets against the results "strange" (guai) poems by Li He which seem to stand as distortions or expansions of the earlier poets fantastic vision. In seeking further justification to relate them, the analysis focuses on the alleged "transcendent" and "supra-human" elements of the two poets respective oeuvres, suggesting how their versions of a Chinese "fantastic" might be compared or contrasted with Romantic notions of the sublime.
Rhyme, Reason, and Revival: Ouyang Xius Witty Appropriation of Han Yu
Colin Hawes, University of British Columbia
In the imaginative graveyard of the early Song, decked out with its wreaths of imitation late-Tang regulated verse, Han Yu (768824) would have made a most unwelcome ghost. Yet by the 1040s, ancient-style poems in the rough, strange Han Yu vein were an essential part of every poets repertoire. It is a commonplace that Ouyang Xiu (10071072) was largely responsible for the Han Yu revival: Ronald Egan and others have clearly illustrated the degree to which Han influenced Ouyangs mastery of prose style. However, little work has been done on the equally close poetic affinity between these two writers.
This paper redresses the balance, revealing Ouyang Mus appropriation and subtle alteration of Han Yus poetry. Focusing on ancient-style verse, I begin by noting the aspects of Hans poetry that Ouyang singles out for praisenotably clever rhyming, vivid daily-life vignettes, and "joking and teasing." I provide several examples where Ouyang has clearly borrowed such stylistic idiosyncrasies from Han. I demonstrate that in each case Ouyang alters his modelreplacing Hans grotesque hyperbole and shocking disorder with gentle caricature and cunningly reasoned wit. The resulting poems are delightfully "original," and utterly "Song" in style.
My conclusion deals with two questions arising from Ouyangs compositional method. Isnt witty transformation an effective means to escape the shadow of our strong predecessors? And cannot revival of dead writers, far from evoking anxiety, in fact revive the sagging inspiration of our own age?
The Anxiety of Influence and the Problem of Zhi: Fantastic Lyricism in Yueweicaotang biji
Sing-chen Lydia Francis, University of Auckland
In the preface to his Yueweicaotang biji, Ji Yun (17241805) dissociates his writing from both creation (zuo) and transmission (shu). This is a remarkable proclamation, in light of the traditional Confucian literary discourse of transmission as authoring. The explicit analogy of author as father and transmitter as son in classical Chinese lends itself to comparison with Harold Blooms notion of the "anxiety of influence," which is structured upon the Freudian metaphor of the Oedipal complex. However, in a culture where the principle of filiality reigned supreme, the path to ones own artistic identity was perhaps best found in the realm of literary fantasy.
Taking "Wang Juzhuang yan" as a case study, this paper seeks to demonstrate how Ji Yun, as a "belated" writer, reclaims originality by appropriating and problematizing literary forefathers through rigorous exploration of fantastic indeterminacy. Cast in the framework of a ghost story telling contest, the story strives not only to outdo its literary predecessors, but also to outdohence ultimately undoitself, The highly self-referential text exposes the multiplicity and incongruity of the authorial intent (zhi), which is traditionally taken to be the locus of meaning. On the other hand, by negating both textual objectivity and authorial subjectivity as the final arbiter of meaning, Ji Yuns ghostly tale celebrates illusion itself as an artistic subject. As the anxiety for an ultimate "author or "authority" dissolves, the lack of a singular origin of meaning becomes no longer chaotic or nihilist, but rather, fantastic, lyrical, and "original." | <urn:uuid:fddc49d7-6744-4fd3-85d8-eb1d3d774a65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asian-studies.org/absts/1999abst/china/c-141.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932685 | 1,779 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Podcasts & RSS Feeds
Thu October 11, 2012
A conversation with director Scott Thurman
There is nothing unusual about political fights over public school curricula and the content of textbooks. The textbooks can influence how people think about history and social issues, sometimes for decades or more. So, the battles take place around the United States, and they take place around the world.
But the Texas Board of Education took these culture wars to another level when members made highly controversial decisions on how evolution is taught in the classrooms. Director Scott Thurman focuses on this Texan drama in his new documentary, The Revisionaries. He joined Global Journalist to discuss his film. | <urn:uuid:ffadc3cc-7292-47bc-8ba5-7ed6b052a420> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kbia.org/post/conversation-director-scott-thurman?ft=1&f=160965383,160965660,160965895,162231652,162382158,162503245,162586773,162749710,162821542,162970337,163190800,163492835,164022637,164119281,165056083 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95937 | 136 | 1.757813 | 2 |
April 3rd, 2010 Brian Herzog
This isn't really a reference question, but it is a question from a patron. It's, well, you decide:
Patron: Have you see the monk hidden on the cover of the tax forms?
As Liz Lemon would say, "what the what?" The patron explained, somewhat cryptically, that the negative space between the stars on this year's 1040 instruction booklet cover design seemed to form a monk.
Can you see it? Hover your mouse over the image to see what he was talking about. It's slightly easier to see on a larger animated version on flickr.
I saw it after he pointed it out, but personally, I think it looks more like Darth Vader. The conspiracist in me knows it's not unusual that secret symbols appear in government printing, but they're usually more Masonic than Imperial (but maybe the stars were just to much to resist).
There must be a word for this - hidden pictures formed by positive space shapes. This is sort of like the distorted tessellations in MC Escher's art, but not quite. I looked around but couldn't find a name or description, so I'll keep looking.
In the meantime, if you're interested, here are a few examples of logos employing negative space.
Tags: 1040, booklet, darth vader, form, forms, hidden, image, libraries, Library, monk, negative space, picture, public, Reference Question, shape, star, stars, tax
January 15th, 2009 Brian Herzog
So one morning this week, before we opened to patrons, I was walking around the floor tidying up.
In the furthest back corner of the stacks, the one that is most secluded and is the only place in the library we find condoms et. al., I came upon the scene pictured here.
I'm used to this corner being the place where kids go to hide, so I kind of laughed when I came across this stack of dessert books. Not the reside of illicit sex, or Playboys, or drugs, or a pile of barcodes removed from books and DVDs. I could just visualize someone tucked away, hiding their guiltiest pleasure from the world: graphic books featuring cakes, pies, ice cream and cookies.
But it makes me sad they couldn't bring themselves to check them out. Maybe the temptation to prepare these recipes would be just too much if they took these books home. Good thing the library will always be around when this patron needs another fix. | <urn:uuid:46f6f2a9-aa5f-49e0-9316-04f4972cfe6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/tag/hidden/ | 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 | 0.961956 | 521 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Court rules counties and cities can ban pot shops
November 12, 2011
In a decision that could impact several San Luis Obispo County medical marijuana dispensary applicants, a California appellate court ruled Wednesday that cities and counties can pass laws banning medical marijuana dispensaries. [LATimes]
The decision by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside upholds both Upland and Riverside bans and is expected to empower more California cities and counties to pass laws prohibiting pot shops.
Even though the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors adopted rules allowing medical marijuana dispensaries in 2007, they have since rejected every dispensary application.
Earlier this month, county planning officials approved an application to open a medical marijuana collective in Oceano. However, it is unlikely the board of supervisors, which has extinguished three such proposals in the past five years, will vote in favor of the proposed Oceano dispensary.
Tammy Murray argued for her Compassionate Cannabis Information Center, but Commissioner Tim Murphy, who represents the area in question, cast the lone opposing vote after raising the usual issues of location and federal prohibition.
Sheriff’s officials echoed those concerns, contending that an expensive increase in patrol capability would be needed.
In July, the city of San Luis Obispo rejected three applications for medical marijuana dispensary business licenses, citing zoning code. A previous moratorium adopted in 2004 had expired.
Before Wednesday’s ruling, San Luis Obispo attorney Lou Koory said it was only a matter of time before a new applicant would come forward and challenge the city’s stance on zoning code prohibition of medical marijuana which he referred to as “void.”
Long Beach, a city which uses a lottery for its pot shop approval process, is currently considering banning dispensaries, the LA Times said.
Long Beach City Atty. Robert Shannon told the LA Times the city filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on Thursday noting that, “The law is in total disarray,” and “There is no clarity and consistency.”
“The recent decisions could give the state Supreme Court an opportunity to address critical issues that remain unsettled 15 years after voters made California the first state to allow medical use of marijuana,” the LA Times said. “Despite the state’s groundbreaking status, its medical marijuana program is the most tumultuous.” | <urn:uuid:d5e88e2a-e8c9-4a2f-a4df-0c94f434cfd6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://calcoastnews.com/2011/11/court-rules-counties-and-cities-can-ban-pot-shops/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948811 | 487 | 1.53125 | 2 |
|ONU – Salesians Contribute to the work of the Commission on Social Development|
|United States - Salesian contribution on youth employment offered to ECOSOC|
|United States – Salesians and the impact of poverty and the prevention of HIV|
(ANS – Washington) – The XIX International AIDS Conference was held in Washington, D.C., July 22-27, 2012. Twenty nine thousands delegates from around the globe participated in the sessions, discussions, workshops and informal networking as they examined the theme of the Conference: “Turning the Tide Together”. Fr. Tom Brennan, SDB, helped organize and moderated a panel discussion during the conference.
Leading scientists, public health experts, policy makers, members of the HIV-affected community and community leaders and activists met to seek effective ways of acting decisively on recent scientific advances in HIV treatment and biomedical prevention. Momentum has been growing that may lead to a cure and the development of a vaccine. Every stakeholder in the AIDS response is needed if we are to change the course of HIV and AIDS in the world.
Fr. Tom Brennan, SDB, helped organize and moderated a panel discussion during the conference. Collaborators included UNAIDS, UNDP, the NGO Committee on HIV/AIDS, the Sero Project, the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies and the Hunter College Center for Community and Urban Health. The panel addressed the issue of the Criminalization of HIV: Is HIV a Crime? Race, Sexuality, Poverty and the Impact of Criminalization, and presented the following topics before a lively discussion with attendees: Adolescents: HIV, poverty, and criminalization; UNAIDS: UN response to HIV criminalization; Personal perspective: HIV non-disclosure and incarceration; Legal sanctions: adult incarcerations and US law; UNDP/UNAIDS Global Commission on HIV and the Law.
Fr. Brennan is the co-chair of the NGO Committee on HIV/AIDS in consultative relationship with the United Nations. The Committee has agreed to collaborate on three advocacy issues for the year. | <urn:uuid:85a492be-a99c-4406-a069-1f5440a924b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoans.org/1.asp?sez=1&sotsez=13&doc=8173&lingua=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930981 | 428 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Washington briefing: “Rival” gas pipelines discussed in Sofia, Prague
Published: Saturday May 02, 2009
Washington - European countries are continuing to discuss ways to safeguard their gas supplies from interruptions, resulting in part from their overdependence on supplies from Russia and the latter's recurring pricing disputes with transit countries like Ukraine.
A meeting in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia on April 24-25 brought together senior officials from 28 countries and, according to local media, focused on the so-called South Stream project that would bring Russian natural gas under the Black Sea to Turkey and then on to Europe, thus avoiding Ukraine.
That summit's main intrigue was Russian premier Vladimir Putin's decision to pull out at the last moment, sending his energy minister instead. According to media speculation, Mr. Putin's decision came after Bulgaria declined to cede its gas distribution network to Russia's Gazprom as part of South Stream.
For their part, Europeans seek to increase the transparency of gas purchase and transit agreements made by Gazprom with Central Asian gas suppliers.
On May 6–7, the European Union will hold its summit in the Czech capital. On the agenda there is EU support for the U.S.-backed Nabucco gas pipeline that aims to bring Central Asian (and potentially Iranian) gas to Europe bypassing Russia via Turkey. (Turkey has conditioned its support for Nabucco on progress of its accession talks with the union, which are hampered by objections from Cyprus.)
The Prague summit will also bring together leaders of four former Soviet republics, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine, for the formal launch of the "Eastern partnership" proposed by the EU. Leaders of Belarus and Moldova are expected to stay out over their disputes with EU member-states. | <urn:uuid:5dc3adab-2a4e-48a1-940d-e5e278b74e1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-05-02--rival--gas-pipelines-discussed-in-sofia-prague | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953552 | 362 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Ready to help Japan (updated 15 March)
© Fotolia, Ruslan Olinchuk
At the first news of the devastating earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, the European Council expressed its condolences to and support for the affected people and governments. The leaders asked the High Representative and the Commission to mobilise all appropriate assistance. In addition, President Van Rompuy together with Commission President Barroso issued a message of solidarity on behalf of the European Union.
The European Commission immediately (11 March) activated the European Civil Protection Mechanism. The Mechanism facilitates cooperation in disaster response. 31 states participate in its operations (27 EU member states plus Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway).
These countries pool their resources to make them available to disaster-stricken countries all over the world. So far 20 states have offered personnel and equipment through this mechanism.
Offers of assistance in kind comprise water purification units, field hospitals, advanced medical posts, Emergency Temporary Shelters (ETS). The first response teams that are ready for departure include medical and logistic experts, search and rescue and decontamination experts.
The Commission Civil Protection Mechanism sent a civil liaison officer to Japan on 13 March to reinforce the EU Delegation in Tokyo and prepare for possible deployment of the team.
Furthermore, two teams of European civil protection experts, which are currently in Indonesia, stand ready for deployment. Commission's humanitarian and civil protection service (ECHO) follows the situation on a 24/7 basis through its monitoring and information centre and its humanitarian offices in Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila.
The Japanese Mission to the EU in Brussels asks for the dispatch of any additional personnel, teams and equipment to be put on hold for the time being due to the difficulty of gaining access to the affected areas.
EU member states' consular offices in Japan are operating, and citizens are invited to contact their embassies.
Nuclear safety concerns
The Commission is in regular contact on the situation with Japanese sources, the International Atomic Energy Agency and established emergency networks in Europe.
Commissioner Oettinger has called for a coordination meeting, which will take place on 15 March in Brussels, with EU member states, all 27 nuclear safety authorities and all operators and vendors of nuclear power plants in the EU to assess the situation in Japan as well as the EU's state of preparedness in the case of similar accidents. The aim is to get first- hand information about contingency plans and safety requirements in place.
Statement of the European Council (pdf)
More on the EU response to the disaster in Japan | <urn:uuid:a796522e-e146-4112-912b-ce907b1d63ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.consilium.europa.eu/homepage/highlights/ready-to-help-japan?lang=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939559 | 524 | 1.6875 | 2 |
(CNN) -- Amid all the furor about the seemingly omnipotent military in Egypt, the disbanded Islamist-dominated parliament and the debate over whether the Muslim Brotherhood will ban beer and bikinis, it's tempting to mutter, "It's the economy, stupid."
In 18 months of upheaval, all Egypt's economic indicators have headed south.
Growth is a projected 1.5% this fiscal year, far too feeble to provide a young and rapidly growing population with jobs (80% of Egypt's population is under age 30). Unemployment, one of the engines of the revolution, is estimated to be as high as 25% among the young. Tourism revenues have fallen sharply, and foreign reserves have dwindled to $15 billion. According to the United Nations, some 40% of Egyptians live below the poverty line; 14 million people subsist on less than $1 a day. Institutions are chronically weak and corruption is endemic.
President-elect Mohamed Morsi has his hands full.
Many critics say the military has handed Morsi a neutered presidency doomed to fail. But economists who have dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood's economic team describe the team as pragmatic, well-prepared and favorable to the free market.
Hernando de Soto, a noted economist who has helped his native Peru empower millions, has consulted with the Muslim Brotherhood. He says that when he met millionaire Khairat el-Shater, the Brotherhood's first presidential candidate who was disqualified for legal matters, el-Shater described himself as "businessman" on his card.
"They want to create a market economy for the poor, to bring them into the mainstream," de Soto says.
The Muslim Brotherhood has pledged to reach a rapid accord with the International Monetary Fund to cool Egypt's borrowing costs and protect the value of its pound. The interim military government raised money by selling bonds to Egyptian investors -- but at rising interest rates, with the yield on the one-year bill reaching a dizzying 16%. The new government will have to repay or roll over some $4 billion in short-term borrowing over the next six months.
There have been several rounds of negotiations between the Finance Ministry and the IMF for a $3.2 billion loan, but they have yet to yield an agreement. That amount may now be inadequate. Masood Ahmed, one of the IMF's senior officials for the Middle East, summed up the challenge last month: "How can we help Egypt now come up with an economic program that would restore confidence, protect poor people and vulnerable households -- and do so in a way that restores confidence during uncertainty?"
Hafez Ghanem, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was recently in Egypt, says the immediate priority is to devise a "bold, credible program to reduce the outflow of reserves, encourage investment and bring in other donors" through an agreement with the IMF.
He advises the new government to focus on two or three priorities. The first is tackling corruption, which resonates with every Egyptian. "Real progress on corruption will have to involve a partnership between the government, the private sector and NGOs," he says.
He looks at the example of Indonesia. After the fall of President Suharto, the new government embarked on decentralization, partnering with nongovernmental organizations and civil society. Results were not immediate, but the perception of change was.
The second priority, Ghanem says, must be the subsidies that consume such a large part of the national budget.
The country's growing deficit could be cut significantly if fuel subsidies were removed. But that's not going to happen. The Brotherhood is anxious to protect the poor Egyptians who propelled it to power, even though 90% of the subsidy benefits the wealthiest 20% of Egyptians.
Fuel and bread subsidies have long been an essential insurance against civil unrest in Egypt. The challenge for Morsi and his government is to better direct them at those most in need. Ghanem says that over two or three years, the subsidy program can be refashioned as income support for the poorest, similar to the "bolsa familia" in Brazil that has lifted millions into the middle class. Gasoline stamps, graduated electricity tariffs and a shift in subsidies toward healthier foods -- away from bread and sugar -- all have a role to play, he says.
Ghanem says the issue of youth unemployment can only be addressed if the public debt is tackled, something that could have been done already with support from the IMF. But the interim government's refusal to consider foreign financing squeezed liquidity out of the domestic credit market.
Gehad el-Haddad, a senior member of the executive committee of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, says he knows it faces a tall order.
"We are warding off the immediate devaluation of the pound and working to regain the trust of investors in the market, to assure them that stability will come under this presidency," he says.
One of their primary challenges, he stressed, is wiping away remnants of the Mubarak regime's hallmark bureaucracy and patronage networks: "The economy is our first, second and third priority."
Some still aren't convinced.
"I'm not sure I want to be investing my money when I know the Brotherhood, with little experience in this realm, is at the helm," says a senior member of losing presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq's campaign. "It doesn't give me and many other liberals much incentive to invest in a civil state that might be compromised by Islamists with unclear motives."
Ahmed El Alfi, chairman of Flat6Labs, a start-up incubator based in Cairo that provides money and support to young entrepreneurs, says fostering entrepreneurship in Egypt is an oft-forgotten component of getting the economy on track.
"Really, this government should just get out of the way and let people work," he says. "The revolution gave people a sense of empowerment. Instead of calling up your dad to call up his friends to get you a government job, now Egyptians are thinking outside of the box, they want to make a difference. We have to nurture this talent, support creativity and harness the power as an economic solution."
But El Alfi worries that continued instability may prompt a brain drain among Egypt's brightest prospects. He notes that most of the budding entrepreneurs that seek Flat6Labs' mentoring are public school educated and from a lower economic bracket.
"These are the people who can't just pack up and move to the West if things get bad," he says. "And they can't be neglected."
Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, says the Brotherhood knows this.
"Put simply, if they can't deliver on the economy, then they'll hemorrhage popularity," Hamid says. "They know they can't fail, and they're committed to delivering with a detailed free-market economic program that also focuses on social welfare."
De Soto says the key to Egypt's long-term prosperity is to find a way to liberate its anarchic "extra-legal" economy: the shopkeepers, craftsmen and traders who work below the radar to avoid corruption, taxes and the inertia of the bureaucracy.
That would require the streamlining of some 300 laws, he says, and the creation of one organization that could bestow property rights and provide the "extra-legal" with a path to a more productive role -- unlocking the vast sums sloshing about in the informal economy.
It would be a huge transformation, de Soto says, and it will require promotion and smart messaging.
"But there is a window of opportunity," he says. "That's what revolutions provide." The same happened in Japan immediately after World War II, unleashing an economy that had been in many ways feudal until then.
De Soto's consultancy, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, was commissioned by the Mubarak government eight years ago to study Egypt's informal economy and concluded it was worth 55 times all the foreign direct investment Egypt had received since the Napoleonic era. But none of his recommendations was implemented.
De Soto reflects: "If you're going to change things, your enemy is the status quo."
Marwa Metwally, 23, is the sort of young talent that de Soto wants to see empowered. She's a razor-sharp unemployed college graduate who makes a four-hour commute every day from the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqiya to a nonprofit organization called Education for Employment in Cairo. She says the status quo simply can't continue.
"Though I didn't vote for Morsi in the first round, he can bring the change we need," she says. "The Brotherhood is from the poor, they understand. ... They were oppressed along with all us Egyptians the past 80 years, they have a plan and they know that we can't go on like this. We're dying. It's the breaking point."
But the short-term political uncertainties -- no parliament, a military perhaps committed to that very status quo and a ministerial team yet to gel -- will complicate decision-making. And given the speed with which Egypt's economy has deteriorated, time is a luxury the new government doesn't have. | <urn:uuid:dc252268-867a-4ee9-b72a-20fd36f1eb1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/29/world/meast/egypt-economy/index.html?eref=rss_middleeast&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fedition_meast+%28RSS%3A+Middle+East%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968883 | 1,885 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Sen. Feinstein introduces Ban on Modern Sporting Rifles
From National Shooting Sports Foundation
Since the tragic and unforgivable incident that occurred last month in our community of Newtown, Conn., the National Shooting Sports Foundation has been engaged in discussions with lawmakers to find real solutions for keeping our children and our communities safer.
All Americans share the goal of wanting to make our communities and children safer by reducing violence in our society.
Unfortunately, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) bill, S. 150, is not a proposal with that shared goal in mind.
Similar efforts have been tried in the past and they have shown no discernible effect on the violent crime rate, which has been greatly reduced in the last two decades, even as gun ownership has become more widespread.
Any serious attempt to work toward our collective goal must begin with addressing unauthorized access to firearms. We believe it is critical to first focus on keeping firearms out of the hands of irresponsible persons and those not legally qualified to possess them.
This cannot be done by simply mandating a home storage requirement, as the senator proposes.
Instead of focusing on the troubled individual, Sen. Feinstein has opted to criminalize the choices of law-abiding Americans who legally purchased modern sporting rifles, shotguns and handguns.
Her legislation will cover many more firearms, including handguns and shotguns, than did the 1994 ban on semi-automatic rifles, as she seeks to lower the threshold of what firearms would be banned, by requiring only one cosmetic feature to define an assault weapon instead of two.
The new bill also looks to reinstate the ban on magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
Finally, there is no sunset provision, meaning this bill would ban modern sporting rifles forever.
An earlier version of the legislation calls for current, legal owners of modern sporting rifles to be fingerprinted, photographed and have their firearms registered in a federal database.
Whether the senator would still seek these onerous and expensive provisions is unclear at this time.
Sen. Feinstein's bill does not address the real issues that would prevent further tragedies and is not a serious effort to keep our children and communities safer. Instead she wants to ban commonly owned firearms popular among recreational shooters, collectors and hunters and create a database to track their current owners.
We encourage everyone to call their U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative at (202) 224-3121 and demand that they reject S. 150 and its companion bill in the House of Representatives.
For more information about modern sporting rifles, see <http://www.nssf.org/msr>
For more information about defining assault weapons, see <http://www.nssf.org/factsheets/PDF/AssaultBG.pdf>
For more information about the ban on magazines, see <http://www.nssf.org/factsheets/PDF/HighCapMag.pdf>
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the more than 8,000 member trade association for America's firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting industry. | <urn:uuid:df179108-33a2-40c8-bc0f-b3fd7d2cde5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buckmasters.com/nssf-responds-to-feinsteins-proposed-ban-1.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944427 | 625 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The court left intact the most egregious section of Arizona’s controversial law, inviting a stop-and-frisk culture.
For most progressive-minded Americans, not to mention Latinos in the Southwest, the recent Supreme Court decision about Arizona’s draconian immigration law was highly disappointing.
Although the justices determined that three portions of Arizona's controversial immigration law were unconstitutional, justices nonetheless allowed one of the most divisive provisions, which allows Arizona’s state and local police to check the immigration status of people they stop if a "reasonable suspicion" exists that the person is in the country illegally.
In a complicated and nuanced opinion, the court ruled that the state of Arizona had overstepped its authority by making it a state crime to target illegal immigrants. The justices also struck down a provision that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants not to carry registration papers and another which made it a crime for soliciting work. The third portion of the law struck down allowed state and local police to arrest illegal immigrants without a warrant in some cases.
Nonetheless, the decision not to overturn the most egregious portion of the law is nothing more than a license for an Arizona-style stop-and-frisk shindig. And it carried potentially dire consequences for many residents, who may well face deportation. It is a disastrous piece of legislation that has the potential of making Latinos the subject of racial profiling and invoking fear in a large segment of the population of that state.
President Obama said it succinctly: “I remain concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally.”
He continued, “I agree with the Court that individuals cannot be detained solely to verify their immigration status. No American should ever live under a cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who is making an art form out of her contempt for President Obama, has called the court decision a victory because it enables police officers to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop if there is a “reasonable suspicion” the person is an illegal immigrant.
The silver lining — to the extent there is one — is that the decision will cause states to think twice before trying to emulate Arizona’s immigration laws. It also signals that civil rights and civil liberties groups will remain vigilant of any movement to expand such laws to other states will be met with strong opposition.
As Anthony D, Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “If state governments enact new immigration bills, we say bring it on, we will see them in court.”
The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of BET Networks.
BET National News - Keep up to date with breaking news stories from around the nation, including headlines from the hip hop and entertainment world. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.
(Photo: Andrew Innerarity/Reuters) | <urn:uuid:39faf129-bd97-4b23-acfc-72c18bb45434> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bet.com/news/national/2012/06/26/commentary-supreme-court-decision-in-immigration-case-disappointing.html?ftcnt=HP_News | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940722 | 614 | 1.765625 | 2 |
OK, it's time to reveal in two parts what I know about the Champagne Pyramid Trick.
First you have to have a stable formation, a tetrahedron or triangular pyramid that will use up 680 wine glasses. This is a lot harder than it sounds. I did a little by trial and error:
1. I looked at an extended bowling pin arrangement and discovered that with 15 glasses in the bottom triangle the total in the stack of having one less in each ascending row would be 666. Unless a square pattern fits better (which as you will see in #2 is not the case)you have to add glasses into the formation somewhere, which is one for each level except the top one (which has to be just 1)
2. You must switch to a square pattern and start the same way with a level 1 square of 9 x 9. Level 2 is 8x8, 64. Level 3 is 7x7, 49. Level 4 is 6x6, 36. Level 5 is 5x5, 25. level 6 is 4x4, 16, level 7 is 3x3, 8. level is 2x2, 4. level 9 is 1. Add them up quickly and you get 819, so level 1 must start with 12 and not 13. then you add them up to get 650. You can't get there from here on this one either.
3. A hybrid approach appears the only one that can work but I have to back off and say that the mathematical closure on this just isn't there. My mistakes in the earlier two approaches led to inaccurate conclusions, but I hope you had some fun trying out your mathematical dexterity. If anyone did better let's hear about it.
The other side of the equation is how to actually stack the glasses. Heresay has it that if you take out one glass from most many levels, the champagne will be able to drain through there. Here is what a professional bartender who has done this trick has been reported about the proper way to do it:
You know that the glasses have to be stacked in a pyramid.
Now here's the trick to filling all the glasses and not pouring your Champagne all over the table top....make sure your glasses are about a fingers width apart all around. If they're touching each other, the Champagne will follow the rims and stems and just dribble all over the place(not good). By keeping the glasses from touching each other, the Wine will follow the stems and bases of the glass just like the little waterfall you want to have.
You won't even need a tray under glasses. No wine will wet the table as long as the glasses are not touching each other.
No doubt there will be those dissatisfied with this analysis. I say you should go out and buy 660 wine glasses and try it out.
I expect all of you will enjoy this demonstration of a tetrahedron shape with about 5000 glasses, which is totally amazing:http://www.metacafe.com/watch/343130/pyramid_of_glasses/
Try it at your next party. | <urn:uuid:fa44deb5-01bc-4f7d-9019-b60d86e268bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.realityfanforum.com/index.php/topic,21791.0/prev_next,prev.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959017 | 639 | 1.625 | 2 |
A week after his very public resignation from Goldman Sachs, dissident banker Greg Smith is still making waves. His accusations against the investment giant, which he chided for engaging in unethical behavior with respect to its clients, were for many the straw that broke the camels back. Investment bankers have lost the Master of the Universe image they so long enjoyed. Now theyre seen more and more as losers, which is something that will likely impact future generations of bankers.
Since the 1980s, theres been a glamour factor associated with investment bankers. Part of that has to do with the piles of money being earned by the bankers themselves, whose salaries match those of rock stars and top soccer players. Movies like Oliver Stones Wall Street (1987) and books like Michael Lewiss Liars Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street (1989) cemented the macho image. Top performers from the most elite business schools were rushing to get Wall Street jobs, unfazed by the inhumanly long hours and the brutal dog-eat-dog competition.
That picture appears to be changing. In its analysis of the latest Goldman Sachs affair, the New York Times notes that graduates who once felt drawn to the top banks like moths to light are now looking at other sectors. According to the paper, financial insiders say that revelations about the lives of would-be top dogs in the finance sector are turning more and more people off, and keeping them from applying to the firms with the hardest selection criteria.
Mathematics professor Chris Wiggins of Columbia University is quoted as saying: The claim of investment banking that it serves a social purpose by lubricating capitalism has been eroded. Its simply very difficult for young people to believe that theyre serving any social purpose now.
A call for new hiring practices
At the same time, events have shown that investment banking is driven less by the rationality of efficient markets than by the high testosterone levels of young bankers. Joan Coates, a former Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs trader, has demonstrated this empirically. And that represents a danger to the whole system. A Financial Times writer noted that too much testosterone can lead to individual success, but in a collective, it leads to excessive aggression, dangerous over-estimation of self, and herd behavior.
Coatess advice to the banks is to re-think their hiring policies. They should hire more women and older men, he says. A different mix in the trading room would make the vibe less hectic and cut down on the drama sheer biology would decrease the testosterone and hence risk levels. At the same time, new hiring policies would solve the problem of how to attract new talent to the field.
Read the original story in German
Photo - Wonderlane | <urn:uuid:8beff6c5-c0f9-4481-81f5-5981a38c6297> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldcrunch.com/time-break-banking-worlds-all-boys-club/business-finance/time-to-break-up-the-banking-world-s-all-boys-club-/c2s4918/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964281 | 553 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Owning the night
U.S. military commanders have long based mission plans on the expectation they would own the night. Their troops would operate equipped with night vision goggles while the enemy would flail in the darkness.
The Pentagon has held tight export restrictions for infrared detection equipment to maintain that edge. However, the U.S. defense industry is challenging those restrictions, claiming they only put American defense companies at a disadvantage since international competitors produce similar infrared products.
Bloomberg is reporting that Raytheon Co., DRS Technologies Inc. and Flir Systems Inc are leading the charge to not add infrared detectors to the U.S. Munitions List. Raytheon, DRS and Flir are three of the largest U.S. manufacturers of infrared equipment.
The State Department oversees the U.S. Munitions List, a list of articles, technology and services deemed defense– or space-related by the federal government. If the infrared technology is added to the list, the companies who produce it would need a specific Defense Department license to export it.
Pentagon officials, to include former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have pushed to ease foreign military sales restrictions for U.S. defense companies to keep the industry afloat as the Defense Department plans to cut defense spending over the next decade.
As a result, the U.S. defense industry saw arms transfer agreements triple in 2011 compared to 2010. A Congressional Research Service report found the value of the U.S. defense industry’s arms transfer agreements rose from $21.4 billion to $66.3 billion from 2010 to 2011. A large chunk — $56.3 billion — of 2011’s agreements came from developing nations, namely Saudi Arabia.
If infrared was only used in night vision goggles or missile guidance systems, this would be an open and shut case. But there are plenty of non-military uses for infrared technology such as civilian security cameras as Bloomberg’s report pointed out. Putting the technology on the U.S. Munitions List, though, would make it hard for companies to even sell their infrared equipment for civilian uses.
While Flir, Raytheon and DRS Technologies have plenty of military contracts, they do produce infrared equipment outside the military. As defense spending comes down, these companies will need to depend more on the civilian contracts as the military contracts drop. | <urn:uuid:9bb5c8d6-6d73-409b-af78-2216a6596cfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/08/30/owning-the-night/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950163 | 482 | 1.828125 | 2 |
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