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Image courtesy: kraft.com
My favourite moments when discussing food with Cambodians come when I speak passionately about some particular foreign food and they look at me like I’ve just described to them the correct manner by which to skin and eat a human baby. For some reason, I often receive this blank stare of boundless horror when I try to describe muesli as a vaguely pleasurable breakfast experience. Possibly because at some unspecified time, Cambodians encountered Grape-Nuts.
Over the weekend, a friend was in town for a reciprocal visit from Laos and we did a run to Lucky Supermarket for a selection of processed Western goods unavailable in the Land of A Million Elephants. While I was perusing the specials bin, I spied a packet of Grape-Nuts. They sounded vaguely like an insult that you would throw around the playground as a child, so we deduced that they must be a good thing. They were also half the price of any other imported breakfast cereal available in Cambodge.
Kraft says: “One of the first ready-to-eat cereal products ever made available to the public, Grape-Nuts was first introduced in 1897. Made of wheat and malted barley, Grape-Nuts was so named because its inventor, Charles William Post, said that grape sugar was formed during the baking process and described the cereal as having a nutty flavor.”
I say: After completing the baking process, I would have bestowed the name Bran-Gravel on the product. The only positive that comes from this product is that it effectively sharpens your teeth as you eat it, or at least, polishes the pieces of teeth that have snapped off as you fruitlessly gnaw away.
My friend from Lao PDR says: “I concur, Grape Nuts suck ass”
Grape-Nuts are currently on sale at Lucky for US$1.90. Unleash the cereal wrath upon Phnom Penh at your peril. | <urn:uuid:74eea8d1-fd8c-4923-b3ba-0abd8c51f5df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phnomenon.com/index.php/cambodian-food/uncategorized/grape-nuts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975607 | 412 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Renewable energy is under attack in the Tar Heel State. That’s the word from Greenpeace USA‘s Connor Gibson today in a report that implicates King Coal powerhouse, Duke Energy and the fossil fuel industry at-large.
ALEC is described as a “corporate bill mill” by its critics. It’s earned such a description because it passes “model bills” written by corporate lobbyists and to boot, the lobbyists typically do so behind closed doors at ALEC’s annual meetings.
The ALEC-Duke Alernative Energy Attack
Gibson puts it bluntly in his exposé, explaning that North Carolina Republican Rep. Mike Hager “says he is confident that he has the votes needed to weaken or undo his state’s [renewable] energy requirements during his second term.”
Hager is a former Duke employee, where he worked as an engineer. Duke maintains its corporate headquarters in Charlotte, NC.
The model bill Hager appears likely to push is called the “Electricity Freedom Act,” a piece of legislation calling for the nullification of any given state’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (REPS). Passed in October 2012 by ALEC, the bill was actually co-written with the fossil fuel-funded think tank, the Heartland Institute (of “Heartland Exposed” fame).
“We wrote the model legislation and I presented it. I didn’t have to give that much of a case for it,” James Taylor of Heartland told The Washington Post in a November 2012 investigative report.
Taylor’s claims are backed by economic analyses of a sort.
That is, the sort one would expect from a group heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry (Heartland) teaming up with a group receiving 98 percent of its funding from corporate interests (ALEC). As The Post explained back in November:
As part of its effort to roll back renewable standards, ALEC is citing economic analyses of state policies co-published by Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute and the State Policy Network. Both groups have received donations from foundations funded by the Koch brothers.
Gabe Elsner of the Checks and Balances Project described ALEC’s game plan as a deceptive “one-two punch” against renewable energy to The Post.
“You push the legislation to state legislators and then you fund reports to support the argument and convince state lawmakers and all without any transparency or disclosure about the sources of this funding,” he said back in November.
North Carolina’s GOP (which according to the Center for Media and Democracy‘s (CMD) SourceWatch has 45 ALEC members) appears set to go on the offensive against the state’s existing renewable energy standards.
More to Come?
There’s far more of this to come in the weeks and months ahead in statehouses nationwide.
As Gibson explains, “According to its own documents, ALEC spent the last couple years monitoring states attempting to introduce state-level renewable energy portfolio standards in West Virginia, Vermont and Virginia as well as legislative attacks on REPS laws in New Hampshire and in Ohio.”
Renewable energy is under attack. That is, of course, unless its advocates fight back.
Photo by Rainforest Action under Creative Commons license | <urn:uuid:29fb7dc9-9f00-4775-9478-a73347e6f27a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://my.firedoglake.com/stevehorn1022/tag/corporate-lobbyists/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957666 | 712 | 1.5 | 2 |
First-class stamps rise 2 cents
WASHINGTON — The post office wants two more pennies for your thoughts.
The price of a first-class stamp for mailing a letter — or paying a bill — climbed to 44 cents Monday, though folks who planned ahead and stocked up on Forever stamps will still be paying the lower rate.
It’s the third straight year rates have gone up in May under a new system that allows annual increases as long as they don’t exceed the rate of inflation for the year before.
While the increase will bring in added income, the post office continues to struggle financially as more and more lucrative first-class mail is diverted to the Internet, and the recession discourages businesses from sending their usual volume of advertising.
The Postal Service, which does not get a taxpayer subsidy for its operations, lost $2.8 billion last year and is already $2.3 billion in the hole just halfway through this year.
Postmaster General John Potter has asked Congress for permission to reduce mail delivery to five days a week. The agency is offering early retirement to workers, consolidating excess capacity in mail processing and transportation networks, realigning carrier routes, halting construction of new postal facilities, freezing officer and executive salaries at 2008 pay levels and reducing travel budgets.
Even so, the rate increase is unlikely to cover the ongoing losses and the possibility remains that the post office could run out of money before the end of the fiscal year.
The post office could have cited extraordinary circumstances and asked the independent Postal Regulatory Commission for larger increases, but officials worried that would only result in a greater decline in mail volume and worse losses.
Potter has also urged congressional changes in how the post office prepays for retiree health care, to cut its annual costs by $2 billion.
While the new 44-cent rate covers the first ounce of first-class mail, the price for each additional ounce will remain unchanged at 17-cents.
Postal officials estimate the increase will cost the average household $3-a-year.
Other changes taking effect May 11:
— The postcard stamp increases 1 cent to 28 cents.
— The first ounce of a large envelope increases 5 cents to 88 cents.
— The first ounce of a parcel increases 5 cents to $1.22.
— New international postcard and letter prices are, for one ounce, 75 cents to Canada; 79 cents to Mexico; and 98 cents elsewhere.
Most Postal Service shipping services prices were adjusted in January and will not change in May. | <urn:uuid:de8b2a20-1270-4a83-a542-e7c29f40c14f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/may/11/peel-em-and-weep-first-class-stamps-rise-2-cents/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94731 | 519 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Updated: November 30, 2011 3:40 PM EST
Send some sunshine home
We high-tailed it out town Thanksgiving weekend to the land of sunshine, fresh fish and, of course, citrus fruit.
And just about every day we passed a fruit store that reminded visitors and locals alike to order their holiday fruit boxes now. Honeybells, a terrifically sweet orange, come into season in January, and they are just the treat to add a little of that Florida sunshine to the dark days of Erie winters.
Years ago, when fruit boxes arrived, I couldn't figure out why someone would send us a box of citrus fruit when we could get the same thing in a grocery store. It's taken me a few years (and a few trips to Florida) to finally get it -- they taste better. For anyone who follows the local food movement, this makes perfect sense. Florida oranges that are picked when not quite ripe and shipped north on trucks and stored in warehouses for weeks just don't cut it. It's not unlike the taste difference between a California peach in May and an Erie peach during the summer season -- one bite will make you a convert to eating regionally.
So what about those oranges? A box that goes from the grove into overnight mail does retain its Florida tastes, as long as the oranges were picked at their peak of ripeness. While less perishable than fresh peaches, fresh oranges and grapefruit don't take kindly to prolonged stays in your refrigerator. It is best to eat them soon after their arrival. For some people, this might pose a challenge. After all, how many oranges can one person eat in a day? Plus, many dietitians advocate skipping the juice and eating the fruit whole because it contains fiber and more nutritional benefits.
So if you find yourself on the receiving end of a box of oranges and/or grapefruit, enjoy. I'm a fan of grapefruit, so I've included a salad today that calls for candying the grapefruit sections. You can do this with oranges too. But you can skip the whole candying process and substitute candied walnuts instead of plain toasted walnuts for additional crunch.
Orange chicken is a fast and easy winter dinner that is bright and refreshing. Serve it with a salad, broccoli and/or rice for a quick weeknight dinner. And, finally, oranges make a beautiful cake, both in color and flavor.
So enjoy your oranges. They're not just for breakfast, or juice, anymore.
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June 6th, 2011
Fast Company wrote a really concise piece on the importance of recycling this week. The article wasn't the usual rhetorical spin on recycling (recycling is good, green is good, blah, blah, blah). Instead, the article is a nice feature on recycling metals and furthering the clean tech industry.
May 20th, 2011
We're sometimes asked why we bother to recycle cork. The simple answer is that natural cork is entirely re-usable. Cork is multi-functional and did I mention that it's natural? Cork has value well beyond its first purpose as a bottle closure. It can, and should be used to create innovative products, especially when it replaces petroleum-based materials. Frankly, not taking advantage of its virtues is egregious.
May 6th, 2011
As I've written about on this blog before, ReCORK is a social venture committed to transparent, value-based objectives, innovation and a sustainable business model. We're investing considerable amounts of our own capital (we've never asked anyone for a gift or donation) in order to build this company. Our primary objective is to educate about natural cork and promote its use in replacing petroleum-based materials commonly used in everyday products. We provide a valuable (and free) service to the community and we are totally committed to supporting best practices in sustainability. Our whole-hearted commitment to cork and sustainability is manifested in our efforts, investment and passion.
May 6th, 2011
The New York Times ran an article recently declaring that demand for green products has been greatly diminished during the recession. Their argument is that consumers are no longer willing to pay a premium for green products. Harvard Business Review wrote a great assessment of the NY Times article. HBR contends that consumers were never willing to pay more for green products so nothing has really changed. In fact, the prevailing trend is that conscious consumers are demanding green products of equal or greater quality. HBR poses this point:
February 25th, 2011
ReCORK advocates for natural cork. The virtues of natural cork used for bottle closures are well documented on our site. Not only is it the natural, more authentic way to bottle your wine, but cork's environmental impact is dramatically less than that of oil- and metal-based closures.
February 11th, 2011
ReCORK will be rock'n'rolling this Sunday, February 13th at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards! We're happy to team up with our friends at 100% Cork to collect bottle closures at two events serving wine sealed exclusively with natural cork. | <urn:uuid:c69b221f-0631-4e6c-a35e-4f96cadbb56f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://recork.org/blog/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964652 | 530 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Just like the concepts of flying cars zooming through the sky or hand-held lasers that can stun a perp at 100 paces, the idea of a wrist mounted communication device has been just that – an idea. The reality is that "flying" cars can barely get off the ground, "hand-held" lasers need to be coasted around on trolleys and wrist-phones have been either hand-achingly cumbersome or severely lacking in quality and features. How much longer do we have to wait for the future? I expected moon-bases by now!
In regards to the issue of wrist-phones, the wait may be over soon. Qiao Xing Mobile Communication has unveiled the CECT W100 watch-phone which, despite actually being wrist sized, is jam-packed full of all the features you’d expect from todays "bricks". 1GB memory, FM radio, bluetooth, a 1.3 mega pixel camera and audio/video capabilities are all included in this tiny package. However, the clincher for me is that the phone has a built in touch-screen. Move over iPhone.
The future is here. The future is now… although I am still waiting for my Porsche Carrera GT with vertical takeoff. | <urn:uuid:e79984f3-ef84-498e-9b9a-510799f880c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brandish.tv/category/watches/page/4?pid=1104 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959217 | 258 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Students who enjoy athletics have the opportunity to compete in several sports. Many Carroll High students participate in two or more events during the fall and spring semesters. Student athletes must meet academic and eligibility requirements as set by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association in order to compete.
Sports offered at Carroll High School include the following: Basketball (Girls and Boys), Baseball, Softball, Football, Tennis (Girls & Boys), Soccer, and Track & Field (Girls & Boys). The Track & Field, Basketball (both Girls and Boys), and Football teams have enjoyed great success with trips to playoffs, State Championships, and a legacy of appearing and excelling at the State Track & Field Meet.
In addition to the above-listed sports, Carroll High School also has opportunities for young ladies who excel at dance (Million Dollar Girls Dance Team/Carrollettes), flags, and twirling. Countless hours go into preparation for each performance (parades, competition, football/basketball games, school ambassadors, hosts and hostesses).
Finally, the Carroll High cheerleaders practice and perform all year round with their support for athletic teams, performance of community service projects, and serving as hostesses along with the Carrollettes. | <urn:uuid:ae648d43-b6ba-4555-b800-3d6149dfca03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eric.herndon@mcschools.net/site257.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958172 | 247 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By Bill Blum
We can take away two lessons from the first high-profile oral argument of the Supreme Court’s new term, which began Monday. Lesson No. 1 is that the court is already a hard-right institution. Lesson No. 2 is that the re-election of President Barack Obama is more crucial than ever if the court’s movement to the right is to be slowed or possibly reversed.
The argument—in the case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum—involves an international human rights complaint brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) of 1789 against the giant oil conglomerate by 12 Nigerian nationals, all of whom have received political asylum in the United States and at least one of whom is now a U.S. citizen. The plaintiffs contend that Shell assisted and was complicit in the torture and killing of members of the Ogoni tribe in the Niger Delta carried out by the military dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha in the early to mid-1990s.
By its terms, the ATS authorizes federal courts to hear civil actions by aliens for torts “committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” Although the statute was largely dormant for 200 years, a string of lower-court precedents issued since the 1980s breathed new life into it, sparking a small but important wave of human rights litigation targeting abuses stretching from Paraguay to New Guinea, from Liberia to Mexico. It made sense, therefore, that when the Kiobel plaintiffs were unable to find any semblance of justice in Nigerian courts, they joined the trend, filing suit in 2002 in New York.
Eventually, Kiobel made its way to the Supreme Court for oral argument in February to test the narrow question of whether the ATS could be applied to corporations. But as happened in the infamous Citizens United case—which commenced with a narrow focus before expanding exponentially to rewrite the law of campaign finance—the justices ordered Kiobel to be re-argued Oct. 1 to address the larger issue of whether the ATS can ever apply to acts committed on foreign soil, especially those involving foreign corporations and foreign sovereigns.
If the tenor of the oral argument holds, the court’s five Republican appointees appear poised not only to dismiss the Kiobel complaint but to rule broadly that the jurisdiction of American courts does not extend beyond U.S. territory absent an explicit grant of congressional authority. As the plaintiffs’ lead attorney Paul Hoffman, a former legal director with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, told the justices, such a ruling would mark the end of a movement in favor of “universal justice” and allow torture and atrocities around the globe to go unpunished. In short, from a human rights perspective, such a ruling would be a game-changing outrage.
Each of the court’s Democratic appointees expressed dissenting views during the Kiobel argument, with 79-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg the most vociferous—a fact that underscores not only how far the court’s majority has moved to the right but also how directly the court’s future is riding on the outcome of the presidential election.
To be sure, Obama has disappointed many progressives, especially in the areas of national security and military engagements around the world. And in the Kiobel case itself, appearing as a nonparty “amicus” (friend of the court), the administration urged a tepid and ultimately unsatisfying middle ground that would permit some ATS lawsuits to proceed against U.S. corporations for acts committed abroad while prohibiting such lawsuits against foreign nations and companies.
Still, despite the disappointments with Obama, only a political purist holding out for perfection could fail to see the difference, going forward, between a court dominated by Mitt Romney appointees and one shaped by Obama, or after a second term, his Democratic successor. In addition to Ginsburg, three of today’s sitting Supreme Court justices—Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer—are 74 or older. Each can be expected to step down over the next four to eight years.
For the remainder of the court’s present term, as the high tribunal takes on challenges to affirmative action, voting rights and same-sex marriage, the best progressives can hope for may well be the kind of damage control afforded by narrowly crafted 5-4 decisions in which Justice Kennedy or Chief Justice John Roberts sides with the liberals. But looking ahead—as progressives must—the court is certain to revisit a host of issues central to the lives of all Americans, including campaign finance, civil rights and abortion.
The concrete question facing us is whether when the court tackles those momentous issues, we want the nation’s highest judicial powers wielded by another Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas or another Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan. The answer, starting with the re-election of the president, should be a no-brainer.
The United States Supreme Court. | <urn:uuid:c76af684-699d-4207-9006-848f4d105d64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/this_far-right_supreme_court_is_reason_enough_to_vote_obama_20121003/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944612 | 1,038 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Over the past several months, many cases involving same-sex bi-national couples have hit the news. Almost all of these cases, where a U.S. citizen is seeking to sponsor a foreign partner for immigration purposes, have involved couples in which one partner faced deportation. What's more, almost all have ended with a delay or cancellation of the pending removal order.
On Tuesday, Aug. 9, however, word of a denial of a spouse's petition for a marriage-based green card set off alarms across the country for those looking for an end to the discrimination these same-sex couples face largely as the result of the application of the Defense of Marriage Act to immigration law.
The full story, however, is more complex than the San Francisco Chronicle headline announcing that a ''S.F. gay married couple loses immigration battle'' suggests.
The couple has not lost its battle, as the administrative decision is just that – an agency decision – and can be appealed to a point where an adversarial process could allow discretion more easily to be employed. And, though the article states that the Obama administration ''ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse,'' there was no removal order issued in the case and, therefore, no immediate threat of deportation.
The story of what is happening to the couple – Bradford Wells, an American, and his Australian husband, Anthony John Makk – nonetheless highlighted the insecurity faced by such couples. It is only understood by looking at the immigration process -- and by looking back over the past six months of developments in these issues.
On Feb. 23, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he and President Barack Obama had determined that the federal definition of marriage contained in the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. That definition has kept same-sex couples from being able – even when legally married – to be treated like straight married couples would for purposes of immigration.
An I-130 petition typically is filed by the American spouse in an opposite-sex married relationship at the same time an I-485 permanent resident application is filed by the foreign partner. Once a case has reached removal proceedings, the ''permanent resident'' decision comes from the immigration court or Board of Immigration Appeals. Although referred to as courts, the bodies actually are formed under the executive branch and organized in DOJ.
For same-sex couples, those petitions and applications have previously been denied. For a while after the Feb. 23 letter was issued by Holder, the hope of some advocates was that a blanket abeyance policy – putting I-130 petitions on hold while courts and the Congress address DOMA – would be put in place to keep any couples from being separated by deportation. But U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, under the Department of Homeland Security, announced on March 30 that it was unwilling to issue any such blanket abeyance policy.
On May 5, Holder took the rare action of intervening in the case of Paul Wilson Dorman, who is in a civil union, by sending Dorman's case from an appeals court back to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Holder asked the BIA to answer several questions relating to Dorman and his partner's civil union.
Then, on June 13, an immigration judge granted a motion to close Henry Velandia's deportation proceedings after the chief counsel at the Newark office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agreed that Velandia's deportation ''is not an enforcement priority at this time.'' He has been allowed to stay with his husband, Josh Vandiver.
And so it has gone, with several couples averting deportations, but with the policy left unclear for same-sex, bi-national couples across the country seeking to ensure stability in their relationships.
Many of the couples involved have been represented by Lavi Soloway, a co-founder of Immigration Equality who formed Stop the Deportations with his law partner. Immigration Equality has taken a different tack, filing I-130 petitions and I-485 applications for two different couples, one in New York and one in California.
The couples represented by Immigration Equality were ''in status'' when the petitions and applications were filed, which means they were in the country within the time period provided for by their stay. Although the New York couple's papers were filed first, the July 26 denial of Wells's petition and Makk's application came first.
The result should not have been a surprise. On March 30, U.S. CIS spokesman Christopher Bentley was asked if petitions would be able to be put on hold while awaiting a final court determination about the constitutionality of DOMA and said, ''No. The guidance is the same policy that has always been in place'' -- to ''enforce the law.''
Immigration Equality communications director Steve Ralls told Metro Weekly that the denial was not necessary, noting that ''many I-485 applications can remain pending for a year or more.'' He added, ''In the case of applications surrounding the HIV Ban specifically, actual abeyance was granted for those applications. That is what we are seeking here.''
Soloway added, ''While we have seen progress in our deportation cases in which binational couples have challenged DOMA in immigration court, case-by-case discretionary reprieve is not an acceptable substitute for a moratorium on all deportations and an abeyance policy that will protect every lesbian and gay binational couple until DOMA is gone.''
Although the U.S. CIS has not issued such an abeyance policy, nor did it issue a removal order for Makk – because it can do no such thing. Makk had his application denied by the administrative agency because of the denial of Wells's petition. Accordingly, the U.S. CIS, as is the case in any such denial, stated, ''You are required to depart the United States within thirty (30) days from the date of this decision, or be subject to removal proceedings.''
In other words, if the decision is not reversed when Immigration Equality's lawyer files a motion in the next weeks for the U.S. CIS to reconsider the denial and if Makk does not leave, he could face removal proceedings.
At that point, ICE – the immigration enforcement arm within DHS – would become involved because ICE acts in the prosecutorial role in removal proceedings. According to a June memorandum from ICE Director John Morton directed to all ICE officers, agents and attorneys, ICE ''must regularly exercise 'prosecutorial discretion''' when it comes to enforcement of its removal powers and the limited resources of the agency should lead ICE to focus on ''the agency's enforcement priorities.'' Among the reasons cited in the memo for discretion are several that, but for DOMA, would appear to apply to Makk's circumstances. So, it is entirely possible that Makk would not be seen as an enforcement priority and would not face removal proceedings.
''By allowing him to go out of status," Ralls notes, "even if ICE doesn't show up at their front door, the Administration is placing Anthony in a position where, if he were even stopped for a small traffic violation, he would be in jeopardy of being removed eventually anyway.''
In addition to ICE's discretion, the immigration courts and BIA – organized as the Executive Office for Immigration Review – would then come into play, and they – up to and including with intervention from Holder as the head of DOJ – also can show discretion through their review of cases.
Then, even with an adverse decision from the BIA, a case could be appealed to the federal appellate court from which it came – the status of Dorman's case before Holder sent it back to the BIA for further review.
There are other options for the couple moving forward in the process – although it is not clear whether Makk will go out of status. If the motion to reconsider is denied, will Makk stay in the country and go out of status or leave? ''They have been resolute in wanting to remain in legal status," Ralls said, "and understand that doing so is in their best interest if the law changes down the road.
''Having said that, though, I honestly don't think they have a definite answer to that question.'' | <urn:uuid:3016a05d-dd27-46c7-9454-9b7bf8c4ce22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metroweekly.com/news/?ak=6486 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973717 | 1,674 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Cape Charles, Virginia's Eastern Shore's southern most town, is located 10 miles north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Cape Charles offers a free public beach in the historic district.
The beach is safe for families with small children. The shallow waters of the Chesapeake Bay, clean and refreshed by our proximity to the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean, make delightful vacations for mothers. There are no waves here. Mothers can relax here while their children splash and play in the oversized wading pools of Cape Charles beaches.
Last Updated: 5/4/2007 4:16 PM | <urn:uuid:7e311015-119a-4d31-9b4b-4df36f029b2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.virginia.org/Listings/OutdoorsAndSports/CapeCharlesBeach/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939272 | 119 | 1.554688 | 2 |
To the Vatican, Donna LeMaster Rougeux, a married mother of three who works as a hospice chaplain, is part of a revolt.
Rougeux, 52, was ordained through the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests on Saturday in Lexington, becoming one of only two such female priests in Kentucky and 130 in the world.
Bridget Mary Meehan, a bishop with the same association who presided over the ceremony, called it part of a “new spiritual uprising in the church.”
“It’s part of a big justice movement that recognizes we all are images of God,” Meehan said.
The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize Rougeux’s ordination. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington issued a statement calling it a “provocative and headline-grabbing fiction.”
The church’s position is that only men can be ordained. That’s not sexist, but biblical, said Tom Shaughnessy, spokesman for the diocese.
As Pope John Paul II pointed out, “if the church is faithfully to follow the example of Jesus, who chose twelve men as his first priests/bishops, then the Roman Catholic Church is not free to ordain women,” Shaughnessy said in a statement.
Rougeux chose automatic excommunication when she was ordained a deacon earlier, according to the church’s position.
Rougeux and others involved in the women’s ordination movement, however, don’t acknowledge the excommunication.
“We believe the church is the people of God,” not the male-dominated hierarchy, said Janice Sevre-Duszynska of Jessamine County, who in 2008 became the first Kentucky woman ordained as a priest.
The controversy over ordaining women is part of a larger debate in the church over the role of women, the propriety of contraception and other issues.
This year, for instance, the Vatican strongly criticized the nation’s leading organization of nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for not speaking strongly enough against ordination of women, among other things, prompting a show of support for the nuns.
And debates over issues such as whom to ordain are not unique to the Roman Catholic Church.
People who support ordaining female Roman Catholic priests say it is a step toward correcting centuries of incorrect teaching and practice by the institutional church, based on misogyny.
One of the Scriptures read at Rougeux’s ordination ceremony at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lexington was from the Gospel of Luke, about Jesus healing a woman who had been unable to stand up straight for 18 years.
“The institutional church is trying to keep women bent over when it refuses to recognize our call to priesthood,” Meehan said in her homily. “Women are silent, and invisible, and subordinate no more.”
People involved said the communities involving women priests use male and female images of God and inclusive language and liturgies.
Part of the goal is to “de-clericalize” and create a community of equals, Meehan said.
“Christ calls both men and women to the priesthood,” said Sevre-Duszynska. “When it’s in you, it’s there. It doesn’t leave.”
Rougeux said the call to ministry was definitely in her.
She grew up in the United Church of Christ but converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1980s. She taught in a Catholic school, then she said she felt a pull to attend seminary, and finally a call to ministry.
She found out about the women priest movement on the Internet.
“It’s like God has revealed it one step at a time,” she said.
Rougeux has a degree in pastoral studies from Lexington Theological Seminary, has completed additional work in clinical pastoral education, and is a chaplain at Hospice of the Bluegrass.
“I think I bring a whole other bag of experiences to helping people,” she said. “I think we are all needed.”
Rougeux said she wants to help the community of like-minded Catholics grow in Lexington.
“I want them to grow together as a community of God helping the world,” she said.
Rougeux said she was excited to be part of the movement to reform the church.
“I think my granddaughters are going to look back at this and think history was being formed.”
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vintage mural ads & other signage by Frank H. Jump & friends
© Frank H. Jump
Posted in: Brooklyn Waterfront, Greenpoint, Public Baths.
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Very cool – any idea what it’s currently being used as?
Wow. Would love to see shots of the interior…
[...] As you can see 143 Huron fits in seamlessly with its neighbors: a three story house with chartreuse aluminum siding and a Neoclassical bath house dating from 1903. [...]
Richard- Not a clue what kind of use this building is getting or what’s planned for it. If things go as the trend, it will be demolished unless it can be made a landmark.
KS- Let’s break in together and do it!
Great piece Miss Heather about the anachronism next door!
[...] favorite things in Greenpoint were. I rattled off the old Meserole Theater on Manhattan Avenue, the bath house on Huron Street, the glory that is the Beadel Street House of Leopard Print and [...]
Many of the homes on Green Street and outlying Streets were not equipped with warm water or showers or tubs. Coal and kerosene was used to heat these homes. Both me and my sister used this bath house and it was a sheer luxury. Inside was tiled and indivdual stalls and seats. Also you could buy soap, and indeed it was male one side and female the other. There were people inside to accomodate you as far as renting towels too, (you brought your own). Many of the homes were built for immigrants as this was a ship building area. I loved and still love Greenpoint. It has changed dramatically, but for better? Who knows? I left it and returned recently to see off the last family loved one. Couldn’t wait to get back upstate the change was bettersweet. Condos and rents outrageous over a stinly East River and Newtown Creek. I just don’t get it.
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On Friday, Streetsblog reported on a presentation by the Department of Transportation about alternatives for the 181st Street corridor in Washington Heights. "Alternative 2 would create a two-way, protected transit mall along this stretch, with raised medians serving as bus stops," writes Noah Kazis. Why does that matter? Check out the Bronx bus map (PDF):
There are five bus routes that start at the Port Authority's uptown bus terminal, cross Manhattan along 181st Street, go across the Washington Bridge to the Bronx, and fan out to cover most of the western Bronx. The Bx3 goes north past Bronx Community College, Lehman College and the VA Hospital to Kingsbridge. The Bx36 goes clear across the borough, past West Farms and Parkchester to Castle Hill. The Bx11 and Bx35 cover Morrisania and the Bx13 goes south to Yankee Stadium and the courts. They have high ridership, which keeps costs down; none of them require heavy subsidies:
|Route||Average weekday ridership||Operating farebox recovery ratio|
The Bx36 is a long route, but I would guess that more than half the ridership crosses the bridge to Manhattan, and even more for the other routes. Many of the people who live in this part of the Bronx are Dominican, and they use these buses to connect with friends, relatives and jobs in the Dominican neighborhoods of Washington Heights and Inwood. Others use these buses to connect with the A and 1 trains in Manhattan, which provide a more direct route to many destinations than the 4 and D trains.
Significantly, these buses also allow Bronx residents to reach the George Washington Bridge bus terminal, where they can take buses run by New Jersey Transit and Red and Tan Lines to various locations in New Jersey and Rockland County. There are also private van services that run from the GWB terminal across the bridge and west to Paterson and south along Bergenline Avenue to Hudson County. These buses form a vital east-west link between communities in an area where all the train lines run north-south.
If you actually go to check out these routes sometime, well, it can try the patience of Job. Double-parking is rampant along 181st Street, and all it takes is one double-parked car to hold up three buses. It's common for a bus to take as long to get from Broadway to Amsterdam as from Amsterdam to the Grand Concourse. These delays cause bunching, which has repercussions down all five lines.
Alternative 2 could actually work as a kind of "bus network acupuncture," relieving a pressure point and thereby improving flow on a large section of the network. Putting in bus lanes on three blocks of one street could improve the commutes of 50,000 people, and through speedier and more reliable trips, attract more people to the bus who might otherwise have taken car services. Compare that to the hundred-plus blocks of the First and Second Avenue Select Bus Service (M15 average weekday ridership: 53,510), and you get a huge bang for the buck.
And this is why it was so disheartening to me to read these words from Manhattan Transportation Commissioner Forgione: "We will not proceed with anything without community support."
I know what "community support" refers to, and it has precious little to do with actual community support. We're talking about a community board that's dominated by drivers in a neighborhood where 80% of households don't own a single car. These are people who are much more likely to double-park than ride the bus, even though the real community is much more likely to be riding the bus. We're talking about a lot of self-important "community leaders" who are convinced that their small circle of friends constitutes the community. These are the people who Commissioner Sadik-Khan stood up to, and got blasted for it. These are the people that John Liu, Bill Thompson and Jimmy Vacca repeatedly insist should have veto power over any transportation project. And it looks like in this case Forgione may defer to them.
Forgione is also talking about deferring to the "community" in Washington Heights, but what about the communities across the river in Tremont, Morrisania, Morris Heights, University Heights and High Bridge? Will their support matter?
I definitely believe that people should have some say over what transportation facilities are built in their districts. It would have been nice if Vacca and Liu had been around when people's homes were being bulldozed for the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Members of every affected community should be given the opportunity to raise their concerns, and those concerns should be taken seriously. But I don't think they should have veto power.
Alternative 2 would not tear down any buildings, and it will not blight the neighborhood. It would not flood parallel streets with displaced traffic. It would make these three blocks of 181st Street more like the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn, which would be an improvement.
Fortunately, Councilmember Rodgriguez seems to get this. His comments as reported by Noah were heartening. I hope he will talk to Councilmembers Cabrera, Foster and Arroyo and get their support on this. Transit advocates in that area should reach out to community leaders in the western Bronx and get them to the meetings where this project will be discussed. But the bottom line is that DOT cannot just listen to Washington Heights on this issue. They should conduct outreach along the five bus lines, and find out how much support there is there. | <urn:uuid:39b32194-276e-4485-8bfe-ca6a6fb49acc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-181st-street-matters.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969997 | 1,128 | 1.65625 | 2 |
From Toni Brayer, M.D., Chief Medical Officer Sutter Health West Bay Region, Leader for Sutter Health's Help for Haiti
I also heard from Dr. Barry Rose, a Sutter-affiliated California Pacific Medical Center anesthesiologist and Haiti volunteer with Operation Rainbow. After a week on the ground, he is discouraged with the lack of coordination and lack of security for the teams that need to go away from the medical area to help patients in the surrounding communities.
Dr. Rose reports, “It’s a massive logistics, infrastructure and security problem. The scope of the damage is big, so we need to get out into the field, but the teams cannot be sent out without very serious security. Instead, projects spring up for surgical and continuing care of the patients that have some power and safety. Our efforts are hugely centered around the church structures—like after Hurricane Katrina. This is why I went where I did (on the Dominican Republic border), to be able to do as much actual surgical and work as possible, which we have done. We’re also helping to build an ongoing avenue for care—a difficult process and something that will take time.” | <urn:uuid:ab4a7113-3f92-4fe3-88e6-b54d1849fc59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shhelpshaiti.blogspot.com/2010/01/january-24-2010-its-massive-logistics.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967661 | 243 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Thanks for reply, I allready check (I think) all the post from HWC, about digital camera.
I know this Kodak DC - 280 has a good reputation here on this forum. Maybe not only.
I want to ask you what is mean exactly this sensivity and where is usefull for, becouse this camera has only ISO 70, compare with some other brand name (from ISO 100 to 400).
I'm interesting if I can take some pic during the night time.
------------------ If some one betrays you one, it his fault; If he betrays you twice it is yours
If some one betrays you one, it his fault; If he betrays you twice it is yours
I'd imagine it'd be fairly expensive, but my favourite would most certainly have to be the Olympus Camedia E-10.
The new CamediaTM E-10 is the world's first 4-megapixel filmless digital SLR for under $2,000 and combined with an 11+ MB file size, TruePicTM technology and the first ED glass fully multi-coated lens.
It is rated #1 in digital cameras under $500.
It is rated among the best in color testing.
It is rated among the best in outdoor shooting.
It is rated among the best in indoor shooting.
And it is under $500. (including a battery charger, 32MB of flash memory, ZOOM, for a 2.3Mpixel)
Olympus digital cameras are a$$ when you do indoor shooting. Otherwise they are good candidates also. But the built quality is not always good.
ISO does refer to the film sensitivity - in effect it gives you a relative measure of how much light will be needed to capture the frame. IE, using ISO 400 film requires 1/4 the amount of light as ISO 100, and 1/2 the amount as ISO 200.
This means that you can use higher shutter speeds with faster film if you want to capture fast movement like sports action, or night-time shots where there is very little light. This is also why the ISO rating is also referred to as the film speed.
The other advantage is that under the same conditions (light level, focal length, etc.) the higher-rated ISO film will allow you to set a smaller aperture (higher number), which gives you a larger depth of field. This just means what % of the photo is in focus. Say you're on holiday & you want to take a photo of your wife, with the mountains in the background. Using a really large aperture (small number) will get your wife in focus and leave the background blurred, whereas a small aperture will get both in focus. A large aperture is used most often with portraits, a small one with landscapes. The faster film allows you to do both more effectively, without having to change the film.
Note though that faster is not alwas better. With faster film you will find it very difficult to maintain the image quality when you try to enlarge the image. This is simply because the film has had less time to take in the image detail and so when you enlarge the pic by more than about 200%, it will get noticeably grain which can really spoil an otherwise-awesome photo.
In the case of digital cameras, the principal is still the same, but since you're not using film but rather an aray of pixels, I would expect the grain effect with faster ISO settings to be accentuated.. simply because you're already transferring an image into little dots.. this is just a guess though, I haven't had enough experience with digital cameras yet to say for sure.
As far as I'm aware, most of the more modern digitals give you the option of manually selecting the ISO.. which can be very useful indeed.. say you want to take a photo with the mountains in the background, just like before. You set a high ISO (~400) and take a flly focused shot. Then you change your ISO to 100 and take a close-up portriat of your wife, which you can then blow up to poster size with minimal graining effect. Of course enlargements are always a bit trickier with digitals, but you get the idea.
Anyway hope that helps!!! (Sory about the rambling!! )
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If there’s one thing successful innovators have shown over the years, it’s that great ideas come from unexpected places. Who could have predicted that bicycle mechanics would develop the airplane or that the US Department of Defense would give rise to a freewheeling communications platform like the Internet?
Senior executives looking for ideas about how to make their companies more innovative can also seek inspiration in surprising sources. Exhibit One: Brad Bird, Pixar’s two-time Oscar-winning director. Bird’s hands-on approach to fostering creativity among animators holds powerful lessons for any executive hoping to nurture innovation in teams and organizations.
Bird joined Pixar in 2000, when the company was riding high following its release of the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and the subsequent hits A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2. Concerned about complacency, senior executives Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter asked Bird, whose body of work included The Iron Giant and The Simpsons, to join the company and shake things up. The veteran of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and FOX delivered—winning Academy Awards (best animated feature) for two groundbreaking movies, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.
Ten days before Ratatouille won its Oscar, we sat down with Bird at the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar, which is now a subsidiary of Disney. Bird discussed the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale. He also explained the value of “black sheep”—restless contributors with unconventional ideas. Although stimulating the creativity of animators might seem very different from developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs, Bird’s anecdotes should stir the imagination of innovation-minded executives in any industry.
The Quarterly: What attracted you to Pixar?
Brad Bird: One thing that was unbelievably different about this company was that they were worried about becoming complacent. When I came here, they had made three movies—Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2—that had all been big hits. I was coming off a film called The Iron Giant that was a highly regarded financial failure.
Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter said, in effect, “The only thing we’re afraid of is complacency—feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you’re doing doesn’t make sense, but if you can convince us, we’ll do things a different way.” For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, “Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up”—when do you run into that?
The Quarterly: How did your first project at Pixar—The Incredibles—shake things up?
Brad Bird:The Incredibles was everything that computer-generated animation had trouble doing. It had human characters, it had hair, it had water, it had fire, it had a massive number of sets. The creative heads were excited about the idea of the film, but once I showed story reels of exactly what I wanted, the technical teams turned white. They took one look and thought, “This will take ten years and cost $500 million. How are we possibly going to do this?”
So I said, “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.” A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well.
We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here. For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets and had everything that was hard to do. All this because the heads of Pixar gave us leave to try crazy ideas.
The Quarterly: What sorts of things did you do differently?
Brad Bird: There are purists in computer graphics who are brilliant but don’t have the urgency about budgets and scheduling that responsible filmmakers do. I had to shake the purist out of them—essentially frighten them into realizing I was ready to use quick and dirty “cheats” to get something on screen if they took too long to achieve it in the computer. I’d say, “Look, I don’t have to do the water through a computer simulation program. If we can’t get a program to work, I’m perfectly content to film a splash in a swimming pool and just composite the water in.” This absolutely horrified them. Or I’d say, “You can build a flying saucer, or you can take a pie plate and fling it across the screen. If the audience only sees the pie plate very briefly and you throw it just right, they will buy it as a flying saucer.”
I never did film the pool splash or throw the pie plate, but talking this way helped everyone understand that we didn’t have to make something that would work from every angle. Not all shots are created equal. Certain shots need to be perfect, others need to be very good, and there are some that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.
We also made superelaborate storyboards. We even emulated camera movement in them, so everyone knew that “We only need to make things work between here and there.” Once I was able to commit to the camera angles, we could be very specific about how we built things. Something would look beautiful from one position, but if you moved five feet to the right, the image would disintegrate. I gave up the flexibility to move within a set, but in exchange I bought size and scope.
The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation? Can you be innovative and also happy?
Brad Bird: I would say that involved people make for better innovation. Passionate involvement can make you happy, sometimes, and miserable other times. You want people to be involved and engaged. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.
The Quarterly: How important is team dynamics to innovation and creativity?
Brad Bird: Making a film, you have all these different departments, and what you’re trying to do is find a way to get them to put forth their creativity in a harmonious way. Otherwise, it’s like you have an orchestra where everybody’s playing their own music. Each individual piece might be beautiful, but together they’re crazy.
The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team that collaborates in the way you’re describing?
Brad Bird: When I directed The Iron Giant, I inherited a team that was totally broken—a bunch of miserable people who had just gone through a horrific experience on a previous film that had bombed. When the time came for animators to start showing me their work, I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person.
For my reviews, I got a video projector and had an animator’s scenes projected onto a dry-erase board. I could freeze a frame and take a marker and show where I thought things should be versus where they were. I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together. If there is a solution, I want everyone to hear the solution, so everyone adds it to their tool kit. I’m going to take my shot at what I think will improve a scene, but if you see something different, go ahead and disagree. I don’t know all the answers.”
So I started in: “I think the elbow needs to come up higher here so that we feel the thrust of this action.” “I’m not seeing the thought process on the character here.” “Does anybody disagree? Come on, speak up.” The room was silent because with the previous director, anyone who dared to say anything got their head chopped off.
For two months, I pushed and analyzed each person’s work in front of everybody. And they didn’t speak up. One day, I did my thing, and one of the guys sighed. I shouted, “What was that?” And he said, “Nothing man, it’s OK.” And I said, “No, you sighed. Clearly, you disagree with something I did there. Show me what you’re thinking. I might not have it right. You might. Show me.” So he came up, and I handed him the dry-erase marker. He erased what I did. Then he did something different and explained why he thought it ought to be that way. I said, “That’s better than what I did. Great.” Everybody saw that he didn’t get his head chopped off. And our learning curve went straight up. By the end of the film, that animation team was much stronger than at the beginning, because we had all learned from each other’s strengths. But it took two months for people to feel safe enough to speak up.
The Quarterly: How does your experience with that team compare with your work leading creative teams at Pixar?
Brad Bird: When Pixar asked me to take over Ratatouille, the project had been in development for five years but was not in any shape to produce as a movie. There was a moment, at the very beginning of my involvement, when I was in a room full of about 30 people. At this stage, the rats in the movie had been articulated. Articulation is where they design how the muscles and controls work on the characters. Because people were worried about the audience’s reaction to rats, all of them were designed to walk on two legs.
I thought that was a mistake. I knew it would be an expensive use of resources, at that point in the process, to rearticulate the rats, but I said, “We have to get them so that they walk on all fours. And Remy, the protagonist rat, has to be able to walk not only on all fours but up on two legs.” Everybody said, “Ugh!” because they had spent a year making the rats look good walking on two legs. If you simply took those models, bent them over, and put them on all fours, their hips didn’t work and things just looked wrong. They were designed to be upright.
One of the guys challenged me. He said, “I want to know why you’re doing this.” Now, I had gone into this film reluctantly. It’s not what I was looking to do after The Incredibles. And there was a part of me that wanted to say, “Because I’m the director, that’s why. Do you want to take this problematic thing over?”
But I stopped and thought for a second. I thought, these guys have been sent down blind alleys for a couple of years. They want to know that I’m not doing anything lightly and that if I’m going to make them do a bunch more work, it’s for a reason. So I said, “This movie is about a rat who wants to enter the human world. We have to make that a visual choice for the character. If you have all of the rats walking on two legs, there’s no separation between him and the other rats. If we have this separation as a visual device, we can see the character make his transformation and choose to be on two legs, and he can become more or less ratty, depending on his emotional state. That brings the audience into the character’s mind.”
I spent six minutes saying all this and the guy was initially scowling. But gradually the scowl went away, and he said, “OK.” Once I gave that answer, everyone felt, “OK, we’re on this ship and we’re going toward a definite destination.”
The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.
Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.
Before I got the chance to make films myself, I worked on a number of badly run productions and learned how not to make a film. I saw directors systematically restricting people’s input and ignoring any effort to bring up problems. As a result, people didn’t feel invested in their work, and their productivity went down. As their productivity fell, the number of hours of overtime would increase, and the film became a money pit.
The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?
Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. There was a point during the making of The Incredibles where we had a company meeting. We have them about twice a year, and anybody can bring up concerns. Somebody raised their hand and said, “Is The Incredibles too ambitious?” Ed Catmull said, “I don’t know” and looked over at me. I just said, “No! If there’s one studio that needs to be doing stuff that is ‘too ambitious,’ it’s this one. You guys have had nothing but success. What do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”
The Quarterly: If you ask most companies how they innovate, they’ll say, “Know your customer. Find out what your customer really wants you to do.” It sounds like you think about innovation differently.
Brad Bird: Our goal is different because if you say you’re making a movie for “them,” that automatically puts you on an unsteady footing. The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing.
So my goal is to make a movie I want to see. If I do it sincerely enough and well enough—if I’m hard on myself and not completely off base, not completely different from the rest of humanity—other people will also get engaged and find the film entertaining.
The Quarterly: What does Pixar do to stimulate a creative culture?
Brad Bird: If you walk around downstairs in the animation area, you’ll see that it is unhinged. People are allowed to create whatever front to their office they want. One guy might build a front that’s like a Western town. Someone else might do something that looks like Hawaii. Steve Jobs initially didn’t like this idea, but John Lasseter said, “We’ve got to let it go a little crazy where the animators are.” John believes that if you have a loose, free kind of atmosphere, it helps creativity.
Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. He realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.
The Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?
Brad Bird: One thing Pixar does—which is a knockoff of old-school, Walt-era 1940s Disney—is to have all kinds of optional classes. They call it “PU,” or Pixar University. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. Sometimes, people even move from one area to another.
The Quarterly: On the one hand, you are a leader here. On the other hand, you sound like a bit of a subversive. How do you do both things?
Brad Bird: I think the best leaders are somewhat subversive, because they see something a different way. And I’m not leading by myself. My producer, John Walker, and I are famous for fighting openly, because he’s got to get it done and I’ve got to make it as good as it can be before it gets done. If you look at the extra materials on The Incredibles DVD, there’s a moment where we’re fighting about something, and John says, “Look, I’m just trying to get us across the line.” And I say, “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”
I don’t want him to tell me, “Whatever you want, Brad,” and then we run out of resources. I want him to tell me, “If you do X, we’re not going to be able to do Y.” I’ll fight, but I’ll have to make the choice. I love working with John because he’ll give me the bad news straight to my face. Ultimately, we both win. If you ask within Pixar, we are known as being efficient. Our movies aren’t cheap, but the money gets on the screen because we’re open in our conflict. Nothing is hidden.
The Quarterly: We’ve been talking a lot about how you promote innovation. What undermines it?
Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.
The Quarterly: What kinds of leaders inhibit innovation?
Brad Bird: When I first started at Disney, the old master animators were slowly leaving, and there was an animator in his 40s starting to direct films there; management was sort of grooming him to take over animation at the studio. Anyway, he had taken over a film and had a bunch of us meet in his office. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’m here to teach you. I’m satisfied with what I do.” In that opening statement, he lost me because I had already worked with the old Disney masters—and they were never satisfied.
It’s surreal to think about now, but my first real, formal teachers in animation were the best animators in the world. I’d started a film when I was 11, and a friend of the family knew the composer of the Disney films, who took me into the studio. I met a lot of the great old master animators. Their worst animation was 1,000 times better than this new director’s best, yet they would get to the end of a film and say, “I just started to feel like I was understanding the character, and I want to go back and do the whole thing over. Can’t wait for next time!” They were masters of the form, but they had the attitude of a student. This guy taking over the studio had only done a few pieces of pretty good animation, and he was totally satisfied. Could not have been less inspiring.
The Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?
Brad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain. It was this amazing machine that was beautiful but old and getting a little decrepit. Still, they had the best system on earth at that time. They had the best talent. The movies were still well executed, if uninspired.
But Disney at this time was pared down. They were making one film every three years rather than a film every year or year and a half, as they had at Disney’s height. Walt had been gone for more than a decade, and the old guys were leaving. The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preserve this rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”
Walt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.
Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don’t want to just collect more fuel. | <urn:uuid:72f25039-86eb-4762-8361-844613835836> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/innovation/innovation_lessons_from_pixar_an_interview_with_oscar-winning_director_brad_bird | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978657 | 4,995 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Many people wonder what to wear to dance Samba. This high-energy form of dance is best accompanied by costumes that are in bright colors and expose a little flesh.
Samba Costume Basics
Samba, like most Latin dances, is active and lively. Your costume for Samba dancing should be the same. Most Samba costumes are made specifically for Carnival, dance competitions or other celebrations. They use bright energetic colors. They also use faux jewels, sequins, metallic fabric and fringe to heighten the flashiness of the costumes. They can include floral accessories and beading.
Samba costumes are normally revealing. This is for a few different reasons. First, Samba dancing is active, and wearing little clothing helps keeps the dancers cool. Normally the torso, legs, arms and shoulders of a dancer are exposed. While this doesn't always apply to male costumes, it certainly does to female costumes. Samba costumes also are revealing because Samba is an intimate dance. Having less clothing helps add to this feeling.
Samba Costume Styles
Samba dancers rely on a few different types of costumes pretty consistently. The first type is a bikini-style costume. This outfit looks just like a swimsuit with a bra top and brief pants. Bikini and skirt combinations are also popular. A longer skirt down to the knees can be paired with a bra top for another type of Samba costume. Some women and most men rely on Samba pants and tops for their dancing needs.
Other Samba Accessories
Samba dancing costumes aren't complete without accessories. Samba dancers like to make themselves stand out, especially if they are dancing in Carnival, so it's only natural that there are many different accessories that can be added to a Samba costume. These accessories can include boas, neck pieces, head pieces, gloves and heeled boots or sandals.
Where To Buy Samba Costumes
Many retailers specialize in Samba costumes for professionals and those who want to dress the part. The Samba Collection available from Doris de Hilster is a professional designed collection, but you can get a start on your costume with a bikini, sequins and feathers.
Samba dance origins stretch back to the Brazilian culture, where the dance is often enjoyed and performed in Rio. The Samba is on display during Carnival in Brazil, where thousands of dancers perform the Samba in elaborate costumes.
By learning the origin of Samba, you can learn more about Brazil, the home of Samba music and Samba dance. This dance is a long-lasting symbol for Brazil and is a major part of the nation's yearly Carnival festival. | <urn:uuid:3d711019-c1cb-4f6a-a8b2-a04e75d14312> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.life123.com/sports/dance/samba/what-to-wear-to-dance-the-samba.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946202 | 536 | 1.625 | 2 |
Published by Camilla on 27 Oct 2011 at 08:15 am
This week, I was delighted to welcome Simran Sethi, renowned journalist and academic to our WiserLocal gathering at la Ruche in Paris. Simran shared some of the research she’s been doing for her forthcoming book focused on the Psychological Barriers to Environmental Engagement, or in short, “what’s stopping us all from going green?”
Named one of the top ten eco-heroes of the planet by the Britain’s Independent newspaper and lauded ‘the environmental messenger’ by Vanity Fair, Simran’s latest message is that the environmental movement urgently needs to move beyond the ‘one-size-fits-all’ climate change campaigns and scare-based tactics centred on cities falling into the sea by 2050, to the framing of issues based on the real concerns of people in the street.
“Researchers at Yale talk about the finite pool of worry” she says. “When we start talking about climate change and all the problems going on in the world, people start to tune out because we can’t hold it all in our heads. It’s the same when we start talking about what might happen a long time into the future. The person in the street is just thinking ‘OK, I have to walk my dog today’. However, when you start taking some of their daily worries away, people start listening […] So, if we say that by reducing pollution we also reduce childhood asthma, people get it. In the end, it’s all about framing”.
Simran also talked about the power of social media in creating social and environmental change. “The tools are here, we just need to know how to harness them”, she says. She explained that crowdsourcing is one way to do this. One example she gave is a site called Loudsource which is helping people to crowdfund PR campaigns. It’s currently being used by people supporting the Occupy Wall Street campaign, so that people in the street can get help from PR professionals in designing and printing banners for their local campaign. The Enabling City is another example. It open sources information on urban planning.
“Researchers from Yale reminded me that we’re still working with the same minds that we had 200,000 years ago”, says Simran.
Our challenge now is really to understand what that means when we frame the issues we care about to those around us.
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11 Responses to “So what’s stopping us all from going green?”
Leave a Reply | <urn:uuid:12986e0d-5905-4dbb-9016-65b2116e5937> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.wiser.org/so-what%E2%80%99s-stopping-us-all-from-going-green/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953996 | 578 | 1.828125 | 2 |
The longer I work, the larger will be my Social Security benefits. This is due to Social Security's Recomputation of Benefits provision. Each year you work, you add to your earnings record leading Social Security to automatically recalculate your benefits.
In a nutshell, Social Security averages your highest 35 years of earnings to figure your Average Indexed Monthly Earnings or AIME. Then it plugs your AIME into a formula that figures out your full retirement benefit, called your Primary Insurance Amount (PIA). What benefits you can get for yourself and your spouse (including your ex spouse(s) and children, if they are young enough or are disabled) is all hooked to your PIA.
Social Security considers all your covered earnings from age 16 on and indexes, based on historic wage growth, all earnings through the year you are age 60. Earnings after age 60 are just treated at face value. So if you are now, say, 65, are still working, and you started work at 16, you have 45 years of indexed earnings and 4 years of non-indexed earnings. Social Security then takes the 35 largest of these values to compute your AIME.
If your current earnings are above the smallest of the 35 (ignoring this year's earnings) being used to form the AIME, bingo! You'll raise your AIME, which will raise your PIA, which will raise your Social Security check (checks, if your dependents are also collecting).
Is this a big deal? Well, I just looked at my own situation using my company's software. I didn't really start contributing much to Social Security until I was 29. I was in grad school before then and on a postdoc after grad school. If I were to stop working today and wait until 70 to collect benefits -- when they would start at their highest value, my lifetime benefits would be $774,210. (Lifetime benefits are calculated as the present value of benefits through age 100 discounted at a 3 percent rate above inflation.) If I were to work until age 70, my lifetime benefits rise by $80,312 to $854,522. If I work till 80, they rise another $88,154 to $942,676. Wow! Working to age 80 will raise my lifetime Social Security benefits by 22 percent!
Link - http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/inside-social-security-obscure-incentive-keep-americans-working-224727054.html | <urn:uuid:f94b791a-cbb5-426a-a350-aaa07ddcfe90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1608101 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956056 | 522 | 1.757813 | 2 |
January, 2008. Holyhead: A man packed a dinghy full of fishing equipment and pushed it out, walking into the water to follow it and board the vessel, but stopped dead in the water, went under the surface and drowned. The assumption is that he suffered cold water shock and became unconscious - if he was wearing a lifejacket it may have kept him afloat long enough to receive medical attention.
July - Belfast. A man was in the water after cockle picking on Scotchman Rock when his punt broke away. The man tried to recover it and was declared deceased later at hospital. No lifejacket worn.
July - Sound of Islay. A male angler in his 70s was swept off by the current. His waders filled with water and dragged him under. No lifejacket worn.
September - Polzeath. A 32 year old male angler was swept off the rocks into the sea, possibly while trying to recover some fishing gear. No lifejacket evident.
December - Aberdeen. A Polish rock fisherman was swept away by large wave. No lifejacket worn.
Now it may have escaped the notice of the MCA - or perhaps they have not yet extended their watery bureaucratic kingdom so far inland - but every year in the UK around fifteen people drown in swimming pools (RoSPA figures) - three times as many swimmers as anglers. The case studies could read:
January - Doncaster. Boy, 15, tries to 'bomb' his pal in the deep end but hits his head and drowns. Not wearing a life jacket.
March - Ipswich. Girl, 14, pushed in the deep end by a group of other girls. Not noticed by pool guard and drowns. No evidence of a life jacket.
OK, I won't go on. You get the point. | <urn:uuid:890031ca-0fbb-4d6c-ab6d-f0a5c3f62386> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2009/03/nannys-distopian-madness.html | 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 | 0.981552 | 378 | 1.796875 | 2 |
“When you meet someone, you need to have a super power. If you don’t, you’re just another handshake.” – Seth Godin’s Blog, March 15, 2009
What could be better than x-ray vision?
A couple of years ago I overheard a conversation between a group of five-year-old boys that I will always keep in my pocket for days that need a little sunshine. The boys were talking about superheroes and weighing up the benefits of each of their powers (nothing knew here – I have heard grown men having the exact same debate twenty and thirty years on.) They all wished vehemently to have x-ray vision or superhuman strength or the ability to create fire out of thin air. All but one. He stated that he did not want any of those things because he had a superpower already. The other boys scoffed and scowled and sarcastically asked him what it was. He shrugged, unphased, saying he hadn’t figured it out yet, but he was “pretty sure it was going to be awesome”.
Without any help at all, children instinctively dream big and happily believe in the impossible no matter what the evidence to the contrary. I remember when I was in kindergarten a girl told the whole class that Santa wasn’t real – not a single person believed her. Our belief was so strong that her suggestion seemed completely ridiculous. Even at the tender age of five people begin to question us, to criticise our beliefs, to cast doubt on our dreams. And pretty soon we do the same. So even when there is no one telling us we’re not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, we start telling it to ourselves.
Believe in yourself like some of us believed in Santa – without question.
But in adulthood being aware of what you can uniquely contribute to the world and having complete faith in that contribution is a superpower in itself. Not so long ago I thought Year of Kindness was just silly and idealistic. Pretty much everyone I spoke to about it thought the same thing. Nice idea, sure, but not practical and definitely not something that could have any real impact in our crazy, mixed-up world. Even after I started Year of Kindness, a small part of me still thought it was naive to think I could possibly influence anyone elses actions.
So you can imagine how I felt this week when I recieved a link to a Facebook Page called 12 Days of Kindness. It is a page created by two of the Year Nine students I spoke to a few weeks ago about The Year of Kindness. They have just completed their own kindness project for 12 days, with kindnesses including bringing lollies for the teachers to share, vacuuming the house without being asked, cleaning up the playground and going vegetarian for a day. I doubt that anything could have brought a bigger smile to my face than reading their posts. Katie and Ben, you are amazing and I’m certain your generosity and thoughtfulness will bring so many positive things your way. I also think perhaps wasn’t a coincidence that this morning when I told my barista I would pay for the next person’s coffee, it turned out to be a hot chocolate for a Year Nine student whose resulting smile was the biggest I’ve seen in a long time.
Hi, my name is Cat, and I’m going to make the world a kinder place.
Chris Guillebeau says in order to have faith in yourself and value your unique contribution, you have to consider what the world would look like with you in charge. He suggests we imagine meeting someone important and introducing ourselves by saying “Hi, my name is ____ and I’m going to ____.”
You have something that you can give to the world in a way that no one else can. You have a perspective, an idea, a talent, a wish for the world that is uniquely yours. The tricky part is listening to your instincts to figure out what that is and ignoring anyone who says it’s not important, or valuable, or necessary. Even if – or especially if – that critic is yourself.
What do you love? What do you value above all else? What can you give to others? How can you change the world? If you haven’t figured out your superpower yet, you can and you will, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be awesome. | <urn:uuid:27565deb-3ffc-492e-b8cc-43db2c91c7f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yearofkindness.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/whats-your-superpower/ | 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 | 0.97039 | 930 | 1.554688 | 2 |
After a summer of poor fishing, the Golden Gate's fishing fleets face a new crisis less than a week before the commercial crabbing season is set to begin.
Bunker fuel from the Cosco Busan spill has drifted not only right over many of the prime fishing spots in the main bay but also into the Pacific, where it is affecting prime salmon and crabbing water before it washes ashore along the Marin coastline.
Commercial boats are scheduled to set their crab pots Wednesday for Thursday's opener that traditionally supplies Dungeness for the holiday demand. Because of the fuel spill, that opener might be in question.
Commercial crabbers from San Francisco, Half Moon Bay and Bodega Bay are meeting at the association's hall at Fisherman's Wharf at 2 p.m. Saturday to vote on whether to postpone the season opener until after Dec. 1.
"There's a good chance we would postpone the season if the spill extends over the crab grounds," Collins said. "I'm just one fisherman, but I think we should postpone it. If the crab come up through the fuel, they could be contaminated."
Even if the boats drop pots, there's still the significant matter of getting the crab to the wholesalers in San Francisco.
"We need to bring them into the bay to unload," Collins said. "If that means circulating (fuel-contaminated) water through our holding tanks, we couldn't even offload in the city."
Collins is just as worried about the spill's long-term effect on the bay, which is a nursery for young Dungeness crab.
"Right now, the bay is loaded with baby Dungeness. As that fuel moves down the water column, it could devastate crab numbers for years to come."
Many of the local sportfishing charter boats already are feeling an economic impact from the spill.
Jay Yokomizo, who runs the party boat New Huck Finn out of Emeryville, has seen his business evaporate following news of Wednesday's spill.
"No one is going to want to fish in an oil-spill zone. And I don't blame them. I hate to say it, but that's the reality of it. There is a lot of bunker fuel on the water, right over some of the places we fish."
The most dramatic impact to fisheries, so far, has taken place in the bay, where a heavy coating of fuel remains around Angel Island and over the Berkeley Flats, which are considered some of the most productive halibut and striped bass haunts in the bay. The areas are host to numerous other game fish as well.
"We got there as the tide was going out, and taking the oil with it," Smith said, "so we didn't actually fish over the fuel. But it was there earlier in the morning, and I know it was there in the afternoon."
Like nearly all boats crossing the bay and moving through the entrance to the Golden Gate, the California Dawn's hull is coated with bunker fuel. Smith also has seen sea and shorebirds covered in oil from the spill.
"This is a critical area for wildlife," Smith said from his boat slip at Berkeley Marina on Friday. "Fishermen want this cleaned up, as soon as possible."
According to Smith, the California Dawn was chartered for fishing Friday, but the trip was canceled because of concern over the spill.
"There's no doubt this is bad for business," he said.
Salmon anglers returning from fishing Wednesday were among the first to report fuel from the spill reaching outside the Golden Gate. Jimmy Robertson, who operates the charter boat Outer Limits from Sausalito, saw fuel on the water as he approached Point Bonita on his way in Wednesday.
"The closer we got to the Gate (on Wednesday), the thicker the bunker fuel got. The smell of the stuff is overwhelming."
Robertson had calls from worried customers Wednesday night. "They wanted to know if I was still fishing and if it was OK to fish," Robertson said. "I told them it should be fine, if we fished out of the fuel."
Officials with the Department of Fish and Game are not so sure, particularly when it comes to consuming fish caught in the bay.
"We're assessing the situation now," said Pete Kalvas, a senior biologist with the department's marine region in Fort Bragg (Mendocino County). "We just don't have a blanket opinion on eating fish from the bay right now. The problems seem to be localized, and different harbor commissions and park districts will be posting their own warnings, as they see fit."
Thursday, the Outer Limits did fish, and was back up along the Marin coast, trolling for salmon off Double Point, 13 miles west of the Gate. It was one of its last salmon ventures of the year, as the season is set to close Sunday.
For the first time in months, the boat caught its limit of salmon, 26 in all for the 13 anglers aboard, with the fish from 6 to 18 pounds.
"It's kind of ironic," Robertson said. "We struggle all season, and now, at the very end, we finally see salmon showing up. And right in the middle of an oil spill, too."
Fishing off Double Point on Thursday, Robertson did not see fuel on the water. It was close, though, reaching as far west and north of the Golden Gate as Rocky Point, which is just below Stinson Beach.
Friday, Robertson's boat was again on the water. This time, Robertson said there was a light sheen of fuel all the way past Bolinas, off an area fishermen call The Towers.
"This seems to be getting worse," Robertson said. "I don't understand why there aren't more boats up here containing the spill. When this stuff hits the rocks and beaches, a lot of marine life is going to be smothered."
Collins, whose commercial boat Autumn Gale is docked at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, wonders why he and other skippers have not been asked to help with the cleanup.
"We have 30 boats in the city trained in dropping boom, and they're not asking us to do a damn thing," Collins said. "It's frustrating. We'd like to help.
"Instead we have to sit back and watch this unfold. We just had a horrible salmon season and a lot of the commercial guys are depending on the crab season to survive in this business. We seem to be going from one catastrophe to the next." | <urn:uuid:cb4fa101-9253-4338-92f1-5c33dbe36410> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/The-spill-threatens-to-delay-opening-of-crab-3236627.php | 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 | 0.979172 | 1,354 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Role of a Linux Kernel Maintainer
At LinuxCon Japan a few weeks ago I gave a talk entitled, "Linux Kernel
Maintainers, What they do and how you can help them."
If you have ever wondered why a maintainer of an open source project could be a
bit grumpy about anything you have sent them, I strongly suggest you go read
the notes I wrote for that talk, or the slides, which includes all speaker
Also, if you ever want to know what to do, in order to get your patches
accepted, please go read the slides, I'm not going to repeat the information
Well, with one exception.
But first, it seems that this talk has kicked off a bunch of discussion. First
off was Jake Edge's excellent summary of the talk on lwn.net, which
kicked off a bunch of comments by people who didn't seem to have read the
slides, or seen the talk, but it sparked a bunch of interest anyway, as
everyone likes watching when people argue.
Then Jon Corbet weighed in on the topic of mocking which was a very
good summary of some of the issues involved when maintainers of open source
projects are overwhelmed by bad submissions, or just beaten down by constantly
having to answer the same questions every single week, and no one seeming to
read documentation where things like that are answered. Again, highly
recommended, go read both of them, and the comments for the articles.
(What, you aren't a lwn.net subscriber? Why not! Shame on you, go fix
that right now.)
After that, the Linux Kernel Summit Call For Participation went out,
and lots of the proposals that are being submitted deal with maintainers, our
workloads, and how we can handle the issues involved. Go read them
here for an idea of what we are currently grappling with if you are
The part I wanted to repeat from my talk is this, what I, as a Linux kernel
subsystem maintainer pledge to kernel developers who send me patches for the
various parts of the kernel that I maintain:
- I will review your patch within 1-2 weeks (see details below).
- I will offer semi-constructive criticism of your patches.
- I will let you know the status of your patch if it is rejected, or if it is
accepted, what tree it has gone into, where you can find it, and when you
can expect to see it merged into Linus's tree.
That's it. And from you, I expect to get well-formatted, fully documented,
cleanly applying patches that do useful things, and everyone involved will be
Note about 1-2 week response time:
Of course, if I'm sick, or traveling on insane Asia trips, my response
time will be delayed, but feel free to email me asking the status of a patch
you have sent me, I'm happy to respond back that I just haven't gotten to it.
I would much rather field these kinds of inquiries (after waiting a few weeks)
then loose patches and make people mad.
Also, consider the kernel merge window requirements, during the merge window, I
can't accept new patches into my tree that are not bugfixes for this specific
kernel release, so that means there is usually a 3 week window starting about 1
week before Linus's release, lasting until after a -rc1 kernel is released,
before I can get to your patch. During that time period hundreds of patches
accrue, so please give me some time to dig out from all of them. Usually by
-rc3 I'm caught up, if not, email me and ask. | <urn:uuid:277214e1-ea68-486a-bfe9-91d5f167bd6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2012/06/role-linux-kernel-maintainer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960153 | 780 | 1.523438 | 2 |
President Obama has been trying to tamp down the maelstrom of ridicule that greeted his claim last week that the private sector was doing just fine -- but the public sector needed to be propped for robust job creation. Whether his remark was a political gaffe of the order of Mitt Romney's “I enjoy firing people” or “I don’t care about poor people” remains to be seen. But Obama’s comment accurately summarized prevailing Keynesian thinking on job creation, namely, that public sector spending complements –not crowds out -- private sector economic activity.
But a fascinating study by Harvard Business researchers Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval and Christopher Malloy last year debunks this notion. The study examined the economic activity in 232 instances over the last 42 years when a senator or representative ascended to the chairmanship of a powerful congressional committee and then used his position to divert federal resources to his home state in the form of federal earmarks, contracts and transfers.
If the Keynesians were right, this “exogenous government spending shock” should have resulted in greater private sector activity, especially since this spending constituted “free money” that wasn’t financed by greater state taxes or borrowing. But, alas, the exact opposite happened:
Increased resources from the government that are not expected to be funded by taxes or borrowing induce individuals to increase their consumption and leisure. The resulting decline in the marginal productivity of capital compels companies to scale back investment and output…
Focusing on the investment (capital expenditure), employment, R&D, and payout decisions of these firms, we find strong and widespread evidence of corporate retrenchment in response to government spending shocks. In the year that follows a congressman’s ascendency, the average firm in his state cuts back capital expenditures by roughly 15%. These firms also significantly reduce R&D expenditures and increase payouts to their investors. The magnitude of this private sector response is nontrivial: in the median state (which receives roughly $452 million per year in increased earmarks, federal transfers, and government contracts as a result of a seniority shock), capex and R&D reductions total $48 million and $44 million per year, respectively, while payout increases total $27 million per year. These changes in firm behavior persist throughout the chairmanship and begin to reverse after the congressman relinquishes the chairmanship. We also find some evidence that firms scale back their employment, and experience a decline in sales growth in response to the government spending shock… (Emphasis added).
Our approach identifies a distinct and alternative mechanism by which government spending deters corporate investment. In particular, we provide evidence that crowding out occurs through factors of production including the labor market and fixed industrial assets. These findings argue that tax and interest rate channels, while obviously important, may not account for all or even most of the costs imposed by government spending. Even in a setting in which government spending does not need to be financed with additional taxes or borrowing, its distortionary consequences may be nontrivial.
President Obama might be satisfied by the job creation in the private sector. But one of the great mysteries of America’s post-recession economic recovery under his tenure has been why private companies have refused to add jobs and bring down the unemployment rate despite having returned to profitability.
Could it be because Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus pumped easy money into the economy and made capital “lazy”? Why invest in expanding business and adding workers when you have easy government money at hand to keep shareholders happy?
And could it be that just as the economic health of states began to improve after they lost their powerful Congressional representatives, likewise the American economy will improve after Obama leaves office and all his stimulus threats finally end?
Just sayin…Not that I have any love lost for the alternative!
(Check out Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey’s blog illustrating precisely how weak job growth has been under Obama’s recovery compared to other post-recessionary periods, Obama's sanguine declarations to the contrary nothwithstanding.) | <urn:uuid:d7c9b2da-16bf-4939-b902-ef1d466fe32a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/11/has-president-obamas-stimulus-made-the-p | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954424 | 839 | 1.625 | 2 |
In achieving wealth, how you invest isn't nearly as important as how much you save.
Say you're 40, have $200,000 saved, with 60% in stocks, and are putting away 10% of a $100,000 salary (including company match). You have a 52% chance of retiring with 70% of your pre-retirement income, according to T. Rowe Price.
Boost your stock stake to 80%, and your chances improve modestly, to 57%. But if you boost your savings to 15% instead, you get to 69%.
Message: Stretch to save the most you can.
NEXT: Make a family decision
By Carla Fried, Anne C. Lee, Elaine Pofeldt, Susie Poppick and Penelope Wang @Money
- Last updated June 25 2012: 7:33 PM ET | <urn:uuid:6491fd7a-d4c5-4d65-938d-0a3856908186> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/pf/1206/gallery.wealth-net-worth.moneymag/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943214 | 176 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Thermostats are dull aren't they? But they do control half of the money that you fork out every year on energy, so it pays to have a good one. And by good one we, of course, mean one that looks like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Unlike HAL though, the Nest learning thermostat isn't out to kill you and keep your home for itself; but to learn your living habits so it can save you a few quid on your heating bill.
The Nest is a clever thermostat you see; over the course of a week it learns roughly when you like to have the heating on, how long for and at what temperature. As time goes on it becomes even more intuitive, such as picking up patterns like everyone leaving the house between 7.15 and 8.35 on a Wednesday, people having a lie-in on a Saturday morning and no-one being at home every other Friday.
Basically, like HAL, it studies you from afar, noting every little detail of your life and your daily habits. Unlike HAL, it does this for your own good though... we think.
It's connected up to Wi-Fi, so knows what the weather is like outside (using online forecasts) and has a 150-degree sensor so it knows if anyone is home. You can also set it from afar using a web-based portal or mobile apps.
It's also designed to be eco friendly too, awarding you a green leaf should you make a change that will benefit Mother Earth. A 1-degree difference can reduce energy use up to 5 per cent, so precision is important.
The Nest chaps at CES told us that it is as easy to fit as a light-fitting and it costs $249 Stateside. That may sound a lot for a thermostat, but we're told it will save you $173 per year, so you'll be breaking even after around 18 months. Over 3 years you'll have saved about $520.
That's if HAL, sorry Nest, hasn't plotted your downfall by then.
It's US only for now, we'll let you know if it hits this side of the pond anytime soon. | <urn:uuid:8fce00d6-62c0-4ae0-8b05-31cb71d3e90c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/113898-nest-thermostate-pictures-hands-on | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964787 | 449 | 1.78125 | 2 |
It’s no secret that Apple has been working on its own mapping service to replace Google Maps on iOS devices. According to eyewitness reports as well as leaked screenshots, what sets Apple’s Maps app apart is its 3D imaging capabilities. However, after an interesting announcement from Google on the 6th, this 3D feature might not be as unique as Apple would have hoped.
Google’s enhanced mapping 3D maps experience will be coming to both Android and iOS in the coming weeks, and will offer customers a more in depth look at many popular areas. In fact, using “new processes,” to capture images, Google was able to portray extra depth and delve into astounding detail – in San Francisco, for example, every single building is modeled and displayed in three dimensions.
Google even made a point of showing this technology running on an iPad, so even with iOS 6 on the way, Google has iOS devices on its radar. Obviously Google’s tech won’t be built right into iOS anymore, but the company’s 3D maps will surely make their way to the Google Earth application. It’s also not a stretch for Google to come out with a Google Maps app, which could also utilize this latest mapping development… you know, if Apple allows such an app.
I’ll be very interested to see how this affects Apple’s own mapping service, and which of the two will come out on top. With Google Earth, Maps and Street View under its belt, Google is definitely the more seasoned of the two when it comes to Maps, but it would be foolish to count Apple out just yet.
What do you guys think about this? Will Apple let Google’s 3D maps exist alongside its own in a dedicated App Store app, or will Apple’s 3D maps be the only ones allowed on our iPhones? Do you even care about seeing the depth of a building on a map? Weigh in down below in the comments section or let me know on twitter! | <urn:uuid:7289ec27-7b1d-4736-826c-983af143e967> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.todaysiphone.com/2012/06/google-beats-apple-to-3d-mapping-service/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949964 | 419 | 1.679688 | 2 |
2011 Trends: Global Spam
On December 7 we will release our MessageLabs Intelligence 2010 Annual Security Report looking back at the changes in the threat landscape during 2010. As is our standard practice we also use the opportunity to look ahead at potential trends for next year. In the days before we publish our report we will share a few of these trends.
Global Spam Trends
In 2011, spam will become more culturally and linguistically diverse. The use of English in spam will fall from approximately 95% of all spam to below 90% driven by economic growth and broadband adoption in emerging economies. For instance, spammers will target Brazil with more than 40 percent of spam in Portuguese.
Portuguese and Spanish will become some of the most popular languages used in spam other than English. We expect Italy to receive 20-25% of spam in Italian, France to receive 15-20% French language spam and Germany will find 10-15% of its spam in German. China will receive 10-15% of spam in Chinese and spam in Japan will be 10-15% in Japanese. Arabic language spam will increase in the Middle East, for example Saudi Arabia will receive 10% of its spam in Arabic.
Likewise, as the internet population in East African countries continues to rise, we predict that spam from these countries, such as Kenya will increase sending up to twice as much spam in 2011 as in 2010 driven by botnet domination. Spam sent from Africa will account for almost 5% of all spam by the end of 2011.
Contributions to the global spam landscape will also continue to shift geographically. The amount of spam sent from European countries will increase to 40-45% of all spam. Much of the shift will be due to an increase in spam from Eastern European countries, from the current 50% of spam from Europe to more than 70% in 2011. Spam sent from South America which will account for 10-15% of all spam. North America will remain on par with around 10% of spam sent from the region, and Asia will remain relatively unchanged with around 35% of spam sent from the region.
Tomorrow: Distributed Workforce Drives Security Policies | <urn:uuid:ad4bb47e-3105-432c-af7f-420cb4a121bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/2011-trends-global-spam | 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 | 0.950751 | 442 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Are the Gulf’s over-the-top retail centers doomed? Trends magazine reports.
April 11, 2010 4:20 by Emily Meredith
To do that, though, takes several years to renovate and redecorate so it suits the direction. The second thing the mall can do is rent retailer “animation space.” So the retailer would agree that a special event – such as a make-up artist – would come only to their venue in one mall and in return the mall would rent the entertainment space at a reduced rate or give it to the retailer for free. Ultimately, however, this may help pull more customers into the stores, but it does little to increase the size of consumer spending.
Several owners and developers now say that governments and local authorities should play a greater role in planning real estate developments.
“Dubai now has reached a critical level of retail property supply and they have to invest in the existing ones, reduce their production, and develop any kind of possible means of security in their resident populations,” Bouyer says. Governments should be attracting visitors from cash rich areas of the Middle East and “motivating resident populations to keep their wealth within the country and to increase their annual consumer spend within the U.A.E.,” he says.
In the days of rapid real estate development there was little consideration for the long term, according to Al Retaj Holding’s Al Shaer. “This is the same as you are planning to give approval to build 100 hotels and you know there is no demand for it,” he says. “We have to check the demand. We need everybody to plan it right.” Al Shaer says the authorities in Bahrain work closely with existing shopping center owners to ensure new developments do not cannibalize existing retail. | <urn:uuid:64589c6e-f4e3-4ba2-9293-fabcd5ee4989> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kippreport.com/fcs/shopping-maul/5/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962249 | 374 | 1.625 | 2 |
Notes from YouTube:
"O, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." Indeed the truth. How great can our peace be if we make prayer our first line of action instead of a route we follow "when all else fails."
The words to this hymn were written by Joseph M. Scriven for his mom in 1855 who were across the ocean from him at the time. In 1868, Charles C. Converse composed the music that accompanied it.
Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of this timeless hymn is one of my personal favourites, mainly for her "smooth as velvet' voice. | <urn:uuid:76142647-3786-4c7c-922b-0def254d0d93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://squeezemylemon.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-friend-we-have-in-jesus-by-ella.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973738 | 135 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Don't Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford
Everyone is a genius in a bull market
—old financial saying
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business
I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility
—David Walker, former comptroller of the United States
Last week I described friedmanism, defined as the dissemination of dangerous positive illusions, in the context of the ongoing sixth mass extinction of life on Earth in the 21st century. I come down to Earth in a different sense today, discussing the dangerous positive illusions that have been evident in the equities and commodities markets lately. I argue that the American economy is likely to be sluggish for many years to come. It’s not a hard argument to make.
I am also (not so) amazed to report that the oil price, which now follows the S&P 500see note 1, is over $71/barrel today despite the fact that the weak global demand situation has not changed at all.
Be that as it may, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has determined preliminarily that Gross Domestic Product (GDP, or output) in the United States declined at only a 1% annual rate in the 2nd quarter of this year. This news cheered the financial markets, where it is assumed that GDP is now positive in 3rd quarter. Thus traders have convinced themselves that a robust recovery is just around the corner. Newsweek announced the good news with an asterisk (Figure 1).
Figure 1 — The infamous magazine cover indicator. The graph on the right shows Time Magazine’s Home Sweet Home cover from June 13, 2005 in the context of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. The cover story was America’s House Party, from which I quote: “The house has always reflected its occupants’ place in society. But now it also determines their place in society. The boom has divided haves from have-nots—owners from renters, hot markets from cold. The median U.S. home price jumped in April to $206,000, up a stunning 15% over the past year and 55% over the past five years, according to the National
Association of Realtors. The fact that houses are bought for pennies on the dollar magnifies the windfall.” Barry Ritzholtz supplied the graph. You can find Daniel Gross’ Newsweek story here.
My story last week did not talk about the truly positive part of positive illusions: if you know how to spot them, they can be very entertaining! Black humor, along with a lively sense of your insignificance in the cosmos, is going to be essential if you want to get through the next decade with all your mental faculties—if not your household balance sheet—intact.
You, me, all of us, are about to experience a propaganda blitz about a recovering economy the likes of which we have probably never seen before. The spinmeisters are going to be out in force because GDP is very likely to turn positive in the 3rd or 4th quarters. Over-exposure to bullish financial media, which is never good for you, will pose an extreme danger to your mental health (Figure 2).
Figure 2 — Successful cheerleaders want to invade your brain. Prepare for a shock & awe psychological assault when GDP edges into positive territory. From Eric Janszen’s Explosion Fallout — Part I: Recession Ends, depression begins (iTulip, July 27, 2009).
You have been warned. Today I go back to basics to explain why the United States will remain mired in a deep hole for a long time to come. I need to briefly explain how Gross Domestic Product is calculated and what that really means, but it’s not so hard to understand.
Back To Basics
Let’s return to the clarity of February, 2009, when the stock market was pricing in a Great Depression, now said to have been averted. The Financial Times’ Martin Wolf talked about Japan’s lessons for a world of balance sheet deflation.
What has Japan’s “lost decade” to teach us? Even a year ago, this seemed an absurd question. The general consensus of informed opinion was that the US, the UK and other heavily indebted western economies could not suffer as Japan had done. Now the question is changing to whether these countries will manage as well as Japan did. Welcome to the world of balance-sheet deflation.
As I have noted before, the best analysis of what happened to Japan is by Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute.* His big point, though simple, is ignored by conventional economics: balance sheets matter. Threatened with bankruptcy, the over-borrowed will struggle to pay down their debts. A collapse in asset prices purchased through debt will have a far more devastating impact than the same collapse accompanied by little debt.
[My note: I will not get into the intricacies of the "inflation versus debt deflation" discussion today. I am trying to keep things simple. You can think of the Great Recession as a "balance-sheet recession."]
The United States is in the midst of a balance-sheet recession as households and firms (financial or otherwise) attempt to pay down their enormous debt. Before we look at the debt, let’s look at how GDP is calculated.
(1) Gross Domestic Product = PCE + I + G + (Ex - Im)
PCE is classified as private consumption, or in BEA-speak, personal consumption expenditures. It is the spending done by consumers on final goods and services. Virtually all consumer spending is counted excluding home purchases. However this component does include rents paid.
I is the investment portion of GDP. However, as one would typically assume, it does not include purchases of stock and/or bonds since such transactions are essentially
just changes of title and do not involve capital goods and/or services. Components of I are business investment in capital goods, and purchases of new housing units by consumers.
G represents the government spending portion of GDP. It represents the government’s purchases of final goods, payment of government employees, and investment in capital goods. Transfer payments such as Social Security and Medicare are not included in the GDP calculation.
(Ex - Im) is essentially our trade balance, with Ex = exports and Im = imports. If we run a trade surplus, then this component contributes to GDP. If we run a deficit, then it subtracts from GDP. Imported goods are subtracted here because they have already been counted once in PCE, I, or G since the goods/services came into the country and were purchased in some manner be it as final goods or capital goods.
[My note: I have slightly edited the original text for clarity.]
GDP is the principal measurement of growth in the economy. If GDP is negative, the economy is said to be shrinking. If it is positive, the economy is said to be growing. Depending on the quarter measured, private consumption PCE makes up 66 to 71% of GDP in the United States. The balance of trade term, (Ex - Im), has been negative for many years because we import more than we export.
The San Francisco Fed published a very important paper in May called U.S. Household Deleveraging and Future Consumption Growth. Figure 3 is going to look very complicated at first glance. I have marked up the Fed’s original graph (their Figure 1). This is the one graph you need to understand to get a feel for where the U.S. economy is headed over the next decade, so please take the time to absorb its many lessons.
Figure 3 — The Fed’s data key is shown in the upper left. Note that all the lines start out together. Now, look at real household debt (thick black line) versus real household disposable income (thin black line). You can immediately see that the two lines diverge (decouple) in the early 1980s. This is Event I. Now look at housing wealth (dashed black line) versus disposable income. The two trends diverge around 1997. This is Event II. Let’s turn to the bubbles. Look at stock wealth (dotted black line). Stock prices lagged real income until the late 1990s, but were rising in support of greater debt. Stock prices then got very bubbly—this was the web/tech (dogfood.com) equities bubble. Bubble tops are marked by light gray arrows & text. The Tech bubble tops out in 2000 and the housing bubble (Event II) tops out in 2006. The entire debt bubble tops out 2007-2008. The vertical gray lines (key lower right) mark the Event I period of debt-based consumption growth, i.e. PCE. Finally, the real income trend line is extended to 2020. Housing wealth versus income reverts to the pre-Event II trend (dashed red line) and most importantly, debt versus income (thick red line) reverts to the pre-Event I trend.
Figure 3 teaches us that what goes up must come down. PCE fell 1.2% in 2009:Q2, but this is just part of a longer future decline. Condensing all the information, we get—
- Phenomenal GDP growth, especially from 1992-2007, depended on ever-greater debt-fueled personal consumption PCE.
- Ever greater household debt depended first on rising stock market wealth, which ended with the tech bubble & crash. However, even as stock wealth declined sharply for a while thereafter, steeply rising house prices stepped in to fill the “wealth gap.” This trend ended with the collapse of the housing bubble in 2006.
- The U.S. economy, which was driven by greater debt after the early 1980s and two massive bubbles starting in the late 1990s, must (or should) now revert to the long-term trend which ties debt & consumption to real disposable income & wealth. This will be done by paying down debt over the next decade as shown by the thick red line in Figure 3.
Does it seem complicated? It is not. The simple message of Figure 3 and our conclusions is summarized in Figure 4.
Figure 4 — Saturday Night Live summarizes our economic situation. Watch the video. We can not or should not buy stuff we can not afford for the next 10 years. This could be amended to read “Don’t buy stuff you can not afford and do not need.”
Now you can understand what Martin Wolf meant when he talked about “balance-sheet deflation.” Households and businesses have to pay down their debts for a long time to come. Assets are sold off to pay off debt. If many people are selling and few are buying, asset prices fall, which makes it harder to get out of debt.
The Great Recession is nothing like previous recessions. There can be no “V-shaped” recovery despite CNBC propaganda, which is based on the recent bear market rally—a new bubble struggling to be born—in the S&P 500 and commodities. From Martin Wolf—
First, comparisons between today and the deep recessions of the early 1980s are utterly misguided. In 1981, US private debt was 123 per cent of gross domestic product; by the third quarter of 2008, it was 290 per cent. In 1981, household debt was 48 per cent of GDP; in 2007, it was 100 per cent…
When interest rates fell in the early 1980s, borrowing jumped. The chances of igniting a [new] surge in borrowing now are close to zero. A recession caused by the central bank’s determination to squeeze out inflation [as in 1981] is quite different from one caused by excessive debt and collapsing net worth [like now]. In the former case, the central bank causes the recession. In the latter, it is trying hard to prevent it.
[My note: Here's another view of the data—it's no longer the Land of the Free.]
Thus the San Francisco Fed dryly concludes—
A simple model of household debt dynamics can be used to project the path of the saving rate that is needed to push the debt-to-income ratio down to 100% over the next 10 years–a Japan-style de-leveragingsee note 2.
Assuming an effective nominal interest rate on existing household debt of 7%, a future nominal growth rate of disposable income of 5%, and that 80% of future saving is used for debt repayment, the household saving rate would need to rise from around 4% currently to 10% by the end of 2018. A rise in the saving rate of this magnitude would subtract about three-fourths of a percentage point from annual consumption growth each year, relative to a baseline scenario in which the saving rate did not change…
Until recently, U.S. households were accumulating debt at a rapid pace, allowing consumption to grow faster than income [Event I, Figure 3]. An environment of easy credit facilitated this process, fueled further by rising prices of stocks and housing, which provided collateral for even more borrowing. The value of that collateral has since dropped dramatically, leaving many households in a precarious financial position, particularly in light of economic uncertainty that threatens their jobs.
Going forward, it seems probable that many U.S. households will reduce their debt [thick red line, Figure 3]. If accomplished through increased saving, the deleveraging process could result in a substantial and prolonged slowdown in consumer spending relative to pre-recession growth rates.
Really, this is almost all you need to know about the economic prognosis for the United States over the next decade. More precisely, it is 66-71% (= the private consumption part of GDP) of what you need to know. (Sans peak oil, which will make things worse, of course, but that’s not my subject today.) That’s the meat & potatoes. Let’s talk about the gravy, i.e. the other 29-34% of the American economy as measured by GDP.
Piled Higher and Deeper
Please recall the formula (1) for calculating GDP. If private consumption PCE is down now and will be for some to come, and private investment I can’t find a bottom, as the BEA data indicates, then growth is possible only if government spending G increases or exports gain relative to imports (Ex - Im). Thus Martin Wolf wrote back in February that—
… when the private sector tries to repay debt over many years, a country has three options: let the government do the borrowing; expand net exports; or let the economy collapse in a downward spiral of mass bankruptcy.
Assuming that a downward spiral of mass bankruptcy is not the preferred option, let’s take a look at the trade balance (Figure 5) and government spending.
Figure 5— U.S. imports & exports from 1994 to the present from the ever-helpful Calculated Risk. The gap between imports and exports has narrowed, which adds to GDP. However, both are declining, albeit at a slower rate lately. There’s not much help here for some years to come because our major trading partners (Europe, Japan) are even worse off than we are.
If the trade balance is not likely to boost output much in the next few years, we must look to government spending G for salvation. Many commentators, including Jim Jubak, noted that the second quarter’s relatively small contraction was boosted by greater government spending. Our greater reliance on G to fuel growth is the reason why you hear so much talk about the size and timing of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package enacted last February. That is also the reason why you hear vociferous arguments over whether we need to further stimulate the economy.
It should go without saying that it will not be possible over the long run to replace past consumption fueled by inordinately large household debt with new consumption fueled by more public debt. The publicly held federal debt of the United States today is $7,330,489,761,535. Additional intra-governmental holdings debt is $4,318,058,383,034, which gives a grand total of $11,648,548,144,569. (I like to write the numbers out.) A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. All current and future stimulus money must be borrowed, of course.
The interest expense to the government of all this debt is $320,650,178,293 so far in 2009, and amounted to $451,154,049,950 in fiscal year 2008. (These numbers are billions.) The creation of new debt to stimulate the economy is very inefficient. Not only must the government pay interest on the new debt, but, as Newsweek points out, it takes roughly $92,000 in government spending to create (or save) one new job!
So far, only a fraction of the stimulus funding has entered the economy via tax cuts ($43 billion), and another chunk via aid to state and local governments ($64 billion). Much of that, however, was used to avert cuts rather than to create jobs. New York City, for example, was able to avoid laying off 14,000 teachers. And because the contracting process is more complicated than it was in the 1930s, the investment component will take more time. So far, only about $120 billion in new spending has been promised to specific programs. Using a rough guide that $92,000 of government spending creates a job, the White House assumes the stimulus will preserve or create 1.5 million jobs by the fourth quarter of 2009 and another 3.5 million by the fourth quarter of next year. But the White House says less than 10 percent of the employment impact from the stimulus will take place during 2009.
[My note: I don't know if this $92,000 number counts the interest on this new debt or not. I doubt it.]
For a mere $92,000 one household is saved from ruin, at least for now. Presumably the new job recipient will pay taxes back into the system, and no longer requires unemployment insurance, so the government gets part of their investment back. But what about tax revenues generally? How are they doing? If you’re going to run big deficits, you need big revenues too, either now or in the future.
Figure 6 — The percent change in tax receipts in descending order of decline for all 50 states and the United States as a whole. It’s not looking good! Arizona is #1. See Arizona May Sell State Capitol Building To Balance Budget. State expenditures make up about 12% of GDP. One can guess how federal tax receipts are faring by looking at the states. The graph is from iTulip as cited in Figure 2.
We can add a new rule for governments (at all levels) to supplement the Saturday Night Live rule for households.
- Don’t Fund Stuff With Future Tax Revenues You Will Not Collect
The threat to those still working is that desperate governments will be under pressure to raise taxes in future years despite a dead-in-the-water economy. The states, which received some stimulus help, are directly responsible for unemployment compensation, so the situation is dire. When things fall apart, they really do fall apart, don’t they?
Most of the federal stimulus money will be spent in 2010, so it will add to GDP during that year. But it is worth repeating that private debt-financed consumption can not be replaced with debt-financed public spending for any length of time, especially in light of the fact that the consumption PCE and investment I components of output will be a drag on the economy for many years to come.
Gimmicks and Magic Tricks
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the American economy is a flimsy house of cards. And if all you’ve got is a deck of cards precariously stacked thin end to thin end, you must continually resort to gimmicks and magic tricks to prevent it from falling down. Thus we get programs like cash for clunkers.
The Toyota Corolla has overtaken the Ford Focus as the top new vehicle purchased through the “cash for clunkers” program, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday. That means foreign automakers produce five of the six top-selling vehicles, although several of those, including the Camry, are built in the United States or Canada…
Some Republicans have criticized the program as subsidizing sales for foreign manufacturers. To counter that, the Obama administration had touted that “cash for clunkers” buyers were choosing the Ford Focus more than any other vehicle…
I’m sure we still have a few excellent elected representatives in Congress, but I generally think of them (all together) as a bunch—I believe the word is “scurry”—of blind squirrels. And even blind squirrels find an acorn now and then. The Democrats believe they’ve found an edible nut in their “cash for clunkers” program, but it’s just another gimmick, a magic-trick giveaway funded with borrowed money.
The “cash for clunkers” program provides an incentive for you to improve your vehicle’s fuel efficiency, which is a good thing. Michael J. Jackson, chief executive of AutoNation Inc. called the program “an absolute success. There’s a very compelling case the government should put more money into it. It’s a great stimulus to the economy.” But all the program really does is provide a limited-time incentive that temporarily moves future demand for cars forward.
When you don’t have a real economy, gimmicks are all you’ve got left.
Contact the author at firstname.lastname@example.org
1. The chart below compares oil prices to changes in the S&P 500. It’s basically the same chart.
2. Japanese-style deleveraging comparing U.S. household debt/income (black line) and Japan’s non-financial corporate loan debt/GDP (dashed line). Debt/income is expected to fall for the next 10 years. | <urn:uuid:c265bee7-f96d-4fdd-9b1d-2b8ca1092de9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-08-06/dont-buy-stuff-you-can-not-afford | 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 | 0.95416 | 4,655 | 1.648438 | 2 |
BOSTON — The Massachusetts education department has issued directives on how schools should treat transgender students, including allowing them to use the bathroom of whatever sex they identify as.
The guidance by the department was issued today to help schools follow the requirements of the state’s 2011 anti-discrimination law protecting transgender people.
The directive also said schools should allow students to participate on the sports teams of whatever sex they identify as.
Andrew Beckwith of the Massachusetts Family Institute said the department is protecting transgender students at the expense of the safety and privacy of other students.
Gunner Scott of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition said the guidance is welcomed by transgender students and their parents, who often worry if their children will be safe at school. | <urn:uuid:0e904801-2ad7-4261-a47d-1566196feb53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130215/NEWS/130219893/-1/rss01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967711 | 146 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Shots - Health Blog
Wed September 21, 2011
Ten Questions To Ask You Doctor
It's so hard anymore to get time with anyone — especially your doctor. So you really need to be prepared to make the most of each appointment.
Take heart. The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has come up with a cheat sheet you can bone up on or even take with you to help during the visit.
Now, it's true that some doctors wince when patients show up with sheafs of Internet printouts. But, as the AHRQ points out, a good conversation between doctor and patient can make a big difference in the quality of care. So don't be bashful.
Plus, it would be pretty hard for anyone to argue that the standard questions suggested by AHRQ aren't reasonable and relevant.
So, here we go:
- What is the test for?
- How many times have you done this procedure?
- When will I get the results?
- Why do I need this treatment?
- Are there any alternatives?
- What are the possible complications?
- Which hospital is best for my needs?
- How do you spell the name of that drug?
- Are there any side effects?
- Will this medicine interact with medicines that I'm already taking?
Of course, everybody's situation is different. So AHRQ has a handy online tool to build a question list that's tailored to your appointment and needs.
In any event, don't be afraid to ask about the cost of the treatment or test your doctor recommends. Depending on what you find out, go right ahead and haggle over the price or ask about less expensive options. You might be surprised by what you can get.
Finally, even after all these years I can't help myself from asking, "Is this going to hurt?" | <urn:uuid:16f68be1-95b7-44c5-ac21-9ac1dc37679d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wknofm.org/post/ten-questions-ask-you-doctor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954921 | 386 | 1.515625 | 2 |
I need to generate a 1024 bit ElGamal key on Android, and key generation takes forever (~10 minutes on a Galaxy Nexus), I suspect because it take so long to generate a safe prime.
Is it dangerous for me to use the same safe prime p for all devices using my app?
Where can I find a list of 1024 bit and 2048 bit safe prime numbers?
I'm using it for encryption, and I'm wary about hard-coding a P/G because of the this attack. I know it says only for signatures, but I'm still wary of introducing weakness because I am by no means an experienced cryptographer. The IETF has a list of good Ps to use, but they advocate using G=2, as seen here. | <urn:uuid:4afd5dd0-d92c-490d-97b7-c68d195684ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/5534/whats-a-good-p-to-use-in-elgamal-key-generation/5535 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931233 | 155 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Having fun at McDowell is ever one els?
Without going to school this has probably been the most boring summer yet and I can’t wait too go to school next year. I just don’t have anything to do without going to school and seeing everybody. Are you ready for McDowell or can you wait?
Are you glad that school is out or would you rather be in school????
D.A.R.E.- Define Access Respond Evaluate
D.A.R.E.- Drug Abuse Resistance Education
In D.A.R.E. this last nine weeks I think the most important thing that I learned is that friendship can be the most important thing in some situations. Having a friend can be able to help you say no to alcohol or drugs and that you can always have a choice when it comes to drugs you always have a choice and that choice should be no.
What I have learned will help me in the future as wanting to be an athlete. Doing drugs or not having a friendship with somebody will not show good qualities of an athlete and will always slow you down. In sports having good sportsmanship is like having a friendship at school and doing drugs or smoking will not help you at sports or make you look cool it will just make you look bad on both sports and through out the rest of your life.
In D.A.R.E. we all have had a lot of fun we have also learned a lot When we put on the DUI goggles and tried to walk across a line and then trying to catch a tennis ball was fun but being drunk and having to walk around like that would never be fun. Remembering to wear your DARE shirts would also be fun because you would get extra recess and in the future it would help improve your memory. If you are hoping to be an athlete in junior high just that little bit of recess can even help you stay fit enough for the sports that you wanted to play. Another funny thing is when dip lip bit Hadley’s finger which I talk about in the next paragraph.
Deputy Thomas brought in Smokin Susie and Dip Lip and the Jar of Tar which are two dolls that show what would happen to you if you chewed or smoked tobacco over a period of time.If you would want to look like the dolls that he brought in be my guest but there is no way that I would want look like them and I hope that you don’t either.
I learned a lot in D.A.R.E. and I am sure that is going to help a lot of people stay drug free and to not do any stupid stuff like you see everybody does and I am glad that I was in D.A.R.E. this year because Deputy Thomas taught me a lot of things that I did not know last year that will be good to know when I do go into junior high next year. Like the was to say no like the cold shoulder, the broken record and those are just some of the ways to say no no no no.This year in DARE I have learned some of the most important things in my life that has helped me to learn more about being drug free. My pledge is to stay drug free and have a healthy life so I can live long and I can be able to play sports for a long time because I want to be able to have a long sports career in baseball,basketball or football in the future and to not be involved in the wrong group of people in my life so my friends and family will always be safe and so they don’t have to get involved with any of the want you to do stupid stuff like drugs.
This is my comment on his post
I think having integrity is important. I think that because integrity can guide how you live. When you decide to make a bad choice could that effect how you live or how you will be living in the future. That is the same way in making a good choice. If you could decide between cheating and getting away with it or make the choice and not cheat. If you decide to cheat then you might try to rely on cheating for the rest of your life and that could affect how you live. Having integrity is important to because I want to go and have a good way of living by having good integrity. I think that are view of integrity is similar because he want Max to get through life being able to do every thing that he couldn’t do before by making the right choices.
Would you like to be the two people who were born only hours a part from each other and be friends for 11 years and all of that be ruined by a new girl who came just before the Sadie Hawkins Dance which they can’t find a nickname for.
Thats what almost happened to Jeff and Wiley the two nickname kings in their school. Some of their nicknames fit there is this kid who is always snooping. Can you guess what his name is, Snoopy. They have also nicknamed their school OOPS for the initials of Old Orchard Public School. In the middle of all of this competing for Cassandra Levy The are reading and reading and reading for Mr. Hughes or should I say Mr. Huge. They are doing this so he does not get fired because at first they did not like him but then he kind of stood up for them when the principal Deer In Headlights was saying that they are not smart enough because of of him giving it a hundred and ten percent in being to exited. If you like a funny book I would recommend The Sixth Grade Nickname Name.
With the lost of his dear Kevin in the end of Freak the Mighty, Max has found a way to make a new friend. When Max tried to help a little eleven year old girl get her miner’s helmet back she was afraid at first. Would you be scared of big and tall Maxwell Kane if you first saw him? After he helps her he tells this girl who people call her “Worm or Bookworm” about Kevin and how they used to be Freak The Mighty and that’s when she wants to be his friend because she thinks he can protect her from the only person she is afraid of the UNDERTAKER! Max has said he is just a moron but in this book you will find out that he is not. If you liked Freak The Mighty you will love Max The Mighty.
Comment 1: I think that we do control our destiny if we are being responsible with our choices we make. To have success you would have to be honest or trustworthy to show that we can make good decisions and so that they can trust us.
If you decide to make one bad choice you could not be controlling your destiny it could be in the hand of your mom dad or whoever you live with. In school your teacher can even control your destiny if you goof off or don’t listen you could easily be in trouble if you don’t make good choices your success could be gone and you might not have a higher standard of living.
Comment 2: I think that I control my destiny. I think that because if I make good choices I will be able to make good choice in the future in life or in school.
If I decide to make one bad choice I might not be controlling my destiny the next day. My Mom or Dad could be there telling me what I have to do because when I make that bad decision I am giving up my freedom to control my destiny which is a privilege. So when there is a hard choice in my life I have to make the good decision so that I will have a higher standard of living. When I’m at school if I want to control my destiny I can’t goof off or the teachers’ will control it. To steer my life to success I will make good decisions so I can have control of my destiny.
I would be willing to bet that most students don’t realize their potential. They underestimate their ability to think, read, write, and produce high quality work. Although they are working, they are not even close to maximum output.
Don’t get me wrong. Students in Reading Workshop have really been putting forth a lot of effort. As we scream down the test prep road preparing for the Ohio Achievement Assessment on April 27, students have been working hard and showing excellent growth in their ability. However, I just don’t believe they know the limits of their capabilities. And, I know they are not even close to putting forth maximum effort.
My potential is not 100 yet it’s 90 but by the time of the Achievement Test I will have full potential and that is 100% effort towards every thing that I will do from now on. I know that I have the potential but reaching it is the goal. Your potential is what keeps you going why you have achieved what you have achieved. Once you reach what you think is your highest potential don’t stop try to reach a new potential show what you can do and be successful. To reach your potential you can’t be like you were before you have to push yourself and not stop even if you think you can’t do it like in the video Death Crawl when Brock only says he can go to the fifty yard line but when he doesn’t stop he knows what he can do now. That is why I will reach 100% potential for sure because I was inspired by this video to do so.
Picture found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/50523523@N00/4163976843/
Do you come to school is it because you have to or because you enjoy learning or seeing your friends. Tell my if you enjoy school and why or why not. | <urn:uuid:fc8d5251-0244-4929-8796-bb742b07a2a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ianl22.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97807 | 2,003 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Memorial Day Weekend Concert Information
VNMP is hosting 3 outdoor concerts at the Clay Street Visitor Center, May 24, 25, & 26. The VC parking lot will close at 5:00pm those days and NO on-site parking will be allowed. Click 'More' for detailed parking information. More »
Surrender Interview Site
After a meeting with his division commanders, Pemberton concluded that surrender was inevitable. On the morning of July 3, 1863, he gave orders to display a white flag of truce, and sent representatives to deliver a message to General Grant proposing a meeting to discuss surrender terms. Grant agreed and at 3:00 p.m., Generals Grant and Pemberton met under the shade of an oak tree midway between the opposing lines.
The commanders could not reach an agreement, but discussions among subordinate officers, and an exchange of notes between Grant and Pemberton late in the day, brought about agreement for final terms of surrender.
Did You Know?
Thomas O. Selfridge, captain of the USS Cairo, commanded three boats which sank during the war. Each began with the letter "C"-Cumberland, Cairo, and Conestoga. The coincidence was noted after the Conestoga sank, and Selfridge was assigned to the USS Osage, which survived to the end of the war. | <urn:uuid:1fcd9e1d-6645-4d57-afa3-466a8ade111e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/vick/historyculture/interview.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941622 | 275 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Disney's purchase of Marvel has generated a lot of discussion about the specifics of the business deal and the potential synergies, but what I see is one creatively bankrupt company buying another.
This is Robert Iger's second major purchase for Disney. The first was Pixar at a cost of $7 billion. Marvel went for "only" $4 billion. These purchases have defined Iger's tenure as head of Disney, but not in a way that speaks well for him. While business writers are taken with Iger's boldness, what we have here is someone who doesn't believe that his company is able to compete.
When Walt Disney moved into live action, he didn't buy an existing studio. When he went into television, he didn't buy an existing production company. When he went into distribution, he didn't buy a distribution company. When he went into theme parks, he didn't buy an amusement park. In each case, Walt Disney grew his own company and built its expertise in these areas until the company could compete, and in some cases lead, the particular industry. When Walt Disney was interested in accomplishing something, he did it from the ground up.
By contrast, when Robert Iger needs to compete in computer animated features or to capture a larger share of the young boys audience, he pulls out the corporate wallet and buys what he needs.
Consider the numbers involved. Let's say that it costs $250 million to make and market a cgi family feature. For the $7 billion Iger spent on Pixar, he could have made 28 feature films. With 28 kicks at the can, a company could try a wide variety of approaches and techniques in trying to succeed with audiences.
One of the areas that the Marvel deal is supposed to help is the Disney XD cable channel. Let's say it's going to cost $15 million to create 13 episodes of a TV series (a very generous budget for cable). For $4 billion, Disney could create 266 TV series in an attempt to attract the boy's audience.
With those kind of resources, it's appalling that the company never made a serious attempt.
And what exactly has Disney bought in buying Marvel?
While Marvel recently celebrated it's 70th anniversary, the truth is that the company was creative for approximately 10 years of that time (1939-40 and 1961-68). If you were to remove six people from Marvel's history -- Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko -- you would remove the majority of the characters that define Marvel and the ones that are left are based on examples created by these six.
Marvel has had success recently in creating films based on its characters, but the characters are all more than 30 years old. The company's attitude towards creators guarantees that no new characters will be forthcoming. Marvel took ownership of the work of its writers and artists (even when those people were independent contractors and not employees), but the bigger blunder was to withhold profits or royalties from those creators. As the characters gained popularity and began to generate real money, the creators finally figured out that they would see none of the wealth they created, so they stopped coming up with new ideas.
Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko both left the company as a result of broken promises for compensation. Steve Gerber and Marv Wolfman both sued the company to regain ownership of Howard the Duck and Blade, respectively (and lost). In the '90s, a group of artists split from Marvel to form Image Comics precisely because they realized that they would never receive a fair deal there. Marvel's history of dealing with creators has guaranteed that the very characters that Disney covets are finite in number.
When Disney bought Pixar, they were buying a future: Pixar was still generating new films and characters. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, two people responsible for Pixar's success, were still with the company and still attracting audiences. By contrast, buying Marvel is buying the past. The characters are already decades old and the people who created them are no longer with the company. In this sense, the purchase of Marvel is closer to the purchase of the Muppets than the purchase of Pixar.
Time will determine if the purchase of Marvel was a good one or not. However, the pattern that Iger has established doesn't speak well for Disney's future. Creators need places where they can try things free from a corporate bureaucracy and where they can share in the wealth that they create. Disney would prefer to let those things happen elsewhere and then buy them after the fact. | <urn:uuid:c8a794db-26df-46a6-a535-cbcca29ccd69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2009/09/disney-and-marvel-two-creative-failures.html?showComment=1251853756170 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98226 | 933 | 1.625 | 2 |
OGE’s Information Factory takes flight
Handling disparate data effectively for analytics
Published In: Intelligent Utility January / February 2012
IN "LESSONS LEARNED: HOW UTILITIES LEVERAGE DATA," an Intelligent Utility Reality Webcast held in mid-December, panelists discussed the ways in which their utilities were leveraging and analyzing the data available through meter data management, outage management, distribution management systems and more.
Paul Dick, director of enterprise information management for OGE Energy Corp., explained OGE's "big data" in these terms.
Defining big data
"What does OGE's big data look like? In the past it was SCADA, it was OMS, it was all these different messages and events that we're trying to capture," Dick said. "So for us, meter interval data with the demand response program we have is going to drive our typical meter interval data just a bit higher in terms of the volumetrics of that. We're actually taking in 50 billion events annually, just from a meter interval perspective.
"Our Integrated Operating Center, also, when we collect all the messages that are coming from this kind of technology, and we put together the meter events, the AMI events, the OMS [outage management system] integration, the DMS [distribution management system] messages too, it's a very large volumetric again that's going to take some skill to manage, incorporate it into the data model, and also to build analytics on top of that."
DMS messages "can be massive, and they can be large in width, as well," Dick said. "The value there is also providing OMS the intelligence from DMS, so your reliability processes can be better maintained. The Holy Grail, from a distribution perspective, is integrated Volt/VAR controls (IVVC), and what you are able to optimize."
Handling data from disparate systems
With all that data to manage, OGE developed what the utility calls an Information Factory program. "It's basically, in a nutshell, nothing different than anyone else has ever seen, but maybe we've just tooled the capabilities in a different way," Dick said. "We've spun up our enterprise service bus to start handling messages from all these disparate systems in near-real-time and real-time fashion.
"So we had the traditional batch processes ... big chunks of data over specific time dimensions like everybody else has, but this is now giving us a new capability to be extracting and (building) composite applications above and beyond the transactions which everyone's accustomed to."
Geospatial-enabled presentation, he said, "allows us to layer these things on dynamically, so that each time we add a new subject area within the warehouse, it's automatically picked up in a new layer it was assigned. Users can actually go and pick that layer from a dynamic library. We also beefed up and added some statistic modelling capabilities, so that we can start to do these predictive looks into the IOC and the operating centers as well as the predictive looks into the DMS system, IVVC and so on."
But the last piece of the equation needs not to be underplayed in importance, Dick said. "We believe that the importance is that after these analytical findings are present, then everybody else needs to know, to be able to go in and show what's been done, and show how to leverage those things and the governance around these things, so that people use them in the correct way. Collaboration is becoming a bigger and bigger thing for the presentation layer." | <urn:uuid:c2d55279-effc-4553-8b2e-72db305c07f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intelligentutility.com/magazine/article/253977/oge-s-information-factory-takes-flight?quicktabs_6=1&quicktabs_4=0&quicktabs_11=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951182 | 735 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Luis Faustino and the Jesuit Prison Ministry
Louie graduated in 1953 from the Ateneo with a LittB degree, major in Economics. A classmate remembers him as an admirable person, very sharpand witty, humble and honest. Then he worked to earn an MBA. He was among the promising graduates that Philippine Manufacturing Co. (now Proctor and Gamble) hired as interns to train on the job. PMC was a leading American firm with an excellent track record in training young graduates.
After a stint and on the job training with PMC he was hired to head as Country Manager of the S. C. Johnson company in Manila. After holding this job for many years, he opted to work in the head office of S. C. Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin. One of his jobs was to interview MBA applicants.
When he retired about mid 2000 he and his family moved to Florida. He wanted to serve those whom society had forgotten. Forgotten even by their
relatives. He discerned “who could these be”. He realized that they were those in prison. He had some experience in this when he was in California.
He had no formal training in this work. So he started by visiting them and talking to them to find out what they needed. They would be his
teachers. He provided them with what he could. They asked for food, stationary, medicine, and other simple things that we take for granted. These
were their felt needs. He gave what they needed most, someone who loved them and joyously gave his time for them. They experienced the love of
Jesus. He was the visibility of Jesus. He felt consolation in doing this and he wanted others to experience that too. Jesus gave him on earth a
foretaste of the reward for those who visited him when he was in prison. “I was in prison and you visited me.” His calling card read “Serving Christ
So he recruited others, offered them some formation, trying to imbue them with the spirit of charity. He was successful. After a while, the bishop
of the diocese of Venice, Florida, where he lived, learned about his work and asked him to organize a diocesan prison ministry. His background
prepared him for this. Now with people with a variety of gifts, he could serve the many needs of prisoners. He has served in this capacity for
several years. At the same time he has his pulse on the progress of the prison ministry in the Philippines.*
For a birthday gift, two of his daughters contributed to the Philippine Jesuit Prison Ministry by donating to the Philippine Jesuit Foundation in the New York. He is trying to include the PJPM in his estate planning. His children do not begrudge him that. They know this combines the three things closest to his heart: the Philippines, the Jesuits, and Prisoners. No
greater inheritance could they get than exemplary parents.
“Gather the fragments.” Jesus told the Twelve after he had fed the multitudes. Rudy Fernandez in his homily in the Jesuit Residence chapel said that the Japanese have a saying, “Fortune is in the fragments.” This means “waste not, want not”. This can also be understood in a spiritual sense. The years after retirement may appear to be just the fragments after the full meal, but they can be the better part. Louie has found this out. No wonder his zeal to have others experience the same. At the wedding feast
in Cana, after Jesus had made the water into wine, the steward told the groom, “You have saved the best for the last.”*
How we gather the fragments differs for each one of us. It may mean being totally helpless but we put ourselves totally in his control. | <urn:uuid:6a58abce-12b5-49bd-8deb-dfcbced41d64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://monkshobbit.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/luis-faustino-and-the-jesuit-prison-ministry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989918 | 793 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Bishan is an estate located in the central area of Singapore that has a lot of down-to-earth charm and friendly residents. Measuring approximately 3 kilometers in length and breath, Bishan is a neighborhood in Singapore that is situated in the Central Region. It is primarily a residential area and is one of the newer estates in Singapore compared to Toa Payoh and Ang Mo Kio.
Bishan got its name from the large Cantonese burial ground, otherwise known as ‘Peck San Theng’, which means ‘pavilions on the green’. The flats in Bishan are generally more expensive compared to other estates due to being located in the Central Region.
Conveniently served by both the North (red) line and the Circle (yellow) line, as well as a range of buses, Bishan is highly accessible. As it is one of the newer estates in Singapore and also due to the fact that it is in close proximity to well-known schools, such as Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College, the age of residents are fairly young, with many newly-married couples eager to settle down in Bishan with the hope of sending their children to a good and prominent school.
From time to time there are activities such as carnivals or fun fairs held by local community groups to encourage families to take their children out and enjoy family time together especially on weekends. There are also trips organized by schools to attend such events.
If you haven’t been to bishan, you should make a trip, because it will surely make you feel right at home. | <urn:uuid:04ad4795-5e29-441c-886c-69f4a77c0507> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lomography.com/magazine/locations/2012/09/04/urban-adventures-bishan-a-little-bit-of-home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984819 | 338 | 1.570313 | 2 |
You have a unique medical history. Therefore, it is essential to talk with your doctor about your personal risk factors and/or experience with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). By talking openly and regularly with your doctor, you can take an active role in your care.
General Tips for Gathering Information
Here are some tips that will make it easier for you to talk to your doctor:
- Bring someone else with you. It helps to have another person hear what is said and think of questions to ask.
- Write out your questions ahead of time, so you don't forget them.
- Write down the answers you get, and make sure you understand what you are hearing. Ask for clarification, if necessary.
- Do not be afraid to ask your questions or ask where you can find more information about what you are discussing. You have a right to know.
Specific Questions to Ask Your Doctor
- How fast will my disease progress?
- Are any medicines I am taking dangerous for my stage of this disease?
- Will this likely progress to prostate cancer?
- How do you make the diagnosis?
- Is there a genetic influence that I should be aware of?
- At what point should my symptoms dictate some form of treatment?
- What are my treatment options at this point?
- What are the side effects and benefits of each of these options?
Let's talk about possible side effects of the treatment you recommend. I'm particularly concerned about:
- Sexual function
- Urinary incontinence
- Am I at risk for these or other side effects?
- How can I reduce my risk and/or manage these side effects?
- Are there any alternative or complementary therapies for BPH that may be right for me?
- Reviewer: Adrienne Carmack, MD
- Review Date: 09/2012 -
- Update Date: 00/91/2012 - | <urn:uuid:dc4b0291-111c-49be-8ca0-139b2ef5b4c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fawcetthospital.com/your-health/?/19153/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93276 | 395 | 1.679688 | 2 |
QUSAYR, Syria -- After more than six months of fighting, Syria’s largest rebel group appears to have developed into a resilient guerrilla force, unable perhaps to hold large swaths of territory for very long but still capable of inflicting heavy casualties on the Syrian military and operating fluidly within supportive populations.
The story of the Katiba Farouq, or the Farouq Brigade, has been eclipsed over the past year by news coverage that’s remained focused on the Syrian government’s shelling of urban neighborhoods. But in the months since they took up arms in August, Farouq fighters have discovered the Syrian military’s weaknesses, and despite some reversals, still appear capable of inflicting heavy casualties whenever the Syrian army attempts to enter rebel-held areas.
The rebels plan only to gain strength. “Now we are reorganizing ourselves and creating a military council,” said Mohamed Idris, who was the leader of Farouq’s branch in Baba Amr, the Homs neighborhood that was heavily damaged by Syrian rockets and heavy artillery before the rebels there finally withdrew at the end of February as they ran short of ammunition.
Idris said he and Farouq’s overall commander, Abdel Rizaq Tlass, were wounded in the Homs shelling and escaped together by swimming the Orontes River. Tlass stayed in Homs, while Idris moved south with his men to this all but abandoned city that once was home to 35,000 people near the border with Lebanon.
Tlass appeared in a short video posted on YouTube by Syrian anti-government activists on Sunday, offering to protect U.N. observers if they would stay in rebel-held areas of Homs.
There are many rebel factions fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but Farouq now is considered the largest of the groups claiming to fight under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, the name adopted by the loosely organized army of defectors and volunteers who make up the armed wing of the anti-Assad uprising.
What the Farouq fighters have found is that the Syrian army, as a force built for a potential conflict with Israel, is poorly equipped for the type of asymmetrical combat the guerillas engage in. That allows the guerillas to inflict heavy casualties on the military when the two sides engage in close combat. It is one reason the Syrian military prefers launching artillery attacks on rebel-held cities from long distances.
The rebels also have suffered heavy losses. Idris said he had 250 soldiers under his command during the fighting in Baba Amr, and that 114 of those had been killed in the fighting. Many of those survivors decamped with him to Qusayr, where they battled the Syrian military last week, repelling incursions by the military into the rebel-held portion of Qusayr on consecutive days.
Idris, limping, stayed clear of the front line at the request of his underlings. He directed the fighting from a house-turned-bunker in northern Qusayr.
“If the international community really wants peace in Syria, they will help us with weapons,” Idris said, making it clear the group was planning to step up attacks against the Syrian military. He said his fighters would continue to plant roadside bombs to destroy military vehicles outside of populated areas.
“We will attack the Syrian army in their bases and their checkpoints and try to capture their weapons,” he said. “We are also training fighters. We have many new volunteers without military experience.” | <urn:uuid:2790c6ea-c0ce-484d-8b92-6f1b70183fda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/23/2764247/rare-inside-view-of-syrias-rebels.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980095 | 737 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Home - Cable Management News - Case StudiesPrint
Marshall-Tufflex uses modular wiring for Broadcasting House project
PRODUCT: MT32 Prefabricated Wiring special solution
The BBC is nearing completion of a massive project to redevelop and extend Broadcasting House in central London. Once finished, the building will house 5,000 people, delivering news nationally and globally as well as national radio and music services. As part of this scheme, a new extensive extension has been added to the iconic building and it is here that the Marshall-Tufflex power distribution system is being utilised.
“The BBC project is interesting because it has two crucial requirements that need to be met,” said Chris Scott, Marshall-Tufflex product manager. “Firstly, as with all contracts, it is highly time-sensitive and power installation work has to be carried out as quickly as possible. Secondly, we had to ensure that the new system was compatible with one we’d already installed in the original Broadcasting House as part of the shift to digital broadcasting. Continuity across sites was vital and our ability to design and customise a uniform solution that supplies all physical power feeds was a critical advantage.”
The bespoke solution designed and pre-fabricated at Marshall-Tufflex’s manufacturing base in Sussex centres around its revolutionary MT32 power distribution system, a fast-track plug and play power connection method that has eliminated hard-wiring on site at the BBC and permitted much faster installation times for electrical contracting services company Phoenix Electrical. Design and build contractor was Bovis Lend Lease.
Designed by Marshall-Tufflex, the modular power distribution system is delivered to site in cable management ‘bays’ complete with pre-wired cable sets marked with circuitry and ready to feed into distribution boards. It follows the manufacturer’s development of a bespoke modular power distribution system installed during the modernisation and digital upgrade of Broadcasting House.
The Marshall-Tufflex system has gone into the initial fit-out of the Central Apparatus Area (CAA) and Local Apparatus Rooms throughout the new 12-storey building, including three basement levels. As Marshall-Tufflex product is fitted throughout the building, the company has now supplied further bespoke units for additional Local Apparatus Rooms in the extension, which also includes radio and TV studios, editing suites and offices.
According to Ivan Phelps, Operations Director of electrical contractor Phoenix Electrical: “The initial Central Apparatus Area (CAA) alone has required 81,000 metres of power cabling, 2,000 sockets and 32 pre-wired units contained within 513 ‘bays’ supplied by Marshall-Tufflex. A further 322 ‘bays’ are being installed throughout the building. The supply of cable sets pre-wired and ready to attach to the mains has made life a lot easier and fitting far quicker.”
The above ceiling height ‘bays’ are constructed from a combination of Marshall-Tufflex’s PVC-U Maxi Trunking and Mono 10 with specialised Cee-Norm sockets. The complexity of the vast amounts of circuitry has necessitated the building of extra large containment units with the necessary headroom – some as much as 18 metres long with a 150mm x 150mm high containment capacity. A large number of sockets and cables in relatively short spaces have also been addressed by the cable management solution.
The refurbishment and expansion programme will create one of the largest live newsrooms in the world, using the latest broadcast technology. | <urn:uuid:92ba43a5-8943-4c7c-852a-1c448b4b983c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marshall-tufflex.com/shop/page.php/e058ec9fe6a288620d05515b1c7018e3?xPage=cm_news2&news_id=50&ntype=case | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953343 | 743 | 1.5 | 2 |
It's not unconstitutional to have reindeer, snowmen and a nativity scene on display in the center of town, with no antireligious slogan next to it.
That's what a federal appeals court ruled Monday in finding that the City of Warren didn't trample on anyone's free speech rights when it refused to add a sign that attacked religion to its annual holiday display.
The sign, proposed by a Wisconsin-based group called Freedom From Religion Foundation, would have read: "There are no gods, no devils, no angels, No heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but Myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts, who called the sign "highly offensive" and "meanspirited," wouldn't stand for it. He told the group in a letter, disclosed in court documents, that he wouldn't allow any displays to disparage any religion, "so I will not allow anyone or any organization to attack religion in general."
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the move, concluding that the U.S. Constitution "does not convert these displays into a seasonal public forum, requiring governments to add all comers to the mix and creating a poison pill for even the most secular displays in the process." The court also upheld the constitutionality of Warren's annual Christmas display, noting it features both secular and religious symbols alike.
"Such holiday displays are quintessentially government speech," the panel wrote in a 3-0 vote, also stressing that it's not illegal if an opposing view is kept out of a holiday display.
"If strict neutrality were the order of the day ... the United States Postal Service would need to add all kinds of stamps, religious and nonreligious alike, to its December collection. Veterans Day would lead to Pacifism Day, the Fourth of July to Non-patriots Day, and so on."
Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said the group will consider asking the full 6th Circuit to review the case.
Fouts, meanwhile, is pleased, saying the decision is a "victory for freedom of religion." | <urn:uuid:6001ea2d-1620-4cfb-a72d-08007a582124> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freep.com/article/20130226/NEWS04/302260081/Warren-wins-court-battle-over-holiday-display | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96066 | 446 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Confessions of Saint Patrick
Through me many peoples have been reborn in God
I give unceasing thanks to my God, who kept me faithful in the day of my testing. Today I can offer him sacrifice with confidence, giving myself as a living victim to Christ, my Lord, who kept me safe through all my trials. I can say now: Who am I, Lord, and what is my calling, that you worked through me with such divine power? You did all this so that today among the Gentiles I might constantly rejoice and glorify your name wherever I may be, both in prosperity and in adversity. You did it so that, whatever happened to me, I might accept good and evil equally, always giving thanks to God. God is never to be doubted. He answered my prayer in such a way that in the last days, ignorant though I am, I might be bold enough to take up so holy and so wonderful a task, and imitate in some degree those whom the Lord had so long ago foretold as heralds of his Gospel, bearing witness to all nations.
How did I get this wisdom, that was not mine before? I did not know the number of my days, or have knowledge of God. How did so great and salutary a gift come to me, the gift of knowing and loving God, though at the cost of homeland and family? I came to the Irish peoples to preach the Gospel and endure the taunts of unbelievers, putting up with reproaches about my earthly pilgrimage, suffering many persecutions, even bondage, and losing my birthright of freedom for the benefit of others.
If I am worthy, I am ready also to give up my life, without hesitation and most willingly, for his name. I want to spend myself in that country, even in death, if the Lord should grant me this favor. I am deeply in his debt, for he gave me the great grace that through me many peoples should be reborn in God, and then made perfect by confirmation and everywhere among them clergy ordained for a people so recently coming to believe, one people gathered by the Lord from the ends of the earth. As God had prophesied of old through the prophets: The nations shall come to you from the ends of the earth, and say: “How false are the idols made by our fathers: they are useless.” In another prophecy he said: I have set you as a light among the nations, to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.
It is among that people that I want to wait for the promise made by him, who assuredly never tells a lie. He makes this promise in the Gospel: They shall come from the east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is our faith: believers are to come from the whole world.
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Patrick - Brave Shepherd of the Emerald Isle - DVD
Kidnapped and enslaved by pagans as a child, Patrick makes a daring escape home only to return and lead his captors and the Irish people to Christianity.
A wonderful DVD to help your children grow in faith - great alternative to the mix of violence, magic, and phony-super heroes!
Be sure to check out the whole collection!
God's Seven Gifts: The Sacraments of the Catholic Church
Many Catholics either don't understand liturgy and sacraments or they take them for granted. In this 6 talk set on the sacraments entitled "God's Seven Gifts," Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio covers not only each of the 7 Sacraments of the Catholic Church, but also the other dimensions of the Roman Catholic liturgy--the Catholic Liturgical Year including Lent and the Roman Catholic Advent Season, the sacramentals, and even the liturgy of the hours. Dr. D'Ambrosio's style is upbeat and easy enough to understand for an adult going through RCIA, but also meaty enough for continuing education for catechists, DRE's, and Catholic School religion teachers.
BioLean ProXtreme Protein Drink
ProXtreme! This delicious chocolate formulation brings together six different high-quality protein sources — including whey protein and Glutamine Peptide — to deliver 25 grams of protein to support your immune system and your body’s lean muscle tissue to ensure that your metabolism stays primed for effective weight loss! And, Pro-Xtreme contains only two grams of carbohydrates per serving, so you know it’s healthy for today’s low-carb lifestyle. | <urn:uuid:b14d2768-e4ed-4e0c-979d-e1013d58cd82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/908/Confessions_of_Saint_Patrick.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957393 | 1,086 | 1.570313 | 2 |
A team of University of Kentucky students won the Alltech Innovation competition Saturday with a plan to take reclaimed strip-mined land in Eastern Kentucky and grow switchgrass to create butanol for use as a gasoline additive, replacing ethanol.
The team of four graduate students, all working on their masters of business administration, won $10,000 for the first place finish.
In May, Alltech president and founder Pearse Lyons issued a challenge to UK, the University of Louisville and the University of Pikeville to come up with plans for creating jobs, particularly in Eastern Kentucky.
After the competition, Lyons expressed delight with the student proposals. "These are very smart kids using local technology to create jobs. That's what we wanted," he said.
The three teams captured the essence of entrepreneurship, he said, "with bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, can't-we-go-ahead enthusiasm. It's wonderful."
Teams at the three rival schools presented their plans to a panel of independent judges Saturday at Alltech's corporate headquarters in Nicholasville.
Moderator Van Clouse told spectators that the students were expected to answer tough questions from the judges as if they were pitching their ideas to venture capitalist investors in real life.
Each team requested the money they would need to start their companies.
The UK project, called TerraCast Technologies, uses research by two university professors — Sue Nokes and Michael Montross — from the department of of Food and Bioprocess Engineering. The pair recently won a $7 million U. S. Department of Agriculture grant to do further research on switchgrass. The university is seeking patent protection on their findings.
Start-up costs for the butanol project were estimated at $640,000. The team, made up of Lee Gage Goatley, Jarrod Willis, Jordan Denny and Jordan Laycock, asked for an investment of $300,000.
The other two projects were:
■ University of Louisville students proposed mixed-income, single family modular homes, to be built by the Stardust Cruiser houseboat company in Monticello and would create approximately 122 jobs. The energy-efficient houses would sell for $110,000.
The student company, EcoVision, is utilizing design work already done by the UK College of Design in partnership with Kentucky Highlands Investments.
Modular house benefits include faster construction time than traditional houses and consistent construction quality. The houses, while more expensive than mobile homes, would qualify families for Section 8 funding, not available to mobile home owners.
To build eight prototype modular houses, the student team projected start up costs of $640,000. They asked for an investment of $300,000, offering investors 65 percent equity in the project.
Team members were Kaysara Mandry, Evan Holladay, Scott Norris and Mike Buchberger.
■ The University of Pikeville students' plan, Appalachian Artisan Foods, proposed building three-tier aquaponic greenhouses to grow organic vegetables and fruit, alfalfa and bean sprouts, ginseng and talapia fish.
Students requested $35,000 to defray start-up cost of $110,000 to build and equip one prototype greenhouse that would employ three people.
Pikeville team members were Andrew Kelly, Casey Price, Jan Hunt, Gary Justice and Jeremy Gist.
Most fruits and vegetables eaten by people in Eastern Kentucky travel at least 2,000 miles from fields in California, Mexico and Honduras. Travel costs are expensive and nutrients are lost in travel time, team members said in justifying their project, which would help Eastern Kentuckians eat healthier.
Their marketing plan called for selling fish and produce to a regional grocery chain with 104 stores, to Aramark which runs the university's food service and to a Prestonsburg restaurant.
The U of L team finished second and was awarded $6,000; Pikeville U placed third and won $4,000.
Rick Miller, a judge from Bluegrass Angels, a group of individuals who invest in start up companies, said all three projects had real-life potential. "The quality of the presentations was excellent," he said.
Miller would like to see more teams participate next year.
Lyons told the students to feel free to come back , have a cup of coffee and talk over their ideas with him. He said perhaps Alltech could make "some small financial input" to help make their plans a reality.
Beverly Fortune: (859) 231-3251.Twitter: @BFortune2010 | <urn:uuid:c7056d00-dbcc-4441-92fb-c20b9f3cf112> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/19/2482714/uk-students-win-alltech-innovation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96387 | 933 | 1.671875 | 2 |
France took a major step toward winding down its activities in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan on Dec. 8 with a ceremony for 153 returning combat soldiers — part of President François Hollande’s pledge to bring the nation’s fighting troops home by the end of 2012. Though the arrival of a final contingent of combat soldiers in France in the next few days will fully close that chapter, Saturday’s moving commemoration by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian thanking the nation’s military for the Afghan effort was designed to emphasize that France’s combat role has already drawn to an end.
“It’s with the sentiment of a duty fulfilled that you’re returning to France … [and] being reunited with those you love and have missed so much,” said Le Drian on a tarmac in Cyprus beside a government Airbus waiting to take the soldiers back to Paris. “This was the promise that the President of the Republic made to the French people. It’s a promise fulfilled.”
The significance of that pledge and the official gesture of accompanying them home were not lost on the returning soldiers.
“This ceremony makes it clear an important page has been turned, and that France’s political leaders and public have decided to end this operation the same way they began it — with their support and appreciation,” said Captain Kamel Essid, 33, eager to return to his wife and three children after seven months of combat duty that left five members of his unit dead. “Without echoing any party line, I can honestly say we did what was needed to help provide Afghanistan the breathing room, elected government and trained forces it needs to decide its future on its own. Now it’s time to let Afghanistan do that.”
Hollande’s move toward withdrawal required careful diplomatic and security balancing act. It defied claims by Hollande’s conservative foes who mocked his campaign vow with warnings that such a quick return was logistically impossible, would provoke anger from France’s remaining NATO allies and leave exiting forces vulnerable to Taliban assaults. Those things didn’t happen, and after a series of bruising domestic policy and p.r. setbacks that have sent Hollande’s approval rating sliding, his success in fulfilling his popular Afghan pledge should do his public support some good.
“We’ve finished the combat operation before year’s over, all our allies understood our position from the start, and though there were attacks during what was a long and slow withdrawal, there were no injuries,” Le Drian told TIME in Cyprus, needling the foresight of the opposition’s Cassandras. “The mission is accomplished.”
Most of it, anyway. If Hollande is making good on his pledge to bring French fighting forces home, he’s also made it clear to allies since announcing the combat contingent withdrawal — just two weeks after his May 6 election win — that France won’t be leaving NATO high and dry in Afghanistan.
Departed French troops leave behind 1,500 military personnel regrouped in Kabul. Roughly 1,000 of those will carry out logistical work — much of it linked to transporting vehicles and material back to France — through mid-2013. The other 500 will continue medical duties, managing the Kabul airport and training Afghan soldiers and officers until the current NATO mission mandate expires at the end of 2014. At that time, any continued presence will have to be renegotiated with the Afghan government and must be redefined in what leaders at the NATO summit in Chicago last May stressed would be noncombat in nature.
What extended role NATO countries might take once the U.S. finishes its withdrawal in 2014 is anyone’s guess. In fact, with public patience over the Afghan slog waning in many participating nations, French officials suspect their stepped-up combat departure may be soon be replicated by some allies. That thinking already seems to be prevalent among ground forces.
“We had very good relations and regular contacts with our American peers, and they fully understood the decision of [French] leaders — and related to our joy in going home now that the job is done,” said Essid. “I think everyone privately agrees it’s time to wind things down.”
A returning French lieutenant went even further. Under the agreement his name not be used, the soldier said there’s general consensus among NATO forces in Afghanistan that continued presence in the country may soon become counterproductive.
“Afghanistan now has the basic governmental and military structures it needs to determine its own future, and what we risk by staying now that’s in place is inflaming the eternal, notorious Afghan determination to chase the foreign invader out,” he said. “Most Afghans appreciate what we’ve done — especially in bringing medical care and aid that saved fathers, mothers, children who would have died otherwise. But Afghan resentment of the occupier runs strong and deep, and we’re in danger of awakening it by staying too long.”
For some, even sped-up departure may be too tardy. France’s participation in the 11-year NATO mission deployed an average 3,600 soldiers to Afghanistan at any time — and 4,000 at its peak in 2010. The rotation of forces over that period involved a total of 60,000 soldiers — 1 for every 1,000 French citizens. That duration and scope made the Afghan operation France’s largest military commitment since the Algerian war for independence. It also cost the country 88 of its troops and injured another 725.
That toll may seem minimal to countries like the U.S. and U.K., which have lost 2,145 and 438 service members respectively. But those fatalities will be the most vivid memories some French combatants take home from Afghanistan.
“There are a lot of things I’ll remember about that vast, impressive and captivating country, but the thing that will stay most with me from Afghanistan is the smell of death,” said Essid, who lost four comrades in June to a suicide bomber and another in August in a firefight. “Cold death, hot death, death in battle and death that came out of nowhere.”
“Enough death,” he said, sipping a glass of juice and smiling somewhere over the Mediterranean as the government Airbus sped him back to his family. “It’s time for life — for everyone getting back to life.” | <urn:uuid:0e09b69d-6c76-4215-8e08-42dcfe2d7c1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://world.time.com/2012/12/08/ceremony-for-returning-troops-closes-french-combat-mission-in-afghanistan/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968483 | 1,355 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Wii U: New console launches in sea of gadgets
NEW YORK (AP) — In the six years since the last major video game system launched, Apple unveiled the iPhone and the iPad, “Angry Birds” invaded smartphones and Facebook reached a billion users. In the process, scores of video game consoles were left to languish in living rooms alongside dusty VCRs and disc players.
On Sunday, Nintendo Co. launched the Wii U, a game machine designed to appeal both to the original Wii’s casual audience and the hardcore gamers who skip work to be among the first to play the latest “Call of Duty” release. The Wii U’s predecessor, the Wii, has sold nearly 100 million units worldwide since 2006.
But the Wii U arrives in a new world. Video game console sales have been falling, largely because it’s been so long since a new system has launched. Most people who wanted an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or a Wii already have one. Another reason: People in the broad 5-to-95 age range have shifted their attention to games on Facebook, tablet computers and mobile phones.
U.S. video game sales last month, including hardware, software and accessories, totaled $755.5 million, according to the research firm NPD Group. In October 2007, the figure stood at $1.1 billion.
The Wii U is likely to do well during the holiday shopping season, analysts believe — so well that shoppers may see shortages. But the surge could peter out in 2013. The Wii U is not expected to be the juggernaut that the Wii was in its heyday, according to research firm IHS iSuppli. The Wii outsold its competitors, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, in its first four years on sale, logging some 79 million units by the end of 2010. By comparison, IHS expects the Wii U to sell 56.7 million in its first four years.
In the age of a million gadgets and lean wallets, the game company faces a new challenge: convincing people that they need a new video game system rather than, say, a new iPad.
“Nintendo has to be a cut above the noise here,” said Ben Bajarin, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies. | <urn:uuid:80e96e04-a3c0-44ac-82db-21757274a59c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newtondailynews.com/2012/11/19/wii-u-new-console-launches-in-sea-of-gadgets/a5lpfa5/?__xsl=/print.xsl | 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 | 0.94494 | 473 | 1.5 | 2 |
Sadly, across the nation (and, well, across the globe), anti-science syndrome sufferers are using a variety of tools to attack scientists who are, well, showing fidelity to science. Whether harassing (and, to a reasonable person, threatening) emails to scientists and their wives or rogue Attorney Generals leveraging taxpayer resources for baseless (and costly) investigations,
Sadly, writ large, it is easier (intellectually, fiscally, and other resources) to lauch truthiness (and falsehood) laden attacks than it is to mount defense. Sadly, of course, such ‘defensive’ efforts come at the cost of time and resources that could (should) be spent on advancing science and helping decision-makers (at all levels, from the individual citizen to the President, from the mail clerk to the CEO) understand what the implications are of that science to help foster better decision-making.
Those who are defending the scientific method and defending science against attacks from anti-science sources have a new tool at hand: the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund which is now supported by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Fighting a legal battle is expensive and academic salaries can’t compete against fossil foolish interests’ deep pockets. The Defense Fund is designed to help address this resource disparity. But, critically, this is not about “scientists” but about science.
Our goal is not only to defend the scientist but to protect the scientific endeavor. The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established to make sure that these legal claims are not viewed as an action against one scientist or institution but as actions against the scientific endeavor as a whole.
The CSLDF’s real objective, thus, moves beyond simply trying to pay legal fees. It will serve a clearinghouse for information (coordination, even?) about legal maneuvers targeting the undermining of (climate) science and advise scientists who are under attack.
It is a sad state of affairs that something like is required … but it is required and merits support.
CLIMATE SCIENCE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND GETS NEW BACKING
PEER Sponsors Effort to Counter Fossil-Fueled Attacks on Climate Scientists
Washington, DC — The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) has found a non-profit home in Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which provides it fiscal sponsorship and logistical support. CSLDF lets scientific colleagues and the public directly help climate scientists protect themselves and their work from industry-funded legal attacks.
In recent years, these legal attacks have intensified, especially against climate scientists. The fund is designed to help scientists like Professor Michael Mann cope with the legal fees that stack up in fighting attempts by climate-contrarian groups to gain access to private emails and other correspondence through lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests at their public universities.
The project is co-directed by physical sciences Professor Scott Mandia of Suffolk County Community College and Joshua Wolfe, co-author of “Climate Change: Picturing the Science.” The Fund started this past fall after Prof. Mandia posted a “Dear Colleague” appeal for support which generated more than $10,000 in less than 24 hours (). To date, CSLDF has raised $25,000. All contributions to CSLDF are tax-deductible.
“Academic salaries are not designed to support ongoing legal expenses in fights with corporate-funded law firms and institutes,” said Prof. Mandia. “These legal battles also have taken many of our brightest scientific minds away from their research.”
“Our goal is not only to defend the scientist but to protect the scientific endeavor,” explained Wolfe. “The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established to make sure that these legal claims are not viewed as an action against one scientist or institution but as actions against the scientific endeavor as a whole.”
In addition to its core mission of defraying legal fees, CSLDF will –
Educate researchers about their legal rights and responsibilities on issues surrounding their work;
Serve as a clearinghouse for information related to legal actions taken against scientists; and
Recruit and assist lawyers representing these scientists.
“The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund dovetails with the mission of PEER – to protect those who protect our environment,” stated PEER executive Director Jeff Ruch. “When individual researchers find themselves under intense legal assault, they often have few resources. Their universities do not necessarily represent their interests and may be disinclined to resist corporate fishing expeditions. We are stepping into this void to provide direct aid to both the scientists and their institutions.”
Professor Scott Mandia blog posts about CSLDF:
Other coverage of this includes: | <urn:uuid:1eb423a7-fab8-4f2b-a7fc-9899267b5052> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://getenergysmartnow.com/2012/01/28/helping-defend-the-defenders/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953213 | 989 | 1.71875 | 2 |
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The Reasons for Being Shopaholic
Posted 06 April 2012 - 11:56 AM
If you have extra 50 bucks, would you go out with your friends or rather buy yourself another pair of jeans? You answer will predetermine your happiness, likability and your general view on life.
The last study has disproved the old saying “money cannot buy happiness” as it was found that money-oriented shoppers are less happy and even less liked than those less materialistic ones.
In general people think that being able to buy materialistic goods can to improve their lives. But the recent psychological research found that so-called “experience shoppers”- people that spend money on traveling, food and visiting cultural events tend to better get along with others- feel themselves less anxious in difficult social situations and are overall happier comparing to people who are obsessed with shopping.
Posted 09 April 2012 - 05:45 AM
i think that's kind of silly categorising people into happy and not happy based on amount of money they spend on clothing and stuff. Happiness is an abstract thing and for some people sociolising is not what makes them happy. I'm not a shopaholic but i do lobe doing shopping and that makes me really happy, the process itself and the result, too. We are different. And each person is happy in his own way.
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Page 1 of 1 | <urn:uuid:e5539e43-86c1-4f0c-b4fc-65c2756c210b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.milliontalks.com/topic/3676-the-reasons-for-being-shopaholic/page__pid__16864 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977971 | 293 | 1.5 | 2 |
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Borges y BallardAuthor: Simon Sellars • Jul 3rd, 2008 •
ABOVE: Jorge Luis Borges and J.G. Ballard,
somewhere in the 60s possibly in 1972 (many thanks to Lucho G. in Argentina for supplying this scan).
Borges writes what he calls ‘condensed novels’. He argues, with some truth, that since the essence of most novels can be told in a few minutes … it shouldn’t be necessary to give the whole book but only a description or review of it or essay about it.
James Colvin [pseudonym for Michael Moorcock], ‘Mainly Paperbacks’, New Worlds #160, 1966.
These condensed novels [in The Atrocity Exhibition] are like ordinary novels with the unimportant pieces left out. But it’s more than that — when you get the important pieces together … not separated by great masses of ‘he said, she said’ and opening and shutting of doors, ‘following morning’ and all this stuff — the great tide of forward conventional narration — it achieves critical mass as it were, it begins to ignite and you get more things being generated. You’re getting crossovers and linkages between unexpected and previously totally unrelated things, events, elements of the narration, ideas that in themselves begin to generate new matter.
Ballard, interviewed by James Goddard and David Pringle, ‘An Interview with J.G. Ballard’, J.G. Ballard: The First Twenty Years, 1975.
At my age nobody loves you for your prose style, just as nobody loves a beautiful woman for her kind nature. Obviously, I’m not the first writer to reach a larger part of the audience because of the movies. That’s happened many times before with many other writers. Serious writers, as opposed to popular writers, who have become well-known without movies being made from their books, are very rare. It’s only a writer like Borges whose fame is not dependent on any movie.
Ballard, interviewed by Richard Kadrey and David Pringle, Interzone #51, September 1991.
Short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available, an over-valued currency that often turns out to be counterfeit. At its best, in Borges, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe, the short story is coined from precious metal, a glint of gold that will glow for ever in the deep purse of your imagination.
Ballard, introduction to the Complete Short Stories, 2001.
I certainly began as a short-story writer — the best way of learning one’s craft as a writer and something denied to so many young novelists today, when the short story seems, sadly, to be heading for extinction… Sadly, I think most people have lost the knack of reading them, perhaps under the baleful influence of TV serials and their baggy, unending narratives. The greatest short stories, by Borges, Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury, are nuggets of pure gold that never lose their lustre.
Ballard, interviewed by Sebastian Shakespeare, ‘Pure imagination, the most potent hallucinogen of all’, The Literary Review, 2001.
MH: You’ve already mentioned Burroughs. Which other authors did you most admire at that point, and how do you believe they influenced what yourself and Ballard were writing?
MM: Burroughs, like Borges, showed us what it was possible to do. Neither Borges nor Burroughs were available to us until about 1960 or so. I first heard Borges’s stories related to me by a Spanish-speaking Swede while hitch-hiking from Uppsala to Paris. It was a while before City Lights, I think it was, brought out the first translations. Burroughs wasn’t a disappointment, when we finally met him, but Borges was. Burroughs pretty much lived as he wrote, while Borges was a rather conservative man with a keen interest in G. K. Chesterton.
Michael Moorcock, interviewed by Mike Holliday about Ballard and New Worlds, ‘Angry Old Men: Michael Moorcock on J.G. Ballard’, Ballardian, 2007.
In Crash, there is neither fiction nor reality — a kind of hyperreality has abolished both… After Borges, but in a totally different register, Crash is the first great novel of the universe of simulation, the world that we will be dealing with from now on: a non-symbolic universe but one which, by a kind of reversal of its mass-mediated substance (neon, concrete, cars, mechanical eroticism), seems truly saturated with an intense initiatory power.
Jean Baudrillard on Ballard’s Crash, ‘Two Essays: 1. Simulacra and Science Fiction. 2. Ballard’s Crash’, SFS, 1991.
Newer: Ballardian Forum, reinstated? » | <urn:uuid:255d022b-5a0f-4e22-8cf1-83424f39489a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ballardian.com/borges-y-ballard | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941658 | 1,097 | 1.75 | 2 |
Competitive Enterprise Institute | 1899 L ST NW Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036 | Phone: 202-331-1010 | Fax: 202-331-0640
As the Senate Finance Committee completed its work on a bill that would greatly expand the government’s role in health care – requiring nearly everyone to buy insurance, and designing that insurance through subsidies and mandates – President Obama is trying to rally doctors to his side. At an event last week at the Rose Garden, phalanxed by doctors wearing their white coats (as well as some that White House staffers had handed out ), Obama declared, “nobody has more credibility with the American people on this issue than you do.”
Yet one of the nation’s top surgeons, with credibility and acclaim the world over for the pioneering surgeries he has and his personal story of overcoming hardship, recently ripped the dominant health care legislation before Congress in a critique similar to that of conservatives and libertarians. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md., and recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, criticized in a recent interview the approach of the current bills for their mandate, creation of a “public option,” and lack of malpractice liability reform.
“My biggest problem is I feel it’s going in the wrong direction,” Carson told reporters at TV station WLOS in Asheville, N.C. (Video here .)“It’s giving us more government and less autonomy. And I think we should be going in exactly the opposite direction. We should be having more autonomy and less government. And that is the kind of thing that brings the prices down.”
Considered one of the best neurosurgeons in the world, Carson gained acclaim in the ’80s and ‘90s for his pioneering operations separating conjoined twins joined at the head and other procedures that have saved children from epilepsy and brain cancer. But Carson is also celebrated for his personal story of overcoming poverty and prejudice. An African-American, Carson grew up in a single-parent home Detroit ghetto, but his mother pushed him and his brother to achieve excellence. He is the author of the popular autobiography “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” which was made into a TV movie this year with Cuba Gooding Jr. portraying Carson. And he does much philanthropic work through charities such as his “Carson Scholars” fund.
Over the past few years, Carson has been writing and speaking more about public policy, including health care reform. He has railed against excessive litigation, pointing out how much malpractice insurance and other forms of “defensive medicine” to protect against lawsuits add to medical costs. In the interview with WLOS, Carson insisted that tort reform must go “hand in hand” as part of any true health care reform.
“We have to bring a rational approach to medical litigation,” he said. “We’re the only nation in the world that really has this problem. Why is it that everybody else has been able to solve this problem but us? Simple. Special interest groups like the trial lawyers’ association. They don’t want a solution.”
Carson also blasted proposals backed by Obama and most Democrats that would create a government-backed “public option,” saying it would inevitably lead to a “single payer” system like that of Canada, in which the government as the sole insurer would end up calling all the shots for patients. He pointed to how the Canadian government itself crowded out private insurance. “What happened to the private insurance companies in Canada? Just like that, they were gone, because they couldn’t compete with it (the government). Now, why would it be any different here? That’s one of the things that disappoints me about the lack of honesty … We can’t really debate when there’s all this subterfuge.”
Carson said that despite the problems with American health care, Canada and European countries were not models to emulate in their health insurance financing systems. “All we have to do is go to other places and see what’s going on. See how long people have to wait. Very, very long waiting periods. Why do you think so many people from Canada come here when they have a problem? I know a young man in England who has a problem with his knee. He needs an operation, and the waiting list is so long. … These are the kind of things that people in this country are not used to. But more importantly, it’s something that we don’t have to get used to. We can fix this without going to that kind of system that causes those kinds of long waits.”
As his main “fix”, Carson proposes a system of patient empowerment in which “individuals and families can own their own insurance; it doesn’t have to be through their employer.” Not all of Carson’s ideas expressed in the interview were free-market, though. He did propose that the government set insurance rates, and cover patients’ catastrophic costs above $250,000.
Above all, Carson was adamant that there transparency and deliberation, rather than a rush to force through a health care bill that no one had read. In fact, he proposed bringing health care to a national vote of the American people “I would say we should have a national referendum on it. People should be able to vote. That would really work, because now, people would have to explain it. They would have to know what was in it. When we do these big sweeping national things and just sort of jam them through and nobody even knows what’s in it, that’s not democracy. At some point, someone has lost their ideal of what democracy is.”
Carson’s colleagues at Hopkins – ranked by U.S. News and World Report for 19 years as the nation’s best overall hospital and lauded for the millions it spends on charity care for the poor –have also voiced concerns about the direction that health care legislation is going. Citing the cuts to hospitals to pay for the goal of universal coverage – cuts of more than $150 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, according to the Congressional Budget office “preliminary analysis” of the Max Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee bill – the Hopkins officials have been warning about severe stress on Hopkins and other hospitals that Hopkins and other hospitals would face.
At a Sept. 18 “town meeting” on the campus of the main hospital in Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins Institutions Director of Federal Relations Beth Felder was blunt about the cuts in reimbursements. “That is going to come out of hospitals and health systems,” she said. “I think that’s not a good thing for us.” Similarly, Johns Hopkins Medicine health system CEO Edward Miller told C-Span on Sept. 16 that cuts in the reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid, “There are going to be less physicians that will care for these patients.” | <urn:uuid:7de7cdca-b57d-4a23-b021-8871469609de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cei.org/print/23590 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975967 | 1,504 | 1.53125 | 2 |
---- — Several readers identified the History Center of Traverse City archive photo published in the Community section on April 9.
Lavonne Mathison said the woman pictured in the center is her grandmother, Dora Koenig.
The priest is Father Joseph Kohler, pastor at Traverse City St. Francis Catholic Church. The woman on the left is Mrs. Raymond Kimmet.
Mathison found the same photo in an undated Record-Eagle newspaper clipping. The photo was taken during a St. Francis school PTA founders' dinner held at Traverse City Central High School. Mathison said her grandmother was guest of honor at the dinner.
Kathryn A. Kimmet said the woman on the left in the light colored suit is her mother, Blanche E. Kimmet (Mrs. Raymond). Kimmet added that her mother was active in many organizations including the first Traverse City president of the League of Women Voters, Michigan Federation of Womens Clubs, St. Francis PTA, Girl Scout Board, Mayor's Advisory Committee and the Traverse City State Hospital Tri-Faith Chapel Board.
Elaine Kozlowski also identified Father Kohler and Blanche Kimmet. Kozlowski noted that her mother was St. Francis PTA president from 1941-43. Kozlowski said Kimmet appears to be wearing a past president PTA pin like her mother's.
Tim Bramer recognized Father Kohler and Mrs. Kimmet. Bramer said he served as an altar boy while Father Kohler was pastor at St. Francis. Bramer added that he graduated from St. Francis High School in 1956.
Gerald Martineau also named Father Kohler. He said his family lived across the street from St. Francis. "As an altar boy during my elementary and high school years, I served at many Masses he (Kohler) celebrated," Martineau said in an email.
History Center of Traverse City archive photos that appear in the Community section can be found at www.record-eagle.com/history. | <urn:uuid:b3c85f4d-f932-406d-9a47-796375bf04a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://record-eagle.com/historyphotos/x1165115645/Readers-identify-priest-women-in-photo/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963972 | 422 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The prompt from Amy Coffin at WeTree Genealogy read, “Week 8: Technology. What are some of the technological advances that happened during your childhood? What types of technology do you enjoy using today, and which do you avoid?”
Aha! A clear vision of that first “kid” car appeared in my mind–our three on the tree, two-door, blue/purple Ford Falcon, stuffed with friends. The technological advance #1: the production process that resulted in the automobile being soooo affordable that average families could have two cars, one for mom and one for dad–and one or the other was shared with teenage drivers!
Our stick-shift wonder was my key to teen freedom, and, though I complained vehemently about the window that fell down each time a friend slammed the door shut, I loved it. Plus I didn’t need to think about a gym membership. Steering was a full upper body workout, for without the next most important technological advance ever–power steering– maneuvering a couple thousand pounds of steel was pretty darn hard work.
I cannot imagine doing without power steering now, but when I was growing up only high end cars had that option, and we were definitely middle of the road middle class. But I was terribly proud to be on the road, at all! | <urn:uuid:4ee2b0f7-1289-4b43-aaa0-da70bdc165e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dkaysdays.com/2011/02/22/power-at-the-wheel-52-weeks-of-personal-family-history/?like=1&_wpnonce=67418a1937 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977522 | 274 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Jennings county has just 28,000 people, but put 1,100 properties up for auction this year for nonpayment of taxes. That is 39 properties for every 1,000 people.
Jennings County tax sale supervisor Amy Williams says hundreds of properties in that county’s tax sale are the result of a single failed development in North Vernon.
“A few years ago, we had a gentleman buy close to 500-600 properties out there — just vacant, undeveloped lots — in hopes of turning them around and selling,” Williams says. “But then he went through some financial crisis of his own.”
Lake County has the second highest population in Indiana, so it is not surprising it has the most total tax sales — but it had six times as many as any other county. Lake County’s rate of 27 sales per thousand people is nearly triple the rate of any county except Jennings. | <urn:uuid:04d4647c-92f2-47cb-bca2-225b7f819cec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/jennings-county-leads-tax-sale-capita-list-24043/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973003 | 190 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Artwalk is an arts festival that transforms Birmingham’s loft neighborhood into an arts district, featuring the work of more than 100 visual artists, live musicians, street performers, food and drink vendors, and children’s activities. The event is free to the public and in the last three years has become a much anticipated fall event, drawing visitors from all over to downtown Birmingham. For the past two years, more than 10,000 people walked the streets of downtown during the two-day event.
Join us for an inside look at this year’s Artwalk taking place on Friday and Saturday, September 11 and 12, 2009. Wednesday, September 2, noon.
Feed your body and mind at BPL's Brown Bag Lunch Programs. You bring the lunch and we'll bring the drinks. Wednesdays at noon in the Arrington Auditorium located on the 3rd floor of the Linn-Henley Research Library, 2100 Park Place.
photo by Bob Farley | <urn:uuid:b730a6a2-a7ce-4af0-9584-f13a12f26f9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bplolinenews.blogspot.com/2009/08/brown-bag-lunch-program-birmingham.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956516 | 201 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Laminate Flooring vs Bamboo Flooring
How is bamboo flooring compared with laminate flooring? As a consumer, you might get confused to make the decision to choose bamboo or laminate, so I list several points to clarify their each advantages and disadvantages.
- Environment vs Formaldehyde
Bamboo flooring: It is pressed with 3 layers of bamboo strips and it is glued with DYNEA glue which is imported from Finland. Bamboo flooring is an eco-friendly product and it also releases bamboo smell. The DYNEA glue has really low formaldehyde emission and it is E1 standard.
Laminate flooring: It is produced by MDF which has used multiple times of glue than bamboo flooring, of course, the formaldehyde emission is quite higher than bamboo flooring.
- Foot feeling vs Mute
Bamboo flooring: It has same thickness of solid hardwood flooring, like 15mm and 18mm, so foot feeling is very close to hardwood floor. Also, the ratio of heat conduction of bamboo is very low, so bamboo flooring can adjust the temperature and moisture of rooms. Cool in summer and warm is winter.
Laminate flooring: Thickness of laminate flooring is around 8mm, 10mm. When people walk on it, it is very hard, and as laminate flooring is thin, so it is more suitable for heating system flooring.
- Lifetime vs Hardness
Bamboo flooring: It is coated on surface and the coating hardness is 4H, abrasion rotating amount is over thousands. Bamboo flooring is over one time than hardwood in bending strength, hardness and tensile strength. Bamboo flooring can be used over 25 years in theoretical.
Laminate flooring: The abrasion depends on the abrasion paper on surface. This paper has a lot of aluminum oxide on top, and aluminum oxide is very strong for abrasion. The abrasion rotating amount is over 6000 and laminate flooring can be used 10-15 years in theoretical.
- Style vs Tongue+ Groove
Bamboo flooring only has natural color and carbonized color, horizontal structure and vertical structure. But with simple colors and structures, it can create natural, elegant and comfortable rooms. Bamboo flooring is always standard tongue and groove, with engineered bamboo flooring, it can be click system.
Laminate flooring: It has many styles, colors, grains, any color you want, it can be on laminate, because the factory will produce each color paper. The grain can be hand scraped, sculpture, subdued light and mirror face. Tongue and groove can be V structure, U structure, R structure, and click is laminate standard tongue and groove.
Bamboo flooring: The price of vertical is expensive than horizontal because vertical need more strips for producing. Bamboo flooring has very even color, very stable structure, and can be refinished after a few years. Price is cheaper than hardwood flooring, but has same functions of hardwood floor.
Laminate flooring: It is cheap flooring and used in some areas with less maintenance because it can be replaced after a few months. | <urn:uuid:27c34309-378a-47fe-b953-950c6222efd7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bambooindustry.com/blog/bamboo-laminate-flooring.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 | 0.93495 | 673 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Wee Can Too has come out with a great natural egg dyeing kit, "Nature's Magic Egg", which I encourage parents to use instead of the yucky chemical dyes, especially since these will most definitely be going in your child's mouth if they are serious egg eaters like my kids. I think I can safely say everyone here knows how to dye an egg. If not, we provide instructions on the box. :) I wanted to get extra creative today because the weather was soooo bad (Spring in Eugene). I got out my Wee Can Too Veggie Crayons and made this fantastically fun activity with my two kids, Delta and Savannah. Here is a "how to" for extra special eggs for Springtime or Easter! Have fun...
First use the largest size on your cheese grater and grate some of your Wee Can Too Veggie Crayon into small pieces. Leave the rest for drawing on your egg. This can get kinda messy with the kids, so I put mine into separate cups.
Next, boil your eggs as you normally would and when hardboiled, remove with a slotted spoon and rest on the egg carton. Immediately start your decorating of eggs. Let the kids pick the colors and sprinkle a rainbow of decor on your warm eggs. Make sure the kids don't touch or pick up the egg, as they still are hot. It's important to supervise this part. My egg was initially to hot to draw on, the crayon kept dripping down, so I held the egg under cold water until it was the right temperature to draw with my crayon. After the decorating is done, set aside and let dry for at least 45 min. They will harden before then.
And what do you do until then you ask? Well, I used the extra crayon shavings to sprinkle on paper and then warm in the oven at a low temperature. My daughter had a blast with this and created some wonderful works of art!!
Not only did we have a blast doing this, but we have some gorgeous eggs to admire...as long as they don't get eaten. I hope you have a chance to try this at home. Have fun & Happy Easter! | <urn:uuid:6b23c37e-fc29-4579-9571-2d07edeba0d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weecantoo.blogspot.com/2012/04/easter-creativity.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960749 | 463 | 1.789063 | 2 |
What is Google Content Blocker?
Google's mission is to organize the world's advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads.
That's where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements.
How does Google Content Blocker work?
After you install Google Content Block, just surf the Web as you normally do. When we find a site that has content, we will block that content so you see only the ads. It all happens automatically, with no effort on your part. ...
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How does Google Content Blocker work?
You're probably too dumb to understand the technicalities, but we'll tell you anyway. We install special top-secret proprietary software on your system. When you browser to a Web site, this software examines the document. Ads are displayed, and everything else is hidden.3. What type of Web content is blocked?
How many times do we have to tell you? Everything is blocked except the ads. It's not rocket science. One more time. Repeat after me: If it's an ad, it's not blocked. If it's not an ad, it's blocked. Got that? ...
5. What if I click on a page that has no ads?
A Web site with no ads? What do you think this is, 1991? The chances of that happening are very small. In such a case, we will insert some randomly selected Google AdSense ads so you'll have something to read. ...
(Thanks to John Walkenbach of Tucson, Arizona) | <urn:uuid:8a5ebbf9-952b-4f5a-8c2a-db89d5c94b4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://joyofsox.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-content-blocker.html?showComment=1288890538043 | 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 | 0.935188 | 348 | 1.679688 | 2 |
William Graebner: Patty’s Got a Gun
The Kansas City Public Library hosts author William Graebner for a presentation based on his latest book, Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America, on Wednesday, January 21, at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.
In 1974, a San Francisco robbery committed by the Symbionese Liberation Army included 19-year-old accomplice Patty Hearst, an heiress who had been kidnapped by the terrorist group. The robbery lead to a trial that depicted the “brainwashed” heiress as a symptom of 1960s liberalism gone wrong.
Graebner offers the first substantial reconsideration of the Patty Hearst story in decades, delivering a nuanced portrait of 1970s America, the repercussions of which can still be felt.
A 6 p.m. reception precedes the event. Admission is free. Click here or call 816.701.3407 to RSVP. Free parking is available in the Library District Parking Garage at 10th and Baltimore. | <urn:uuid:1d7f20fb-a58d-43c4-8e06-d57557dfc664> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kclibrary.org/event/william-graebner-patty-s-got-gun?mini=events%2F2012-12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939533 | 229 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Oakland residents will vote on November 6 whether to allow the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) to issue $475 million in bonds to repair school facilities and start new projects. If voters approve Measure J, OUSD will begin planned projects at 11 schools in Oakland, including McClymonds High School and Foster Elementary, among other district-wide improvements. Projects range from replacing portable classrooms with permanent buildings to constructing community kitchens at school sites.
Measure J would be the fourth in a series of bond measures to be approved over the past 18 years. Bond measures allow institutions to borrow money and, with time, pay back the loaned amount, plus interest. The borrowed money is paid back using funds produced by tax levies on Oakland property owners (see graphic for Measure J tax amounts). The tax rates are not fixed, said OUSD director of public relations Troy Flint. Alameda County would set tax rates based on the actual repayment amount due each year.
Under the California Education Code, bond money may only be used to pay for facilities—“not people,” school board president Jody London said, adding that voters sometimes think bond money will be used for salaries. | <urn:uuid:90ee476a-afaa-46d2-81a9-3a645cc75b45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2012/10/18/measure-j-bonds-for-school-facilities-how-much-would-it-add-to-tax-bills/?gta=commentlistpos | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953307 | 238 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Posted on Wed, Jan. 12, 2011
last updated: January 13, 2011 10:57:14 AM
TUCSON, Ariz. — President Barack Obama played the part of "healer in chief" Wednesday night, honoring the victims of Saturday's mass shooting while seeking to calm an increasingly angry political debate, urging all Americans to stop pointing fingers and "make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.''
"I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow," Obama told a crowd of 26,000 gathered inside and outside the University of Arizona's basketball arena. "There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.
"But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through."
The president, who devoted much of his speech to the bravery of the victims and recalled those who died, first detoured away from the basketball arena to pay an unannounced visit to Giffords, who's in critical condition but making steady progress, doctors say, toward an improbable recovery from a gunshot wound through her head.
"I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak," the president said, adding that "Gabby opened her eyes for the first time," a statement that brought the crowd to its feet.
"And I can tell you this — she knows we're here and she knows we love her and she knows that we are be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey. We are there for her."
People stood in line for more than 30 blocks, waiting to see Obama pay homage to the victims of last Saturday's shooting rampage, which killed six and wounded 13 others, including Giffords.
The memorial service came the same day that authorities in Tucson revealed that a state Fish and Game officer had stopped the alleged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, earlier on the morning of the shooting.
Loughner was stopped on a red light violation at 7:34 a.m. about six miles from the Safeway where six people were killed and 13 others injured, but he was released because there were no warrants outstanding and his license was valid. Two and a half hours later, authorities say, he opened fire.
Loughner faces federal charges in the deaths of a federal judge and a federal employee, and he could face the death penalty.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department also revealed that among the writings that 22-year-old Loughner left behind in his home were documents he may have intended for investigators to find, including a paper that contained the phrase "Die bitch" and another that read "f--- you pigs."
The sheriff's department released records showing visits to the Loughner home dating back to 1994 for various complaints. The records showed Loughner had been arrested as a juvenile in 2006 when he showed up at high school one morning "so extremely intoxicated" on vodka that he was sent to the emergency room.
He also was cited in September 2007 on marijuana and drug paraphernalia charges.
But the focus in Tucson Wednesday wasn't on the suspect. Instead, people gathered to honor the victims killed and offer hope for the survivors. And, Obama played a role similar to that former President Bill Clinton assumed when he spoke after the Oklahoma City bombing in remarks that earned him the nickname "healer in chief."
The president visited Tucson as the community sought to show that it renounces violence, and Gov. Jan Brewer, who spoke before the president, vowed that Arizona's spirit "will not be shredded by one mad man's act of darkness."
More than 13,000 people gathered inside McKale Center, with another 13,000 in the football stadium watching on large screen televisions, and they cheered as firefighters and police who rescued victims of the rampage filed into the arena.
After days of shock and tragedy, the crowd was seeking release and looking for heroes, and they weren't in short supply.
Some of the loudest cheers and a standing ovation came when doctors from the University of Arizona Medical Center who worked feverishly to save Giffords and the other survivors filed into the arena in their white medical smocks.
Dr. Peter Rhee, the combat-trained trauma surgeon who has become a face of the university and who virtually guaranteed Giffords will survive, received extended applause when he arrived. Cheers and screams greeted 75-year-old Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a close friend of Giffords' who set off national debate with his denunciation of the nation's toxic political arguments and his refusal to back down from his statements.
And intense applause repeatedly greeted 20-year-old University of Arizona student Daniel Hernandez Jr., a Giffords intern who rushed to save her and held compresses on her head wound until help arrived.
Political leaders including Attorney General Eric Holder; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former Arizona governor; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi; Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy; and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a native Arizonan, were among the guests. A number of House members who are friends and colleagues Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, also attended.
Obama met with other victims Wednesday who remain hospitalized, and also had private meetings at the arena with survivors of the attack.
During his remarks, the president recalled each of the victims killed, including John Roll, Arizona's chief federal judge, and 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green, shot to death as she waited in line to meet her congresswoman.
As the president spoke of Christina, Michelle Obama, seated to the side next to Giffords' husband, appeared to be holding back tears.
"The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better, be better in our private lives — to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents," Obama said.
Wading carefully into the debate over political discourse, he told the crowd that "it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.
"We cannot use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other," he added. "That we cannot do."
Before the ceremony, student volunteers painstakingly folded thousands of Navy blue T-shirts emblazoned with the theme of the evening — "Together We Thrive, Tucson and America" and placed them on the arena seats.
Some people said they had arrived as early as 7 a.m. to get into the arena for the 6 p.m. ceremony, and many said they simply felt the need to honor Giffords.
Michael Wong, a 20-year-old Arizona State University student, drove two hours from Tempe to his rival school's Tucson campus Wednesday because he wanted to help hand out small pieces of paper for people to write prayers and thoughts on. Later, they were taped into a paper chain more than 500 feet long.
"We've had people just sitting thinking for a long time about what they wanted to write," Wong said. "It's really making people think."
(Stanton reports for the Sacramento Bee.)
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
McClatchy Newspapers 2010 | <urn:uuid:e9b18182-b3ec-4a02-9ff1-a559121031f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/12/v-print/106708/at-arizona-memorial-obama-urges.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977399 | 1,577 | 1.5 | 2 |
As an undergraduate student of social work, Candace Nordahl never planned to work with youth. However, homelessness had always captured her attention, leading her to an internship at The Night Ministry.
The Night Ministry provides a range of homeless services for adults and youth in Chicago. Their programs value non-judgmental listening, caring support, and a focus on connecting people with resources to change their lives for the better.
Direct services include adult outreach and health services as well as youth programs. The Night Ministry serves youth through outreach, a 120-day housing program for pregnant and parenting teens, an interim shelter and support service program for youth ages 14-20, and a Transitional Living Program that transitions youth ages 16-20 to independent living within two years.
Candace began her internship with the interim shelter. During her time interning with the program, she discovered that “youth are really fun to work with.” Now, after completing her Masters in Social Work, Candace is the residential services coordinator for the shelter programs. She plans and coordinates the weekly calendar of events, including a Young Leaders group for boys, and life skills courses for girls. She also coordinates cultural events, such as bringing residents to museums and the theater, which she says is “something they would never otherwise have a chance to do.”
She shares why she stayed at the The Night Ministry. “I fell in love with agency. The people here are so dedicated. I think that dedication is shown through interactions with the clients. There are such strong relationships here, and clients feed off of those relationships.”
That’s why it was no surprise to Candace that the staff was so receptive to her efforts to make The Night Ministry more welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, and two-spirit (LGBTQI2-S) youth.
With only 150 beds for youth in Chicago and an estimated 10,000 youth who are homeless in the city, there is a strong demand for services at The Night Ministry. Located in the neighborhood of Lakeview, The Night Ministry is reaching kids at the heart of Boystown, the cultural center of one of the largest LGBTQI2-S communities in the nation.
Candace explains that there is no typical client. Many have been kicked out of their homes because they are pregnant, or often their family simply cannot afford to support them. However, many others left home after coming out as LGBTQI2-S. Attracted by the accepting environment of Boystown, many youth who identify as LGBTQI2-S eventually find themselves at The Night Ministry’s door.
Candace shares that she became committed to creating a safe space for LGBTQI2-S youth at the agency after getting to know a young male client. He first came to the interim shelter, but transferred to the Transitional Living Program. Candace started noticing changes in the client. He began to wear women’s clothes and changed his name. The client was transgender and in the process of transitioning from male to female. “She was finally in a place where she felt comfortable being herself. She left her family for this very reason, and within the supportive environment of The Night Ministry, she was able to really come into herself.”
The Night Ministry provided a space for the client to feel safe, but Candace knew they could do more. After taking an LGBTQI2-S awareness class at Loyola University, Candace learned that LGBTQI2-S youth represent a significant proportion of all youth experiencing homelessness.
She was surprised that few of her colleagues shared this knowledge. She sensed confusion in many of her coworkers as they grappled with clients who changed their names or pronoun preferences without much warning. Candace tried to emphasize that the clients were trying to figure themselves out, in the same way staff members did as adolescents.
She encouraged all staff to place safe space stickers or a rainbow in their office windows. These are universal signs of acceptance and openness. Candace also held a training for her colleagues, using materials from her class and packets her director shared with her about making a space friendly to all clients. A transgender youth and a gay male youth client joined the discussion. “They shared their experience and their voice has been a part of the discussion from the beginning.”
“Everyone was very engaged during the training. There were a lot of questions. For example, many people didn’t realize that a male client might want to be called by a female pronoun. I’ve learned that as long as you’re coming from a genuine place and are willing to ask about things like pronouns, it’s okay to ask. As long as you are open to learning, the kids pick up on that. It’s much better to ask than to make assumptions.”
Candace knows it will be an ongoing learning process at The Night Ministry, for her coworkers and herself. There is always a new situation or a new client. However, she is confident that by remembering the basics of cultural competence, they will provide better care. This includes being on the same page about LGBTQI2-S definitions and terminology, providing safe space, and keeping an open mind.
“Now, our clients see the safe space sticker in our office windows and ask questions about it. It sparks interesting conversations that might not have otherwise happened. For example, they’ll ask, ‘what’s the rainbow? Does that mean you’re gay?’ It prompts great discussions.”
Check out the "Related Items" to the right of the screen. | <urn:uuid:59692306-a942-4a53-ac25-d00afdff7993> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://homeless.samhsa.gov/(S(b41lta45l3bd4pncmvw4hx31))/Resource/A-Voice-for-LGBTQI2-S-Youth-at-The-Night-Ministry-49043.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977943 | 1,162 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Most Active Stories
Thu September 8, 2011
Perry, Romney Capture Spotlight At GOP Debate
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, Im David Greene.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And Im Steve Inskeep.
Just a few months ago, many Republicans seemed to assume that their candidate for president would be a long shot in 2012.
GREENE: But now President Obama is looking more vulnerable, so Republican candidates attended a debate last night, knowing that one of them could have a real chance to win.
INSKEEP: First, of course, they battle each other. Former front-runner Mitt Romney faced with the current front runner, Rick Perry.
NPR's at Ina Jaffe watched the debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.
INA JAFFE: Rick Perry has debated just four times in his three runs for Texas governor. But he's earned a reputation for never backing down. He lived up to that last night, right from the start. Moderator Brian Williams of NBC said that while Perry touts his state's success in creating jobs, there are some less flattering statistics.
Mr. BRIAN WILLIAMS (Moderator): Texas ranks last among those who have completed high school. There are only eight other states with more living in poverty, no other state has more working at or below the minimum wage.
JAFFE: But Perry was having none of it.
Governor RICK PERRY (Republican, Texas): I'm proud of what we've done in the State of Texas. And for the White House or anyone else to be criticizing creation of jobs, now, in America, I think is a little bit hypocritical.
JAFFE: Yes, Texas is a great state, said former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. It has low taxes and oil and gas deposits that have contributed to job growth.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Republican, Former Governor, Massachusetts): But Governor Perry doesn't believe that he created those things. If he tried to say that, why, it'll be like Al Gore saying he created the Internet.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROMNEY: Look, the reality is
JAFFE: The reality is that Rick Perry didn't like his image as a jobs creator questioned by the former Massachusetts governor.
Gov. PERRY: Michael Dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, Mitt.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROMNEY: Well, as a matter of fact, George Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, Governor.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Gov. PERRY: That's not correct.
Mr. ROMNEY: Yeah, it is correct.
JAFFE: Perry and Romney battled again on Social Security. Perry has called it a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal. Seniors shouldn't worry about it now, he said, but Republican candidates should talk about transitioning to something more sustainable.
Gov. PERRY: It is a monstrous lie. It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today: You're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody thats for the status quo with Social Security today, is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids. And it's not right.
JAFFE: Romney said that any Republican presidential nominee must be committed to saving Social Security and that it was wrong for Perry to call it a failure.
Mr. ROMNEY: You can't say that to tens of millions of Americans who live on Social Security and those we who have lived on it. And under no circumstances would I say, by any measure, it's a failure. It is working for millions of Americans and I'll keep it working for millions of Americans, and we got to do that as a party.
JAFFE: After a while, Perry said he felt like the pinata at the party. He did seem to be wearing down late in the debate, when he tried to explain his skepticism about human activity as a cause of global warming.
Gov. PERRY: Just because you have a group of scientists that have stood up and said here's the fact - Galileo got out-voted for a spell. But the fact is to put America's economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country, is not good economics. And I will suggest to you, is not necessarily good science.
JAFFE: If Perry felt like the party's pinata most of the other candidates probably felt like the wallflowers. While Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman all got their chances, none managed to influence the dynamics of the race, says Jason Johnson, political science professor at Hiram College in Ohio.
Professor JASON JOHNSON (Political Science, Hiram College): But everyone benefits for this small reason
JAFFE: That reason being Rick Perry's position on that third rail topic of Social Security
Prof. JOHNSON: has given every campaign hope that; maybe, maybe there's going to be a chink in the armor.
JAFFE: The other candidates will have plenty of opportunities to try to turn that into a gaping hole. There are two more debates scheduled for this month and around half a dozen others before the Iowa caucuses this winter.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Simi Valley, California.
INSKEEP: And our reporters fact check some of the candidates' statements on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED later today. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:bf4dfb6c-5890-4191-83ac-c92fedbba0be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ketr.org/post/perry-romney-capture-spotlight-gop-debate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963863 | 1,183 | 1.757813 | 2 |
It was during the Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh assembly elections of 2007 that the blatant sale of news space by some Hindi and Gujarati newspapers to political parties and candidates in the form of election coverage packages came to be noticed. As the malpractice became more brazen during the last Lok Sabha elections, the eminent Hindi editor and columnist Prabhash Joshi went into campaign mode and engaged with the issue till his last breath. He and some other veteran journalists petitioned the Press Council of India and the Election Commission against this media misdemeanour because political parties and candidates too become guilty of electoral malpractice when they disguise the expenditure made on campaign ads in newspapers as news reporting. Needless to say, these package deals were unaccounted for and paid for in cash. Senior functionaries and so-called war rooms of political parties seem to have monitored the activity during the campaign period. In fact, in one such ‘war room’ during the Lok Sabha elections, a senior political leader mocked me on the ethics of the media by thrusting under my eyes a full front page of news coverage bought by his party. This leader said they were left with no option as the newspapers insisted on such deals and denied even minimum coverage to those who refused to buy the packages. But there were politicians like Lalji Tandon of the BJP and Mohan Singh of the Samajwadi Party who went on record with their allegations on this count against specific newspapers.
The specific newspapers mentioned and documented in this regard are nearly all language ones—Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Marathi. Does it mean that the Indian language media is the inventor of this trendy irregularity? No. As everybody in the trade remembers, the leading light amongst English dailies launched a scheme to sell editorial space to corporate and socialite buyers. The daily maintained this was no malpractice as the transactions were accounted for and the published items were attributed. Yet the reader was completely deceived—as in the case of recent election packages in language dailies—because the legend was kept so minuscule as to render the ‘MN’ of Medianet nearly indistinguishable from the ‘NN’ of News Network. And of course, the management never bothered to tell the reader what ‘MN’ or Medianet really stood for. A fig leaf of deception. The language media walked this beaten path of the English brand leaders rather more crudely during the recent elections. Like a Madhu Koda or Shibu Soren or Laloo Yadav or Mayawati negotiating the political kajal ki kothri (a proverbial soot-smeared room out of which it’s impossible to come out unsullied) more clumsily than their supposedly more sophisticated peers.
Why this crudeness? Obviously because of the hurry to catch up with the more materially successful sophisticated Joneses of the trade. Despite the larger readership reach of language newspapers in India, look at the imbalance of earning they suffer from vis-a-vis their English counterparts. The readership of Dainik Jagran, the largest Hindi daily, is more than double that of the largest English daily, The Times of India. But ToI’s revenue of nearly Rs 5,000 crore is more than thrice Jagran’s approximately Rs 1,400 crore. Such a difference shows proportionately both in the quantum and rate of advertisements of large Hindi and English dailies. Any back-of-the-envelope calculation will place the average earning of an English newspaper at least three times more than a Hindi daily of similar standing and circulation.
The corporate clout of English newspapers, which depends on their turnovers and the purchasing power of their readers, is far ahead of the language ones. But the language newspapers beat the English ones hollow in political clout because of their much larger circulation, which matters more in the game of numbers that is democracy. During the elections, the language media saw an opportunity to lessen the gap in corporate earnings vis-a-vis the English media by their political clout. Political leaders, too, sought to pander to the language media much more than the English media during the elections. The crude hurry inherent in this phenomenon caused more din.
To point this out is not to condone corruption. Outrage should be the response to any corruption, but in the era of liberalisation, corporate transactions are questioned less and less, irrespective of whether they are ethical or unethical. Because of this, such questionable practices by leaders in English media as acquiring equities in lieu of advertisements, which is likely to colour their news reporting about the companies they acquire shares in, escape comment. A misuse of corporate clout, however sophisticated, is as irreprehensible as a misuse of political clout.
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You are welcome to post your suggestions here or in case you have a specific issue, to directly email us at Mail AT outlookindia DOT com with the subject header COMPLAINT | <urn:uuid:93b9fa4d-9aa6-4cc0-8ad9-9f79e5cfa7a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?263244 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95852 | 1,686 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Last Modified: May 1, 2003
Dear OncoLink "Ask The Experts,"
I'm 54 years old and last October I had a routine colonoscopy and they found a medium size polyp and removed it. I was told the top part of the polyp contained cancer cells but not the stem so to be on the safe side my doctor recommended I have a sigmoid colon resection. Everything came out clean. I was told to get another screening in 3 years but would feel better if I got one every year instead. Is there any disadvantage to having this done yearly to be on the safe side? I have no history of colon cancer in my family.
Timothy C. Hoops, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Gastroenterology Division at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Gastroenterology at Penn Medicine at Radnor, responds:
Your situation occurs with some frequency and you have a very good question. First, I am glad they were able to get all the cancer out. In general, you might consider your polyp an advanced polyp. A study published in 1993 demonstrated that with advanced polyps, a colonoscopy performed at 3 years was as effective as one done at 1 year. This important study changed the way GI was practiced. You have had a polyp that was removed. Although it had cancer, it appears to have remained very local. The concern is not whether this polyp will recur; they generally do not. (And the region your polyp was located has been removed, in any case.) Rather, the follow-up procedures are done to look for new polyps. In most cases, the process of moving from normal to polyp to cancer is a 10 to 15 year process or longer. There are a few instances where things can progress more quickly, but it is unlikely. I understand the concern and desire for more frequent studies, but I think you would be very safe waiting for 3 years. Colonoscopies are very safe but they do have some risk associated with them. The last thing one wants is a complication from a procedure that really wasn't necessary in the first place. My recommendation for individuals in this circumstance to get a repeat colonoscopy at three years. | <urn:uuid:ca9be2dd-9e62-4361-99d4-194fdad801e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oncolink.org/experts/article1.cfm?id=1976&c=40 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983052 | 458 | 1.554688 | 2 |
We would like to keep you informed with details and breaking news surrounding the 1st annual Servant Leadership Winter Conference.
Rani Hong combines her nationally recognized business skills with her passion to affect change for exploited women and children. She has contributed to the passage of precedent-setting laws in Washington State, making it a national leader for addressing the crimes against women and children. Rani has advised U.S. Congress, the White House and international parliaments on the prevention of human trafficking. Rani is a United States American Embassy speaker for the Department of State domestically and abroad to lobby for the rights of women and children.
She and her husband, Trong Hong, founded the Tronie Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting education, policy change, and restoration for children of violent crimes. For the past 10 years, Rani has shared her story in international media, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and BBC World News, describing her plight as a child slavery survivor in India. She also works with journalists in print, radio, and television to be a voice for those enslaved. Rani has worked directly with over 50 women and children who have been exploited in 6 different countries. Rani has been honored with many awards, including the 2010 Jefferson Award for Washington State and the 2008 United Nations Human Rights award
Here is a video highlighting Rani’s story as seen on Oprah. | <urn:uuid:0c5076b7-4c70-4aaf-b066-8495c237cbcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forthesakeofothers.com/servant-leadership/featured-speaker-rani-hong/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963294 | 286 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Ethanol Maker Ensus to Restart Output After 15-Month Halt
Ensus Ltd., a U.K. producer of ethanol from wheat, is planning to restart production at its plant in Teesside, England, after a 15-month halt, the company said in an e-mailed statement.
The plant, Europe’s largest biorefinery, will reopen later this month, the Yarm, England-based company said today. U.K. biofuel has become more price competitive since the European Union tightened regulations on foreign imports, improving profit prospects for the plant, the company said. Market conditions also have improved since the U.S. ended an ethanol subsidy last year, Ensus said. The plant has capacity to convert 1 million metric tons of feed-grade wheat into ethanol annually.
“Everyone is absolutely delighted that things are moving in the right direction once again and we are in a position to restart,” Peter Sopp, chief executive officer of the company, said in the statement. “It has been a very difficult time for everyone connected with the business.”
The plant, which has about 100 employees, expects to be fully operational within the next two months, according to the statement. Ensus can produce about 400 million liters (106 million gallons) of ethanol annually and is a supplier to Shell Oil Co. It gets wheat from Glencore International Plc (GLEN) and yields about 350,000 tons of livestock feed a year from ethanol byproducts, according to the company’s website.
Denatured ethanol futures have climbed 24 percent since the end of May on the Chicago Board of Trade as the worst U.S. drought in 50 years damaged crops in the Midwest. In the U.S., ethanol is mostly made from corn and is blended with gasoline. In London, feed wheat futures gained 0.8 percent to 196 pounds ($308) a ton today on NYSE Liffe. The most-active contract is up 14 percent since May 31.
To contact the reporter on this story: Whitney McFerron in London at firstname.lastname@example.org
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:36841135-7c97-408f-b12d-6fc9aa33135a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-14/u-k-ethanol-maker-ensus-to-restart-output-after-halt-correct-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950946 | 468 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Composer John Adams's predilection for topical operas reached a kind of apotheosis in 2005 with Doctor Atomic, which was premièred by the San Francisco Opera. The title character is J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, and the opera takes us to the Arizona desert outside of Los Alamos in July 1945, as the testing of the first atomic bomb (or "Gadget," as it is referred to by Oppenheimer) is imminent. Doctor Atomic is no documentary, however, but a work that goes farther and deeper in its attempt to dissect the implications of the work done by Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists. Director Peter Sellars constructed the libretto from period documents, recently declassified, and also from the poetry of John Donne, Charles Baudelaire, and Muriel Rukeyser; the Bhagavad Gita; and a traditional song of the Tewa tribe of Native Americans. The choreography of Lucinda Childs also plays a prominent role in the opera.
Based on what I had heard about Doctor Atomic, my expectations were somewhat low as I started watching these DVDs. My appreciation for John Adams's music had been decreasing for the past decade, and I feared that he would have nothing new to say in Doctor Atomic. I was, however, almost immediately gripped by the first act, and the momentum never faltered throughout its nearly 80 minutes. "Well," I thought skeptically, "the second act will be problematic." At a bit under 90 minutes, it is overlong, and not as tightly constructed as the first act, but it hardly was a disappointment. All in all, Doctor Atomic is one of the most impressive new operas I have seen in some time, although one could argue it is difficult not to be impressive when your subject is the atomic bomb!
The Dutch production recorded here (live, although I was not aware of the audience) comes almost two years after the San Francisco première, and I gather some changes were made to the opera during that interval. All the male members of the original cast are repeating their roles here, and they are a memorable lot! The newcomers are the women. Soprano Jessica Rivera has a strong stage presence as Oppenheimer's wife Kitty, and she negotiates the jaggedly expressive writing with confidence, and with a powerful yet always attractive sound. As Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer's Tewa nurse, Ellen Rabiner has a problematic role. If you've been cast as the voice of the Earth, there isn't a lot that you can do with that, and Rabiner doesn't have the voice or the charisma to overcome that. She's the only character who doesn't rant, however. It wouldn't be too far from the truth to call Doctor Atomic a 170-minute mad scene for seven characters.
Speaking of mad scenes, baritone Gerald Finley's performance of the title role astonishes, particularly at the end of act I, where he sings an extended solo whose text is based on the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Finley's intensity throughout the opera exhausted even me; I can't imagine what he feels by the end of a performance. The beauty of his voice makes it hard to lose sympathy for Oppenheimer. In fact, using the tools that Adams and Sellars have given him, Finley helps us to understand Oppenheimer's controversial character better, and to put ourselves in his shoes.
Doctor Atomic could have been pretentious and preachy, but it is neither of those things. I hesitate to call the music "great," because I feel that its primary function is to serve as a scaffold for the libretto. Take away the text and it would be diminished greatly. Still, if Adams's music is primarily scaffolding, it is scaffolding of the highest quality. (I suppose the text would be just as diminished if Adams's music were taken away!) The important thing is that Adams work here has a white-hot intensity and commitment which – to my ears – has been missing from some of his more recent work. To a degree, Doctor Atomic brings back the John Adams I knew and loved – the Adams of Harmonium and The Wound-Dresser.
The first DVD contains a cast gallery and an illustrated synopsis. The second contains four short documentaries about the opera, the cast, John Adams, and Peter Sellars, and a longer, preachier interview with Sellars. You won't miss much by skipping any of them, but the "mini documentaries" probably are worth watching once. Visually, the High Definition DVD (16:9 anamorphic) is a treat. The rapid editing and close camera-work create a tension which compensates for not being physically present in Amsterdam's Muziektheater. Even the occasionally artsy-crazy camera angles feel right. The sound (LPCM Stereo and DTS Digital Surround) also has tremendous impact … and there's plenty of ominous rumbling in Doctor Atomic!
We are only two weeks into 2009, but when I compile my list of favorite CD and DVD releases of 2009, I am confident that Doctor Atomic will be on it.
Copyright © 2009, Raymond Tuttle | <urn:uuid:d5091e27-472f-416c-ab99-0e241bfd7102> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classical.net/~music/recs/reviews/o/opu00998dvdb.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973342 | 1,079 | 1.679688 | 2 |
• Extremely drought tolerant
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This resilient evergreen is adaptable to just about any type of soil. | <urn:uuid:406e1f80-ee36-4f85-9a9f-f4e032b08e1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fast-growing-trees.com/BlueSapphireCypress.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935253 | 195 | 1.8125 | 2 |
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AP) — Two top Taliban leaders and four South Korean officials met face-to-face yesterday in the first negotiations over the fate of 21 members of a church group held hostage for three weeks, Afghan officials said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said two members of the top militant council — Mullah Bashir and Mullah Nasorullah — traveled to the central Afghan city of Ghazni, near where the South Koreans were kidnapped July 19. He said the government in Kabul gave the Taliban a written guarantee the two officials will be safe.
The meeting began yesterday evening in Ghazni at the office of the Afghan Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross in Islamic countries, said Marajudin Pathan, the local governor. An Afghan official, who asked not to be identified because he was talking about sensitive information, said the two Taliban leaders, four South Korean officials and four International Committee of the Red Cross officials participated in the meeting.
"We have given them the freedom of secrecy to talk with each other," Mr. Pathan said, confirming that no Afghan officials were taking part in the talks.
He said the government guaranteed the Taliban members' "safety and security."
Mr. Ahmadi said the Taliban would not kill any of the 21 remaining South Korean hostages until the face-to-face meetings were held. Two men among the 23 South Koreans originally kidnapped have already been killed.
The South Koreans were the largest group of foreign hostages taken in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, and their kidnapping underscores the rise of the Taliban's power in rural Afghanistan over past two years.
The captors repeatedly threatened to kill more hostages if their demands to release Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government and the U.S. military are not met.
The Afghan government said it will not release prisoners because doing so could encourage more kidnappings. Afghan authorities say talks with the Taliban are the best way to resolve the problem.
Mr. Pathan said a ransom payment might resolve the crisis. He said the talks would not lead to further negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
The South Korean government issued guidelines to its aid organizations, telling them to leave Afghanistan by the end of the month for safety reasons, a South Korean Embassy official said, on the condition of anonymity due to policy.
Last month, the government banned its citizens from traveling to Afghanistan.
In South Korea, a spokesman for the hostages' families said the mothers of several hostages — five women and a translator — will travel to the emirate of Dubai next week to seek help from the Arab world in securing their loved ones' release.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, meanwhile, agreed to attend the closing session of a peace council between hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani tribal leaders discussing the rising militant violence along their shared border.
Gen. Musharraf canceled his appearance at Thursday's opening of the conference — or "jirga" — raising doubts about how effective it would be, especially because tribesmen from the most volatile Pakistani border zone were boycotting it.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai phoned Gen. Musharraf yesterday evening and invited him to attend tomorrow's closing session, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said.
By Douglas Holtz-Eakin
The young drop coverage to avoid higher premiums
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
In a world that is increasingly complex, we need to seek greater awareness of the blending of cultures and America's changing role in a global community.
A look at what’s new and what’s worth driving, no matter the budget.
Finding health and health care is not easy. It is changing. Know what's on the rise.
Television commentary, reviews, news and nonstop DVR catch-up.
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal
Vietnam Memorial adds four names
Cinco de Mayo on the Mall
NRA kicks off annual convention
California wildfires wreak havoc | <urn:uuid:ccc7ae56-86ed-4293-bc82-2fc9f29429af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/11/s-korean-officials-meet-taliban-over-hostages/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949461 | 826 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Slash With Care
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Leaves of Gold: 1. A Wind There Came
My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.
Rainer Maria Rilke, To Say Before Going to Sleep
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
He is leaving.
Any day, any moment the guest chair reserved for him in my father's hall will be empty, the surrounding Mirkwood will be quiet and the trees will not tell where he has gone. He always stays only for a short while, merely to go away again and to leave behind traces that I alone will see: a dark strand of hair under a tree where he slept, an overturned stone beside the brook that runs through the woods, a sprinkling of ash carried on the sole of his boot from a fire grown cold long ago.
He stirs in his sleep, a muscle below his eyebrow twitches, and he breathes a sigh into the cool night air. He is so tangible, so real, flesh and skin and garment, strong will under thin layers of sleep. Yet to my eyes he is like a ghost or a delusion, gone already.
My time on Middle-earth may be drawing to an end, but his was never more than an inaudible whisper in the ear of the eternal.
The knot of the night is unravelling into the morning. He lies beside the dying fire as I keep watch. His sleep is restless and wary, like my senses that filter noises, scents, movements. We are far enough from the borders of my father's realm to be in danger, should anything unexpected come our way. No matter how skilled wanderers of the wild, an Elf and a mortal are a poor match for any enemy that might have the advantage of surprise or superior numbers on their side.
I look at his face, his coarse, strong features that seem marked by some unspoken sorrow. His hair falls in dark tangles and a small vein pulses on his neck. A strange feeling of belonging flickers in my chest, but before I can catch it and look it in the eye, it hides from me.
What is in the beginning, when nothing has yet been said or done?
Is there an empty path that looks just like any other, yet is the only possible one? Is there a fate one can mould for oneself, or will stronger hands somewhere twine a fine thread of life into a larger tapestry? Is there a foreseen moment that has always existed, when blind stars collide and something upon earth is irrevocably changed -- or is all but a coincidence, whim, lapse?
When he first came to Mirkwood years ago in search of the creature Gollum, I hardly noticed him. One day he was there, the next day he was gone, and I forgot. Or did not, because nothing is ever really forgotten, only buried under piles of lush, moist leaves and drops of water and songs and scents of starry nights. He was but another ranger, passing by on his endless journeys through the landscape that had become the image of his life -- the cave that sheltered him from a storm, the river that cleansed the stains of battle off him, the barren plain that exposed him to any eyes that might be watching, friendly or hostile. He was no longer young but worn out by the strains of the road, another human whose life-span would come to an end when he had hardly learned how to speak and walk.
But I was reminded. He kept coming back. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Mithrandir, the Grey Pilgrim. The name of Elrond of Imladris was mentioned, and once even the Lady of the Golden Wood, who was hardly more than a tale from times long gone; it was said he was on the errands of the Wise. Estel was the Elvish name he wore like a cloak when he wished to remain unknown. He moved silently and skilfully like an Elf, he knew of woods and winds and earth. But he was no Elf. His name was Aragorn, and he was of Isildur's blood lineage. In his footsteps a stalk of grass fell upon another, small twigs were broken, leaves rustled in an unending whisper that rumoured of what was to come. I began to see in his comings and goings a faint outline, hardly visible patterns that were running towards a larger story.
And somehow, I became a part of that story. Once, twice, again I found myself keeping him company on his journeys through the darker parts of the forest, in Rhovanion, in the vales of the Great River. Not really knowing why he had chosen me or I him, somewhere along the way we grew towards each other, felt our way through the unknown and found a friendship.
Like a spider may patiently and imperceptibly spin glimmering fabrics amongst tree branches, years have woven a net of translucent strings between us. Delicate, yet firm and demanding strings that grow when you have lost track of the time you have spent with someone: tilt your head in a certain way and I know immediately where your mind is set today, move your hand and I look before I know I am looking, stir to take a step and I already follow.
Words are caught in that web until they grow dimmer, fewer, more fragile. Until the meaning of them starts to sink into oblivion.
Aragorn is awake. He sits up and gathers himself closer to the hot ashes where the fire has faded away. We are surrounded by the mystical twilight that wraps the world before every break of dawn and after every sunset, the blue and grey haze that floats in the air, the moment of transition when it is not yet day or night, and the universe seems to stand still.
Even before he speaks, I know he will be gone when the daylight breaks again into the forest.
His voice is low but firm.
"Legolas. When I pass through these woods again, it will only be to deliver Gollum for your father's guards to keep. I shall not linger."
"Why not take me with you?" I keep my voice steady, my face a mask of serenity. "Ours has been a good companionship in the past, even outside my father's realm."
His eyes reveal nothing, but his answer is folded in worry.
"Such dangers may lay ahead as I have not known before. I might have to go to the very confines of Mordor. And at my return a path awaits me I have long feared to walk."
I am feeling frustrated because I know so little of what he talks about.
"If dangers be fiercer, the better to take me with you! Two pairs of eyes are more alert, and two pairs of hands fight more forcefully, if perils should come our way."
The corners of his mouth tighten slightly and there is a tinge of impatience in his tone when he replies to me.
"Legolas, I must face this task alone. There are roads you can walk with me, but on some paths you cannot follow. No one can. And war is upon us. I am needed elsewhere."
A fluid realisation enters me.
"I may not see you again, then?"
"I know not." He looks at me thoughtfully, and this time I believe I see a glint of something new, unfamiliar in his gaze. "I see ahead of me but darkness, a grey fog which obscures all, leaving me to grope my way through."
He remains silent for a moment before continuing.
"Imladris awaits. My foster father knows the time is near, and he shall soon summon the peoples of Middle-earth to attend his Council. I wish to see you there, my friend, unless it is meant to be otherwise."
On impulse I embrace him. I think he is surprised, but does not push me away -- quite the opposite. He holds me for a long time, his body firmly pressed against mine, his warmth radiating into me. When we finally part, he looks at me gravely. My voice is steadier than I am feeling inside as I speak.
"I shall walk and fight by your side just as willingly as I have accompanied you in times of peace, should ever the day come you need me."
His hand is still on my shoulder, and a smile brightens his weary face.
"Hannon le, Legolas. Gwadoren," he whispers in my own tongue. Thank you, Legolas. My brother.
He leans in to place a kiss on my both cheeks, an earnest, affectionate kiss -- and then, on my lips. It is a continuation of the same gesture of friendship, intended as nothing but a confirmation of the bond that has grown between us. But instead of moving away his lips stay there, touching mine, frozen in time. Sooner than I know my hand has crept on the back of his head, and I am breathing into his mouth. I cannot tell which one of us falters first, but I realise this is no longer a brotherly kiss, but a hungry, desirous exchange I am unwilling to break free of.
The strings between us are delicate, yet firm and demanding: run your fingers through my hair and sparks will rain along my spine, make a sound of pleading and I will kiss you deeper, resist but a little and I will burn to press you tighter to this yearning forced inside the crumbling walls of my body.
Aragorn tears himself away from me, and his face is confused and vulnerable like I have not seen it before. I know what we have violated. A silence surrounds Evenstar of Imladris in our conversations, but I have long known of their promise to each other, of the choice they once made under the unchanging night skies. Of what should reach beyond the fates of two peoples separated from each other, beyond life and death.
We are both speechless.
He is the first to move, to break the ice that has frozen us in confusion. In silence he collects his blanket and his few carryings from the ground, drawing the hood of his cloak deep over his head so I cannot see his face. The glow of his touch still throbs in me quick and merciless and will not calm down, will not be still. Aragorn throws his pack on his shoulder. His whole body is turned towards the East, towards Mordor, towards the darkness that spreads from there like drops of blood in water. I see the steam of his breath in the morning air as he speaks to me one last time.
"Nothing has changed, Aragorn."
But even as I speak, a wind rises and sweeps over all living things on the ground, bending them, shaking them, changing the way they grow, and nothing will ever be the same again. Without looking back he walks away, taking with him the world as I have known it.
I let him go.
Playlist Navigation Bar | <urn:uuid:ea9b6e09-20a0-4be7-9622-6cf9e39f5948> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henneth-annun.net/playlists/chapter_view.cfm?spordinal=1&sqid=184&sxid=978 | 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 | 0.976815 | 2,302 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Get Answers for: “Biblical Concepts”
- The Chosen Children of Adoption
- Jill Korey is an adoptive mom who knows what it's like to open her home to an adoptive child. Ryan Dobson is an adopted child who knows what it's like to benefit from such a home. Parenting and family expert Dr. Jim Burns talks with with Jill and Ryan about adoption.
- Keys to Raising a Well-Behaved Child - Part 1
- Too many parents are working feverishly in hopes that their chidlren will "turn out all right." Parenting and family expert Dr. Jim Burns talks with popular author and speaker John Rosemond about some practical and stress-relieving tips for developing "Well-Behaved Children."
- Faith Conversations for Families - Part 1
- It's not easy to get your kids interested in "family devotions" - but you can discover some practical ways for actually making "devotion time" fun for your kids - and relatively painless for Mom and Dad, too!
- Keys to Successful Stepfamilies - Part 1
- With an increasing divorce rate in the Church today, more and more Christians are facing the challenge of establishing new "blended families." Dr. Jim Burns talks about to do so with Ron Deal - author of the book, The Successful Stepfamily.
- Why Every Mom Needs a Best Friend - Part 2
- Circumstances brought them together - but now nothing will tear them apart! Dr. Jim Burns continues his conversation with Susan Brammel and Teri Gundlach, two moms who became best friends and have built a life-time relationship for their husbands and kids to enjoy as well!
- Raising Sons and Loving It - Part 2
- It's not easy being a boy these days - especially when adolescence begins! Parenting and family expert Dr. Jim Burns continues his discussion with Dr. Gary Oliver on ways you can really enjoy this season of your son's life.
- Giving More Encouragement than Advice
- Dr. Jim Burns focuses on how parents who "listen more than lecture" build more solid connections with their children.
- Becoming a Confident Parent - Part 2
- Parenting can be a challenge – but it doesn’t have to be scary! Parenting and family expert Dr. Jim Burns continues his discussion on some of the practical yet profound principles for “Becoming a Confident Parent.”
- Keeping Your Kids Safe from Cyber-Bullies
- Dr. Jim Burns addresses the growing problem of kids being hassled by bullies online.
- Keys to Shaping Your Family's Faith - Part 1
- When the Church mentors parents, parents can mentor their children -and the legacy of faith continues to the next generation. Parenting and family expert Dr. Jim Burns talks with Jack Eagar - President of Awana Clubs International - about some practical ways for doing so.
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- Check out our Culture Blog for finding the most up-to-date and significant news items shaping today’s youth culture and their influence on kids and parenting.
- Read the Blog | <urn:uuid:37260c00-3235-4a65-aa53-04f392f5a13b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homeword.com/advanced_search_result.php?stid=10&rtype=rb&pg=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939011 | 724 | 1.546875 | 2 |
U.S. Department of Education Boosts District-Led Efforts to Recognize and Reward Great Teachers and Principals Through the 2012 Teacher Incentive Fund
The U.S. Department of Education announced today 35 grants awarded to improve pay structures, reward great teachers and principals and provide greater professional opportunities to teachers in high poverty schools. Winning applicants comprise districts, partnering districts, states, and nonprofits that together serve nearly 1,000 schools in 150 urban, suburban, and rural school districts in 18 states and D.C.
"Whether urban or rural, traditional or charter, successful schools are not possible without great teaching and leadership," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "Our best teachers and principals are invaluable leaders in changing life outcomes for students. They are desperately needed in our struggling schools, and they deserve to be recognized, rewarded, and given the opportunity to have a greater influence on their colleagues, students, and in their communities."
All applicants submitted proposals, developed in part by teachers, that provide opportunities for teacher leadership and advancement, put in place district-wide evaluations based on multiple measures that include student growth, and improve decision-making through better evaluations.
"The Teacher Incentive Fund called on local leaders to engage teachers in influencing the future of the teaching profession," said Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education Deb Delisle. "Many more districts will benefit tremendously from an investment in scaling up and securing the talents and abilities of effective teachers and principals within their toughest schools."
The 2012 TIF program encouraged districts to enhance educator compensation systems through one of two modelscareer ladders or performance-based pay with the option for additional responsibilities. With either model, applicants were able to submit a general proposal or a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused proposal.
Twenty-nine winners received funding to create general, district-wide evaluation systems that reward success and drive decision-making on recruiting, retaining, and providing additional responsibilities to great teachers. Among the 29 projects, two granteesNew York City Public Schools and L.A. Unified School District - will pursue compensation systems based around career ladders. Six will focus on developing and supporting excellent science and math teachers.
The 35 winners listed below were selected from a pool of over 120 applications. Award amounts represent the first 2 years of funding over the 5-year grant period. Continued funding is contingent upon congressional action.
For more information on the TIF program and the 2012 grantees, visit: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/teacherincentive/awards.html. | <urn:uuid:167be0d7-0174-4a46-98b1-d5a78e67ce15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-boosts-district-led-efforts-recognize-and-reward-great-t | 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 | 0.952775 | 534 | 1.75 | 2 |
On any given day, we get our news and information in bite (and byte) sized chunks. While drinking our morning coffee and perusing through what’s left of our city’s newspaper, we’re tapping into a favorite news aggregator via our iPhones, knowing full well that online sources have now reported even more about the stories than we’re seeing in print. We get a text from a friend about a sale at our favorite store; we read a tweet from a local restaurant about today’s special; and update our friends on Facebook about an article they “must read.”
This sums up the perfect storm in which we all currently live – mammoth changes to the manner and means in which news and information is being disseminated combined with a significant shift in the way people want and need to consume it. Not a newsflash you say? Been coming for a while? The reality is that this storm has a bold and broad impact, and Public Relations is hardly being spared. Does the following sound familiar?
- The boss wants to be everywhere, but the definition for “everywhere” changes daily as more and more resources, social media outlets and Apps are added to the communications chain on what seems to be an hourly basis.
- The journalist is doing it all, playing the role of assignment manager, reporter, editor AND producer. And once they’re done with the story, they’re editing it for print, blogs, tweets, etc. to make sure it is as “everywhere” as possible.
- And the communicator (that’s you!), the one responsible for making sure the news gets “everywhere,” is neck-deep just trying to figure out which of the zillion tools they should use to do so and how on earth they’re going to get it out in a timely manner with only so many hours in the day.
So how can we strategically brave this “storm”? There are a few key principles that can help PR pros get and keep control, but also serve as broad strategies as more changes come (you know they will) and this fractured communications class continues to evolve:
Journalists are wearing a lot of hats, and you should too.
As mentioned earlier, today’s journalist is doing a lot more than just reporting the news. It’s about time we as communicators rethink our job description as well. Over the last 12 months, I’ve experienced more and more occasions where I’ve pitched a story to an editor, only to then be asked by the editor to write and submit it as a bylined article. I don’t see this trend dissipating any time soon, so we’d all be wise to dust off our AP Style Book and learn a little about using a video camera.Get a grip…on what’s available.
A little research can go a long way. Email your colleagues in the industry and ask what tools – from press release distribution services to media coverage tracking, analysis and reporting -- they’re using and why. And do some research online and find out what resources are available, and which are getting top ratings from other communicators just like you. Take the time to build your arsenal of communications weaponry and then assess on a case-by-case basis which ones would be appropriate for your news.
Don’t always scratch that itch.
It’s a good idea to stay on top of the next big PR tool that just debuted, but kill yourself by changing up your routine every two weeks. Get good, and I mean GOOD, at the tools you’ve deemed the best, then stick with them. This will help you stay in control of what could otherwise be a marathon of posting your social media press release to countless distribution sites. Change it up if there’s good reason, but don’t make things harder on yourself just because something’s new.
“Everybody” should never be your target audience.
Nothing makes your job harder than maintaining that everyone is your customer, public or other. Hone in on your specific audience – whether by profiling them by geographic, demographic, psychographic or other data. This will help you craft a message that’s much more relevant, as well as narrow the suite of tools and mediums you use to reach them.
Recycling isn’t just for soda cans.
Make “repurposing” your “new thing.” Your social media press release can easily be repackaged into a scrumptious little tweet, a compelling video short or a brief blog entry in a matter of minutes. Give your news its best chance of reaching your target audience by configuring and delivering it in relevant formats across appropriate mediums.
It’s always about business goals. Always.
When it comes to your communications strategy, ensure that there is alignment of business goals and how your efforts will be measured against them. If your boss really wants your news to be “everywhere,” it would be a good idea to sit down and get them to quantify what they mean, then use that as the foundation for your measurement matrix. Bottom line, all communications initiatives – regardless of whom they’re targeting or what tools and mediums are used – must track back to overarching business goals.
The good news and bad news—everyone on every side of the communications equation is struggling. However, if you apply the principles above and give yourself and your organization the implicit permission to fail at times, all should be okay. This storm too will settle.
About the Author | <urn:uuid:332d683c-b2a6-4d54-b41d-7c5785a4a0d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prnewsonline.com/topics/pr-insiders/2009/11/12/coping-with-the-rise-of-the-fractured-communications-class/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942424 | 1,174 | 1.632813 | 2 |
This is where learning happens.
Federal Work Study
The Federal Work-Study program provides students with an opportunity to work part-time to assist with educational costs. The program consists of jobs on and off campus for community service opportunities. Eligible students must be enrolled at least part-time, eligible to receive federal aid and have demonstrated financial need as determined by the FAFSA application. For more information, students are referred to the Financial Aid office and to their website at http://www.ncat.edu/admissions/financial-aid/aid/fed-wk-stdy-prog.html. | <urn:uuid:bddcbe56-352b-4b32-8801-405253f32677> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncat.edu/academics/schools-colleges1/grad/graduate-catalog/2012-2014/expenses-financial/work-study.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959016 | 125 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Isaac yawns as the first weak signs of the early morning light stream through his blinds. Rubbing his eyes, he looks from his book at his window, watching as the sunlight slowly gains strength. Another all-nighter, he thinks regretfully. And today's the first day, too. Not really a good start.
Closing his book, which was an old copy of Shakespeare's tragedies, he stretches and walks to the bathroom of his small, one-room apartment. After his shower, he throws on a white t-shirt and jeans and pours some cereal. Glancing at the clock, he sees that he has roughly an hour and a half left, which was good, since he lived about half an hour from the school. Ten minutes later, he puts his empty bowl and used spoon in the sink, grabs his bag, and walks out the door. Suddenly, he realizes he forgot something. Turning around, he walks back into his apartment, grabs his book from his table, and leaves, opening back up to where he left off. He was halfway through Hamlet's soliloquy when he hears him. It's not even seven o'clock yet, and you already have your nose buried in that thing.
I don't need to hear it, Isaac tells Vincent, his alter personality.
I'm just saying, what if you're walking along, focused on that book, and something happens?
The only reason you're concerned is because if I died, you would too, Isaac snaps.
Naturally, Vincent unashamedly admits.
Arriving at the school, Isaac closes his book and looks at his watch. Instead of only taking him half an hour, it took him forty minutes to arrive, giving him ten minutes to find his class. Schedule in hand, he walks in and finds it relatively easy. He walks in and sees he wasn't the first to show up. Smiling, he nods at the girl already sitting down and takes his place near the back of the room. What are you doing? Vincent yells at Isaac. Go sit next to her! Ignoring him, he opens his book back up and finishes "Hamlet" and moves onto "Julius Caesar." | <urn:uuid:fb534189-9924-49a7-9ecd-20767156f50e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://roleplayerguild.com/showthread.php?189584-LastGen-IC&p=8196115&viewfull=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992711 | 456 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Forrester Research came out with a research piece this week, titled “Will your Offshore Provider Survive The Recession? that asks BPO clients to take a cold, hard look at the health of India-based providers.
The Forrester researcher, Sudin Apte, paints a pretty grim picture of the India BPO sector citing that major providers are ill-equipped to handle a perfect storm of diminished demand, picky clients wanting better deals and anti-outsourcing rhetoric from President Barack Obama.
The researcher says: “Indian providers’ limited preparedness to fight the recession poses a risk for clients. While in the short term sourcing professionals will find it attractive to obtain lower rates, vendor viability is challenged in the long run — putting project delivery and overall client work at risk.”
These are pretty strong words and have major implications for Nearshore providers and US customers. What can providers learn?
Lesson 1: Differentiate yourself and your brand. Part of the problem for many India providers is they are doing too much and have lost sight of their core specializations.
Lesson 2: Build credibility through service excellence. The outsourcing business is very much a long-term gain proposition. It remains essential that providers consider their delivery value through continuous engagement and committing to invest in competency areas.
Lesson 3: Be honest. Say No. Part of the advantage of working in the Nearshore region, is the sharing of similar cultures. For that reason, the Western Hemisphere is probably better known for its ability to be “professionally blunt” when necessary to get the point across. This is an advantage for providers who are working with clients who are used to receiving “push back.” Being tactfully frank when necessary is something that customers will respect you for.
Lesson 4: Offer new methods of engagement. This point – courtesy of Forrester – is important since providers need to demonstrate that they are innovating in the right areas and looking at ways to improve the delivery of service, through human capital efficiencies, technology improvements or other creative models.
Is the India outsource industry about to collapse? Absolutely not.
But when major research firms like Forrester talk about anticipating bankruptcies – it’s a wake up call I would pay attention to.
Forrester advice to US clients working in India: “Rather than wait for a provider to go bankrupt or be acquired and face work disruption, identifying early symptoms of risk can save a lot of pain.” | <urn:uuid:fe42f655-a4f0-4bf6-a7db-3b2c1eb342cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caribbeancrmcentral.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/is-disaster-about-to-strike-india-outsourcers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942415 | 518 | 1.515625 | 2 |
My remark about the article is the lack of a simple examples for the first part (like a simple ECHO server)
Yeah, that's been suggested a couple of times now; my plan is to write complete source code for the tetris game, and make the final article just a description of the source code plus javadocs link plus the downloadable source itself.
Just haven't had time
for example I wondered if I needed to cancel the key or unregister the channel when I finished to read a packet and want to register the channel as OP_WRITE, that can sound obvious but a simple example could solved it in 2 sec.
The different ops are independent. You can be registered for read and write simultaneously on one selector, or simultaneously on multiple selectors. They don't interact AT ALL, except that each key can only have one attachment.
but if you give me time next week (need to finish my work travel) I think I can write a simple echo server:) I whould like to write doc about NIO & server when I finished to understand the whole block, but my english doesn't help me much
If you (or anyone else) wants to compose the example snippets in the articles into complete working source I'm happy to help debug and advise on getting it working (and I can probably provide much of the necessary code for you) if I can then publish it in the article (with obvious credit to you of course). Best of all would be if someone would actually write a tiny tetris game as described in the article.
Part of the problem is that it's harder for me to write complete code because I have to be very careful not to copy code from my day job, and I find that difficult. So it's easy for me to contribute ideas and bits of code, and someone else will produce an example in their own "style" and I won't get into any trouble for giving away any of our classes | <urn:uuid:8e343267-2661-4103-8294-5c99f7b2b45c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=3958.msg36993 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953485 | 400 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. America will not be destroyed. The undocumented children living in the United States will stay in the shadows and margins of society where they belong. Sure, we’ll be forced to give them a high school education – heck, we give anyone a high school education whether they deserve it by birth-right or not – but they won’t go using it to get a college education or a tax-paying job.
As I predicted – and I need not have been much of a prophet to do it – the DREAM Act failed to get enough votes in the Senate to move the bill forward. Only three Republicans dared to support it – lame duck Bob Bennett of Utah, undefeatable Dick Lugar of Indiana, and the write-in re-elected Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Even former sponsors Orin Hatch and John McCain felt too much heat from the fear-mongerers to continue their support.
The opponents of a productive future for undocumented children demanded all sorts of concessions in the bill to which sponsors acquiesced, including attaching hefty fees for those wanting to apply for conditional residency under the Act, narrowing the eligible age group, making sure the relatives of those using the Act could never gain residency though sponsorship like those of other legal residents, and extending the period of conditional residency from six to ten years before someone under the act could apply (again with hefty fees, lots of complicated paperwork, and up to a year-long wait) for permanent residency (which would then have to be followed by another five years before being eligible to pay more fees, file more paperwork, and wait months for citizenship). Yet despite having all the demands met to water down the bill, those who made the demands still refused to vote to let the bill be considered.
I was particularly disappointed by the excuses given by the Senators from my home state of Texas. John Cornyn said, ”I am sympathetic to the plight of children who have no moral culpability for being in this country illegally and I support the intent of the bill today, but not this legislation and not this way.” Unfortunately, he didn’t say which legislation and which way would allow him to vote with his sympathies.
Kay Bailey Hutchinson opted for a outright lie rather than Cornyn’s ambiguous drivel. She said, ”I could not support the DREAM Act legislation brought before the Senate today because it expanded the scope of the bill beyond the intended individuals who were brought here as children and were educated in the United States.” Not only is that made up out of whole cloth, but the real reason Hutchinson could not support the bill was because she had been threatened by conservatives. After all, when a much broader bill was before the Senate in 2007 she said,
“This is such an important piece of legislation, and I do think this is isolated from the entire immigration issue because there … are young people who have been brought to this country as minors, not of their own doing, who have gone to American high schools, graduated, and who want to go to American colleges. They are in a limbo situation. I believe we should deal with this issue. We should do it in a way that helps assimilate these young people with a college education into our country. They have lived here most of their lives. If we sent them home, they wouldn’t know what home is. There is a compassionate reason for us to try to work this out.”
In the meantime, she alienated the furthest right-wing of the GOP in running against Rick Perry and can’t afford to lose their support in 2012. Somebody has to pay the price and it is certainly easiest to put it on those who have no voice and if her supporters have their way, will never have a voice.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy. | <urn:uuid:96bd39a6-928f-43cb-bda6-7e30659f7048> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solomonhezekiah.wordpress.com/tag/us-senate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977961 | 820 | 1.648438 | 2 |
It is in Indonesia, during the famous Bandung Conference (1955) that Zhou Enlai, Nehru, Nasser and Nkrumah, along with their Indonesian host Sukarno, proclaimed the creation of a own formation: the third world, a counterweight against Western capitalism and the Communist world. This marked the beginning of a catch-up strategy; the country now presents growth rates that overshadow traditional Western industrialized countries.
Living Stone Exclusive
According to a BBC World survey of April 2011, Indonesia is the best place in the world to start a business. It central location in the Asian market and cheap labour have an extra advantage. This is the starting point of the many conversations we will conduct during the journey. | <urn:uuid:b998432d-c175-4b38-ae37-d76b7a8f4a81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lscoop.com/fb111quxe1124cjgc1gjfc145.aspx?eyelng=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934536 | 147 | 1.648438 | 2 |
LONGMONT -- Innovative educational tools such as Skyline High School's STEM Academy and some programs in Aurora Public Schools couldn't succeed without partnerships, local officials told the director of the White House's Domestic Policy Council on Monday.
The Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics Academy at Skyline has received national recognition for how it educates kids in those fields. On Monday, Cecilia Muñoz visited Skyline to hear firsthand how it and other St. Vrain Valley School District programs work.
Muñoz promised to take what she had learned in Longmont back to her office in the West Wing of the White House.
"I can assure you I'll take this back to Washington and it's going to inform the work that we're doing in the educational sphere," Muñoz said.
One of the school district's key partners in STEM and other programs is IBM. Ray Johnson, IBM's corporate citizenship and corporate affairs manager, said the company has always tried to take an active role in helping further students' education in technology.
"Partnerships like this are key and it's really a two-way street," said Johnson, one of about two dozen panelists in a roundtable discussion that Muñoz led.
John Barry, superintendent of Aurora Public Schools, said it's not just private sector companies that are important partners. Institutes of higher education also play a key role, whether it's the University of Colorado's Health
As a member of the Governor's Education Leadership Council, Barry said one of that group's top priorities is eliminating the "Colorado paradox," which the state's economic developers have talked about for years. Colorado is known as one of the most educated states in the country, but it's not because a large percentage of its homegrown residents go on to earn advanced degrees. Instead, most of that well-educated work force is brought in from other states to work at companies here. That's a long-term trend that needs to change, Barry said.
"We're aligning academics and economic development, because they got divorced in the 1990s and we're reuniting them again," he said. "The partnerships go a long way.
Regina Renaldi, executive director of priority programs for the St. Vrain Valley School District, said that on all levels, from kindergarten to secondary education, the district's partners enable it to continue to innovate even as funding dollars are stretched thinner every the year.
"Our partnerships have as much to do with expertise as they do sometimes with money or resources," Renaldi said.
The panel included Longmont Mayor Dennis Coombs; John Cody, president and CEO of the Longmont Area Economic Council; and Kathy Weber-Harding, president and CEO of the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce. A few dozen people sat in the audience for the 90-minute discussion inside Skyline's library.
The panel discussion took place after Muñoz was given a short tour of Skyline, with an introduction to some of its programs. She said the Skyline staff, including principal Patty Quiñones, seemed to have "the same sense of urgency that my boss has," and noted that, "our country's economic well-being depends" on some of the innovative programs being done locally.
Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:f4bc1a21-6274-48ae-8bd6-90ae4cdc57b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_21089349/entertainment/entertainment/entertainment/classicalmusic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975326 | 694 | 1.75 | 2 |
Agartala, May 10 (IANS) A music laboratory sponsored by the University Grants Commission (UGC) was launched Thursday in Tripura capital Agartala to boost traditional folk songs and music in the country's northeastern region.
The state-of-the-art music laboratory, first of its kind in the region, was set up at the Sachin Deb Barman Memorial Government Music College here at a cost of Rs.600,00,00.
'The music laboratory would facilitate immensely to expand and preserve traditional folk songs and music of the northeast region,' Anil Sarkar, Tripura Information, Cultural Affairs and Education Minister, said after inaugurating the lab.
'All the premier cultural bodies of the central and the state governments of the region, including the Lalit Kala Akademi and National School of Drama, must reach out to young people in the northeast to search for hidden talent'.
'To protect the northeast culture and to draw attention to its traditions, the music laboratory would play a vital role in the region,' said Sarkar, a renowned and award winning poet.
The laboratory comprises an audio recording studio, editing and training modules and components. | <urn:uuid:a71b1c01-0fd3-49de-b64b-952a3dc2eda7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southasianews.com/797298/UGC-sponsored-music-lab-launched-in-northeast.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936358 | 240 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Jonathan Kurtzman <email@example.com> writes:
There are several interesting things about El-Fish, reviewed in TidBITS-231. Its fish breeding capability, which follows genetic rules, is fairly well-known. Less known is something which may in the end prove more important, namely that its animation is algorithmic and not frame by frame. This is why it is so life-like. The program was developed in Russia. The animator emigrated to the Boston area where I met him in a computer store. He explained and demonstrated for me how he had developed mathematical descriptions of the possible motions. This was necessary because the program will breed incredibly odd-looking, impossible fish, making frame by frame animation impossible. Because the fish move by rules, they essentially choose where to swim from moment to moment. To prove this wasn't a fluke, he then showed me a program of horses trotting which he said he put together in a few days. It was eerie to watch the horses run next to each other, cross, turn away, etc. While much animation is moving toward captured motion (optically, magnetically), the potential of algorithmic animation is vast. By the way, he hated the straight at you / away from you azimuths (because they look squashed) and was upset that they were added to his work. I hesitate to tell you how little he was paid. | <urn:uuid:cc9f9667-561f-43dc-9e41-0cdf7a0858a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tidbits.com/article/1943 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981321 | 295 | 1.828125 | 2 |
The biggest young-adult science fiction novel of the fall is probably The Hunger Games - and it's one of the best new science fiction books out there, period. Former Nickelodeon writer Suzanne Collins has written a sharp book about televised death-sports in a post-apocalyptic future. Her story pits a resourceful young hero against a media machine that doesn't just want to watch her die - it also wants to devour every bit of her emotional life. I'm sick of "reality TV" parodies, but the Hunger Games goes one better by making the audience the villains.
It's a bleak future, and the United States has been destroyed. In its place has arisen the oppressive nation of Panem, which is governed by a venal Capitol. (One of the things I didn't like about the book was the occasional touches of Roman-ishness and nods to "bread and circuses.") The Capitol is surrounded by 13 districts, which service it in a sort of feudal arrangement that leave most of the people nearly starving while the people in the Capitol live in luxury. At some point in the past, the districts rose up, and one of them was destroyed totally. The others must show their obedience to the Capitol by taking part in televised "Hunger Games" every year.
The "Hunger Games" are what they sound like - a battle to the death, with one male competitor and one female competitor from each district. The "reality TV" element comes in because each contestant has to appear likable and relatable, in the hopes of winning sponsorship. If you get sponsors, you can get hold of tools, medicines, and even body armor to help you survive in the games.
The thing that makes Hunger Games more than just another book about a post-apocalyptic battle to the death for the amusement of the elites is the book's hero, Katniss Everdeen. She's one of the least whiny or self-regarding YA protagonists I've ever come across. Growing up in the hardscrabble mining region that used to be Appalachia, she has to step up and learn to hunt in the woods (which is technically illegal) to feed her family after her father dies and her mother checks out. When Katniss' little sister, Prim, gets chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place.
Once the young survivor gets to the Capitol, she has to learn media savvy from the only previous winner of the Games from her district, the drunken Haymitch. And then it turns out that the other contestant from her district, Peeta, has been in love with Katniss for years. (We get a hint of this early on, when the young Peeta risks getting whipped to sneak some burnt bread to Katniss' starving family.) But then Haymitch decides that the best way to boost Katniss and Peeta's popularity - and thus keep them alive - is to play out the "doomed love story" angle as much as possible. Katniss isn't even sure if she has any real feelings for Peeta, but she winds up having to manufacture some for the cameras.
As I said, the reality TV/Lord Of The Flies mash-up about a group of teenagers killing each other on television could be incredibly cheesy, but Katniss' stark narration keeps it grounded. To her, this is just another version of the daily struggle to survive, and yet another way the Capitol works to destroy people in the provinces. The only thing that makes it different is that Katniss is constantly aware she's on camera, having watched the Games in previous years. (Viewing is mandatory.)
Really, the Hunger Games is about learning to become inauthentic, which is a nice spin on the usual coming-of-age story. In your typical coming-of-age tale, the main character starts out with illusions and gradually sheds them, facing up to the harsh realities of life. But Katniss starts out the book already well aware of the worst life has to offer, and she already knows what she has to do to survive. (She does feel bad the first time she kills someone.) Instead, she spends the book learning to become more fake, learning to wear the fancy costumes and say and do the right thing to make the viewers like her... even when she's fighting for her life. Especially then, because she knows she'll be on screen at those times.
I was genuinely bummed when The Hunger Games ended with the phrase, "End Of Book One." It doesn't end on a cliffhanger, exactly - most of the loose ends are neatly tied up - but I actually wanted to see if Katniss would decide that her manufactured feelings for Peeta were real after all.
The Hunger Games isn't exactly a deep work of literature, but it is a fun, exciting adventure story with a cool, believable female hero. And a entertainingly bleak, dystopian world with just enough of a reflection of our own reality to be thought-provoking. And most of all, a media-savvy story of on-camera slaughter by a former television professional. Good stuff, check it out. | <urn:uuid:888bc05c-649a-4c4b-8b8e-5da588a57a6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://io9.com/5063303/post+apocalyptic-girl+warrior-slays-her-peers-fakes-a-love-story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969631 | 1,067 | 1.5 | 2 |
BEIJING — The storm that ravaged Beijing nearly a week ago and killed at least 77 people remains a sensitive topic in China, with a newspaper ordered to cut its coverage and online discussions curtailed.
Directed by propaganda officials, mainstream media have been focusing on positive aspects of the storm, such as rescue efforts, heroic civilian acts, and sacrifices by uniformed officials. But those who want to raise questions on the city’s handling of the disaster and its drainage system have come under pressure.
Southern Weekly, an influential newspaper known for its edgy reporting, canceled four pages of storm coverage this week, and the newspaper — together with Beijing’s former and acting mayors, and the deaths in Fangshan, the hardest-hit district in Beijing, were all blocked on China’s most popular microblogging site, Sina Weibo, on Friday.
The censorship comes during a personnel reshuffling in the city government of the capital as China braces for the once-in-a-decade power handover to the next generation of leaders. That takes place when the Communist Party holds its congress later this year, with banners around the city already calling for the creation of a stable environment for the meeting.
Officials have kept information tight, mindful that any failure to cope with the flooding could reflect badly on the country’s leadership.
China’s Communist government has justified its one-party rule in part by delivering economic growth and maintaining stability and acting quickly to manage disasters like the June 21 flooding.
Chinese officials usually limit coverage of disasters, but one media analyst said authorities may have expanded that for the floods because the questions about death tolls are happening against the backdrop of an ill-timed city power shift, with Beijing’s mayor and vice mayor resigning Wednesday.
The outgoing mayor, Guo Jinlong, who was promoted to the city’s most senior post of Communist Party secretary, is expected to join the central government’s top 25-member politburo at the fall congress.
‘‘It’s kind of a perfect storm in terms of press control,’’ David Bandurski, a researcher at Hong Kong-based China Media Project, said of the timing of the disaster so close to the party congress.
A journalist close to the Southern Weekly told the Associated Press that the newspaper killed four pages of storm coverage this week after provincial propaganda officials and corporate management intervened. He requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. | <urn:uuid:4ee5739a-4509-4d64-b315-0276aca3f0c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2012/07/27/china-censors-aftermath-deadly-beijing-storm/GYWVx5JNzVMTHXLF8q4yUN/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959206 | 514 | 1.734375 | 2 |
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Thread: Where to go next?
- 07-21-2009, 11:21 PM #1Member
- Join Date
- Feb 2009
- Rep Power
Where to go next?
I am a mature student and just finished my first year at university. Rather stupidly, because I did so well in C I thought I could slack of in Java. Because of this, I don't have an amazing understanding of the subject which I want to improve.
So far I know the basics, IE: Loops, operators, classes, methods, objects, reference/primitive types and swing.
The problem is I come on this forum and even in the "New to java" section I find myself lost at alot of the posts. I really want to improve my knowledge but don't know where to start. The question is, how did you improve and whats the best way to? | <urn:uuid:e5b48d8c-f4ed-4bba-81c4-0362d3826027> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.java-forums.org/jobs-discussion/20017-where-go-next.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952496 | 190 | 1.546875 | 2 |
WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told a constituent in favor of legalizing marijuana that he doesn't support the idea because drugs like pot lead to death.
In a Feb. 14 letter to his constituent, McConnell said he has "serious concerns" about legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, a topic that the constituent had written to him about. He pointed out that the main ingredient in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol, is already available in pill form for the treatment of certain illnesses.
He is also "troubled" by the fact that many legalization proposals would make marijuana available to the public "without following the scientific processes" of the Food and Drug Administration, McConnell said.
McConnell then cites a medical marijuana bill introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and raises concerns about what could happen if it became law -- death.
"Because of the harm that substances like marijuana and other narcotics pose to our society, I have concerns about this legislation. The detrimental effects of drugs have been well documented: short-term memory loss, loss of core motor functions, heightened risk of lung disease, and even death," McConnell wrote.
McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said McConnell was just making the case that drugs in general have detrimental effects.
"Everyone from the Obama administration on down agrees that drug use has had serious consequences, including deaths. The letter makes that clear," Stewart said.
The constituent who corresponded with McConnell posted the letter on a counterculture blog, grasscity.com, and wrote a response to what McConnell had to say:
"Hi Blades, got a letter back from Mitch McConnell about legalizing marijuana. I'll let the letter speak for itself. WOWZA." | <urn:uuid:3edc67aa-e8fb-43f8-93be-97562a7d0c26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/14/mitch-mcconnell-legalizing-weed-causes-death_n_1344572.html?ref=politics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963069 | 349 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Pictured are members of the Cape Girardeau Fire Department. Barney Kraft (center of the picture standing) had been appointed Chief during the re-organization of the Department on May 5, 1909. First Assistant Chief was Charles Hahn and the Second Assistant Chief was Leon Albert.
The dapple gray team of horses was purchased in St. Louis for $400.00 by Aldermen Alex Vasterling and Joe Wilson,hence their names Joe and Alex. They were trained by Leland Albert and were first hitched to the wagon on May 25, 1909. They responded to their first call on June 7, 1909.
The Wagner Special Hose Wagon, Chemical Engine and Hook and Ladder was purchased from Fred Wagner and Son of St. Louis for $1,100, and arrived by boat on December 12, 1908. It had a chemical reservoir, ladders, hooks, rope, 300 feet of hose and all other appropriate and necessary paraphernalia. | <urn:uuid:5eb74e79-3b77-4354-b24a-d314cfa615ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.semissourian.com/story/1533836.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986103 | 199 | 1.742188 | 2 |
If a staff member considers that there has been an administrative decision that violates his or her rights as an employee of the Organization, and is unable to resolve the matter informally if such methods are pursued, the staff member can contest such a decision through the formal mechanism.
Contesting a decision involves a number of steps, with specific deadlines. It is important for anyone wishing to contest a decision to be aware of these steps and deadlines.
As a first step in the formal system, a staff member who wishes to contest an administrative decision is required to request a management evaluation no more than 60 days after the staff member was notified of the contested decision. The deadline may be suspended pending efforts for informal resolution conducted by the office of the Ombudsman and Mediation Services.
This initial review, which normally should be concluded within 45 days (30 days for New York Headquarters), entails an objective and reasoned assessment as to whether the contested decision was made in accordance with the rules. If it is determined that an improper decision has been made, Management will ensure that the decision is changed or that an appropriate remedy is provided. In some cases, alternative means of arriving at a settlement, such as mediation, may be found. In the Secretariat, management evaluations are carried out by the Management Evaluation Unit in the Office of the Under-Secretary-General for Management. The Funds and Programmes carry out the management evaluation function through their own administrative structures. The purpose of this step is to give management a chance to correct itself or provide acceptable remedies in cases where there has been flawed decision-making, and to reduce the number of cases that proceed to formal litigation.
A management evaluation is not required if the contested decision concerns the imposition of a disciplinary measure, or if it was taken by the administration based on the advice of an expert or advisory board, such as the Advisory Board on Compensation Claims. In such cases, an application can be made directly to the UN Dispute Tribunal.
The UN Dispute Tribunal
When no resolution through informal means can be arrived at, and when the result of the management evaluation is not to the satisfaction of the staff member, the staff member can file an application to the United Nations Dispute Tribunal (UNDT), as a court of first instance.
Read more about the UNDT
UN Appeals Tribunal
Decisions by the Dispute Tribunal may be appealed, either by staff or the administration, to the United Nations Appeals Tribunal (UNAT). The Statute of the UNAT allow for appeals in cases where it is alleged that the UNDT has either exceeded its jurisdiction or failed to exercise it; or that it has erred on question of fact or law or procedure. The UNAT is also competent to hear cases filed by other entities subject to special agreement with the Secretary General.
Read more about the UNAT
Legal assistance to staff
It has been a long-standing principle of the Organization that staff members who wish to appeal an administrative decision, or who are subject to disciplinary action, should have access to legal advice and representation. For this purpose, there is an Office of Staff Legal Assistance (OSLA), staffed by full-time legal officers at Headquarters, as well as in Geneva, Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Beirut.
Read more about OSLA
Office of Administration of Justice
A hallmark of the new system is that it be independent. A new Office of Administration of Justice, headed by an Executive Director appointed by the Secretary-General, is responsible for coordinating the functioning of the new system.
Read more about OAJ | <urn:uuid:7f8ccd70-8220-4d40-b295-8da893a79b0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.un.org/en/oaj/unjs/formalres.shtml | 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 | 0.959178 | 720 | 1.726563 | 2 |
What began as an emotional outlet between mother and daughter has spiraled into an organization that serves as a platform of self-expression for individuals affected by cancer. But starting a foundation wasn’t something that Yael Cohen intended to do. “It started really organically, when my mom got cancer. After her first surgery I got her a shirt that said ‘F*ck Cancer’ and it was an inside family joke,” Cohen said. “I thought it would be something she could wear at home, but mom being mom, she ended up wearing it everywhere. What was astonishing were people’s responses, it really resonated. People just opened right up.”
Since its inception in 2009, F*ck Cancer has taught young adults between the ages of 17 and 35, otherwise known as Generation Y, how they can educate themselves on the disease, and in turn relay their knowledge to those around them. “We are in a very unique position right now,” Cohen said. “Every kid thinks they know more than their parents do, and now for the first time we just might.” Cohen’s proactive approach to her mother’s diagnosis was a pivotal factor in her survival.
While today we’ve been taught to censor our emotions, Cohen says, “F*ck that!” F*ck Cancer promotes an authentic emotional response, where patients and their families are allowed to feel exactly what they need to feel, because as Cohen said, “There is no appropriate response to cancer.”
Advocates for F*ck Cancer include Hollywood A-listers Sophia Bush, Wilmer Valderrama and Adrian Grenier, all of whom have participated in F*ck Cancer’s Cancer Talk Campaign. The Campaign urges “Gen Y” to have the “cancer talk” with their parents, similar to the “sex talk” that virtually every child has endured.
But between conducting research, creating campaigns and implementing strategies, Cohen’s day to day routine is a non-stop march toward being the example. “The day-to-day is all I do,” Cohen said. “And it is all I live because I need to practice what I preach.”
I start every morning off with a green juice, because I think it’s really important to be alkalined, and then I work out. We teach people that you need to find that balance, and that what you put into your body is directly affecting your health.
Following my workout, I either have a breakfast meeting or I’ll make breakfast and catch up on emails.
10 AM-12 PM
I spend time on campaign creation and implementation, anything from sitting down with the agency or with creative companies. I also meet with supporters. We’ve been really lucky to have various high profile supporters.
Either a business lunch or lunch with friends at some of my favorite places in L.A., like Newsroom.
Sometimes I’ll hike in the afternoon if I have meetings with New York in the morning.
6 PM- 8 PM
At night I don’t do business meetings, because I think it sends the wrong message. I do dinner with friends, game night or concerts. The standard spots are usually Cecconi’s or Chateau Marmont. The vegan options at the Chateau are fantastic, and we try to advocate a plant-based diet. I’m not shy to ask for what I want. | <urn:uuid:1e612d33-ccfc-4371-914a-31514e0eba93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hauteliving.com/2012/03/yael-cohen-spend-a-day-with-the-inspiring-woman-behind-the-fck-cancer-campaign/263466/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974645 | 740 | 1.71875 | 2 |
As the mobile workforce expands and gains acceptance across the board, industries that serve professionals are changing their offerings to meet new demands. Recently, efforts to turn automobiles into mobile offices have been making a big splash. Automobile manufacturers are partnering with tech companies to change the driving experience drastically (don’t worry, cars will still have CD players). The new technology serves a range of professional use-cases, whether it’s dispersed workforces that drive around servicing clients or simply individuals who spend extended periods of time on the road commuting every day.
Here are a few of the notable recent developments transforming cars into mobile workplaces:
At CES this year, Chrysler unveiled it’s UConnect Access Via Mobile offering. It’s part app integration system and part telematics system. These cars feature a built in 3G connection to provide drivers with a Wi-Fi hotspot. (link)
High Speed LTE:
If 3G doesn’t cut it for you, Audi will soon release the first vehicle to have an available high-speed LTE wireless connection (part of the Audi Connect package). (link)
While it’s unclear how car safety officials will react to this one, QNX (a RIM subsidiary) has partnered with Bentley to produce a concept Continental GT fully outfitted with video conferencing. (link)
Some cars, most notably the new Tesla Model S, feature unbelievably large screens. The Tesla’s screen looks like a large iPad in the front of the car, and has full web-browsing capabilities. (link)
In addition to built in features, electronics makers are getting into the auto-office industry with a range of products. For instance, portable printers that mobile workers can mount in their cars. These printers use direct thermal printing, so they dont even need ink or toner, and can run on a car’s power system. (link)
Infographic by the folks over at Moovweb.
The acceptance of mobile tech in governments and the consumerization of the enterprise made a breakthrough with the New Zealand police force earlier this week. The National Business Review reported that, following an 11-month trial involving 100 staff members, the force has decided to outfit their officers with smartphones, and are opting for Apple devices over competitors. Thus, iPhones and iPads will become the tech weapon of choice for 6000 New Zealand law enforcement officers.
This is part of a larger global trend we’re seeing in government, and Law enforcement officers are a fantastic example of a mobile workforce employed by the state. The stakes of coordination among police officers are obviously very high, so it makes sense that they be outfitted with devices that allow for rich, instant, communication and collaboration. The police estimate that the investment will provide productivity benefits of $305 million over the next decade.
Of the 6,000 officers getting iPhones, 3,900 of them will be receiving iPads as well. Stephen Crombie, New Zealand Police CIO, pointed to the benefits of increasing consumerization of technology in large organizations: “The trial showed the most useful tools for officers were small devices for making phone calls or text messaging, accessing email, and accessing information and photo databases, and a larger [device] such as a laptop for staff who need to do more data entry.”
Image Credit: Euthman
It may not be easy to imagine our elected officials opting to telecommute from home, but it could be reality in the near future. Governments are starting to notice the way mobile technology empowers workforces to get their jobs done from anywhere. In cities, states and countries around the world, bureaucrats and officials are becoming part of the post-PC mobile workforce. While these new arrangements target more than just the digital aspects of remote work, smartphones, GPS tracking, desktop video, and access to cloud files are at the heart of the developments. A recent piece by David Israelson in The Globe and Mail examines Canada’s public sector and the efforts of other governments to harness their employee’s mobile potential.
Although formal regulations are still far and few between, there have been some major steps in that direction:
- In 2010, U.S. Congress passed the telework enhancement act requiring heads of government agencies to establish a policy for employees to network, determine who is eligible, and communicate these policies.
- The British deputy prime minister announced a plan to extend the right to be properly flexible to all employees with children, including those in the public sector.
- Sweden’s Agency for Government Employers set a framework for including flex time provisions in negations over work hours.
Read Israelson’s piece here.
The growth of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in the workplace has received a ton of attention over the past year. This cool infographic from TrackVia illustrates the statistical growth of BYOD and how it’s changing the way we work, empowering organizations to harness their mobile potential. | <urn:uuid:4431178d-8984-45ec-a7f6-02409705d562> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.getlua.com/2013/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939054 | 1,021 | 1.640625 | 2 |
May 21st marked the beginning of a 6-week summer English program at STEP. Cindy, my cousin Jamie (who came down for 7 weeks specifically to teach,) Jennica (a close family friend who taught for the second 3 weeks of the course), and I all prepared ourselves for the upcoming weeks of challenging times. Each of us had different level of students ranging from barely even able to greet someone in English to being able to carry on a small conversation. We would meet 4 days a weeks for a total of 10 hours, therefore allowing the students to really catch on and practice what they were learning. For me, around half way through the program, I had already started to notice major improvements from day one. The curriculum we used was very teacher friendly and the students enjoyed it as well.
My students going over vocabulary
Jamie with a group of her students
A weekly spelling quiz
Jennica with her students
Cindy listening to conversation practice
My whole class
After our 6 weeks of classes us teachers felt we should celebrate with a party for the students. We sang songs they had learned in English, played games in which they really got into and became competitive, and had snacks together.
First, we started with Pictionary
Next, we played a game where we gave a topic to one team at a time and they had one minute to name off as many things as they could think of in that topic. We had a list of 10 things and if they got the bonus word they received extra points. We used topics we had cover in English. Watching these seminary students get into games was a riot!!
This team was so animated and they had the topic "the body"
This was my absolute favorite moment. The man in the blue shirt was a part of our English classes, his name is Pastor Vezel. He is a pastor who is also a professor at STEP, but wanted to further his English so he participated in the summer English program. When the students attend STEP during the school year they must wear ties everyday, but because this was summer school and a party many dressed casual. Pastor Vezel was the only one with a tie... watching him rush to the center trying to get his tie off was hilarious! This reserved quiet pastor and STEP professor sure came out of his shell and the students found it hilarious!
Lastly, we played this number game. Students were to make a list using numbers 1-60 in sets of 3. Then we would call out sets of 3. If the students had that specific number they were to choose a paper bag from the center. When the bags ran out they were to steal one from someone. Many thought they were getting these amazing prizes inside the bags, but I'll let the pictures explain.
One found a rock...
Another found some crystal light packets, but had no idea what they were.
One found just one garden glove in his bag.
The party was a success!!!
You'd think since many of the students can hardly afford to live day by day the last thing they'd be thinking of is gifts for others, but these students are so thoughtful. Each class presented their teacher with a card signed by all expressing their appreciation along with a gift and a thoughtful speech. I taught them English and in return they taught me patience, they brought me so much joy, and they reminded and continue to remind me of what true gratitude looks like. They were exceptionally pleased with what they learned, but little did they know the impact they had on me in our short 6 weeks. | <urn:uuid:5b4ffdb9-9dde-4463-8a3a-7972f8650496> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.youngsinhaiti.blogspot.com/ | 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 | 0.992275 | 718 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Now, most of the information I knew about America came from watching Jerry Springer on Australian TV, but so far I have not even seen ONE dwarf fighting with a large security guy. In fact, every single person I have met here at the San Diego Zoo and around San Diego have been absolutely fantastic. Californians seem like very relaxed and friendly people, just like back home in Australia. I think I might stick around and run for mayor.
One of the reasons I came to the San Diego Zoo was to learn more about ungulates (animals with hooves), and there is no better place in the world to do that than here at the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. Being a tiger keeper, most of my hoofed animal knowledge revolved around how to prepare meat to feed to the tigers…but I needed more.The animals that I get to care for are amazing. I’m learning about reindeer, Calamian deer, Sichuan takins, Japanese serow, Soemmering’s gazelles, red-flanked duikers, Cape blue duikers, hairy armadillos, lesser kudu, pronghorn, tufted deer, steenbok, and my favorite: the dik diks. They are amazing little African antelope weighing about six pounds (2.7 kilograms) and their name comes from the alarm call they make when they are startled. Visitors to the Zoo will be lucky enough to see our one-week old baby dik dik near the west end of the Skyfari aerial tram. He could be the cutest animal in history! Another animal that I look after and I’m really enjoying learning about is the Speke’s gazelle. These guys are another African antelope weighing around 40 pounds (18 kilograms), and they are super quick. But their most unique feature is their nose: they have folds of skin over their nostrils that inflate when they get excited. If I am working in their enclosure and they think I’m getting a bit close, they will stamp their hoof on the ground and their nose inflates like a small tennis ball! Visitors to the Zoo can see the Speke’s gazelle in our large mixed species exhibit just before you get to the polar bears. And you shouldn’t have to wait too long to see a Speke’s gazelle inflate its nose sack, because these guys don’t mind fighting out of their weight division, and you could see them trying to intimidate much larger animals like lesser kudus, and gerenuks, all with the help of an inflatable nose!
So, I hope the great people of San Diego get a chance to come into the Zoo soon, and if you see an Australian going walkabout, then come and say G’day.
Brent Clohesy is a keeper at the Melbourne Zoo. | <urn:uuid:2b6f8178-f9cf-48ce-ad94-466b1702b8ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.sandiegozoo.org/2008/12/12/an-aussie-in-san-diego/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959074 | 619 | 1.6875 | 2 |
GRAND RAPIDS – Police say two suspected bank robbers showed little creativity, at least in writing demand notes.
In separate holdups, robbers presented tellers a note that said: “This a robbery don't make it a killing.”
Robbers got away with about $8,000 from Huntington National Bank, at 1158 Wealthy St. SE on Jan. 10, and $1,520 from Fifth Third Bank, at 754 Franklin St. SE on Jan. 26.
Police arrested Albert Thomas, 51, shortly after the second holdup. A second suspect, David Lee Oliver, 56, who has twice been convicted in bank holdups, was arrested this week. An indictment, unsealed upon Oliver's arrest, said the two conspired to rob Fifth Third Bank, while Oliver robbed Huntington National Bank.
“David Lee Oliver prepared a note that stated, 'This a robbery don't make it a killing,'” the indictment said.
Grand Rapids police and the FBI were onto the suspects early on. After the Fifth Third holdup, a tracking dog led police to a house on Prince Street SE where police spotted a stocking cap, similar to the one worn by the robber, on the roof. The resident said the suspects had just borrowed her vehicle to drive to Oliver's house on Fuller Street.
Oliver consented to an interview. He said he was fixing a broken water pipe at the Prince Street residence when Thomas suddenly showed up. Oliver said Thomas changed his clothes and left gloves behind.
He told police that Thomas, the night before, had asked how Oliver robbed banks.
“Oliver advised he provided details of the robberies he committed, to include using demand notes and the wording of the demand notes,” FBI special agent Sean Burns wrote in a criminal complaint. When shown surveillance photos of the robbery, Oliver identified Thomas as the robber.
Friends and family of Thomas also identified him as the robber. One relative, who kicked Thomas out for using drugs, “stated he was positive the robber was Thomas, and he couldn't believe Thomas had done something so stupid,” Burns wrote.
Another witness said surveillance photos showed Oliver with Thomas during that robbery.
E-mail John Agar: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:bc43bff0-6b1a-4c6d-8e12-65fe09f6f956> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/04/grand_rapids_banks_robbed_with.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963622 | 468 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Used in messaging and speech to get the point across that you are actually saying the letters L.O.L. and not meaning "You make me laugh".
Saying aloud: "*Laughter* Too funny... you really make me eloel!"
Texing:"LOL! Too funny... you really make me eloel!"
another way of saying lol. Used by people who feel they have a need to be different than everyone else, and feel they are above the heads of those who use "lol"
the saddest part is really the fact that "eloel" should really be pronounce (ee-low-ell) and therefore is actually even more retarded than lol itself. A "new low" so to speak.
Blair: Hey max how's it going?
Max: Ur mom was good in bed last night.
Blair: ur mean, eloel. | <urn:uuid:51794d20-517e-42e2-a71b-8422d11f2dcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eloel&defid=5690753 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944591 | 187 | 1.65625 | 2 |
In a graphics engine I'm working on, I have 2 types of geometry:
1. indexed arrays modeled after opengl's vertex arrays/vbo options
2. an OO style where you can add faces/move vertices
Option 1 was very straightforward to implement, but it's not the easiest to use because you have to manipulate raw primitives. This isn't really a problem for geometry created in an 3d suite and it can render very quickly.
However, to make it easier to programmatically specify geometry I wanted to provide #2 in my engine, too. I'm stuck between 2 representations:
a. The geometry has a list of positions/normals/texcoords and each face can have indices into those lists
b. The geometry is a list of faces, which hold onto vectors for positions, normals and texcoords
I'm leaning towards style b but I wanted to get opinions, or be convinced that an OO representation of geometry is pointless | <urn:uuid:47a64b04-5c8e-4912-a374-45159a878d11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=20424.0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943943 | 202 | 1.65625 | 2 |
HARRY J. NICHOLAS. - A young man of tireless energy and of keen mental vigor, an active brain, Harry J. Nicholas has made good use of the mechanical talent and ability with which he was by nature endowed, and as manager for the Phelps Stone Company, one of the largest concerns of the kind in Kansas City, Missouri, is filling a position of much importance. A native of Nebraska, he was born April 25, 1883, in Madison county, being a son of Albert Buffum Nicholas, who married Emeline Frances Miller, the adopted daughter of a Mr. Douglas.
When he was a lad of seven years his parents moved from Nebraska to Missouri, and there Harry J. Nicholas received a public school education. As a young man he was variously employed, first becoming acquainted with the details of the stone business while working a year with the Eagle Contracting Company, of Kansas City, Missouri, who sold out to the Parker, Washington Paving Company, with which he was identified the following year. In March, 1905, Mr. Nicholas became bookkeeper for the Phelps Stone and Supply Company, and likewise cashier, and while thus employed displayed such rare ability and judgment that on March 1, 1908, he was promoted to his present high position as manager of the firm. Through his wise management of affairs Mr. Nicholas has largely increased the business for the company, having been instrumental in securing some very large contracts in the supplying of building material used by the Street Railway Company in the construction of viaducts, bridges and other concrete works. He has a good deal of constructive ability, and by the use of his mechanical talent succeeded in solving some of the problems connected with the rebuilding of the Phelps Stone and Supply Company's plant, (which he superintended) that the engineers employed in the work were unable to decipher.
Mr. Nicholas is known far and wide as a man of upright principles, fair and square in his dealings. He is unmarried, and is living with his parents at No. 2708 Bell street.
Home Page for Kansas
Search all of Blue Skyways
The KSGenWeb Project | <urn:uuid:0cb0d52e-3146-4aa8-ba3b-74f3e69501a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.skyways.org/genweb/archives/wyandott/history/1911/volume2/n/nicholhj.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984766 | 437 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Women and children likely to be sent to Nauru
More transfers to quickly follow … a Sri Lankan man boards the plane on Christmas Island taking the first group of asylum seekers to Nauru. Photo: Sharon Tisdale
THE federal government is not ruling out including women and children in the next transfer of asylum seekers to Nauru as it hailed the arrival yesterday of the first planeload of men as a sign to people smugglers the government is serious.
A private chartered jet carrying 30 single Sri Lankan men from Christmas Island landed in Nauru yesterday morning. The men will live in tents while permanent facilities are being built.
They are the first of the 1500 people the government wants to send there.
As the opposition predicted the government would fail to stop the boats that are arriving in record numbers and humanitarian organisations decried the lack of detail about how the people would be treated, the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, said more transfers would quickly follow.
The Herald reported this week that women and children, including unaccompanied minors, would be sent to the camps in Nauru and Manus Island, which will hold 600 people, because the minister did not want to issue blanket exemptions.
People smugglers have exploited exemptions by sending boatloads of children as ''anchors'' who are then able to bring over their families.
''You can expect to see a broad cross-section of people transferred to Nauru next week and in coming weeks,'' Mr Bowen said yesterday.
The asylum seekers would be afforded the legal and human rights protections as spelt out by the expert panel the government commissioned.
The opposition predicted the Pacific solution would fail because Labor was not prepared to also reintroduce temporary protection visas and to order the Navy to turn back boats. ''My fear is that this government's heart just isn't in it,'' the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said.
The expert panel set up to break the policy deadlock on people smuggling did not recommend the visas and it expressed misgivings about being able to turn back boats. It did say the Malaysia plan, in which 800 arrivals would be sent straight back to Malaysia, was a crucial part of the policy but it needed extra negotiated safeguards first.
The government is still pursuing the Malaysia plan but the Greens and the Coalition will not back the necessary legislation. Yesterday's transfer to Nauru and subsequent transfers will be publicised by the government in the source countries of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, as well as the transit countries of Indonesia and Malaysia.
Mr Bowen said people smugglers had been ''peddling lies and untruths'' in recent weeks that the Australian government was not serious about restarting offshore processing.
''This tells the lie to the people smugglers' message of the last few weeks,'' he said. Those sent to Nauru could stay there for as long as five years. | <urn:uuid:9d1ed313-d337-47bc-9574-188e17326ea0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/women-and-children-likely-to-be-sent-to-nauru-20120914-25xna.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965107 | 585 | 1.59375 | 2 |
President Barack Obama has called for a luxury tax on corporate jets as a means to generate revenue to fight federal deficits. The president's economic advisers ought to be fired for not telling him that doing so is unwise and counterproductive. They might have already told him so, only to have the president say, "Look, I know you're right, but I'm exploiting the public's envy of the rich!" Let's look at what happened when Obama's predecessor George H.W. Bush signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 and broke his "read my lips" vow not to agree to new taxes.
When Congress imposed a 10 percent luxury tax on yachts, private airplanes and expensive automobiles, Sen. Ted Kennedy and then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell crowed publicly about how the rich would finally be paying their fair share of taxes. What actually happened is laid out in a Heartland Institute blog post by Edmund Contoski titled "Economically illiterate Obama, re: Corporate Jets" (7/12/2011).
Within eight months after the change in the law took effect, Viking Yachts, the largest U.S. yacht manufacturer, laid off 1,140 of its 1,400 employees and closed one of its two manufacturing plants. Before it was all over, Viking Yachts was down to 68 employees. In the first year, one-third of U.S. yacht-building companies stopped production, and according to a report by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, the industry lost 7,600 jobs. When it was over, 25,000 workers had lost their jobs building yachts, and 75,000 more jobs were lost in companies that supplied yacht parts and material. Ocean Yachts trimmed its workforce from 350 to 50. Egg Harbor Yachts went from 200 employees to five and later filed for bankruptcy. The U.S., which had been a net exporter of yachts, became a net importer as U.S. companies closed. Jobs shifted to companies in Europe and the Bahamas. The U.S. Treasury collected zero revenue from the sales driven overseas.
Back then, Congress told us that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft and jewelry would raise $31 million in revenue a year. Instead, the tax destroyed 330 jobs in jewelry manufacturing and 1,470 in the aircraft industry, in addition to the thousands destroyed in the yacht industry. Those job losses cost the government a total of $24.2 million in unemployment benefits and lost income tax revenues. The net effect of the luxury tax was a loss of $7.6 million in fiscal 1991, which means Congress' projection was off by $38.6 million. The Joint Economic Committee concluded that the value of jobs lost in just the first six months of the luxury tax was $159.6 million.
Baucus & Hatch Grill IRS Commissioners Who Don't Know Anything: "That's A Lie By Omission" | Greg Hengler | <urn:uuid:ac63c8b1-be47-4665-ab1d-61cde2cb01d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/08/10/ignorance,_stupidity_or_connivance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975851 | 603 | 1.765625 | 2 |
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