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Park at Merryfield is a neighborhood park that is linear in nature, providing protection for the significant wetlands that comprise almost seven acres of the site. An important local access trail passes through the park, connecting the neighborhood to Inza Wood Middle School, Boones Ferry Primary School, and Graham Oaks Natural Area.
Park at Merryfield contributes to the identity of the surrounding neighborhood because it provides basic recreation amenities near residents, preserves wetlands, and includes an important segment of Wilsonville’s bike and pedestrian network.
The site contains play equipment that was purchased with State grant funds.
Location: 29778 SW Camelot Street
Size: 9.00 acres
Facilities: Children’s play area, interpretive signage regarding history and environment, pedestrian path (Connects through park).
Last updated: 6/15/2010 5:33:28 PM | <urn:uuid:65a42bd1-68e7-4020-82e0-0e86855320e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ci.wilsonville.or.us/Index.aspx?page=266 | 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 | 0.943192 | 174 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The third wave’s most renowned tradition is rapidly approaching: V-Day and The Vagina Monologues. The tradition of V-Day started February 14th, 1998 when an all-female group of accomplished entertainers came together to perform Eve Ensler’s award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues, in an effort to raise funds and awareness to end violence against women and girls. The play itself weaves together the pleasure and pain of womanhood and makes a powerful statement on what it means to be female in today’s world. Since the event in 1998, a V-Day movement has ensued which includes the Worldwide Campaign, the College Campaign, and the Youth Initiative.
The V-Day College Campaign offers an awesome opportunity for feminist activists at college. The program allows any on-campus organizer to present up to three benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues at their school on or around V-Day. The only major stipulations of the program is that you must charge admission, you must donate 10% of the proceeds to the V-Day Spotlight Campaign (the Spotlight for 2006 is the Global V-Day Campaign for Justice to Comfort Women), and you must donate the remainder of the proceeds to a local charity that works to end violence against women. In addition to raising awareness and money, the College Campaign also gives organizers the opportunity to honor up to three “vagina warriors” per performance. Eve Ensler has said that being a vagina warrior, “means developing the spiritual muscle to enter and survive the grief that violence brings and, in that dangerous space of stunned unknowing, inviting the deeper wisdom" (V-Mail #17, October 30, 2003). The Vagina Warrior Award is a beautiful way to let the people in your community who are working to end violence against women know that their efforts are making a difference and that we appreciate all that they do. It is something that hard-working feminists should see more often.
Participating in a production of The Vagina Monologues is one of the most empowering things a college woman could do. There is just something about assembling a cast of about twenty feminists and having them talk about vaginas for two months that lends itself to being an incredible and superbly moving experience. To find out whether or not your school already participates in the V-Day College Campaign, just visit the V-Day website (www.vday.org) and check out the Participating Schools page. If your school is not listed and you want to get a V-Day Campaign started on your campus, visit the Guidelines for Joining page and it will give you an overview of the program and a link to getting started.
Because the V-Day organization encourages participants in the College Campaign to attempt to raise $6,000, many schools turn V-Day into V-Week and organize a myriad of additional fundraising events. At the school I attend, Western Washington University, the biggest additional fundraising event that we do is called The Vagina Memoirs. Inspired by The Vagina Monologues, The Memoirs is a small cast of women who spend a period of time developing their own vagina monologues in writer’s workshops. The monologues are then assembled into a full-length performance much like The Monologues and presented in intimate venues. Following each performance, the audience is then invited to participate in a discussion that addresses the issues raised in the piece. Participating in the cast of The Memoirs is an exceptionally influential experience and some attendees find The Memoirs to be even more powerful than The Monologues because the pieces are so personal.
When I first started participating in the V-Day Campaign, our big fundraising social event was the Vagina Carnival. In addition to a stage featuring a mixture of live music and spoken word, the venue was filled with vagina themed carnival games such as “Pin the Clit on the Cooch” and a “Vagina Bean Bag Toss.” In more recent years, the event has become more simplified because we found that while the carnival was tons of fun for V-Day volunteers and cast members, attendance was stunted because the radical nature of the carnival games served to alienate the mainstream population. Because part of the V-Day mission is to raise awareness, feminist organizers on my campus have opted for a “Vagina Ball,” which is basically a dance party with live bands and tables set up around the venue with V-Day information and merchandise.
Merchandising is the very best way to raise additional funds for V-Day. After being exhilarated by a performance of The Vagina Monologues, audience members will be thrilled with the opportunity to take home a piece of the experience. Selling V-Day merchandise on-campus before the performances is also a great way to psyche up the campus community to get tickets for the show (ie. good publicity). The V-Day website has a store, and one option is to buy a bunch of official V-Day merchandise to sell. Another option (which is much more fun, if you ask me) is to assemble a merchandising team to come up with their own V-Day merchandise. Some great ideas are t-shirts and buttons (tried and true), vagina cookies, vagina chocolates, vagina soaps, and V-Day travel mugs. Due to the overwhelming popularity of The Vagina Memoirs on my campus, we have also started selling vagina journals as part of our V-Day merchandising. There’s a ton of stuff you could do, and there’s nothing like designing a slew of vagina merchandise to get a feminist in the V-Day spirit.
Not all V-Day events have to charge admission. At Western, V-Day organizers have coordinated a silent march that moved between places on campus where sexual assaults had occurred. Each site was marked off with red “Rape Free Zone” tape, a brief description of the incident, and red flowers. On the lighter side of things, Western has also had a few V-Days that featured a vagina empowerment workshop. The workshops have included a lecture on vaginal anatomy, group orgasms, improvisational theater orgasms, and a vagina valentine-making workshop.
Humboldt State University (www.humboldt.edu/~vday/events.html) in California has hosted a number of great V-Day events, including a poetry slam, an art show, a self-defense workshop, and a Clothesline Project workshop. The Clothesline Project (www.clotheslineproject.org) is a program that offers women who have been affected by violence a means to express their emotions by decorating a t-shirt. Humboldt State University has also offered V-Day lectures such as “Birth is a Feminist Issue” at which the California Association of Midwives presented a critique of violence against birthing women, and some solutions offered by midwifery care, and “International Perspectives on Women’s Issues” highlighting such issues as female genital mutilation in Africa and the United States’ efforts to liberate women in Afghanistan. Something to keep in mind is that when organizing more academic events such as lectures, a great way to boost attendance is to contact professors teaching related classes and invite their class to the event. Sometimes professors will even offer extra credit to students for attending such events, so this kind of PR can really pay off.
V-Day and The Vagina Monologues is a great time of year for feminist activists on college campuses because there is just so much feminist energy buzzing in the air. The biggest thing to be mindful of with this event is that it can be extremely time consuming in some cases. Some ardent feminists on my campus have found that they simply can’t work on the V-Day Campaign because of time constraints. The only thing I ask of people in this situation is that they attend a performance of The Vagina Monologues. Or that they buy some vagina merchandise or simply donate to the V-Day Campaign. The cause is insurmountably important to the feminist movement, and the V-Day Campaign has really reawakened the feminist movement on not just a national level, but on a global level as well. Because of this campaign there has been very tangible feminist change (see the V-Day website’s Victory page for examples of this change). The greatest advantage of the V-Day College Campaign is that it gives feminists the opportunity to really make and impact, and who would want to pass that up?
Happy V-Day everybody!
I want to hear about the feminist activism
happening on your campus -- shoot me an e-mail and we'll compile a rich
database of ideas for feminists to share.
Brooke N. Benjestorf is a senior at Fairhaven College, an interdisciplinary concentration design program at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. Her chosen concentration is Feminist Activism and it includes study in writing, film, women’s studies, and social change. When she is not being a feminist activist extraordinaire she loves to hang out with her girlfriends, make art, and take good care of her dog (her best friend), Paytah. | <urn:uuid:9c11a697-5870-40c2-9984-33eee51d0f6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.feminist.com/activism/collegeactivism106.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957541 | 1,922 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Day Lilies in Full Bloom!
The garden pops with color this time of year as the Day lily (Hemerocallis fulva) bursts open in all its glory. This hardy perennial will bloom late June thru early July. We have a lovely patch of day lilies near the pond. According to the book Flowers in the Kitchen by Susan Belsinger, all parts of the day lily are edible, although she suggests that the smaller buds (2 inches or less) are best for eating, while the petals can be used whole or finely shredded if desired. We like to pluck the buds and drop them into a jar of pickle juice, allow them to marinate for a week, and enjoy pickled day lily buds as a special treat. Of course, if you do this, you have greatly decreased the amount of beautiful blooming blossoms! What do you do with your day lily blossoms? We recently had an evening event in the tea room for the Cumberland Herb Society where we featured day lilies as the appetizer! Stuffed with savory cheese spread, garnished with fresh parsley, and several tasty crackers, they were served to oohs and aahs as the first course of an herbal tea party. Most of the guests nibbled their way thru blossoms, cheese spread and crackers. I did remove the stamens and pistol before stuffing with the cheese spread. They would also be pretty served on a luncheon plate, stuffed with tuna or chicken salad, perhaps hummus. Aren't they just cheery! If you were served this appetizer, would you eat the blossom? | <urn:uuid:e4454506-3ac8-49d3-bfaa-e495feef3fc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://therosemaryhouse.blogspot.com/2009/06/day-lilies-in-full-bloom.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972801 | 346 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Find Programs > Youth Council
The Youth Council is an active group for ages 12-17 that is driven by teens and supervised by recreation staff. Based out of community schools and centers, each Youth Council develops activities through the ideas given by the group, including:
- Sports and Games
- Community Projects
- Field Trips
Teens develop creative thinking skills, meet new friends and enhance leadership skills.
To get involved with a youth council call 229-6242. | <urn:uuid:8da2bd13-0bd2-418c-80be-cd02c383d5d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lasvegasnevada.gov/Find/21374.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942616 | 96 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Record turnout at Alzheimer's walk
Tim Miller feared the day his mother would forget how to do basic tasks, like eat or swallow.
For three years, Mr. Miller and his sister, Colleen Martinelli, cared for their mother, who had Alzheimer's disease.
"It was a devastating disease," Mr. Miller said. "I consider it a long goodbye."
Mary Miller died in 2009.
Mr. Miller and his sister were part of the largest crowd to ever participate in the local Walk to End Alzheimer's, held Saturday morning at Snö Mountain.
As of Friday night, more than 550 people were registered to walk and more than $64,000 was donated. Participants have until Nov. 15 to help the local Alzheimer's Association chapter meet its $108,000 goal.
Clayton Jacobs, vice president of programs and services for the Greater Pennsylvania chapter, called Alzheimer's an "isolating disease."
"We are one voice, and we're here today to end Alzheimer's disease," he said to the crowd gathered before the start of the walk. "We're here today to celebrate the lives we've lost."
Many people wiped tears from their eyes.
Participants carried different colors of flower pinwheels, with each color representing a person's role in the disease - from patient or caregiver to family member and supporter. Together, the flowers made a "promise garden."
As people began the walk through the parking lot at Snö Mountain and down Montage Mountain Road, the pinwheels started to spin.
"We've all followed our own paths to get here this morning," said Barbara Wilson, special events manager for the chapter. "Every step we take gets us closer."
Contact the writer: firstname.lastname@example.org, @hofiushallTT on Twitter | <urn:uuid:946a06c9-58eb-47ef-8ec7-fffe63eac693> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/record-turnout-at-alzheimer-s-walk-1.1384423 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97049 | 376 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Lots of media outlets have written about Jonah Lehrer’s ill-defined journalistic no-no’s. Poynter, for instance, has published eight posts (make it nine) since learning Tuesday that Lehrer has recycled old columns.
Edward Champion has published one post about Lehrer, but what a post it is: At 7,985 words, plus a Storify, “How Jonah Lehrer Recycled His Own Material for Imagine” is the Starr Report of the Lehrer affair.
Champion’s relationship with Lehrer goes back to this spring, when he got the author to participate in one of his Bat Segundo podcasts. I haven’t listened to it, but a partial transcript on Reluctant Habits, the culture site Champion owns and edits, includes this wonderful quote from Lehrer:
Shakespeare did not like inventing his own stories, of course. He made them his own. He reinvented them.
Champion has been down roads like this before. In 2010 he painstakingly chronicled how the magazine Cooks Source flagrantly took others’ material. He provided a similar service last year when Q.R. Markham’s publisher yanked one of his novels after he was accused of plagiarism.
“I’m fascinated by plagiarism,” Champion said when reached by phone. While he said he “can’t fathom” why anyone would steal work, he suspects Lehrer’s reuse of old material is the result of the popular author and speaker getting “caught in a massive need to produce.”
“Something had to give, and he found a workaround,” Champion said. He took exception to “the idea that someone would feel glee for this or schadenlehrer.”
Champion said he’s hardly unfamiliar with writers ginning up previously published work into book form. Christopher Hitchens, he noted, did an admirable job of that in “God Is Not Great.”
“But even Hitchens restated the material in his own indelible voice,” Champion said. “And that really is the issue.”
In his accounting of Lehrer’s generous reuse of his previously published material, Champion discovered that Lehrer had helped himself to Malcolm Gladwell’s work by reproducing a quote from screenwriting giant William Goldman. “I have found three other instances in ‘Imagine’ where there is a very close similarity to stuff Gladwell has published,” he said, information he said he’d publish soon.
Gladwell defended Lehrer in the comments section of Champion’s post:
If Lehrer is plagiarizing me, by quoting the same quote I quoted, then I am plagiarizing the person who used that quote before me, and that person is plagiarizing the person who quoted it before them, and so on and so forth, and we have a daisy chain of “plagiarizing” going back forty years and plagiarism, as a ethical concept, has ceased to mean anything at all.
But David Folkenflik noted that Lehrer and Gladwell have elided Goldman’s words in the exact same way.
Champion admitted to a little frustration that, so far, most discussion of Lehrer’s sins has centered on his salami-slicing and not the Goldman lift. “I wish people would say, if this isn’t plagiarism, it’s pretty close,” he said.
Champion fired up his Lehrer forensics on Tuesday after Jim Romenesko filed the first report of Lehrer’s duplicative ways. “First of all,” Champion said, “based off the existing plagiarists, you have to find out how the person is plagiarizing.”
Digging up Lehrer’s duplications was “fairly effortless,” he said: He looked for “anything that involved a study or a finding or a pithy summation” and Googled the passages. “I did a very selective search to ensure anything I found would be before the actual publication of the book in 2012.”
He tweeted his findings as they occurred and said he appreciated the crowd-sourcing that enabled. Thinking he’d find two or three examples, Champion said he was surprised to find nine before he hit the sack Tuesday night. So he woke up Wednesday and started whaling on Google again.
After he found the Gladwell lift, “that was the cue to stop,” he said. “My partner was saying, no, get away from this. You have to eat breakfast.” | <urn:uuid:d377b107-e91c-4ddf-81fa-c9d87d444810> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/178281/how-edward-champion-catalogued-jonah-lehrers-sins/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96931 | 1,007 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / email@example.com
Carnegie Mellon's Jacobo Bielak Elected
As Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers
Outstanding Research and Leadership Supports Scholarly Recognition
PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Jacobo Bielak has been named a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the highest distinction that organization awards. He will be inducted on Oct. 20 at the 2011 ASCE convention in Memphis, Tenn.
"This honor recognizes Jacobo's outstanding work in the areas of earthquake engineering, seismology and computational science and engineering. We are very fortunate to have him as a member of our faculty at Carnegie Mellon University," said James H. Garrett Jr., head of the top-ranked Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU.
Those elected to this highest grade of membership have attained acknowledged eminence in some branch of engineering or in its related arts and sciences. Out of the 120,000 members, only about 200 currently hold the distinction, according to the ASCE.
"I feel honored to receive this distinction," said Bielak, a university professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CMU. Bielak is recognized for his pioneering work in creating three-dimensional models that simulate how earthquakes impact buildings, bridges and other critical infrastructures; for demonstrating the use of high performance computing in civil engineering practice and for educating the next generation of engineers.
He is also the recipient of the Gordon Bell Prize and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S. and the Mexican Academy of Engineering and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. He joined CMU's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department in 1978. He completed his undergraduate degree from the National University of Mexico, and his master's degree in civil engineering from Rice University. He earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.
Pictured above is University Professor Jacobo Bielak. | <urn:uuid:05ce5f3e-cb2b-4b64-9ca6-856fa953313f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2011/July/july20_bielak.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961221 | 418 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Supporters for the city of Orlando allowing front-yard vegetable gardens protested outside of City Hall on Monday in hopes of keeping the city from imposing too many regulations in its new ordinance.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said at the council meeting on Monday that the concerns of the College Park couple, whose front-yard vegetable garden made headlines across the nation last year, will be taken into consideration as the city drafts a new proposed ordinance.
Code enforcement officers threatened to fine Jason and Jennifer Helvenson for their garden. City officials later decided the rules governing gardens was too vague and newer rules needed to be established.
"Our goal is to help them create a sustainable city, the greenest city in America," said Jason Helvenston. "We're here to support that. We don't want to go to court over it."
The Helvenstons tell Local 6 they're glad the city is willing to allow front yard gardens, but they're concerned officials might impose too many restrictions, possibly limiting the garden to a quarter of the front yard, requiring a fence and outlawing taller crops.
The couple said they believe edible plants should be treated no differently than decorative landscaping.
"If you tell us we can't grow something over four or five feet, we're going to tell you no other plant can grow over four or five feet," Helvenston said.
It's not clear how long it will take for the proposed garden ordinance to be drawn up or the restrictions it will include. Before commissioners vote on it, the public will have an opportunity to comment.
Watch Local 6 News and stay with ClickOrlando.com for more on this story. | <urn:uuid:b932c1e0-e492-4332-a924-cbcc68f3fab7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Front-yard-vegetable-garden-supporters-protest-at-Orlando-City-Hall/-/1637132/19078292/-/9d6xkz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962841 | 338 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Tag: "tarantulas" at biology news
Ground spider diversity studied in research project
...rest. She remembers being intrigued by insects and tarantulas
when she was young. "My parents wondered why I lik... allowed her to keep her collection as long as the tarantulas
and spiders didn't get out into the house, she said. As an undergraduate, Henderson took her paren...
Tarantulas produce silk from their feet
Researchers have found for the first time that tarantulas
can produce silk from their feet as well as their ...m of scientists who made the discovery using zebra tarantulas
from Costa Rica. The team found that the tarantulas
secrete silk from spigots on their legs, allowin... | <urn:uuid:c42231e9-4006-4c72-8ff4-c423384404ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/tag-2/tarantulas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979652 | 157 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Ladies, networking is not just for men in top level, white collar, Corporate America. Even the bold and the beautiful, working mom can make connections, strengthen her community and build her network. There are several ways in which working mothers can develop their professional skills at the office or in the convenience of their homes.
Listed below are practical suggestions in which Power Moms can also be Power Networkers!
Stay in the Loop
Whether you have a full time, part time job or work from home, it is important to stay connected. Being a mother is definitely a full time job but there are ways in which mother can stay current on industry news and trends. Subscribe to a focus or industry magazine or publication. This is a low cost and practical way of staying in touch with development trends in your profession. Take the time to write to the editor or publisher of the magazine with specific questions which relate to your career. Also, improve your communication skills and expertise by submitting articles to the publication. You may have the opportunity to be featured in a monthly or quarterly issue.
Stay on the Scene
Although there are many demands for raising a family, it is necessary to network with your colleagues. Keep up your membership to clubs and organizations. Take time to schedule a few events for meeting new people and growing your network. It is very vital to be effective in your networking objectives. The commitment and extra time that you invest into your endeavors will definitely pay off and be a huge benefit. As you continue to network, find ways to take on leadership roles within your group or organization. This will definitely bring awareness to your personal and business goals and objectives. | <urn:uuid:ad1cae8e-672d-4469-b9db-b0aff88afa00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://network.ezinemark.com/networking-for-working-moms-4efdd20c97d.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963987 | 333 | 1.609375 | 2 |
A local historic house will be featured on a show for the DIY Network.
The cast of the the “Bronson Pinchot Project” touched down in LaGrange Sunday night to begin a week-long project of dismantling the Fannin-Truitt-Handley house, located at 2159 Whitesville Road.
The house was built for Revolutionary War hero James Fannin in 1835 by well-known architect Cullen Rodgers, and some of it’s components will be used to restore homes across country.
The house will be featured on “Bronson Pinchot Saves America,” a spin-off of the “The Bronson Pinchot Project,” which airs on the the DIY Network.
On the show, the star Bronson Pinchot, known best for his role in the TV series “Perfect Strangers,” travels throughout the country with his sidekick Mikey looking for historic artifacts and pieces from homes that they can be saved from being destroyed.
“Part of it is to show Mikey who is from small town in Northern Pennsylvania more of America,” said Pinchot. “Another major part is to save what we can of parts of historic buildings, I like pre Civil War buildings. Like buildings that have run out of options and can’t be saved.”
A few things the crew will be saving are two matching doorways with fan lights on top, the underside of the original front porch paint, flattened columns and pediments above the columns.
The front columns on the house have been sold to a buyer in Texas.
“The house has got a lot of beautiful and savable things on it,” said Pinchot. “We can put the parts on houses to restore a house that may have those damaged parts and these houses can live on on other houses.”
Owner of the house Jeb Crawford, said he came in possession of the house due to a trade with the landowner who wanted it taken off the property. He has been dismantling the property house for over a year.
“This is the oldest house I’ve ever worked on,” said Crawford. “It’s pre Civil War and has plenty of family and local history.
He said a local resident referred some people she knew to make some lumber purchases, and those connections ultimately led to Pinchot’s show.
Pinchot said the “Bronson Pinchot Saves America” is expected to air on the DIY Network in about two months. | <urn:uuid:7b92a99c-9c51-49ed-aaa7-24ecb0d7261f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lagrangenews.com/pages/home/push?class=prev_page&rel=prev&x_page=6&per_page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956541 | 540 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Stumped by mysterious illnesses in at least 600 dogs in the U.S., federal health officials have turned to consumers for help investigating problems possibly tied to chicken jerky pet treats made in China.
A log of complaints collected from pet owners and veterinarians contains references to at least three popular brands of jerky treats that may be associated with kidney failure and other serious ailments, according to internal Food and Drug Administration documents obtained by msnbc.com.
Of 22 “Priority 1” cases listed by the FDA late last year, 13 cited Waggin’ Train or Canyon Creek Ranch jerky treats or tenders, both produced by Nestle Purina PetCare Co., the records show.
Another three listed Milo’s Kitchen Home-style Dog Treats, produced by the Del Monte Corp. The rest listed single brands or no brand.
Priority 1 cases are those in which the animal is aged 11 or younger and medical records that document illness are available, an FDA spokeswoman said. In many cases, samples of the suspect treats also are collected.
The report, obtained through a public records request, is the first agency indication of any brands linked to illnesses that have climbed since the FDA warned pet owners about jerky treats in November. That was the FDA’s third caution about the pet products since 2007.
Nestle Purina and Del Monte officials said their treats are safe and FDA regulators said repeated tests have shown no absolute tie to any brand or manufacturer.
“No specific products have been recalled because a definitive cause has not been determined,” FDA officials said in a statement.
he internal report, overseen by the FDA’s Coordinated Outbreak and Response Evaluation, or CORE, group, is one of several ongoing assignments in which FDA regulators are seeking jerky treat samples and medical records of dogs that may have developed kidney failure, liver disease or Fanconi syndrome, which can lead to serious illness and death.
The recent complaints were filed from October through December by people in cities from California to New York, but the agency will continue to accept them.
“We still invite owners and veterinarians to submit complaints and samples,” said Siobhan DeLancey, an FDA spokeswoman. “The more information we have, the more likely we can find a link.”
The move comes as the FDA is under growing pressure from consumers and lawmakers to address rising numbers of illnesses blamed on the China-made treats. Before the warning was issued in November, the agency had logged 70 reports of illnesses tied to the treats last year. Since then, more than 530 additional complaints of illnesses and some deaths have been filed, officials said.
Consumers who say their dogs were sickened or killed have launched at least three petitions demanding recalls of jerky pet treats made in China, including one begun in December that has more than 3,400 signatures from the U.S. and around the world.
“At the slightest doubt, these products should have been recalled, especially knowing there was a link or at the very least a caution/warning label put on the packaging warning the consumers,” said Robin Pierre, a co-founder of “Animal Parents Against Pet Treats Made in China.”
Pierre, 49, of Pine Bush, N.Y., believes Waggin’ Train chicken jerky treats were responsible for the sudden death last fall of her previously health 2-year-old pug, Bella, who developed kidney failure.
“The last week of her life was nothing but misery and pain, separated from her family, she died all alone, in a cage, despite the fact that she had a family who loved her,” Pierre wrote in an email to msnbc.com. “She meant the world to me and my family.”
More than 375 people have signed a petition launched last week by Susan Rhodes, 51, of Port St. Lucie, Fla. She believes her 14-year-old dog, Ginger, may have developed life-threatening kidney failure after eating chicken jerky treats. She was stunned to hear that consumer complaints alone can’t force the FDA — or a company – to recall potentially tainted products.
“That is just unreal. I am not happy with that,” Rhodes said.
For their part, FDA officials said the companies are free to enact a voluntary recall at any time.
Lawmakers call for action
Lawmakers, however, are demanding stronger FDA action. Ohio Democrats Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Dennis Kucinich in February called on the FDA to step up investigation of tainted pet treats.
In a response sent late last week, an FDA official told Brown the agency “continues to actively investigate” the reports and to pursue testing for chemical and microbiological contaminants.
On Monday, Brown called the agency’s response “inadequate” and urged prompt release of results of 153 pending tests on the Chinese-made treats.
“I will continue to press the FDA on this issue because Ohio consumers shouldn’t have to worry about the safety of their pet’s food,” he said in a statement.
Since 2007, FDA scientists have analyzed jerky treats for evidence of dangerous toxins, including heavy metals, melamine, melamine analogs and diethylene glycol, chemicals used in plastics and resins.
So far, they’ve found nothing convincing, a point emphasized by Keith Schopp, director of communications for Nestle Purina. He noted that FDA officials also suggest that illnesses may be a result of causes other than eating jerky treats.
“Our chicken jerky treats are safe to feed as directed,” said Schopp. “The safety of our products – and the pets who consume them – are our top priorities.”
The company has a comprehensive food safety program in place, he said, including at manufacturing plants in China.
Pierre, who lost her dog, has little faith in pet food manufacturers – or in the FDA.
“Actions speak louder than words and there has been no action from them up until now,” Pierre said. “Waggin’ Train has hid behind the technicality that the FDA cannot find the link and the FDA has let them.”
Consumers can report illnesses to the FDA’s pet food complaint site. | <urn:uuid:44a7d770-0659-43a0-a284-3599e5513881> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sheltienation.com/tag/chicken-jerky/ | 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 | 0.965701 | 1,326 | 1.804688 | 2 |
FirstGov.gov the U.S. Government's Official Web Portal Wins Prestigious Innovations in American Government Award
GSA # 10014
May 8, 2003
Contact: Eleni Martin (202) 501-1231
Washington, DC - The U.S. General Services Administration Office of Citizen Services and Communications (OCSC) is proud to announce that [www.FirstGov.gov], the U.S. Government's official web portal, is the winner of the prestigious Innovations in American Government Award. FirstGov was one of nearly 1,000 applicants for the 16th annual Innovations in American Government Awards and the only federal applicant in the final running.
"This award is recognition that President Bush is making government more responsive and accountable to the citizen," said M. J. Jameson, Associate Administrator for the Office of Citizen Services and Communications, where the portal is housed within the U.S. General Services Administration. "By offering citizens easy access to federal and state government information and resources, FirstGov.gov is narrowing the distance between citizens and their government."
According to a recent Hart-Teeter poll, 86 percent of E-Government users want one Web site or easy links to other Web sites with answers to their questions about government services. The poll found clear support for a portal that puts information about services in one place.
FirstGov.gov is the "Front Door" to official government information and the Bush Administration's E-Government initiatives, which connect citizens with government. FirstGov.gov helps citizens find and do business with government online, on the phone, by mail, or in person. The site connects visitors to a wealth of information, services and transactions from over 180 million pages of on-line government resources from federal, state, and local governments. In addition, FirstGov.gov also provides links to other customer channels the public can choose from, including phone, fax, e-mail and snail mail.
The Innovations in American Government Award is funded by the Ford Foundation and administered by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government.
The FirstGov.gov Web site is managed by GSA OCSC. OCSC provides citizens with access to information in a variety of ways--the Web, e-mail, telephone, fax, or print. FirstGov.gov is the official Web portal to the U.S. government. OCSC also leads USA Services, an E-Government initiative that seeks to make the Government more citizen-centric.
GSA is a centralized federal procurement and property management agency created by Congress to improve government efficiency and help federal agencies better serve the public. It acquires, on behalf of federal agencies, office space, equipment, telecommunications, information technology, supplies, and services. GSA, comprised of 14,000 associates, provides services and solutions for the office operations of over 1 million federal workers located in 8,300 government-owned and leased buildings in 1,600 U.S. communities. | <urn:uuid:7e0cf531-b3ce-4f83-9f1b-acdb8bf24d46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gsa.gov/portal/content/100098 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931161 | 617 | 1.601563 | 2 |
We are all dwellers in two kingdoms, the inner kingdom, the kingdom of the mind and spirit, and the outer kingdom, that of the body and the physical universe about us. In the former, the kingdom of the unseen, lie the silent, subtle forces that are continually determining, and with exact precision, the conditions of the latter.To strike the right balance in life is one of the supreme essentials of all successful living. We must work, for we must have bread. We require other things than bread. They are not only valuable, comfortable, but necessary. It is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize that life consists of more than these. They spell mere existence, not abundance, fullness of life.
the great spiritual verities, the fundamental humanities of national life, that make for the real life and welfare of its people, and that give also its true and just relations with other nations and their people, is both dangerous and in the end suicidal--it can end in nothing but loss and eventual disaster. A silent revolution of thought is taking place in the minds of the people of all nations at this time, and will continue for some years to come. A stock-taking period in which tremendous revaluations are under way, is on. It is becoming clear-cut and decisive.
SOUL, MIND, BODY--THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND THAT INTERRELATES THEM
There is a notable twofold characteristic of this our age--we might almost say: of this our generation. It is on the one hand a tremendously far-reaching interest in the deeper spiritual realities of life, in the things of the mind and the Spirit. On the other hand, there is a materialism that is apparent to all, likewise far-reaching. We are witnessing the | <urn:uuid:19d76732-c7fe-4140-a17e-a0c64ca89e8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://manybooks.net/titles/triner2816328163-8.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953326 | 373 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Astronaut Joe Allen '59 is Next Distinguished Alumni Lecturer
May 3, 2012
Joseph P. Allen IV, a 1959 graduate of DePauw University who has flown on two space shuttle flights and is a member of the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, will return to his alma mater on Thursday, May 10, to offer "Reflections from the Edge of Earth." Dr. Allen's speech is part of DePauw's 175th Anniversary Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series. The program will begin at 8 p.m. in Meharry Hall of historic East College and is free and open to the public.
A webcast of the event may be viewed via this link.
Born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1937, Allen earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and physics from DePauw and a master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from Yale University. He was a nuclear physics research associate at the University of Washington when NASA selected him as one of eleven scientist-astronauts in 1967. After serving in several administrative positions with NASA, including four years at headquarters, he returned in 1981 to Johnson Space Center where he helped support the first space shuttle flight.
After four test flights, Columbia was ready for operational duty, blasting off in 1982 with Allen and three crewmates to deliver the first satellites to orbit for paying customers. Nine hours after liftoff, Allen and William Lenoir conducted a countdown and sent a Satellite Business Systems communications satellite spinning out of the cargo bay. They repeated the feat the next day with a Canadian satellite. Allen and Lenoir were to have made the first shuttle space walk, but technical problems with the space suits canceled this plan.
History’s first space salvage mission began when Allen and four other astronauts blazed into orbit aboard Discovery in 1984. Their main goal was to retrieve two communications satellites, Westar 6 and Palapa B2, which had been stranded in useless orbits after deployment from an earlier shuttle. Early in flight, the crew released a pair of satellites and then set out to round up their first target, Palapa. Once they caught up with it, Allen and Dale Gardner, wearing space suits, glided outside, with Allen moving untethered over to Palapa, propelled by a Buck Rogers-like jet pack. He latched onto it and moved it into position to be grabbed by the ship’s robot arm. For 90 minutes, one circuit of the globe, Allen held aloft the 1,200-pound satellite while work was done on it before it was manually lowered into the cargo bay. Allen and Gardner used similar procedures two days later to retrieve and stow Westar. Back on earth, the two satellites were repaired for return to orbit.
Joe Allen left NASA in 1985. He served as chief executive officer of Space Industries International, Washington, D.C., and later was chairman of Veridian Corp., until he retired in 2004. Allen was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on April 30, 2005. A wrestler at DePauw, he is a life trustee of the University, a member of the University's Athletic Hall of Fame, and received the Old Gold Goblet from DePauw in 1985.
Dr. Allen's father, Joseph Percival "Perk" Allen III '30, was a member of DePauw's economics faculty from 1957 until his retirement in 1975.
Dr. Allen will be introduced by his classmate and retired Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Robert Godwin '59. Following his remarks, Allen will take part in a conversation moderated by Howard Brooks, Paul B. Kissinger Professor of Physics and Astronomy at DePauw. A reception for Joe Allen will be held immediately following the event at Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
Learn more about Joe Allen in this previous story.
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. '57 delivered the inaugural remarks in February for DePauw University’s 175th Anniversary Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series: A Yearlong DePauw Discourse. The programs will continue through the University's 175th anniversary celebration, which began January 10 and goes through June 2013.
Kyle Smitley '07, owner and founder of barley & birch, spoke on March 7, and international development consultant Judith A. Edstrom ’70 and Mary Leonard Ramshaw ’70, deputy managing editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, addressed an April 11 event.
Learn more about the 175th anniversary celebration by clicking here.Back | <urn:uuid:a96aaf26-d271-4b6d-96ef-91960a4ac19c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/category/80/details/28527/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955822 | 944 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Last year Vietnam as the world's top exporter with a 37 per cent market share, exported 198,000 tonnes of cashew, up 11.8 per cent from a year earlier.
Nguyen Thai Hoc, chairman of Vietnam Cashew Association, an industry association said the area under cashew was expected to remain at 350,000 hactares until 2015, but would fall to 330,000 by 2020.
But by then average productivity was expected to double from the current one tonne per hectare.
The Association expects cashew exports rise to US$1.5 billion in 2020 from $1.13 billion last year.
The industry would focus on raising the ratio of fully processed kernels to satisfy high customer requirements and add more value. The industry was planning to modernize technology, improve quality and hygiene standards.
It would provide training to 1.5 -2 million workers in cashew growing and processing.
Hoc said there were shortfalls of workers for the industry now.
Dinh Thi My Loan, general secretary of the Vietnam Retailers Association, said the cashew industry depended too much on exports, shipping more than 95 per cent of output.
"Cashew consumption in the domestic market accounted a very modest rate of 1.8-2.2 per cent.
In India, the world's largest cashew producer, as much as 40-60 per cent of cashew is sold in the domestic market."
Loan attributed the low demand at home to the high prices, poor marketing, and lack of diversified products.
Nguyen Phi Long, director of Nam Long Co Ltd, said because of its high price cashew was considered a "high-end" nut, and so many people did not eat it despite its high nutritional value. (From AsiaPulse/VNA)
All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:0c4875db-115a-4d68-bb5c-ae4223a9337c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/indochina/fullstory.php?nid=1470106211 | 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 | 0.962291 | 380 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Features - Legal Technology Predictions for 1999: What To Expect On The InternetBy Jerry Lawson, Published on January 4, 1999
Jerry Lawson is the author of The Complete Internet Handbook for Lawyers, due from the American Bar Association in January 1999. He is also the designer of the Internet Tools for Attorneys Web site. He compiled the Annotated Bibliography of Internet Legal Research Books for LLRX and writes "LLRX is one of the classiest Internet sites around, and I am always pleased to have something I wrote published there."
Dennis Kennedy, Lawyers Weekly USA columnist and publisher of his own excellent legal technology newsletter, invited a number of people to polish off their crystal balls and make some law office technology predictions for 1999. His query prompted me to start thinking about the effects the Internet will have on the practice of law. Here is what I saw in the tea leaves:
- A few lawyers will (mistakenly) urge their firms to their drop Westlaw/Lexis accounts in favor of the Internet.
Sometimes when a pendulum swings, it goes too far.
Just a few years ago, most lawyers were not willing to trust the Internet at all for research. Now some lawyers have begun to pressure law librarians to drop expensive commercial services and rely only on the Internet. This makes no more sense than the earlier reluctance to use the Internet at all. The Internet is not "better" than Westlaw and Lexis. It is DIFFERENT.
An Internet connection will open up new research avenues (particularly for factual research) and it may let you reduce your Westlaw/Lexis expenses, but the Internet is not yet close to being a complete replacement for the commercial services.
- Virtual communities will come to be seen as a mainstream business use.
1998 was a "breakthrough" year for electronic commerce. Sales from web sites became a significant factor in the marketplace for the first time. A critical mass of people finally realized that there were benefits to electronic commerce, and began using it. While online sales were still a fraction of the overall sales total in 1998, electronic commerce transitioned from "exotic" to "mainstream."
I believe that this year, in a similar fashion, the value of online communities will become apparent to more than the relatively small number of legal and other professionals who have caught on so far. Online communities will come to be seen as an important business use of the Internet, instead of just something for "webheads" and teenagers on AOL.
Most lawyers who use the World Wide Web conceive of it as static web sites. These certainly have value, but there are unique benefits to be gained from interactive sites. A few organizations, like ATLA and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, have such sites, and we will see more static web sites transformed into online communities over the next year. More law firms will use intranets and extranets for internal communications and client service.
As this shift in understanding from what can be done via the Internet (static sites vs. virtual communities) occurs, it will have a much more important impact than electronic commerce on the way we practice law.
- Knowing how to use encryption will become a new marketing tool for lawyers.
Sophisticated clients will not be lulled into a false sense of security by bar association opinions that say using e-mail does not automatically waive the attorney/client privilege. Knowledgeable clients realize that confidential information can be used to damage someone in ways that make attorney/client privilege rules irrelevant.
Further, e-mail snooping is attractive to those inclined to illicit activity: new software makes it much more cost efficient than voice wiretapping. It is also immeasurably safer. E-mail snoops are seldom even detected, let alone caught and prosecuted.
Attorneys who also understand the risks will give their clients the option for secure communications by encryption. Such attorneys will be more attractive to clients who like to use the Internet, especially those whose cases regularly involve large amounts of money.
Here are some of the writers about the future of the Internet that I have found most useful: | <urn:uuid:21b7295f-be1e-4cee-8980-36b7cae8ff88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.llrx.com/features/predict.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949523 | 843 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Ratings agency Fitch offered a ray of light for the eurozone on Tuesday as German Chancellor Angela Merkel met IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Greece’s struggle to cut its debt, amid tentative signs of progress.
While the agency said Italy was the most worrying of the embattled eurozone countries and could see its credit rating cut this month, it also said France’s top “AAA” rating was safe for this year barring any significant economic shocks.
Speculation has raged for months that France, the second-largest economy in the eurozone, could lose its gold standard rating, plunging the bloc further into turmoil.
Continuing a flurry of diplomatic activity to find a solution to the crisis, Merkel hosted Lagarde in Berlin, a day ahead of a planned meeting with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.
A statement for the Washington-based IMF confirmed Lagarde held talks with other German officials, including German Federal Minister of Economics and Technology and Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler and Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schaeuble.
“We do not expect to provide any specific readouts from these meetings, or offer further comments,” the spokesperson said.
Lagarde made no comments to reporters on the sidelines of the talks and no public statements were scheduled.
Following her tete-a-tete with Merkel, Lagarde was expected to travel to her native France for talks yesterday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Meanwhile, in Greece, the subject of most of the talks, progress appeared to be forthcoming on a deal with private creditors to accept losses that would help wipe 100 billion euros (US$128 billion) off its debt mountain of 350 billion euros.
Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos told his ministers that an agreement with banks could be reached by early next week, Greek news reports said.
“We are about to finalize shortly the negotiations on private sector involvement” in reducing Greece’s debt, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro Olli Rehn said at an economic seminar at the European Parliament.
International auditors are due back in Greece next week to take stock of the country’s economy after Papademos warned of an “uncontrolled default” in March without further aid.
Having already received most of a 110 billion euro rescue package from the EU and IMF in 2010, Greece reached a preliminary accord for a second 130 billion euro bailout with the eurozone in October last year.
However, this rescue package depends on private investors accepting a major writedown on the value of their holdings of Greek debt.
Merkel said on Monday that Athens must also ensure the “rapid implementation” of reform measures, warning that “otherwise it will not be possible to pay the next [aid] tranche to Greece.”
Nevertheless, Monti warned on yesterday of possible “anti-European” protests in his country if Rome’s reform efforts were not recognized, ahead of a key meeting with Merkel.
Speaking in German daily Die Welt, Monti complained: “The problem is that despite our sacrifices, we have not got anything in return from the European Union, such as a drop in interest rates.”
“Unfortunately, we have to say that our reform policies have not received the recognition and appreciation in Europe that they deserve,” the prime minister added. “If the Italian people do not soon see tangible success for their savings and reform efforts, there will be a protest against Europe, against Germany — seen as the driver of EU intolerance — and against the ECB [European Central Bank].” | <urn:uuid:fa98bcc4-00ee-4842-a3ba-740ba44a5a75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2012/01/12/2003523003 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959908 | 744 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The pro-life cause is not just something Monsignor Michael Mannion believes in.
“It’s part of the air you breathe,” says the priest whose “day job” is director of community relations for the Diocese of Camden but whose credentials show him to be “one of the old men of the pro-life movement.”
The path Monsignor Mannion’s life has taken no doubt surprises some of those who knew him as a child, when he spent two years in first grade and was “always in trouble.” But even through his formative years in public school – after a tumultuous first year in Catholic school in his native New Jersey – he says he “tried to stay connected to the rituals and the practices of the church that had deep meaning.”
In college in Wisconsin, he not only played trombone in the dance band but also worked with handicapped kids. His discernment process confirmed “a feeling that this was what God was calling me to do.” When he was sent to study in Rome, he met Mother Teresa and began a 27-year relationship with her that would help shape his life.
“Everything around her shouted life,” he recalls, “even if you were immersed into a world of life surrounded by physical death.”
As a seminarian at Pontifical Gregorian University and Angelicum University, both in Rome, he took time off to join Mother Teresa in Calcutta, even though she told him not to. Thousands of refugees from the Bangladesh war for independence were flooding across India’s borders, and Monsignor Mannion found himself working among them, digging latrines and assisting at surgeries taking place on picnic tables. He also worked with lepers, cleaning their wounds and giving them the shots of sodium gluconate that help arrest the disease.
Monsignor Mannion also spent time in Africa, working with villagers in Uganda. Many of them later were slaughtered by the dictator Idi Amin.
Ordained in St. Peter’s Basilica in December 1971, the new priest came back to the states for his first assignment, at St. Ann’s Church in Westville, N.J. Almost immediately, he got involved with Birthright and the National Pro-Life Center. Leading retreats for high school and college students gave him a platform to spread the pro-life message to an estimated 30,000 kids in a few decades. He started doing post-abortion healing talks, which brought him into contact with Dr. Theresa Burke and inspired her to start Rachel’s Vineyard, a worldwide ministry for healing after abortion. He had also met Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, a number of times over the years.
For seven years, Monsignor Mannion served as rector of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Camden. “I didn’t go out to play so much” during those busy years, he says with a laugh. He did maintain his extensive community involvement in Camden, and that involvement continues today. He is the chaplain for the New Jersey State Police, as well as the Camden County Police and Fire Marshals. He serves on the advisory board of the Rand Institute at Rutgers University and the public policy board of the University of Medicine and Dentistry’s School of Medicine.
In the last few years he has increased his involvement with Priests for Life and is now officially a Pastoral Consultant to the ministry.
Monsignor Mannion, who has written several books on abortion, including “Abortion & Healing: A Cry to be Whole,” lives in Pennsauken, N.J., where he was born.
“In my own life’s journey,” he says, “God uses every experience of the past to contribute to the ministry of the present, and the future.” | <urn:uuid:8d97d77c-c197-428f-aad2-24d61c137f62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.priestsforlife.org/library/document-print.aspx?ID=3738 | 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 | 0.982924 | 830 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Contact: Terrill Bouricius, analyst - firstname.lastname@example.org - (802) 864-8382
Paul Fidalgo, communications director - email@example.com - (301) 270-4616
Proving the value of transparency and redundancy in ballot-counting, an independent rescanning of ballots cast in the May 5, 2009 elections in Aspen (CO) showed that the voting machines used for the initial vote count entirely missed 11 (0.4%) out of the 2,544 ballots cast. The ballots were initially counted with Pitkin County's Premier (formerly Diebold) AccuVote optical scan voting machines, one of the most widely used optical scanning systems in the country. The error was discovered when TrueBallot, Inc., employed under contract with the city of Aspen to re-tally the elections at a central location, rescanned all ballots using a commercial off-the-shelf scanner and discovered the erroneously disregarded 11 ballots.
FairVote recommends that measures be taken to ensure that the errors of the Premier machines are not repeated. "We have seen that when elections are tabulated using non-proprietary, commercially available systems and equipment, the results have proven to be more verifiable than with closed, proprietary systems," said FairVote senior analyst Terrill Bouricius, author of a report on the findings (see below). The report also notes that when the Humboldt County (CA) Election Transparency Project conducted a re-scan of AccuVote ballots using commercial scanners in 2008, 197 dropped ballots were discovered. "It is troubling to know that errors by machines made by one of the largest providers of voting equipment in the United States could go undetected because there is typically no transparent mechanism used to recheck the results. We need to build redundancy into our election tallies."
Bouricius's report includes specific policy recommendations for the city of Aspen as well as broader lessons learned, applicable to elections across the U.S., regarding the recording of individual ballot records, manual audits and public release of raw data from elections to allow independent tallying of the results. Notably, the election in question included Aspen's first use of instant runoff voting, a ranked voting system, which did not in any way contribute to any of the errors discovered, but did lead the city to do the central scanning that uncovered the error.
The following is the report in its entirety (or view online).
* * * *
By Terrill Bouricius, FairVote Senior Analyst
On May 5th 2009, Aspen (CO) held municipal elections for mayor, two city council seats and a ballot measure. Pitkin County's Premier (formerly Diebold) AccuVote optical scan voting machines failed to register 11 (0.4%) of 2,544 ballots, which was discovered due to the ballots also being counted on Election Day at a central location with a separate system. Premier is one of the three largest providers of voting equipment in the United States.
Aspen had more voters at its polls than ever before in its history. It was the first election with the city's system of instant runoff voting for electing the mayor and a variation of instant runoff voting (IRV) for city council. In both ranked voting methods, voters were allowed to rank candidates in order of choice. First choices were counted at the polls with Premier's AccuVote system provided by the county, then the full paper ballots were counted at a central location where there was an independent re-scanning of the ballots. This re-scanning uncovered errors in the results reported by the AccuVote machines, and most alarming, revealed the fact that 11 ballots were entirely missed by the AccuVote machines. The ballots were re-scanned using a commercial off-the-shelf scanner as part of an independent system TrueBallot, Inc., employed under its contract with the city to tally the instant runoff voting elections.
The TrueBallot system did not simply record votes and keep running totals for each candidate, but rather captured an actual graphic image of each individual ballot. This redundant record of each individual ballot allowed for a higher level of accuracy in determining voter intent, with apparent over-vote or under-vote ballots being able to be projected onto a screen allowing election judges to rule on voter intent. There is currently a legal battle in Aspen about whether these graphic images are public records that should be made available to the public. FairVote believes the public interest is best served by full election transparency and that the images should be made public.
To underscore the importance of the missing 11 ballots, it is not uncommon for manual recounts of optical scan elections to find new valid votes that were discounted by the optical scan voting machine, either because the machine detected a stray pen mark as an over-vote (voting for more candidates than allowed), or because a voter marked a choice too lightly or outside the designated spot on the ballot, such that the machine detected an under-vote, or skipped race. Such "found" votes are common in manual recounts where humans can recognize a voter's intent that the optical scan machine could not. In the recent Aspen election, the independent scanning of ballots did indeed allow election officials to find at least one such valid vote missed by the AccuVote voting machines.
However, this problem is unrelated to the discovery that nearly a half percent of ballots - 11 ballot cards in all - went entirely unrecorded by the AccuVote machines. According to Aspen City Clerk Kathryn Koch, both the poll book record of the number of voters who voted and the TrueBallot record of ballots processed agree that there were 2,544 ballots. The AccuVote machines, however only recorded 2,533 ballots. These numbers can be calculated from the first round mayoral vote counts from the AccuVote and TrueBallot data on the city web site. We have put them into the following chart.
|Mayoral candidates||AccuVote||TrueBallot||Missed Ballots|
|Residuals (e.g. skipped race)||17||16||-1|
According to city clerk Koch and the data from TrueBallot, Inc., the AccuVote voting machine errors came from two different AccuVote voting machine units, designated #4 and #5B. The errors were unrelated to the city's use of instant runoff voting. The voting machines were running in their customary plurality election mode, necessitating the independent re-scanning of ballots to record voters' alternate rankings, which uncovered the AccuVote errors. This means that the same sort of error could have occurred in previous elections in Pitkin County for elections for president, Congress and state offices and could occur again, unless the source of the errors is identified and fixed.
The only other known independent re-scanning of ballots cast using Premier AccuVote machines occurred in Humboldt County, California in conjunction with three recent elections. The independent scanning was done by the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project (http://humtp.com/page3.html) authorized by Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich. It is troubling to note that in November 2008 the re-scan uncovered a serious error. The independent re-scan discovered 197 ballots that went unreported by the version of the Premier GEMS ballot upload program in use, and were thus missing from the certified election results.
Fortunately for Aspen, the official results of the election were the TrueBallot results, not the Premier results that were missing 11 ballots. The post-election manual audit of a random selection of 10% of the ballots confirmed that the TrueBallot system accurately recorded the votes. (http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20090508/NEWS/905089992)
Recommendations for Aspen:
Aspen immediately should undertake a detailed investigation to identify the source of the errors. This investigation may include interviewing poll workers associated with machines #4 and #5B to learn if there were any unusual events or lapses of proper procedures. For example, are they certain all of the ballots actually went through the tabulators? Could some poll workers have put some kicked-back ballots (that were wrinkled, or mis-marked) directly into the "emergency" side slot of the ballot box (that exists in case of power failures, etc.) and thus did not pass through the tabulator? If this possible error was combined with a second error when the ballots were removed after the close of polls, such that nobody noticed these 11 ballots were in the special compartment of the ballot box for un-scanned ballots, this could explain the error.
If the scenario above is ruled out, it is recommended that representatives from Premier and the testing laboratory that passed this AccuVote model be asked to explain how such an error could occur. Machines #4 and #5B should be secured and computer forensic experts should be employed by the Colorado Secretary of State to attempt to identify the source of the errors.
As to the matter of public release of the ballot images, we believe the city of Aspen should release these records, just as it has previously released all of the ballot data derived from the images. This was the practice in Humboldt County (Humboldt County election ballots can be found online at http://earc.berkeley.edu/hosting.php). The remote risk that voters might in the future be solicited to sell their votes and make identifying marks on their ballots is not relevant to the already completed election and unconvincing as to future elections, as making any identifying mark on a ballot is already illegal under existing state law (1-13-712: disclosing or identifying vote). If there is still concern, as with other states, Colorado statutes should probably be amended to clearly state that ballots with identifying marks are defective and invalid.
Broader Policy Recommendations:
Since both U.S. elections that have been tallied or audited in a transparent manner by scanning with commercial off-the-shelf scanners have proven to be more accurate than results reported by proprietary voting equipment, the fundamental assumption that vote tabulations should be conducted by non-transparent proprietary means should be questioned. The value for election integrity of having redundant records of each individual ballot (both paper and machine) rather than merely running totals from proprietary voting machines is evident. Colorado should require that voting machines purchased after 2010 record individual ballot records showing each voter's choices, rather than merely keeping running totals and establish manual audits of a statistically appropriate random sample of all ballots.
* * * *
Established in 1992, FairVote is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that educates and enlivens discourse on how best to achieve a democracy that respects every voice and every vote. We pursue innovative research, strategic outreach and civic education in order to promote fair access to political participation, fair elections with transparent election administration and meaningful choices, and fair representation grounded in majority rule and proportional representation for all. For more information, contact communications director Paul Fidalgo at firstname.lastname@example.org or (301) 270-4616. | <urn:uuid:36db48ed-e250-4aaf-9f74-37d53d1af3ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=27&pressmode=showspecific&showarticle=258 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959582 | 2,281 | 1.5625 | 2 |
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A White House official apologized Monday after he OK'd a large aircraft to fly low over Manhattan -- a sight that sent people reminded of 9/11 running in fear.
Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty.
"I was here on 9/11," said iReporter Tom Kruk, who saw the plane as he was getting coffee Monday morning and snapped a photo. Kruk called the sight of the aircraft low in the sky "unsettling."
The huge aircraft, which functions as Air Force One when the president is aboard, was taking part in a classified, government-sanctioned photo shoot, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," said Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption." Watch people run in fear as plane flies overhead »
Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty before flying up the Hudson River. It was accompanied by two F-16s.
Two officials told CNN the White House Military Office was trying to update its file photos of Air Force One. The officials said the president was angry when he learned Monday afternoon about the flight, which sparked fear in the New York-New Jersey area.
"The president was furious about it," one of the officials said. The incident outraged many New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg. iReport.com: Share your photos, video and reaction to low-flying 747
"First thing is, I'm annoyed -- furious is a better word -- that I wasn't told," he said, calling the aviation administration's decision to withhold details about the flight "ridiculous" and "poor judgment."
"Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center defies the imagination," he said. "Had we known, I would have asked them not to." Watch the White House respond to questions about the scare »
Linda Garcia-Rose, a social worker who counsels post-traumatic stress disorder patients in an office just three blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, called the flight an "absolute travesty."
"There was no warning. It looked like the plane was about to come into us," she said. "I'm a therapist, and I actually had a panic attack."
Garcia-Rose, who works with nearly two dozen post-traumatic stress disorder patients ages 15 to 47, said she was inundated with phone calls from patients Monday morning.
"They're traumatized. They're asking 'How could this happen?' They're nervous. Their anxiety levels are high," she said.
Garcia-Rose is considering filing a class-action suit against the government for sanctioning the plane's unannounced flight. "I believe the government has done something really wrong," she said.
Capt. Anna Carpenter of Andrews Air Force Base said local law enforcement agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration had been given notice of the exercise.
New York Police Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said the department had been alerted to the flight by the federal agency "with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it."
Sen. Chuck Schumer echoed the mayor's sentiments in a separate news conference Monday afternoon, saying the Federal Aviation Administration should have notified the public to avoid panic.
"It is absolutely outrageous and appalling to think that the FAA would plan such a photo shoot and not warn the public, knowing full well New Yorkers still have the vivid memory of 9/11 sketched in their minds," the New York Democrat said. Schumer said the FAA's decision to not announce the fly-by "really borders on being either cruel or very very stupid."
Building evacuations took place across the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey.
|Most Viewed||Most Emailed| | <urn:uuid:7980a433-4204-4786-85f5-a02b144ac672> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/04/27/low.flying.plane/index.html?iref=mpstoryview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971924 | 840 | 1.742188 | 2 |
2012-2013 Museum & School Collaborative Grant Opportunity
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
By Julie Saylor
2012-2013 Museum & School Collaborative Grant Opportunity to Integrate Indian Education for All
The Office of Public Instruction will provide support for collaborative efforts between a local museum and school district to address a two-fold purpose: exploring ways to become co-educators in topics of Montana American Indian culture and history in a museum setting and the public school classroom, and improving the presentation of American Indian history, artifacts and related documents in museum collections. The OPI will award up to six grants for amounts of $7,000 - 10,000, with priority given to communities which have not participated in a prior IEFA museum – school grant. The first step is to define the potential collaboration, second step - complete the Letter of Intent form by April 15, and the third step is to develop and submit a complete grant proposal by June 22. Upon approval, grant funding begins July 1, 2012 - June 15, 2013.
Questions? Contact Justine Jam 444-7490 firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:9fecb0a6-a2e3-4dd4-b960-243a6b16f2d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opi.mt.gov/Programs/IndianEd/Update_Listings/NewsStories/archive/2012-03-14_101703.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933832 | 224 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Does process get in the way of doing business? Do the head honchos in the boardroom rely too much on the analysts, to the point that real estate deals never materialize? Why are the people with the maps getting so much attention with their “pretty pictures”? Author Jim Stone of Chain Store Advisors explains that there can be a happy medium if …
You hear the complaints all the time.
“The field people only react to the deals that the brokers present to them. They don’t take the market planners seriously when we target certain trade areas.”
“The analysts (aka “geeks” or “deal killers”) think they know everything because they have mapping and statistics programs. They have no idea how the real world works.”
“I can’t open enough stores because the paperwork takes forever. It’s easier to get a Ph.D. than get a deal through our approval process.”
Is this just the way it has to be? Dealmakers versus analysts? People who drive sales and people who prevent sales? Entrepreneurs versus bureaucrats?
NO, it doesn’t have to be this way. But it sure isn’t easy to avoid these problems. It all comes down to finding the right blend of structure and freedom that allows companies to manage their business while getting the most out of their talented and creative people.
The complaints above, and many more like them, are symptoms of an imbalance between structure and freedom in an organization. Each represents a different way for a real estate group to fail: either by opening underperforming stores that could have been avoided (too much freedom for dealmakers) or NOT opening enough stores to grow the business (too much freedom for analysts and bureaucrats).
I have gotten to know dozens of chain store organizations over the past 20 years and I’m sorry to say that there are few that seem to have gotten it right (especially over a long period of time). Most companies tend to follow a pattern that is based on the general economy: when times are good, the dealmakers get more freedom and when times are bad, the bureaucrats get more freedom.
There are a few industry leading companies that seem to strike a good balance during good times AND bad times. In good times, they boldly pay top dollar for only the best locations that will perform well even in bad times. In bad times, they use their strong cash position to grab “B” locations at prices that generate great profits in bad times and do even better when the economy recovers. How do they do it?
There are at least three common elements that I have observed in these companies:
- Defined business processes for market selection, market planning and site selection
- Ongoing training programs with active learner participation that create alignment from the boardroom to the field
- Information systems that provide fast, accurate decision support to all participants in the process, tailored to their roles and skill sets
Let’s take a closer look at these three traits.
- Defined business processes simply means taking the time to think through the way decisions will be made and writing it down. The first draft may be rough, incomplete and in need of a lot of revisions in the early going. If the authors are empowered by senior management to solicit input from all participants, and they actually get that input, it is much more likely to be useful and used. I have seen cases where the authors of such documents become “process bullies” and aggravate everyone, creating a painful, cumbersome waste of time that is sometimes worse than no defined process at all!
- Training programs are the grease that makes the processes work. Real estate markets are complex and there is a lot of terminology that people use to describe similar, but not identical, phenomena. Every organization is a melting pot of people from different backgrounds and companies and the training programs provide a common platform for building and sharing a company’s standardized ways of thinking and talking about important factors and analytical methods. This is one area where the balance between structure and freedom is particularly important: standard terms and methods should always be viewed as a common denominator and all participants should be encouraged to correct and improve them as better ideas find their way into the mix. The key to effective training programs is that they must be well-designed, have significant learner participation, and be ongoing, using a combination of delivery methods including classroom, online, on demand (Web-based), and on-the-job.
- Information systems that support chain store real estate decisions have come a long way in the last 10 years. Once the domain of computer programmers and spreadsheet jocks, it is now possible to deploy affordable, powerful systems to all participants in the process, from executives to dealmakers. Web-based and mobile applications based on a single enterprise database can deliver maps, demographic reports, aerial imagery and analytics that are tailored to the role and skills of the user. However, this is the LAST step in the process. Many companies rush out and buy a technology platform before they have even defined their business processes and designed their training programs. This is putting the cart before the horse and will ALWAYS lead to pain and remorse, and can sometimes be career-threatening. On the other hand, it is very difficult to take advantage of best practices (or at least “good practices”) without these tools. Just remember that if you try to automate business processes that haven’t been defined, you will end up with (guess what?) automated chaos.
I would love to get some comments from people who have seen both good and bad examples of efforts to optimize structure and freedom in chain store real estate planning and site selection! | <urn:uuid:3fcf5476-b83c-4df1-a39f-58d3fcae098a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.directionsmag.com/articles/freedom-through-structure-optimizing-chain-store-real-estate-processes/295298 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958484 | 1,177 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Nick Halstead has shared tip number six in his "Programming Tips" series. This one focuses on keeping things simple.
Next up on my programming tips series we have another guest post. This one is written by Georgi Momchilov. "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler" ( quote from Einstein ).
Georgi suggests thinking of your application like a living organism or a house - don't expect any one part of it to take more than its share of load. Keep components simple and to the point of doing they job. It makes for much easier code to maintain and to expand on later. | <urn:uuid:994f617e-a662-4c55-bad4-4bf30e295cb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/9187 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969424 | 127 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Dunwoody College of Technology’s robots Rugburn and Billet will compete for the top prize at the North America Robotics National Competition May 2-3, 2009, at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. Dunwoody’s robots will engage in what organizers call a “destructive testing process” against 38 robots created by teams of middle school, high school or college students from across the United States.
The competition will be held from 12:30 to 6 p.m. Saturday, May 2, and from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, May 3, in the Best Buy Rotunda of the Mall of America. The general public is welcome to stop by and watch the competition.
Rugburn (pictured) earned the title 2008-2009 Midwest Robotics League Champion after overcoming Uppercut’s 9 point lead at the Midwest Robotics League (MRL) Championship held April 12. The MRL season runs from October to April and consists of one competition per month. The Rugburn team is composed of Dunwoody College students Kris Branstetter, Mike Rhode, Casey Combs, Steve Lunseth, Josh Bartlett and Ben Kirchner with advisor Al Jaedike. Dunwoody’s other robot, Billet, came in fourth overall at the league competition. The Billet team includes students Tom Wagar, Mark Walstron, Jake Hawthorne, Josh Hervey and Andrew Karst.
The Midwest Robotics League was formed by the MPMA (Minnesota Precision Manufacturing Association) to give students a chance to put their technology skills to use building robots that compete against other students’ robots. The league is for educational programs from middle school through college. The robots, which must be 15 pounds or less, are designed, built and fight each other in a destructive testing process. Trouble shooting is a key to advancement in the competition. Students need to identify failed parts and fix them for the next round.
The national competition is sponsored by the National Tooling and Machining Association. | <urn:uuid:856737a3-3abe-49c8-abb1-db27f5671dd9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dunwoody.edu/blog/tag/andrew-karst/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95299 | 425 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Every time I give a talk on the luxury business today and I get to the subject of counterfeiting, the same thing happens. The room grows absolutely silent as I put forth the facts: It is estimated that up to 7 percent of our annual world trade — $600 billion worth — is counterfeit or pirated; that fakes are believed to be directly responsible for the loss of more than 750,000 American jobs; that everything from baby formula to medicine is counterfeited, with tragic results; that counterfeiters and the crime syndicates they work with deal in human trafficking, child labor and gang warfare; and that counterfeiting is used to launder money, and the money has been linked to truly sinister deeds such as terrorism.
No one utters a word, not a sound, as I recall the raid I went on with Chinese police in a tenement in Guangzhou and what we discovered when we walked in: two dozen sad, tired, dirty children, ages 8 to 14, making fake Dunhill, Versace and Hugo Boss handbags on old, rusty sewing machines. It was like something out of Dickens, “Oliver Twist” in the 21st century.
Then I read the following passage from my book, “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster.” “ ‘I remember walking into an assembly plant in Thailand a couple of years ago and seeing six or seven little children, all under 10 years old, sitting on the floor assembling counterfeit leather handbags,’ an investigator told me … ‘The owners had broken the children’s legs and tied the lower leg to the thigh so the bones wouldn’t mend. [They] did it because the children said they wanted to go outside and play.’ ”
The audience gasps. From time to time, I see tears too. And afterward, I always hear the same response: “I had no idea.” Always. Most consumers believe that buying fake goods is harmless, that it’s a victimless crime. But it’s not. It’s not at all.
In the five years that I have been writing about this issue, I have seen two things happen: The illegal enterprise is getting stronger and more professional, and the consumer is slowly but surely becoming more aware.
Cracking down on counterfeiters
In the past year, there have been some victories in the battle. Among the most prominent was Louis Vuitton’s win against eBay in court in Paris this past June. (Counterfeiters have long used the Internet, particularly eBay, to sell their phony goods.) According to LVMH, the luxury-goods group that includes Vuitton, Givenchy and Celine, 90 percent of the Vuitton and Dior items offered on eBay in the first half of 2006 were counterfeits. That’s right: Nine out of 10 were fake. Most consumers have no idea. How would you know? (See “How to Spot a Fake” below.)
The French court agreed and ordered eBay to pay 38.7 million euros (approximately $63 million) in damages to Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior Couture and other LVMH companies, calling eBay’s behavior “culpable negligence.” EBay, a California-based company, is appealing the ruling. The luxury industry, especially brands such as Tiffany & Co., which has a similar case against eBay on appeal, is watching the case closely.
Law and order
The battle against phony goods smuggled into the United States is getting more intensive. Inspector Brian O’Neill, who has overseen the Trademark Infringement Unit of the New York Police Department’s Organized Crime Investigation Division since 2002, has more resources and manpower than ever.
“We have patrol precincts and field intelligence units assisting us in this kind of work, and my trademark unit coordinates the efforts to make sure we are all working together,” O’Neill says. The joint effort is proving effective. “There are certainly more search warrants and a large number of arrests in the past five years.”
Last May, a patrol unit saw suspicious activity in a warehouse in Brooklyn and reported it to O’Neill’s unit. The result was the biggest seizure ever in New York City: 19 tractor trailers filled with counterfeit clothing and footwear with an approximate street value of $10 million. “The warehouse was a distribution center where merchandise was brought from shipping containers and then distributed,” O’Neill explains.
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In September 2007, authorities had another major success when they confiscated close to 160,000 pairs of fake Nike sneakers with an estimated street value of $7.1 million from various locations in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island after an extensive two-year undercover operation. Yue F. Huang and his wife, He Bin Huang-Wang, were arrested, and each faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of trademark counterfeiting.
New laws stand to make things even tougher for those selling fakes. In October, President Bush signed the PRO-IP Act, which establishes increased penalties for counterfeiters and strengthens those for sellers of fake goods that cause physical harm or death (such as bogus medicines and auto parts or cell-phone batteries that explode). It also grants up to $25 million annually for the next five years to state and local law enforcement to help develop anti-counterfeiting programs. An intellectual-property coordinator will be appointed to oversee efforts from the White House.
In the same month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials announced that they had experienced a 50 percent increase in seizures of counterfeit and pirated goods at the Los Angeles–Long Beach seaport complex in the preceding year. Altogether, CBI officials intercepted 357 shipments of fake goods worth $71.4 million at the seaport. Among the articles seized were Christmas lights that could catch fire, food items that may have contained harmful ingredients, and handbags and shoes.
“No one should think of piracy and counterfeiting as minor crimes,” said Robert Sachet, special agent in charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office of investigations in Los Angeles. “In today’s world, [they] pose a serious threat to public safety and the economy.”
The battle continues
Though laws and enforcement are getting more effective, criminals are getting wilier. Investigators see an increase in “finishing” in the U.S. — the practice of legally shipping in generic items, then having workers, many of them illegal immigrants, stamp, embroider or attach the logo or other identifying details.
“Anything that can be brought in blank is being brought in blank,” says Heather McDonald, a partner in the intellectual-property group at the law firm of Baker Hostler in New York. “They can attach a Pride tag or interlocking GAG on demand. And they are very indiscriminate. It doesn’t matter if the design is from the brand or not. They put the logo on whatever they think will sell.”
Another new strategy is dealing on wheels. Some counterfeit wholesalers no longer keep goods in stockrooms, but in vans parked a few blocks away. They lead buyers to the vans to shop there. Sometimes vendors will have customers stand on a street corner and wait for the vehicle to drive up. If law enforcement arrives, they speed off.
“The harder everyone works to stop the sale of counterfeit goods, the more inventive counterfeiters have to get,” says McDonald. “But no matter what we do, as long as there is a demand, there is always going to be a supply.”
© 2013 MSNBC Interactive. Reprints | <urn:uuid:7e2f54fb-fdc6-4621-a464-364cb1e529c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.today.com/id/28571321/ns/today-today_fashion_and_beauty/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953971 | 1,719 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Approaching a Conflict between an Employee and Yourself
Confronting someone you supervise because the two of you are in conflict isn't fun, yet it’s a necessary part of being a manager. When you’re meeting about a conflict that you’re directly involved in, and that meeting is with one of your subordinates, you need to adapt your approach. Here’s how:
Keep in mind that, even though the person you’re addressing is below you on the organizational chart and you may not want to give her concerns credence, the two of you are in this conflict together. Only you, as a duo, can choose to resolve the conflict in a positive way — a way that reflects well in the eyes of other team members and upper management. It takes two to tango and two to untangle; you need each other.
Put yourself in your employee’s shoes and think about how you’d want your boss to approach you about your communication style or your integrity. Especially if you were in conflict with your boss and had your own opinions about her ability to treat others well or her attitude toward staff. You’d probably want to speak in private, in a neutral place, with enough time to allow each of you an opportunity to share your concerns and desires about these touchy subjects. You’d probably also want her to have done a little contemplating before she even asked you for a meeting. You’d want her to consider the situation from your point of view, and figure out exactly what she wants so she doesn’t um and er her way through the discussion. Then you’d want her to be prepared to propose solutions that meet both your needs, not just hers.
Set a goal for the discussion that allows the employee to get back on track and motivated to reach team goals. Keep her focused on what’s going well and what needs to be improved. Then be open to hearing what she has to say. If her ideas don’t lead to the outcomes you want, you can always be more direct later in the conversation, but initially see if she has any ideas about resolving whatever problems the two of you are having. Let her be a part of the solution so she has more buy-in and follows through with whatever pledges you make to each other.
Think about your part in the trouble. Being at odds with a subordinate is frustrating. Oftentimes, putting the entire responsibility for the problem on the employee is easier than taking personal responsibility — especially if you’re genuinely unaware of the negative impact that particular words or actions may have on him.
Being open to addressing your own behavior helps you create a management style that brings out the best in your employee, instead of resorting to playing the power card and insisting that she do everything your way because you said so. Don’t, however, own up to anything if you don’t know what you’re supposed to own up to. | <urn:uuid:7fd8f479-aca4-4b31-8f2d-0bece457ed89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/approaching-a-conflict-between-an-employee-and-you.navId-380730.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972711 | 617 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Vodafone arrived in India in September 2007, with the aim of capturing a share of the fast growing Indian market. Vodafone has operations in over 25 countries across 5 continents with nearly 40 network partners and around 200 million customers worldwide. In India, Vodafone Essar has a presence in 16 circles covering 86% India's customer mobile base and has a customer base of 49.1 million.
Vodafone provides both prepaid and postpaid GSM cellular phone coverage throughout India. Based on GSM technology Vodafone provides voice and data services in 16 out of the country's 23 cellular circles.
Vodafone has received numerous awards including "Most Respected Telecom Company", "Best Mobile Service in the Country" and "The Most Effective And Most Creative Advertiser Of The Year". | <urn:uuid:ef497934-df2b-40c5-ad14-f704dc617874> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yourbillbuddy.com/top-up-rate-cutter-discount-value-pack-details/vodafone | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93218 | 168 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Eurozone unemployment stood at a record high in June as firms were forced to cut jobs to reduce expenditure amid slowing demand ensuing from the sharp economic slowdown.
Despite economic weakness, inflation in the currency bloc remained above the European Central Bank's target in July. The rising unemployment and high inflation continued to squeeze consumer spending.
The jobless rate for June was 11.2 percent, unchanged from May, Eurostat reported Tuesday. The figure matched economists' expectations. The initially estimated rate for May was 11.1 percent.
There were 17.8 million unemployed in the euro area. Compared with May, the number of persons unemployed increased by 123,000. From the previous year, it increased by 2.024 million.
The jobless rate was stable in the EU27 also, at 10.4 percent. The lowest unemployment rates were registered in Austria, the Netherlands and Germany, while Spain and Greece topped the list.
According to today's flash estimate, Eurozone inflation held steady at 2.4 percent, above the central bank's target of "below, but close to 2 percent." The final data is due on August 16.
The still high rate of inflation need not prevent the ECB from taking further action to try to pull the region out of recession this week or after, said Jennifer McKeown at Capital Economics.
A deepening recession and growing spare capacity will pull down core inflation, raising hopes of the headline rate falling below 2 percent, the economist added.
Although inflation stays above the threshold limit, the ECB resorted to a rate reduction in early July. The main refinancing rate was reduced by 25 basis points to 0.75 percent. This first rate cut to below 1 percent was taken to support the euro area economy that is reeling under severe distress.
The International Monetary Fund expects the crisis-plagued Eurozone to shrink 0.3 percent this year. The 2013 growth forecast for the currency-bloc was cut to 0.7 percent from 0.9 percent.
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:89084c42-6bb2-4a86-8683-136c2cecc9da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rttnews.com/1935329/eurozone-jobless-rate-highest-on-record.aspx?type=ts&SimRec=2&Node= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957163 | 423 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Presenting “Estimating the Net Social Benefits of the NFIP” at the Benefit-Cost Society Conference in Februrary
The abstract is below. Conference information is available here.
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created by Congress in 1968 to provide insurance and prevention against flood risk and to shift some rebuilding costs off the federal budget. The program, administered by FEMA, includes a flood mitigation grants component available to communities and a financial insurance component available to individuals and businesses. The program is self-supporting, while indebted to the federal government, and has been criticized for its environment and economic impacts. Multi-state flood events since 2000, such as Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012) have stressed the NFIP’s finances forcing some to question the benefits and costs of the program.
Estimating the net social benefits through benefit-cost analysis requires an in-depth analysis of the insurance and grant components of the NFIP. This presentation will outline the development of a sufficient statistics for measuring the impacts of the NFIP’s insurance component. This sufficient statistic takes into account the premiums, claims payments, and potential losses for a policyholder and measures their impacts on society. This statistic is calculated using aggregate financial information provided by the program.
Combining the results of the insurance component sufficient statistic with estimates of the net social impacts of flood mitigation grants available from other sources, it is possible to obtain a first-order estimate of the net social benefits of the entire NFIP at the national level, both retrospectively and prospectively. In addition, it is possible to estimate the net social benefits of the NFIP at the state level and, through distributional weighting, obtain a second-order state level estimate of the distributionally weighted net social benefits of the NFIP. The framework can also provide higher-order estimates using disaggregated data sources.
I put a lot of stuff into Mercurial including research, letters, and miscellaneous documents as they are being developed. When a new project shares some common element (such as, for instance, page formatting) with an older project, I’ll fork from the older project into the new one leaving them with a common history, even if they have no other logical or other connection between the two. | <urn:uuid:0c412ff4-a119-4803-99cf-35845f082114> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://researchlog.jameshoward.us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932598 | 468 | 1.640625 | 2 |
MYAKKA CITY - The crowd cheers as the white Lipizzan stallion rears up on it's hind legs with Gabriella Herrmann coaxing a majestic move from one of the horses she trained.
"The Herrmann family has been doing this for generations, it's been passed down," says Herrmann.
Herrmann says one of the famous horses was given to her family 300 years ago. Since the 1960's about 30 of the horses have made their winter home in Florida, dazzling fans with their training shows. During the summer they travel through the north east preforming shows....
To wrap up its Festival of Chocolate, MOSI hoped to break two world records by creating the largest cup of hot cocoa and hosting the world's largest practical science lesson.
Most participants were in shorts and white T-shirts (maybe not the best color choice) as they gathered around a giant cup filled with 880 gallons of hot chocolate. On this mild Monday afternoon at the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, the group, 300 strong, had also joined in a practical science lesson earlier in the day....
If you like big trucks that crush cars and even school buses, the Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa might be just the ticket.
The latest Grave Digger, the world's best known monster truck, is there along with Son-uva-Digger and a 13-passenger truck that fans can get a ride in by stopping into Advance Auto Parts and picking up a ticket.
Dennis Anderson's latest Grave Digger design is based on a 1950 Chevy panel van. "It has a 540 cubic inch motor that puts out 1500 horse power. It will fly 40 feet in the air and keep going," said Anderson....
10/19/12 Human Interest
Some came in pink sandals, with pink hats and pink hair. About 300 people attended the Hernando County YMCA "Pink for a purpose" health fair Friday in Spring Hill. Many wore pink shirts in support of National Brest Cancer Awareness Month, which the center tied its event to this year.
One of the highlights of the fair was a dance workout.
"We just created a really fun and upbeat positive dance routine to kind of get people in good spirits," said Karin Mizell, a dance coordinator for the YMCA. "The dancing was great," said Sandy Bissone, of Spring Hill, who came wearing a pink wig, pink hat and pink sandals.... | <urn:uuid:62a6f274-c4a2-4da4-907e-54afdae42976> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tampabay.com/writers/maurice-rivenbark | 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 | 0.958869 | 514 | 1.546875 | 2 |
How to Cope with File Server Permissions Hell
What do you do when your Samba users are seeing "permission denied" more often than they see their files? For starters, go back to the drawing board ... literally. Next, get back to the basics with Unix and Linux file permissions.
Running a Samba server or NAS appliance consolidates file storage beautifully for centralized backup and management, but one thing has never been easy: file permissions. In this article, we examine why this is often so difficult, and offer some tips on how to ease the pain.
Your new Samba server is humming along nicely, until one day Susan saves a file in the HR Staff directory that Bob wishes to edit. Bob gets a "permission denied" message. This is the most common issue, but the problems only get worse when the security structure requires a complex hierarchical-but-with-a-few-exceptions layout.
Your shared folder structure, or share layout, is extremely important. It is seriously confusing for users when things change, or when bits and pieces are scattered all over between shares due to security requirements. Firstly, we recommend diagramming the directory structure, getting input from as many users as possible. This is easier said than done, since most shares generally move around but never change name. Still, if you have the luxury to completely change everything, do it right the first time.
Initially, you will create groups for user accounts roughly corresponding to the shares created. Say everyone in HR needs access to the HR share, or everyone in sales needs access to the sales share. It's easy at this point, assuming that everything stored in these shares is really for the whole group.
Most importantly, to deal with the Bob and Susan dilemma above, ensure the "create mask = 2775" (or similar) option is set on every share. Setting 2775 means: the setgid bit is set (2) which makes newly created directories have the same group ownership as the parent; owners and group members of the files have full access to them (77); and that everyone else can enter the directories and view the file names (5), which may or may not be desirable. (Need to brush up on Linux and Unix permissions? Get back to the basics with Unix permissions.)
It is easy to give everyone in a group access to a directory, but to allow one new person access to just part of that, is troublesome. The very last thing you want to do is to move the affected directory out of the share. Sure, you can create a new group containing the old one plus the new person for access to the new share, but then people have to remember where this special case lives. It goes something like this: "oh the payroll files all live in the Finance share, but Marvin needed access to the July folder, so that moved out. Go find it in the other share..." As you can see, this quickly gets insane if those types of things are allowed to happen. IT should be able to find a workable solution, enabling the business side to function as smoothly a possible.
One way to allow piecemeal access to specific files or directories, is with extended ACLs. You can specify, for example, that Marvin gets access to a particular file, in addition to the normal user/group combination that exists on it. See the getfacl and setfacl manual pages for information on how to configure extended access control lists. | <urn:uuid:342bcaed-4d48-44b7-97ee-0a0e66229fd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/linux_unix/article.php/3838296/How-to-Cope-with-File-Server-Permissions-Hell.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931486 | 705 | 1.8125 | 2 |
.- The diocesan phase has concluded for the sainthood cause of Rebeca Rocamora, a Spanish catechist who died in 1996 at the age of 20 after a long illness and was known for her tireless service to others.
The announcement was made on Pentecost Sunday by Bishop Rafael Palmero of Orihuela-Alicante at the parish of St. Peter the Apostle in Granja de Rocamora, where Rebeca was baptized in 1975. Her family and many of her friends were in attendance.
The dossier on her life of virtue and reputation of holiness will be sent to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. Rebeca Rocamora's cause for canonization was opened in 2009.
The Diocese of Orihuela-Alicante said Rebeca’s life “was always linked to the Church. Despite suffering from a severe illness at the age of 10, she did not lose her faith and even became a catechist. Her story has left a mark on her family, friends and neighbors.”
Bishop Palmero opened her cause on March 14, 2009, “so that her example would serve as an inspiration to young people and to catechists.”
Rebeca was born into a devout Catholic family on Sept. 7, 1975, in Granja de Rocamora. Blond haired and blue-eyed, she stood out for her smile, innocence and vitality.
In 1985 she contracted a grave illness, which she accepted with courage and strength, becoming an example of joy, humility, simplicity and charity for others.
According to the diocese, “Later on, a new and unforeseen illness befell her, and her soul matured quickly. She encouraged everyone and accepted her plight. Many testimonies bear witness to the human and Christian virtues she lived intimately on a daily basis in a hidden but extraordinary way and which point to a heart filled with great and profound faith.
During her final days, her response to those who insisted she pray for good health was: 'The Lord already knows that if it is of benefit to me, he will grant it. I pray that he will increase my faith.'”
Rebeca died at the age of 20 on Pentecost Sunday, May 26, 1996, leaving behind a testimony of a life full of youth and service to God. More information on Rebeca can be found at: | <urn:uuid:a65a58a1-ea74-4a8f-89f1-f441c8462e5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/sainthood-cause-for-young-spanish-catechist-moves-forward/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979867 | 505 | 1.5625 | 2 |
RoboCop is Happening. Good or Bad, What’s the Positive in This?
Alright, RoboCop is officially happening. This morning the Kickstarter campaign met the $50,000 necessary to erect such a statue. There have been arguments left and right in the city as to the worthiness of such an endeavor: RoboCop represents a film portraying a terrible Detroit! Why spend $50k on RoboCop statue and not tackle something like the education system!? And then, of course, there is the fanatical fan base that passionately supports such a creature: It’s fun, lighten up a little bit! It’s a bunch of people coming together to crowd source public art! Well, whatever the case. The statue is going up. Let’s make some lemonade out of lemons with this RoboCreature.
First, as crazy this may sound, there are probably a lot of people that will come to Detroit to see the statue of RoboCop. Let’s just play a little numbers game here. There were 1,413 people that pledged money for the project. I went through looking at the characteristics of the contributors, and roughly 1/5 of the backing populous is from out of state– and probably many more based on Kickstarter profiles who don’t list where the person lives. So, that’s 282 people that gave money to this project that don’t live in Detroit who probably want to catch a glimpse of Robo in the flesh when he is built. Now, if those 282 people, through the course of their visit, spend $100 locally (which is a conservative sum even with hotel, food and entertainment), that’s nearly $30k in resources poured in to the local economy. Sure, that’s really not a lot of money, but the multiplier effect of such activity could get exciting. What if that amount of people come per month? Well, that could very possibly mean a quarter of a million greenbacks dumped in to the local economy. And right now, that is a lot. Perhaps the Imagination Station folks might see some benefit to pointing future RoboTourists to various locales in Detroit and using the statue as a starting point to better things. If RoboMonster starts opening people’s eyes to the more redeeming sides of Detroit, well, then hey. Job well done.
Second, as silly as RoboCop might seem, it provides a pretty compelling case of possibility in Detroit. Can’t you hear it now? “You’re telling me you can’t raise $20k for this project and that moustached Paffendorf got $50k in the bank for ROBOCOP?!” There’s a real good chance RoboCop is going to push people in the direction of getting more and more creative with how they fund projects and ideas in Detroit. It’s no secret that the city is a little less resource-stocked than other places, so anything creative with fundraising is something that could take us all a long way. There are something like 18,000 non-profits in Wayne County alone (that has to be more per capita than most counties) that are fighting for money with the same tired models. Perhaps Robo can present some interesting solutions for how meaningful endeavors can be funded in the city, which eventually leads to a more productive city.
Thoughtful commentary against Robo: Supergay Detroit
Thoughtful comments for Robo: My Dear Detroit
Unveiling of the RoboSuccess news: MLive, Jeff Wattrick
And someone else just chimed in with RoboSuccess: The Detroit News | <urn:uuid:329138b2-4217-45ca-96b6-8fe1d1bbb7dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://detroitlives.com/2011/robocop-is-happening-good-or-bad-whats-the-positive-in-this/ | 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 | 0.950081 | 749 | 1.523438 | 2 |
BYRON (GEORGE GORDON, Lord)
Autograph letter signed (B), to Francis Hodgson (My dear Hodgson), written when getting the first two books of Childe Harold´s Pilgrimage ready for publication, especially his travel notes and notes on modern Greek (Romaic) with which Hodgson and his erstwhile travelling companion Hobhouse are helping (...I believe Cythèra´ is right according to the Romaic, but Murray´s man is a sore Cacologist nevertheless...Hobhouse is at Enniscorthy & has sent me a cursed cramp Romaic letter to translate & a column of queries that are not easily answered in these parts. They are for the tour, so I must rummage my books, & hold a privy council with Demetrius Zographos & Spero of the woeful Countenance [his Greek servants]...), and, Not having the fear of Phoebus before mine eyes, sending him a parody on Sir W. Jones´s Gazel of Hafiz [The Barmaid´]; with a final flourish, Byron urges Hodgson to join him in print (...Wont you come out with a Quarto to be in such good company? I wish we could get a few more two are so few...), three pages, 4to, autograph address panel, franked (Byron) and postmarked, guard, part of the blank portion of the last leaf lacking and repaired, creased and lightly stained, but without loss of text and in sound condition, printed identification slip, Newstead Abbey, 11 October 1811
BYRON, NOT YET FAMOUS, AS THE YOUNG CHILDE HAROLD AT NEWSTEAD, protesting: I only wait for half a years rent to fly from my solitary mansion where I am losing time & temper I am like the Evangelical definition of the Wind, which goeth (bloweth) where it listeth, but no man knows whence it cometh or where it returneth.´ ...I do any thing or nothing to avoid my own thoughts. In almost exactly parallel terms, at the beginning of the poem Byron was about to publish five months later bringing him overnight fame the autobiographical hero is described as fretting in the vast and venerable pile of his father´s hall and longing to escape: Apart he stalk´d in joyless reverie,/And from his native land resolved to go,/And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;/With pleasure drugg´d, he almost long´d for woe,/And e´en for change of scene would seek the shades below (from Stanza VI)
This letter is unknown to Leslie A. Marchand, Byron´s Letters and Journals, vols.1-12 and Supplementary Volume (1994), although it is listed (without date) in the British Library Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters (1995), p.154, col.3. The reappearance of our letter helps explain a reference in a letter to Hodgson written two days later, on 13 October, which opens: You will begin to deem me the most liberal correspondent; but as my letters are free, you overlook their frequency. Ours has indeed been sent free of charge, courtesy of the privilege extended to members of both Houses of Parliament, with the address panel franked by Byron with his signature.
Books, Maps and Manuscripts
Auction terms and conditions | <urn:uuid:47e23805-7e42-4d67-960a-f669b1659936> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11288/lot/328/?page_lots=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932378 | 716 | 1.78125 | 2 |
During ‘prep’ sessions I really like to give these as minimum pointers. Each topic above I have a story for, but I’d really have a long essay one some of them.
One I will include is that sometimes an auditor will ask a question, get an answer, and then just stare at the person. Within 10 to 30 seconds that person will start talking again - about something. About anything. This is because they see the auditor looking at them and since the auditor is not saying anything the auditor must be waiting for more ‘information’. It’s a very old auditor ‘trick’. If they need more ‘clarification’ wait for them to ask for it. Watch out, or you’ll find the auditee rambling on forever.
Things to Do
Be patient. Wait for the auditor to ask a question.
Listen closely before answering any question(s). If you are not sure you understand the question, ask the auditor to repeat it. If you still do not understand the question, tell the auditor you do not understand it. The auditor will try to better explain him/herself. Never answer a question you do not understand!
Never say “Sometimes I....”. When you do something differently because of different circumstances, explain exactly! “When ------ happens, I...., and when +++++ happens, I ....”. Be specific.
Always tell the Truth. Don’t ever try to hide something. You may think you are helping someone - you are not. One lie can destroy confidence. Just like in a marriage, if one spouse lies to the other and the other finds out, the relationship may be in real danger. One lie could ruin the entire audit.
ISO 19011 - Quality and Environmental Management Systems Auditing Forum Discussions | <urn:uuid:dcd5213a-0fd5-43bc-8f2f-f84c5c2e1d52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://elsmar.com/Audit/sld194.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939214 | 383 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Andrew Lane in
, random ramblings
05 4th, 2012 |
This post was originally published to the Weber Shandwick Social Studies blog. Crown photo by Dennis Jarvis, licensed under Creative Commons.
As Matt Cremer neatly stated in a February 2012 article for AdAge, “Content marketing, an idea that’s been kicking around since companies started firing up Movable Type blogs, is in the full flush of its industrial revolution”. And with good reason. Statistics continue to point to the voracious appetite that consumers have for consuming video, taking, sharing and now pinning photos, reading and sharing articles and... | <urn:uuid:fb6cda94-2527-49ba-be1c-824db4e9921c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nitch.ca/category/business-models/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937525 | 132 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Valentine's scams can be heartbreakers, BBB warns
Valentine's Day is a day for romance and expressions of love, but like all holidays and major events, it's also an opportune time for scam artists to take advantage of those looking for love and steal their hearts-and their money.
"Valentine's is an emotional time for many people," says Danielle Primrose, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau (BBB). "But if you're not careful, you could fall victim to a Valentine's Day scam."
For those who are searching for love or are already in a relationship, the BBB warns people to watch out for these scams:
Online dating and social media websites invites
First, you receive invitations to connect on social media websites or dating websites. Scammers target singles of any age and in any location, creating fake profiles designed to convince their victim to send them money in the name of love.
Tips: Remember, it's not a good idea to friend everyone who sends you an invitation. Do not reply to any message from someone you don't know. Remember, when it comes to communicating with someone via the Internet, what you see is not always what you get. You don't really know who's on the other end. Don't fall for a person who claims to be in love with you at first sight. Scammers usually use emotional ties to increase the chances of getting your money. If your match asks you to pay for the travel expenses, or money for a family emergency, there is a high probability that it is a scam.
Valentine's Day eCards are greeting cards which come via email. While many are legitimate, others can be attempts to steal your personal information by directing the recipient to a fake website to download a virus.
Tips: Make sure you only open emails, attachments, and links from people you know and stay away from "secret admirer" eCards. Update your email filters to block any such threats. Watch out for other unsolicited emails with subject lines like "Someone just sent you an e-card" or "Send your loved one a Valentine's Day card today."
Consumers filed over 500 complaints across North America regarding Valentine's florist orders last year. In many cases flowers went undelivered, or the wrong order arrived. If you go online for a daily deal, remember, while it may seem like a good price, the company may not fulfill the order in time, especially if there are hundreds of other orders to complete. Lastly, if you go online to purchase gifts watch-out for pop-ups ads offering discounts. These ads may have terms that commit you that you've agreed to join a fee-based membership program. Then the small recurring charges will appear on your credit card or bank account.
Tips: Consumers should make sure to read the terms and conditions before making any online purchase, and check out the company's BBB rating at www.mbc.bbb.org. Consider shopping locally with a business you know rather than one you found online. | <urn:uuid:9a559544-f199-42d7-80bf-a29d8cfa9b0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.surreyleader.com/business/191056491.html | 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 | 0.950034 | 632 | 1.625 | 2 |
By For more information, contact email@example.com or 978-934-3224
LOWELL ߝ Gregory J. Morose of Haverhill, program manager at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), recently received an ASQ-Certified Six Sigma Black Belt certification from the American Society for Quality.
A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt is a professional who applies Six Sigma philosophies and principles to drive improvements throughout an organization.
“I am very proud of Greg for working so hard to earn the Six Sigma Black Belt in a very short time period. It’s a very well-respected certification within the many industries we work with here in Massachusetts,” says TURI Director Michael J. Ellenbecker.
The Six Sigma methodology ties in well with TURI’s mission. It addresses the elimination of wastes and the reduction of materials and energy, with a focus on preventing problems rather than dealing with the consequences. Morose prepared for the examination by studying independently, taking several courses at UML, and learning from UML Six Sigma expert, Dr. Sammy Shina, professor of mechanical engineering, who has written many books on the subject.
Morose used the Six Sigma methodology as a tool in his role as TURI project manager for the New England Lead Free Consortium, an organization of about 15 New England electronics organizations which are currently testing and evaluating safer alternatives to lead.
According to the on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia, “To achieve Six Sigma quality, a process must produce no more than 3.4 defects (defect=failing to deliver what the customer wants) per million opportunities. An "opportunity" is defined as a chance for nonconformance, or not meeting the required specifications. Six Sigma focuses first on reducing process variation and then on improving the process capability (process capability=what your process can deliver).
Details about the American Society for Quality and the Six Sigma Black Belt certification are available at www.asq.org.
The University of Massachusetts Lowell, a comprehensive university with special expertise in applied science and technology, is committed to educating students for lifelong success and conducting research and outreach activities that sustain the economic, environmental, and social health of the region. UML offers its 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students more than 80 degree programs in the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Management, and the School of Health and Environment and the Graduate School of Education. Visit the website at www.uml.edu. | <urn:uuid:1c1f888c-d33a-41ce-af8d-094320e004c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uml.edu/News/press-releases/2002-05/morose_turi_staff_six_sigma_bl.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931449 | 519 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Mary Inspires Believers to Fight Evil, Says Cardinal
Papal Envoy Opens Jubilee Year in Lourdes
| 8505 hits
LOURDES, France, DEC. 11, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The papal envoy sent to open the jubilee year of the Marian apparitions in Lourdes said that Mary inspires an attitude of "permanent battle" for good against the forces of evil.
Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Evangelization of People, opened the jubilee celebrations in France on Saturday, feast of the Immaculate Conception, the title with which Mary introduced herself when she appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
The cardinal said that the struggle between the forces of good and evil "began at the beginning of human history, and will continue until the end."
Cardinal Dias said that today "this battle is even bloodier than in Bernadette's time."
"The world finds itself terribly deceived in the spiral of relativism that desires to create a society without God, a relativism that erodes the permanent and unchangeable values of the Gospel; and of religious indifference that remains unconcerned before the higher good of things relating to God and the Church," he added.
But, he said "a mother has bent down from heaven, concerned for her sons who live in sin, far from Christ." The cardinal said Mary enters into world history, which marks "the hostilities between her and the devil, as described in Genesis and Revelation."
"The Virgin is weaving a network of her spiritual sons and daughters in order to launch a strong offensive against the deadly forces and to prepare for the final victory of her divine son Jesus Christ," stressed Cardinal Dias.
The weapons are "conversion of heart, a great devotion to the holy Eucharist, daily recitation of the rosary, constant prayer without hypocrisy, and accepting sufferings for the salvation of the world," he affirmed. "The final victory will be God's."
L'Osservatore Romano noted that for a moment during the celebrations, "around 4:15 p.m. [...] thanks to an international radio connection, everyone prayed to Mary together with the Pope." | <urn:uuid:ddd0cbf9-7bdc-41b1-996b-2f270dfd84d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/mary-inspires-believers-to-fight-evil-says-cardinal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938074 | 471 | 1.75 | 2 |
|Does not appear in-game|
|Release date||Not released in-game|
|Notable features||An elvish scout.|
In the year 1930 of the Fourth Age, the elves that had settled in Misthalin, Asgarnia, and Kandarin lost all contact with their kin beyond the mountain pass of Arandar. When the Cadarn Clan, the elves' main military force, was unable to traverse the mysteriously-abandoned Arandar mountain pass, they decided another method of contact must be devised.
Adwr was one of five scouts sent by the Clan into the abandoned Underground Pass that ran beneath the mountain range. Of the five, Adwr was the only one to return, bringing with him horrible tales of the civil war raging in the elvish capital of Prifddinas. Adwr Iorwerth Clan's treason and their conquering of the Tower of Voices.
With this information, the elvish King Baxtorian led a massive campaign against Lord Iorwerth in an effort to reclaim the capital. Although the details are few, Baxtorian failed, and he returned to find much of his new kingdom in ruin. | <urn:uuid:7e4a5bb8-9954-4b7b-8116-e520ef477d82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Adwr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939667 | 245 | 1.507813 | 2 |
(Hafidz Baharom, TMI) - Tunku Abdul Rahman was partially Thai, the Onn family line were partially Turkish or at least Eurasian as I recall, and Tun Mahathir Mohamad himself isn’t purely local either. Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is also partly Arabic and heck, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is in fact partly of Indonesian descent. And I haven’t even begun to go into the history lessons we had in Form 3 on the royal families yet.
Currently, some people are calling for unity among one race in Malaysia — the Malay race. And this call is being heeded by political and non-political factions; this includes Perkasa, Umno and, of course, some people in PAS who still believe in the concept of racial unity contrary to their so-called conservative Islamic beliefs. Some leaders have spoken out against it being a reality and one of them is my much-admired once-bankrupted former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin.
Now let me ask a question. How many prime ministers are really, truly, Malaysian Malay? Meaning that their parents, grandparents and perhaps even two generations beforehand were all from Malaysia?
Look back some 60 years, if not further.
Tunku Abdul Rahman was partially Thai, the Onn family line were partially Turkish or at least Eurasian as I recall, and Tun Mahathir Mohamad himself isn’t purely local either. Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is also partly Arabic and heck, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is in fact partly of Indonesian descent. And I haven’t even begun to go into the history lessons we had in Form 3 on the royal families yet.
Let us consider what to look at when you look at the Malays. Historically, the Malays were given the role of administrators by the British, but only the elites. The rest of the Malays toiled in the kampungs, focusing on agriculture while the Chinese focused on industry and manufacturing and the Indians were coolies. I am not being disrespectful, I am stating facts. Not all Indians came off a boat from Chennai and straight away became lawyers in good ol’ Malaya.
And then came 1969 when the Malays apparently had a clash with the Chinese because someone apparently took the wrong route in a victory parade that led to killings and the burning of buildings which could be seen by Tunku Abdul Rahman himself as he stood on his balcony.
But after that, everyone thought the Malays should unite, and the Chinese should do the same, which was why Gerakan and PAS both decided to join in the emergency government set up after that under Tun Abdul Razak. PAS would never have united under Tunku Abdul Rahman because the guy loved his horses and whiskey too much.
If these people want to unite the race, let me just ask this question. Under what banner? Do you want to unite under Perkasa, Umno or PAS?
Just pick one of the three and you would see that there, right there, is where the shit hits the fan. Personally on my side, I think all three are similar. The only difference is that one of them talks shit, the other is shit and the third thinks the nation is shit and needs to be saved so it is worthy of Allah’s grace. And if anyone has an objection, take it up with Shahnon Ahmad.
The Malays can’t unite because we believe in different things. Some believe that everyone should convert to Islam. Others think we should put race ahead of nation and religion. Well, fine by me. Go tell that to the Indonesians here. Let’s go ahead and join them, why don’t we? After all, they’re Malay too. | <urn:uuid:2bc7d026-7f86-4caf-96c3-721b01ced71d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.malaysia-today.net/mtcolumns/guest-columnists/48117-no-such-thing-as-malay-unity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97591 | 791 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Pre-Columbian Society of Washington, D.C. Joins National Archaeology Day Celebrations
August 3, 2012
The Pre-Columbian Society of Washington, D.C. has joined as a Collaborating Organization for National Archaeology Day. The Society, open to academic professionals as well as interested members of the pubilc, meets monthly and plans to advertise its monthly meeting and lecture in October 2012 as a National Archaeology Day event!
The Society for California Archaeology has signed on as a collaborating organization for International Archaeology Day.
2013's International Archaeology Day sees the return of many collaborating organizations from years past!
Volunteers are needed to monitor the translations of the International Archaeology Day webpage. | <urn:uuid:923e79ce-dc72-426a-bd70-802f3e4ea75c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archaeological.org/news/nad/9786 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931821 | 148 | 1.570313 | 2 |
This is an official version.
Copyright © 2007: Queens Printer,
SNL1996 CHAPTER C-22.1
COLLEGE ACT, 1996
2004 c32 s1; 2006 cC-37.001 s13
AN ACT RESPECTING A
(Assented to December 19, 1996)
1. This Act may be cited as the College Act, 1996 .
2. In this Act
(a) "board" means the board of governors established under section 9;
"college" unless the context indicates otherwise, means the
(c) "former Act" means the Colleges Act, 1991 ;
(d) "minister" means the minister appointed under the Executive Council Act to be responsible for this Act;
(e) "president" means the president of the college appointed under section 7; and
(f) "provincial program" means a program so designated by the minister, and includes a program which is governed by an Act or a regulation.
There is established the College of
4. (1) All real property necessary for the purpose of the college shall be acquired by and in the name of the Crown, whether acquired by deed, lease or otherwise.
(2) Subject to the Works, Services and Transportation Act
(a) all personal property, and the right of management and control of real property under the control of the board of governors of a college established under the former Act; and
(b) the management and control of property referred to in subsection (1),
is vested in the board which shall manage, control and administer the property, business and affairs of the college.
(3) The board is charged with and assumes all the obligations and liabilities of a college which was, immediately before the commencement of this Act, a college under the former Act.
(4) Unless it is otherwise determined by the board, all employees of a college under the former Act immediately before the commencement of this Act shall continue to be employed in their positions or equivalent positions with the college.
(5) Subsection (4) shall not apply to presidents of a college under the former Act.
Application of municipal Acts
5. The City of Corner Brook Act , the City of Mount Pearl Act , the City of St. John's Act , the Municipalities Act or other Acts in force relating to the cities or municipalities governed by those Acts that permit the taking of land either for streets or for another purpose do not apply to real property, the management and control of which is vested in the board.
Exemption from taxation
6. All real property under the control and management of, or held in trust by, the board is exempt from provincial, municipal or other local taxation while being used for the purpose of this Act.
7. (1) The Lieutenant-Governor in Council may appoint a president, who shall be the chief executive officer of the college, and who, under the general direction of the board, is responsible for the supervision and administration of the college and of the instructional staff and other employees of the college, in the performance of their duties.
(2) The term of office, salary, other remuneration and benefits of the president shall be determined by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council.
(3) The president may appoint an employee of the college who, in the president's absence, may perform the duties that may be assigned to him or her by the president.
8. The president is a member of all committees constituted by the board and shall perform the duties and may exercise the powers assigned to the president by the board.
9. (1) There is established a corporation to be known as the board of governors of the college.
(2) Subject to the approval of the minister, the board may confirm or change the name of the college but where the name has not been confirmed or changed within 6 months after the commencement of this Act, the minister may confirm or change the name of the college.
Membership of board
10. (1) The Lieutenant-Governor in Council shall appoint to the board not less than 9 nor more than 18 members.
(2) One of the members appointed to the board under subsection (1) may be a representative of the department nominated by the minister.
Three of the members referred to in subsection (1) shall be the same persons who are appointed under paragraph 22(2)(c) of the Memorial University Act
(3) One of the members appointed to the board under subsection (1) may be a faculty member of the college who
(a) is nominated by the executive body of the faculty association of the college; and
(b) notwithstanding section 11, shall hold office for a period of 2 years and is eligible for re-appointment to the board, but after 2 consecutive terms on the board that person is no longer eligible for re-appointment until the expiration of 2 years from the time he or she was last a member of the board.
(4) Two of the members appointed to the board under subsection (1) shall be students of the college who
(a) are nominated by the executive body of the student association of the college; and
(b) notwithstanding section 11, shall hold office for a period of up to 2 years and if qualified under paragraph (a) are eligible for re-appointment to the board, but after 2 consecutive terms on the board, are no longer eligible for re-appointment.
(5) Nominations for an appointment to the board under subsections (3) and (4) shall
(a) consist of an equal number of female and male nominees; and
(b) be forwarded to the minister as required by him or her.
(6) In addition to the members appointed under this section, the president shall be a non-voting member of the board.
Tenure of appointment
11. (1) A member of the board appointed under subsections 10(1) shall be appointed during pleasure for a maximum period of 3 years, except that 1/3 of the members of the first board appointed upon the commencement of this Act shall be appointed for at least 2 years.
(2) A member of the board appointed under subsection 10(1) is eligible for re-appointment to the board, but after 2 consecutive terms on the board that person is no longer eligible for re-appointment until the expiration of 3 years from the time he or she was last a member of the board.
(3) A member of the board whose appointment has expired continues to be a member of the board until a successor is appointed.
Chairperson and vice-chairperson
12. (1) The Lieutenant-Governor in Council shall designate a member of the board to be chairperson.
(2) With the exception of the person designated under subsection (1), the board shall designate a member of the board to be vice-chairperson and shall also designate other officers that it considers necessary.
Expenses of board members
13. A member of the board shall serve without remuneration and shall be reimbursed by the board for travelling and other expenses reasonably incurred in relation to meetings and the work of the board in accordance with a scale for expenses approved by the minister.
Protection against liability
14. (1) A member of the board is not personally liable for loss or damage suffered by a person because of anything done or omitted to be done by that member in the execution of his or her office or under, or in the exercise of or supposed exercise of, the powers given to the board or to a member of the board.
(2) An action or proceeding may not be brought against the board or college in respect of an act or omission of a member of the board unless that act or omission would, apart from this section, have given rise to a cause of action against that member of the board.
(3) The board or college, or a member of the board, or an officer or servant of the college, is not liable in respect of an act or omission of a student.
Duties of board
15. (1) The board shall
(a) provide and operate facilities throughout the province where courses and programs may be offered;
(b) divide the college into those departments of instruction and divisions it considers necessary;
(c) approve, authorize and provide programs which lead to a certificate or diploma from the college;
(d) identify the educational needs of persons in the province and provide courses or programs to meet those needs;
identify the education and training requirements of the labour market in the province and provide courses or programs itself or in cooperation with other educational institutions operating under an Act of the province, another province or of
(f) carry out additional courses or programs that it determines to be in the public interest;
(g) grant certificates and diplomas;
(h) make general policies to govern the organization, administration and operation of the college including personnel policies which, unless otherwise approved by the minister, shall adhere to the personnel administrative procedure of the province;
(i) develop and apply conflict of interest guidelines for members of the board and employees of the college;
(j) prescribe procedure for its meetings, make rules respecting the conduct of the affairs of the board and make provision for the keeping of full and accurate records of its proceedings and transactions;
(k) assess the need for new buildings and repairs or alterations to existing buildings or premises administered by the board and make recommendations to the appropriate government department respecting those buildings, repairs or alterations; and
(l) provide furniture, equipment and the apparatus necessary for the college, maintain a listing of the buildings, equipment and chattels of the college and sell or otherwise dispose of obsolete equipment.
(2) Notwithstanding subsection (1) or another provision of this Act, the minister may review the administration, courses, programs and facilities of the college and may require the modification, establishment, suspension or termination of the administration, courses, programs or facilities of the college that he or she considers necessary.
Powers of board
16. The board may
(a) appoint, promote or remove administrative, instructional and secretarial staff and all other officers and employees except the president;
(b) establish a code of discipline for the students of the college with power to expel a student, and delegate to the president the right to impose a penalty that is prescribed in the code;
(c) select a seal for the college and retain custody and use of it;
(d) establish and appoint advisory and other committees of the board that may be necessary or desirable to achieve the purposes of this Act, delegate to committees those powers and duties of the board that it considers appropriate and reimburse reasonable expenses incurred in relation to the work of a committee that the board may approve;
(e) fix standards of admission of students to the college and set the standards to be maintained by students during courses of study;
(f) cooperate and enter into agreements with
(i) a government or its agencies,
(ii) a person who carries on a trade, business or commercial activity,
(iii) other educational institutions, or
(iv) a community group
for the establishment, maintenance, conduct and transfer of courses for credit and programs leading to certificates, diplomas and degrees;
(g) provide facilities and grants at the college and enter into agreements for research and establish the terms and conditions under which research may be conducted at the college;
(h) participate in industrial assistance activities through problem solving, technology transfer and applied research in order to strengthen productivity, competitiveness and diversity of industry in the province;
(i) accept and disburse grants, gifts and bequests to the college and receive payments for services and research;
(j) fix and collect all fees and charges to be paid to the college;
(k) provide for the effective use of the services and facilities provided by the college; and
perform itself or in cooperation with other educational institutions operating under an Act of the province, another
Trust funds of board
17. (1) With the exception of money and property received from the public revenue, the board shall in its corporate capacity be trustee of money and property given or bequeathed for the purpose of the college, its staff or students, except where some other trustee is appointed by the donor or testator.
(2) Where property or money is given or bequeathed to the board in trust for special purposes, the board shall, as the trust may require, hold and maintain the property and invest the money and hold it in trust for the purposes for which it was bequeathed or given, or spend the money for the purposes indicated by the testator or donor, and the money shall not form part of the general funds of the board.
(3) Where property or money was acquired by, given or bequeathed to a board established under the Colleges Act, 1991 and that property or money was given in trust for special purposes, that trust shall be administered by the board which shall, as the trust may require, hold and maintain that property and invest that money and hold it in trust for the purpose of which it was bequeathed or given, or spend the money for the purposes indicated by the testator or donor and the money shall not form part of the general funds of the board.
(4) Where a testator or donor referred to in subsection (3) directed that money be paid out for a purpose specific to a particular college established under the Colleges Act, 1991 , that direction shall be carried out as near as may be possible by the board.
Investment of trust funds
18. The board may invest trust money and alter the investments as it thinks appropriate, subject to the general law governing trustees and the provisions of a will, trust deed or other document governing a special trust.
19. The financial year of the board begins on April 1 in each year and ends on March 31 in the following year.
Expenditure and borrowing
20. (1) The board may pay all necessary expenses of its operations out of its general funds subject to the availability of funds in its approved budget.
(2) The board may by resolution, with the consent of the minister, authorize its chairperson and the chief financial officer of the college to borrow from a person, bank or corporation sums of money that may be required to meet the current expenditures of the college until the time that the revenues for the current year are available, and those loans may be secured by the promissory note of the chairperson and the chief financial officer given on behalf of the board.
(3) A loan referred to in subsection (2) shall, upon receipt of revenues by the board, be immediately repaid out of those revenues.
21. (1) The board shall, not later than a date to be set by the minister in respect of each year, prepare, adopt and submit to the minister a budget containing estimates of amounts required during the next financial year for the purpose of the board.
(2) In each budget prepared under subsection (1), there shall be set out, in the detail and in the form that the minister may require, the estimated revenue and expenditures of the board in respect of a financial year for which that budget is prepared.
(3) The minister may approve or disapprove a budget submitted by the board.
(4) Except with the approval of the minister, the board shall not in a year incur, enter upon or contract, or become liable for an expenditure or indebtedness beyond or in excess of the estimated amount of expenditure set out in the approved budget.
22. (1) The board shall, not later than May 30 in each calendar year, prepare and submit to the minister an unaudited financial statement.
(2) The board shall, not later than July 30 in each calendar year, prepare and submit to the minister
(a) an audited financial statement setting out the assets and liabilities of the board and its receipts and expenditures for the financial year immediately preceding that date; and
(b) all management letters relating to the audited financial statement required under paragraph (a).
(3) The financial statements referred to in subsections (1) and (2) shall be signed by the chairperson and one other member of the board.
General funds of board
23. (1) The general funds of the board shall consist of
(a) the funds that may be appropriated by the Legislature for the college or for the purpose of the board;
(b) gifts, bequests, grants or other money received by the board for its general purposes and not subject to special trusts or conditions;
(c) money that the board may collect for the use of the college or its facilities;
(d) fees received from persons attending the college; and
(e) other money received by the board for its general purposes.
(2) All payments required to be made from the funds of the board shall be made by cheque or order signed by either the chief financial officer of the college, or the chairperson of the board and another person that the board shall designate.
24. (1) The board shall, not later than September 30 in each year, provide to the minister, an annual report respecting the operations of the college and the work of the board for the preceding financial year.
(2) The board shall provide to the minister other reports relating to the board or the college that the minister may request.
Bonding of board
25. (1) The board shall acquire and maintain a bond with a bonding or insurance company to indemnify the board against loss because of a fraudulent or criminal act of its employees.
(2) The bond required under subsection (1) shall be in the amount and contain the assurances that may be required by the minister.
(3) It is a condition of employment of a person employed by the board as the chief financial officer of the college or other officer that the board may designate that the person be bonded in the same manner that the board is required to be bonded under subsection (1) but in the amount that the board may require.
26. ThePublic Service Pensions Act, 1991 applies to the president, instructional and secretarial staff and other officers and employees of the board as if they were employees of the government of the province, within the meaning of that Act and, subject to the exceptions and conditions prescribed in that Act, those persons shall pay contributions to and participate in the pension plan established by that Act.
27. (1) The Lieutenant-Governor in Council may make regulations
(a) respecting agreements or contracts that the board may make;
(b) respecting an instructor certification committee, the certification of instructors including the conditions under which instructor certificates may be granted and providing for the granting of interim, as well as permanent, instructor certificates;
(c) providing for academic and professional standards in the training, examining and grading of instructors;
(d) providing for the establishment of an instructor certification appeal board and prescribing the jurisdiction and powers of the board;
(e) defining a word or phrase used in the Act but not defined in the Act; and
(f) respecting other matters necessary or advisable to carry out the intent and purpose of this Act.
(2) Regulations made under subsection (1) may be made with retroactive effect.
RSN1990 cF-25 Amdt.
28. The Schedule to the Freedom of Information Act is amended by striking out the phrase "The colleges established under theColleges Act, 1991 " and substituting the phrase "The college established under the College Act, 1996 ".
RSN1990 cP-43 Amdt.
29. The First Schedule to the Public Service Commission Act is amended by striking out items 24 to 28 and substituting the following:
24 . College established under the College Act, 1996 .
RSN1990 cP-45 Amdt.
30. The Schedule to the Public Tender Act is amended by striking out the phrase "Colleges continued or established under the Colleges Act, 1991" and substituting the phrase "The college established under the College Act, 1996 ".
1991 c40 Rep.
31. TheColleges Act, 1991 is repealed.
This Act shall come into force on
©Earl G. Tucker, Queen's Printer | <urn:uuid:24b9842c-c2b8-4703-bb35-9585726958c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://assembly.nl.ca/Legislation/sr/statutes/C22-1.htm | 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 | 0.953871 | 4,215 | 1.648438 | 2 |
CFM International's fourth CFM56 maintenance training centre has opened in Hyderabad in India to support its customers in the country and the region.
This facility mirrors those in China, France and the USA and will provide hands-on training for the maintenance of CFM56-5B and CFM56-7B engines, says the engine manufacturer. When fully operational, the centre will have the capacity to train 500 students annually.
"India is one of the most dynamic economies in the world and the long-term potential is virtually limitless," says Eric Bachelet, president and chief executive of CFM International. "At CFM, we are very pleased and proud to be a part of the aviation infrastructure here in India and to help support the continued growth of this industry in the region."
The first CFM56 engines entered service with Jet Airways in 1994, and the company says that there are more then 500 CFM56 engines in service or on order in the region. These power Airbus and Boeing aircraft for Air India, Air India Express, Go Air, and SpiceJet, as well as airlines in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.
CFM also provides engines for the Indian government's VIP fleet of Boeing Business Jets, in addition to commercial applications. In January 2009, the CFM56-7B-powered Boeing P-8I was selected to provide long-range maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare capabilities to the Indian navy.
CFM's parent companies, Snecma and General Electric, also have Indian investments. In 2007, Snecma's 50:50 joint venture with HAL reached full production capability and supplies tubes and pipes for CFM56 engines. GE's large commercial engines such as the CF6 and the GE90 have been operating in India since 1982.
Both companies also have extensive research and development capabilities in the country. | <urn:uuid:1a560d90-22f0-4f78-b256-f5480e53de07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/cfm-opens-hyderabad-maintenance-training-centre-339026/ | 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 | 0.95424 | 382 | 1.53125 | 2 |
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[Copyright © 1999 Hamline Law Review. Originally published as 22 Hamline L. Rev. 399-465 (1999). Permission for WWW use at this site generously granted by Hamline Law Review (web.hamline.edu/law/pages/lawreview/) and the authors. For educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please obtain a back issue from William S. Hein & Co., 1285 Main Street, Buffalo, New York 14209; 716-882-2600 or 800-828-7571.]
Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel
Is it possible for a nation to go from wide-open freedom for a civil liberty, to near-total destruction of that liberty, in just a few decades? "Yes," warn many American civil libertarians, arguing that allegedly "reasonable" restrictions on civil liberty today will start the nation down "the slippery slope" to severe repression in the future. In response, proponents of today's reasonable restrictions argue that the jeremiads about slippery slopes are unrealistic or even paranoid.
This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope.(p.400) When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.
For purposes of this Essay, the reader will not be asked to make a judgement about the righteousness of the (former) British right to arms or the wisdom of current British gun prohibitions and controls. Instead, the object is simply to examine how a right that is widely respected and unrestricted can, one "reasonable" step at a time, be extinguished. This Essay pays particular attention to how the public's "rights consciousness," which forms such a strong barrier against repressive laws, can weaken and then disappear. The investigation of the British experience offers some insights about the current gun control debate in the United States, and also about ongoing debates over other civil liberties. This Essay does not require that the reader have any affection for the British right to arms; presumably, the reader does have affection for some civil liberties, and the Essay aims to discover principles about how slippery slopes operate. These principles can be applied to any debate where slippery slopes are an issue.
Part II of this Essay briefly sets forth the legal background of the British right to bear arms, as it developed from ancient times to the late nineteenth century. Part III describes the unimpaired British right to arms of the late nineteenth century and the changes in popular culture that began to threaten that right. Part IV describes how social unrest before World War I intensified the pressure for gun control, and finally resulted in the creation of a licensing system for rifles and handguns after the war. The gun control system was gradually expanded in the 1930s, relaxed in enforcement during World War II when Nazi invasion loomed, and then re-imposed with full force. Part V focuses on the turbulent 1960s, and how the government enacted a mild licensing system for shotguns, in order to deflect public cries for re-imposition of the death penalty, following the murder of three policemen by criminals using pistols. Part VI describes how the British gun licensing system is administered today and how police discretion is used to make the system much more restrictive, even without changes in statutory language. Part VII analyzes the conditions that have created the momentum for the gradual prohibition of all firearms ownership in Great Britain, and how isolated but sensational crimes are used as launching pads for further steps to prohibition. In Part VIII the Essay looks at how armed self-defense has, without statutory change, gone from being a "good reason" for the granting of a gun license to being prohibited. The decline of other British civil liberties in the late twentieth century, such as freedom of speech, protection from warrantless searches, and criminal procedure safeguards, is discussed in Part (p.401)IX. Finally, Part X summarizes and elaborates on some of the conditions that make possible a fall down the slippery slope.
Throughout this Essay, parallels are drawn between British history and the modern gun control debate in the United States, because the issue of whether any particular set of controls will set the stage for gun prohibition is one of the hotly contested questions in the contemporary discussion.
It began as a duty, operated as a mixed blessing for Kings, and wound up as one of the "true, ancient, and indubitable" rights of Englishmen. From as early as 690, the defense of the realm rested in the hands of ordinary Englishmen. Under the English militia system, every able-bodied freeman was expected to defend his society and to provide his own arms, paid for and possessed by himself. It appears that the wearing of arms was widespread. The only early limitations placed on gun possession were for the misuse of arms by appearing in certain public places "with force" under a 1279 royal enactment or by using them "in affray of the peace." These limitations were construed to prohibit only the possession of arms "accompanied with such circumstances as are apt to terrify the people" but not the mere "wearing [of] common weapons" for personal defense.
The Tudor monarchs tried to prevent hunting with crossbows, and later with firearms, by commoners by setting a minimum annual income from land as a condition of hunting, or of possession of crossbows and handguns. They were unsuccessful and, after first liberalizing the prohibitions, Henry VIII's government repealed them in 1546. As the Tudor era ended, individual armament (typically with long bows) and an individual obligation to serve in the militia was the norm for Englishmen. Historians view the widespread individual ownership of arms as an important factor in the "moderation of monarchial rule and the development of the concept of individual liberties" in England during a period when absolute, divine-right royal rule was expanding as the norm in continental Europe.(p.402)
In the period leading up to the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart monarchs adopted a radical policy of personal disarmament toward those who politically threatened their royal prerogatives. This included the militia of armed freemen as well as direct political rivals. Through a series of parliamentary enactments, they tried registration of possession, registration of sales, hunting restrictions, possession bans ostensibly aimed at controlling illegal hunting, restrictions on personal arms possessed by the militia, warrantless searches, and confiscations. By 1689, the Stuart monarchs had succeeded, not at full disarmament, but at alienating their "allies" as well as their opponents and losing their throne in a bloodless revolution.
When William of Orange and Mary arrived to begin their reign on England's throne, the country's political leaders recognized the need to rein in any tendency of the new monarchs toward the excessive royal power the nation had just suffered under James II. Thus, William and Mary were required to accept a "declaration of rights" as a definitive statement of the rights of their subjects. That declaration was later enacted as the Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Rights was prepared in great haste, limited to noncontroversial matters, and viewed as a statement of the existing rights of Englishmen. It contained only two individual rights applicable to the general public: to petition and to arms. Furthermore, it only effectively limited the monarch, not the Parliament. Even though the Bill of Rights was by its terms to be upheld "in all times to come," nothing one Parliament does can constrain the actions of subsequent Parliaments. That was the problem with the Bill of Rights being enacted as statute, however important a statute. The Anglo-American legal world would not implement a genuine constitution until 1776, when newly-independent Virginia created her first.
The experience under the Stuarts, demonstrating the political uses of disarmament, convinced many in the Convention Parliament that there was great danger to the security of English liberties from a disarmed citizenry. In Commons, member after member complained about the loss of liberty (p.403)they had personally suffered when disarmed of their private arms by actions "authorized" under the 1662 Militia Act, the 1671 Game Act, and various other laws. Since the new monarchy was to be a limited one, the members saw both a personal and national interest in the ability of ordinary Englishmen to possess their own defensive arms to restrain the Crown. After much discussion and numerous revisions, the right to arms evolved into a statement that "the Subjects which are protestants may have Arms for their Defense suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by law." Historian Joyce Lee Malcolm concluded that:
[t]he last-minute amendments that changed that article from a guarantee of a popular power into an individual right to have arms was a compromise forced on the Whigs. The vague clauses about arms "suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law" left the way open for legislative clarification and for perpetuation of restrictions .... But though the right could be circumscribed, it had been affirmed. The proof of how comprehensive the article was meant to be would emerge from future actions of Parliament and the courts.
By the time of the American Revolution, legislation and court decisions had made it clear that Englishmen had a real right to possess arms, even during times of turmoil such as the anti-Catholic Gordon riots in London in 1780. The Recorder of London, the equivalent of a modern-day city's general counsel, gave this opinion in 1780:
The right of his majesty's Protestant subjects, to have arms for their own defense, and to use them for lawful purposes, is most clear and undeniable. It seems, indeed, to be considered, by the ancient laws of this kingdom, not only as a right, but as a duty; for all subjects of the realm, who are able to bear arms are bound to be ready, at all times, to assist the sheriff, and other civil magistrates, in the execution of the laws and the preservation of the public peace. And that right, which every Protestant most unquestionably possesses, individually, may, and in many cases must, be exercised collectively, is likewise a point which I conceive to be most clearly (p.404)established by the authority of judicial decisions and ancient acts of parliament, as well as by reason and common sense.
Blackstone's celebrated treatise lauded the individual right to arms as one of the "five auxiliary rights of the subject," and explained that the right was for personal defense against criminals, and for collective defense against government tyranny. He further explained that "in cases of national oppression, the nation has very justifiably risen as one man, to vindicate the original contract subsisting between the king and his people." The Englishman's boast that he and his countrymen were "the freest subjects under Heaven" because he had the right "to be guarded and defended ... by [his] own arms, kept in [his] own hands, and used at [his] own charge under [his] Prince's Conduct" was true. This did not mean, of course, that Englishmen enjoyed perfect civil liberty, as those in the United States frequently pointed out. Englishmen did, however, enjoy much greater freedom and participation in government than did the people of Continental Europe, and it was England's conventional wisdom that the freedom of the English people was closely tied to their right to possess arms, and thereby deter any thought of usurpation by the government.
From the day when the Stuarts fled to France, there were virtually no restrictions on an Englishman's right to own and carry firearms, providing that he did not hunt with them, for the next two centuries. The only notable exceptions were the Seizure of Arms Act and the Training Prevention Act, which banned drilling with firearms and allowed confiscation of guns from revolutionaries in selected regions. The Acts were the product of social unrest related to the Industrial Revolution, climaxing in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in which government forces killed unarmed demonstrators. The Acts expired by their own terms in 1822. Even while the 1819 Acts were in force, the case of Rex v. Dewhurst explained that the "suitable to their condition" clause in the Bill of Rights's "Arms for their Defense" guarantee did not allow the government to disarm "people in the ordinary class of life."(p.405)
In the final decades of the last century, Great Britain was much like the United States in the 1950s. There were almost no gun laws, and almost no gun crime. The homicide rate per 100,000 population per year was between 1.0 and 1.5, declining as the century wore on. Two technological developments, however, began to work together to create in some minds the need for gun control. The first of these was the revolver. Revolvers had begun to achieve mass popularity when Colonel Samuel Colt showed off his models at London's 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry in All Nations. Revolver technology advanced rapidly, and by the 1890s, revolver design had progressed about as far as it could, with subsequent developments involving fairly minor tinkering.
As revolvers got cheaper and better, concern arose regarding the increase in firepower available to the public. And in fact, the change from one or two shot weapons to the repeat-firing, five or six shot revolver represented perhaps the greatest advance in small arms civilian firepower that has ever occurred. Compared to the seemingly more benign single-shot muzzle-loaders of the past, the revolver seemed a frightening innovation.
Revolvers were also getting less expensive, and concerns began to grow about the availability to criminals of cheap German revolvers. Cheap guns were, in some eyes, associated with hated minority groups. For example, in the late 1860s, the London Lloyd's Newspaper blamed a crime wave on "foreign refuse" with their guns and knives. The newspaper stated that "[t]he revolver's appearance ... we owe to the importation of reckless characters from America .... The Fenian [Irish-American] desperadoes have sown weapons of violence in our poorer districts."
All of these developments have their parallels in modern United States. The current popularity of semi-automatic pistols, with a magazine capacity of thirteen, fifteen, or seventeen rounds, frightens some people who view the old six-shooter as a harmless traditional weapon. Furthermore, the fact that semi-automatics were invented over 100 years ago does not stop the press from portraying them as dangerous new guns, just as the revolvers of the 1850s were portrayed as dangerous new guns in the 1880s.
Prejudice and discrimination against ethnic groups persist. While United States gun control advocates do not complain much about Irish immigrants with guns, they do warn about the dangers of Blacks armed with "ghetto guns." The derisive term for inexpensive handguns, "Saturday Night (p.406)Specials," has a racist lineage to the term "niggertown Saturday night." The phrase "niggertown Saturday night" apparently mixed with the nineteenth century phrase "suicide special," which is a cheap single action revolver, to form "Saturday night special."
Revolvers were one technological development that began to make some Britons rethink the desirability of the right to bear arms. The second development was the growth of the mass circulation press. Newspapers, like guns, had been around for quite a while, but the late nineteenth century witnessed several printing innovations that made printing of vast quantities of newspapers extremely cheap.
The Walter press, patented in England in 1866, introduced stereotype plates. Printers discovered ways to make sheets of any desired length, thereby allowing rolls of paper to be fed into cylinder presses, and greatly accelerating printing speed. Machines for folding newspapers were brought on-line. By the late nineteenth century, typesetting machines were coming into use. All of these developments made possible the production of low-cost newspapers, which even poor people could buy every day. As audiences expanded, papers became increasingly sensationalist, and the "yellow journalism" of publishers such as the United States' Joseph Pulitzer was born.
Hearst's [errata: Pulitzer's] British counterparts were fervently devoted to sensation, and especially loved lurid crime stories. In 1883 a pair of armed burglaries in the London suburbs set off a round of press hysteria about armed criminals. The press notwithstanding, crime with firearms was rare. As this Essay will detail, the propensity of the press to sensationalize what sociologists call "atrocity tales" to create "moral panics" while demanding greater government regulation is one of the factors dramatically increasing the risk that a nation will descend down a slippery slope; but while media sensationalism can spur action, media attention is not necessarily sufficient by itself to produce results. Eighteen-eighty-three did see the first serious attempt at gun control in many decades, when Parliament considered and rejected a bill to ban the "unreasonable" carrying of a concealed firearm. In 1895, strong pistol controls were rejected by a two to one margin in the House of Commons.
The developments of the British press, and the press attitude towards crime and guns in the late 19th century, have their own parallels in the United States today. Television news is cutting loose its last ties to traditional standards imposed from the days of print journalism. In the "infotainment" produced by organizations such as NBC News, depiction of reality is less important than the production of entertaining and compelling "news" pieces. Thus, when the "assault weapon" panic of 1989 broke out, television journalists paid little attention to whether "assault weapons" actually were the "weapon of choice" of criminals. Instead of being on the reality of gun (p.407)crime, the focus was on the sensational footage of guns firing full automatic, while newscasters decried the availability of semi-automatics. Police statistics show that so-called assault weapons are used in about 1% of gun crime. In other contexts, displaying one thing while talking about another would be decried as fraud.
As the nineteenth century came to a close in Britain the press had not as yet persuaded the public to adopt gun controls. Buyers of any type of gun, from derringers to Gatling guns faced no background check, no need for police permission, and no registration. As criminologist Colin Greenwood wrote, "[a]nyone, be he convicted criminal, lunatic, drunkard or child, could legally acquire any type of firearm." Additionally, anyone could carry any gun anywhere. The English gun crime rate was at its all-time low. A somewhat similar situation prevailed on the American frontier in the 1880s where everyone who chose to be, was armed, and "[t]he old, the young, the unwilling, the weak and the female ... were ... safe from harm." The frontier crime rates, except for the results of "voluntary" bar fights among dissolute young men, were less than a tenth of the rates in modern-day United States and British cities.
The official attitude about guns was summed up by Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, who in 1900 said he would "laud the day when there is a rifle in every cottage in England." Led by the Duke of Norfolk and the mayors of London and Liverpool, a number of gentlemen formed a cooperative association that year to promote the creation of rifle clubs for working men. The Prime Minister and the rest of the aristocracy viewed the widespread ownership of rifles by the working classes as an asset to national security, especially in light of the growing tension with imperial Germany. While shotguns were seen as bird-hunting toys of the landed gentry, rifles were lauded as military arms suitable for everyone. Yet, within a century, the right to bear arms in Britain would be well on the road to extinction. The extinction had little to do with gun ownership itself, but instead related to the British government's growing mistrust of the British people, and the apathetic attitude of British gun owners.(p.408)
In 1903, Parliament enacted a gun control law that appeared eminently reasonable. The Pistols Act of 1903 forbade pistol sales to minors and felons and dictated that sales be made only to buyers with a gun license. The license itself could be obtained at the post office, the only requirement being payment of a fee. People who intended to keep the pistol solely in their house did not even need to get the postal license.
The Pistols Act attracted only slight opposition, and passed easily. The law had no discernible statistical effect on crime or accidents. Firearms suicides did fall, but the decline was more than matched by an increase in suicide by poisons and knives. The homicide rate rose after the Pistols Act became law, but it is impossible to attribute this rise to the new law with any certainty. The bill defined pistols as guns having a barrel of nine inches or less, and thus pistols with nine-and-a-half inch barrels were soon popular.
While the Act was, in the short run, harmless to gun owners, the Act was of considerable long-term importance. By allowing the Act to pass, British gun owners had accepted the proposition that the government could set the terms and conditions for gun ownership by law-abiding subjects. As Frederick Schauer points out, for a government body to decide "X and not Y" means that the government body has implicitly asserted a jurisdiction to decide between X and Y. Hence, to decide "X not Y" is to assert, indirectly, an authority in the future to choose "Y not X." Thus, for Parliament to choose very mild gun controls versus strict controls was to assert Parliament's authority to decide the nature of gun control. As this Essay shall discuss in regards to the granting of police authority over gun licensing, establishing the proposition that a government entity has any authority over a subject is an essential, but not sufficient, element for a trip down the slippery slope.
The early years of the twentieth century saw an increasingly bitter series of confrontations between capital and labor throughout the English-speaking world. In Britain, the rising militance of the working class was beginning to make the aristocracy doubt whether the people could be trusted with arms. When American journalist Lincoln Steffens visited London in (p.409)1910, he met leaders of Parliament who interpreted the current bitter labor strikes as a harbinger of impending revolution. The next set of gun control initiatives reflected fears of immigrant anarchists and other subversives.
As the coronation of George V approached, one United States newspaper, the Boston Advertiser, warned about the difficulty of protecting the coronation march "so long as there is a generous scattering of automatic pistols among the 70,000 aliens in the Whitechapel district." The paper fretted about aliens in the United States and Britain with their "automatic pistols," which were "far more dangerous" than a bomb. The Advertiser defined an "automatic pistol" as a "quick-firing revolver," and called for gun registration, restrictions on ammunition sales, and a ban on carrying any concealed gun, all with the goal of "disarming alien criminals."
What was the "automatic pistol/quick-firing revolver" that so concerned the newspaper? In 1896, the British company of Webley-Fosberry introduced an "automatic revolver." It reloaded with the same principle as a semi-automatic pistol, but held the ammunition in a cylinder, like a revolver. It was an inferior gun. If not gripped tightly, it would misfire. Dirt and dust made the gun fail. Although the gun's most deadly feature was, supposedly, its rapid-fire capability, rapid firing also made the gun malfunction. The so-called automatic revolver that was "more dangerous than the bomb" was more dangerous in the minds of overheated newspaper editorialists than in reality. In this way it is comparable to today's "undetectable plastic gun," which is non-existent, and the "cop-killer teflon bullet," which was actually invented by police officers.
As the Webley-Fosberry and its modern equivalents show, media pressure for new laws does not necessarily have to be based on real-world conditions. That is, an item need not necessarily be particularly dangerous in (p.410)order for the media to describe it as dangerous. For example, whatever else may be said about marijuana, we now know that the "Reefer madness" stories from the mass media in the 1920s and 1930s were scientifically inaccurate; marijuana does not impel users to commit violent crimes. However, when the media and public know little about an item, such as Webley-Fosberry revolvers, self-loading firearms, or marijuana, it is easy for reporters to talk themselves and their audience into a panic.
Whatever the actual dangers of the automatic revolver, immigrants scared authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Crime by Jewish and Italian immigrants spurred New York State to enact the Sullivan Law in 1911, which required a license for handgun buying and carrying, and made licenses difficult to obtain. The sponsor at the Sullivan Law promised homicides would decline drastically. Instead, homicides increased and the New York Times found that criminals were "as well armed as ever."
As in modern United States, sensational police confrontations with extremists also helped build support for gun control. In December 1910, three London policemen investigating a burglary at a Houndsditch jewelry shop were murdered by rifle fire. A furious search began for "Peter the Painter," the Russian anarchist believed responsible. The police uncovered one cache of arms in London: a pistol, 150 bullets, and some dangerous chemicals. The discovery led to front-page newspaper stories about anarchist arsenals, which were non-existent, all over the East End of London. The police caught up with London's anarchist network on January 3, 1911, at 100 Sidney Street. The police threw stones through the windows, and the anarchists inside responded with rifle fire. Seven-hundred and fifty policemen, supplemented by a Scots Guardsman unit, besieged Sidney Street. Home Secretary Winston Churchill arrived on the scene as the police were firing artillery and preparing to deploy mines. Banner headlines throughout the British Empire were already detailing the dramatic police confrontation with the anarchist nest. Churchill, accompanied by a police inspector and a Scots Guardsman with a hunting gun, strode up to the door of 100 Sidney Street; the inspector kicked the door down. Inside were the dead bodies of two anarchists. "Peter the Painter" was nowhere in sight. London's three-man anarchist network was destroyed. The "Siege of Sidney Street" turned out to have been vastly overplayed by both the police and the press. A violent fringe of the anarchist movement was, however, a genuine threat; President William McKinley was only one of several world leaders assassinated by anarchists.(p.411)
While the "Siege of Sidney Street" convinced New Zealand to tighten its own gun laws, the British Parliament rejected new controls. Parliament turned down the Aliens (Prevention of Crime) Bill, that would have barred aliens from possessing [errata: and carrying] firearms without permission of the local Chief Officer of Police. The 1993 Virginia legislature had less fortitude than the 1911 British Parliament. After a Pakistani national used a Kalashnikov rifle to murder three people outside of CIA headquarters, the Virginia legislature rushed to enact broad restrictions on gun carrying by legal resident aliens.
British resistance to gun controls finally cracked in 1914 when Great Britain entered The Great War, later to be dubbed World War I. The government imposed comprehensive, stringent controls as "temporary" measures to protect national security during the war. Similarly, the United States continues to live under various "temporary" or "emergency" restrictions on liberty enacted during the First or Second World Wars. Few restrictions on liberty, especially when imposed by fiat, are announced as permanent. Even when Julius Caesar and, later, Octavian, destroyed the Roman Republic by making themselves military dictators for life, they claimed to be exercising only temporary powers because of an emergency.
Randolph Bourne observed that "war is the health of the state," and it was World War I that set in motion the growth of the British government to the size where it could begin to destroy the right to arms, a right that the British people had enjoyed with little hindrance for over two centuries. After war broke out in August 1914, the British government began assuming "emergency" powers for itself. "Defense of the Realm Regulations" were enacted that required a license to buy pistols, rifles, or ammunition at retail. As the war came to a conclusion in 1918, many British gun owners no doubt expected that the wartime regulations would soon be repealed and Britons would again enjoy the right to purchase the firearm of their choice without government permission. But the government had other ideas.
The disaster of World War I had bred the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Armies of the new Soviet state swept into Poland, and more and more workers of the world joined strikes called by radical labor leaders who predicted the overthrow of capitalism. Many Communists and other radicals thought the World Revolution was at hand. All over the English-speaking world governments feared the end. The reaction was fierce. In the United States, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched the "Palmer raids." Aliens were deported without hearings, and United States citizens were searched and arrested without warrants and held without bail. While the United States was torn by strikes and race riots, Canada witnessed the government (p.412)massacre of peaceful demonstrators at the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.
In Britain, the government worried about what would happen when the war ended and the gun controls expired. A secret government committee on arms traffic warned of danger from two sources: the "savage or semi-civilized tribesmen in outlying parts of the British Empire" who might obtain surplus war arms, and "the anarchist or 'intellectual' malcontent of the great cities, whose weapon is the bomb and the automatic pistol." At a Cabinet meeting on January 17, 1919, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff raised the threat of "Red Revolution and blood and war at home and abroad." He suggested that the government make sure of its arms. The next month, the Prime Minister was asking which parts of the army would remain loyal. The Cabinet discussed arming university men, stockbrokers, and trusted clerks to fight any revolution. The Minister of Transport, Sir Eric Geddes, predicted "a revolutionary outbreak in Glasgow, Liverpool or London in the early spring, when a definite attempt may be made to seize the reins of government." "It is not inconceivable," Geddes warned, "that a dramatic and successful coup d'etat in some large center of population might win the support of the unthinking mass of labour." Using the Irish gun licensing system as a model, the Cabinet made plans to disarm enemies of the state and to prepare arms for distribution "to friends of the Government."
Although popular revolution was the motive, the Home Secretary presented the government's 1920 gun bill to Parliament as strictly a measure "to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them." In fact, the problem of criminal, non-political misuse of firearms remained minuscule. Of course 1920 would not be the last time a government lied in order to promote gun control.
In 1989 in the United States, various police administrators and drug enforcement bureaucrats set off a national panic about "assault weapons" by claiming that semi-automatic rifles were the "weapon of choice" of drug dealers and other criminals. Actually, police statistics regarding gun seizures showed that the guns accounted for only about 1% of gun crime. Most people in the United States swallowed the 1989 lie about "assault weapon" crime, and most Britons in 1920 swallowed the lie about handgun crime. Indeed, the carnage of World War I, which was caused in good part by the outdated tactics of the British and French general staffs, had produced a general revulsion against anything associated with the military, including rifles (p.413)and handguns.
Thus the Firearms Act of 1920 sailed through Parliament. Britons who had formerly enjoyed a right to arms were now allowed to possess pistols and rifles only if they proved they had "good reason" for receiving a police permit. Shotguns and airguns, which were perceived as "sporting" weapons, remained exempt from British government control.
Similarly, the horror of use of poison gas during World War I's trench warfare made the Firearms Act's ban on small CS self-defense spray canisters seem unobjectionable. In the hands of British citizens, CS was considered by the central government to be impossibly dangerous, requiring complete prohibition--much more dangerous than a rifle or shotgun. Yet when the CS is in the hands of the government, the central government now mandates that CS be considered benign. When local police authorities protested the Home Secretary's issuance of CS gas and plastic bullets to local police forces and argued that the central government had no authority to force police departments to employ dangerous weapons against their will, the court ruled for the central government on the theory that the Crown's "prerogative power to keep the peace" allowed the Home Secretary to "do all reasonably necessary to preserve the peace of the realm."
The treatment of CS is emblematic of the transformation of British arms policy during the twentieth century. Principles about the use of force were changed from the traditional Anglo-American to the Weberian, with the monopoly of force becoming crucial to the state's definition of its rightful power. Instead of worrying about cheap German handguns among the people, the British would have been better to guard against fancy German ideas among the government.
In the early years of the Firearms Act the law was not enforced with particular stringency, except in Ireland, where revolutionary agitators were demanding independence from British rule, and where colonial laws had already created a gun licensing system. Within Great Britain, a "firearms certificate" for possession of rifles or handguns was readily obtainable. Wanting to possess a firearm for self-defense was considered a "good reason" for being granted a firearms certificate.
The threat of Bolshevik revolution, which had been the impetus for the (p.414)Firearms Act, had faded quickly as the Communist government of the Soviet Union found it necessary to spend all its energy gaining full control over its own people, rather than exporting revolution. Ordinary firearms crime in Britain, which was the pretext for the Firearms Act, remained minimal. Despite the pacific state of affairs, the government did not move to repeal the unneeded gun controls, but instead began to expand the controls.
In 1934, a government task force, the Bodkin Committee, was formed to study the Firearms Act. The Committee collected statistics on misuse of the guns that were not currently regulated, such as shotguns and airguns, and collected no statistics on the guns under control, namely rifles and handguns. The Committee concluded that there was no persuasive evidence for repeal of any part of the Firearms Act. Since the Bodkin Committee had avoided looking for evidence about how the Firearms Act was actually working, it was not surprising that the Committee found no evidence in favor of decontrol.
Spurred by the Bodkin Committee, the British government in 1936 enacted legislation to outlaw (with a few minor exceptions) possession of short-barreled shotguns and fully automatic firearms. The law was partly patterned after the 1934 National Firearms Act in the United States, which taxed and registered, but did not prohibit, such guns. In 1973 and 1988, when the government was attempting to expand controls still further, gun control advocates claimed that the Bodkin Committee report was clear proof of how well the Firearms Act of 1920 was working, and why its controls should be extended to other guns.
As a result of alcohol prohibition, the United States in the 1920s and early 1930s did have a problem with criminal abuse of machine guns, a fad among the organized crime gangsters who earned lucrative incomes supplying bootleg alcohol, although most such firearms were owned by peaceable citizens. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 had sent the American murder rate into a nosedive, but in 1934 Congress went ahead and enacted the National Firearms Act anyway.
In Britain, there had been no alcohol prohibition, and hence no crime problem with automatics, or other guns. Before 1920, any British adult could purchase a machine gun; after 1920, any Briton with a Firearms Certificate could purchase a machine gun. During the 1936 British debate, the government could not point to a single instance of a machine gun being misused in Britain, yet the guns were banned anyway. The government (p.415)explained its actions by arguing that automatics were crime guns in the United States and there was no legitimate reason for civilians to possess them. The same rationale is used today in the drive to outlaw semi-automatic firearms in the United States. Since some government officials believe that people do not "need" semi-automatic firearms for hunting, the officials believe that such guns should be prohibited, whether or not the guns are frequently used in crime.
"O, reason not the need!" shouted King Lear after his two traitorous daughters, Regan and Goneril, disarmed him by taking away his armed retinue. Goneril and Regan had asked why the King needed even a single armed retainer, since Goneril's army and Regan's army would protect him. The King's "reason not the need" response was his way of saying the he should not have to justify what he wanted; he should not have to convince his daughters that he had a good reason for wanting to be armed. Unfortunately, for British gun owners, as for King Lear, it was too late. King Lear had already turned the power in the kingdom over to Regan and Goneril; British gun owners had agreed that rifle and pistol ownership should be allowed only when the government, not the citizen, believed that there was a "good reason" for it. Thus, the burden of proof in public debate was reversed. The government was not required to show that there was a need to ban short shotguns or automatic rifles; indeed, the misuse of these guns in Great Britain was so unusual that the British government could never have shown a "need" for the bans. Instead, the government faced a much lower burden. Did the government believe that citizens had a "need" for the guns in question? Obviously some law-abiding citizens thought they did, since the citizens had chosen to purchase such guns. For example, short shotguns are easy to maneuver in a confined setting, and hence are very well-suited for home defense against a burglar. Likewise, machine guns are enjoyed for target shooting and collecting, and are useable for home defense.
The Firearms Act of 1920 had not, of course, banned short shotguns or automatic rifles. The former were ignored by the Act, while the latter were subject only to a lenient licensing system. The Firearms Act had, however, moved the baseline for gun control, and had helped to shift public attitudes. The concept of a "right" to arms was giving way to a privilege, based on whether the government determined that the would-be gun-owner had a "need" according to the government's standard.
Frederick Schauer's classic article on slippery slopes distinguishes the pure slippery slope argument from its "close relation" that Schauer calls "the argument from excess breadth." The latter argument points to the danger of adopting a policy on grounds that are too broad. He points to the (p.416)example of censorship of information about how to build nuclear weapons. If the rationale for censorship is excessively broad--"the information is dangerous to public safety"--then allowing censorship of the nuclear missile information creates a precedent for censorship of many other things. In contrast, if the grounds for a restrictive action are narrow--"this information has a very high risk of directly causing millions of deaths"--then there is much less risk that a desirable action, like the censorship nuclear missile construction information, will lead to undesirable actions, like the censorship of detective novels from which criminals might learn crime techniques.
The 1934 British ban on short shotguns and machine guns was a classic instance of the dangers of an excessively broad rationale. The government decided that nobody outside the government "needed" such items. Thus, the "good reason" requirement of the 1920 Firearms Act set the stage for the 1934 gun ban rationale, that "people outside the government don't need this," which in turn would set the stage for further prohibitions.
Another type of argument that Schauer identifies as a close relation to the classic slippery slope argument is "the argument from added authority." Here, the argument is that "granting additional authority to the decisionmaker inevitably increases the likelihood of a wide range of possible future events, one of which might be the danger case." The British Firearms Act of 1920 offers a clear example of the dangers against which Schauer's "added authority" argument warns. Before the Firearms Act, the police had no role in deciding who could own a gun. The Firearms Act instructed them to issue licenses (Firearms Certificates) to all applicants who had a "good reason" for wanting a rifle or pistol. Starting in 1936 the British police began adding a requirement to Firearms Certificates that the guns be stored securely. As shotguns were not licensed, there was no such requirement for them.
While the safe storage requirement might, in the abstract seem reasonable, it was eventually enforced in a highly unreasonable manner by a police bureaucracy often determined to make firearms owners suffer as much harassment as possible. More importantly, Parliament--the voice of the people--did not vote to impose storage requirements on gun-owners. Whatever the merits of the storage rules, they were imposed not by the representatives of the people, but by administrators who were acting without legal authority. Without the licensing system, the police never would have had the opportunity to exercise such illegal power. As the Essay discusses in more (p.417)detail below, once even the most innocuous licensing system is in place, it is more possible (although not necessarily inevitable) that increasingly severe restrictions will be placed on the licensees by administrative fiat. The recognition of this danger is one reason why the First Amendment's prohibition on prior restraints is so wise. The rule prohibiting prior restraint recognizes that any system for licensing the press creates a risk that system will be administratively abused.
After the fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, Britain found itself short of arms for island defense. The Home Guard was forced to drill with canes, umbrellas, spears, pikes, and clubs. When citizens could find a gun, it was generally a sporting shotgun, which was ill-suited for most types of military use because of its short range and bulky ammunition. British government advertisements in United States newspapers and in magazines such as American Rifleman begged readers to "Send A Gun to Defend a British Home--British civilians, faced with threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes." The ads pleaded for "Pistols, Rifles, Revolvers, Shotguns and Binoculars from American civilians who wish to answer the call and aid in defense of British homes." As a result of these ads, Pro-Allied organizations in the United States collected weapons; the National Rifle Association shipped 7,000 guns to Britain. Britain also purchased surplus World War I Enfield rifles from the United States Department of War. Before the war, British authorities had refused to allow domestic manufacture of the Thompson submachine gun because it was "a gangster gun," but when the war broke out, large numbers of American-made Thompsons were shipped to Britain, where they were dubbed "tommie guns."
Prime Minister Winston Churchill's book Their Finest Hour details the arrival of the shipments. Churchill personally supervised the deliveries to ensure that they were sent on fast ships, and distributed first to Home Guard members in coastal zones. Churchill thought that the American donations (p.418)were "entirely on a different level from anything we have transported across the Atlantic except for the Canadian division itself." Churchill warned an advisor that "the loss of these rifles and field-guns [if the transport ships were sunk by Nazi submarines] would be a disaster of the first order." He later recalled that "[w]hen the ships from America approached our shores with their priceless arms, special trains were waiting in all the ports to receive their cargoes." "The Home Guard in every county, in every town, in every village, sat up all through the night to receive them .... By the end of July we were an armed nation ... a lot of our men and some women had weapons in their hands."
As World War II ended the British government did what it could to prevent the men who had risked their lives in defense of freedom and Britain from holding onto guns acquired during the war. Troop ships returning to England were searched for souvenir or captured rifles and men caught attempting to bring firearms home were punished. Guns that had been donated by American civilians were collected from the Home Guard and destroyed by the British government. In spite of these measures, large quantities of firearms still slipped into Britain, where many of them remain to this day in attics and under floor boards. At least some British gun owners, like their United States counterparts in today's gun-confiscating jurisdictions such as New Jersey and New York City, were beginning to conclude that their government did not trust them, and that their government could not be trusted to deal with them fairly. In 1946, the Home Secretary announced a policy change: henceforth, self-defense would not be considered a good reason for being granted a Firearms Certificate.
The next rounds of legislative action were aimed at knives, rather than guns. The 1953 Prevention of Crime Act outlawed the carrying of an "offensive weapon" and put the burden of proof on anyone found with an "offensive weapon," such as a knife, to prove that he had a reasonable excuse. In 1959, the Home Office pushed for, and won, a ban on self-loading knives. Self-loading knives are knives that use a spring or other mechanism so that they can be opened with one hand. These "flick knives," as they were called in Britain, were not any more of a crime problem than other knives, but the rationale for their ban was the same as for the 1937 ban on certain guns. The (p.419)government did not see any reason why a person would need a self-loading knife. Furthermore, just as machine guns had been associated with American gangsters, "flick knives," which are called "switchblades" in the United States, were associated with American juvenile delinquents.
The British government in the 1950s left the subject of gun control alone. Crime was still quite low, and issues such as national health care and the Cold War dominated the political dialogue. Even so, the maintenance of the existing, relatively mild, structure of rifle and pistol licensing would have important consequences. As the Firearms Act remained in force year after year, a smaller and smaller percentage of the population could remember a time in their own lives when a Briton could buy a rifle or pistol because he had a right to do so rather than because he had convinced a police administrator that there was a "good reason" for him to purchase the gun. As the post-1920 generation grew up, the licensing provisions of the Firearms Act began to seem less like a change from previous conditions and more like part of ordinary social circumstances. A similar process is at work in the United States, where only part of the population remembers the days before 1968 when federal registration was not required for people to purchase firearms.
As in most of the Western world, the late 1960s in Great Britain was a time of rising crime and civil disorder. In 1965, capital punishment was abolished, except for treason and piracy. Gun crime did not seem to be a problem. Scotland Yard stated "with some confidence" that the objectives of eliminating "the improper and careless custody and use of firearms ... and making it difficult for criminals to obtain them ... are effectively achieved." In June 1966, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins told Parliament that after consulting with the Chief Constables and the Home Office, he had concluded (as had his predecessor the year before) that shotgun controls were not worth the trouble, yet six weeks later, Jenkins announced that new shotgun controls were necessary, because shotguns were too easily available to criminals.
Had there been a sudden surge in shotgun crime in the six week period? Not at all, but three policemen at Shephard's Bush had been murdered with (p.420)illegal revolvers. Popular outcry for capital punishment was fervent, and Jenkins, an abolitionist, responded by announcing new shotgun controls, in an attempt to divert attention from the noose.
In retrospect, Mr. Jenkins' shotgun controls made no logical sense. Regulating shotguns would obviously have no impact on criminal use of unlicensed revolvers, the guns used to murder the three policemen. Jenkins claimed that "criminal use of shotguns is increasing rapidly, still more rapidly than that of other weapons." The "rapidly" increasing type of crime associated with shotguns, however, involved mostly poaching or property damage rather than armed robberies or murders. Nevertheless, by showing that he was "doing something" about crime by proposing shotgun controls, Mr. Jenkins effectively achieved his main goal, which was to divert public attention from the death penalty. The Jenkins tactic has been used by many other politicians since then, including former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who is a proponent of gun prohibition and an opponent of the death penalty.
This brings to light a third factor that may help push a civil right down the slippery slope: the exercise of the right may be unproblematic, but pushes for restriction on the right may satisfy unrelated political needs. The more likely that media or other interest groups are to be hostile to the exercise of the right, the greater the prospect that further infringing on the right may fulfill the political need of distracting attention from other matters.
At Jenkins' request the British government began drafting the legislation that became the Criminal Justice Act of 1967. The new act required a license for the purchase of shotguns. Like the Gun Control Act of 1968 in the United States, Britain's 1967 Act was part of a comprehensive crime package that included a variety of infringements on civil liberties. For example, the British Act abolished the necessity for unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials, eliminated the requirement for a full hearing of evidence at committal hearings, and restricted press coverage of those hearings.
Under the 1967 system, which is still in force for the most part, a person wishing to obtain his first shotgun needed to obtain a "shotgun certificate." The local police could reject an applicant if they believed that his "possession of a shotgun would endanger public safety." The police were required to grant the certificate unless the applicant had a particular defect in his background such as a criminal record or history of mental illness. An applicant was required to supply a countersignatory, a person who would attest to the accuracy of the information in the application. During an investigation (p.421)period that could last several weeks, the police might visit the applicant's home. In the first decades of the system, about ninety-eight percent of all applications were granted.
Once the £12 shotgun certificate was granted, the law allowed a citizen to purchase as many shotguns as he wished. Private transfers among certificate holders were legal and uncontrolled. As with the Firearms Act of 1920, the statutory language of the 1967 shotgun law was eminently reasonable, and unobjectionable except to a civil liberties purist.
The 1976 law contained one other provision that illustrated a key strategy of how to push something down a slippery slope: it is easier to legislate against people who cannot vote, or who are not yet born, than against adults who want to retain their rights. Reducing the number people who will, one day in the future, care about exercising a particular right is a good way to ensure that, on that future day, new restrictions on the right will be politically easier to enact. Thus, the 1967 law did nothing to take away guns from law-abiding adults, but the Act did severely restrict gun transfers to minors. It became illegal for a father to give even an airgun as a gift to his thirteen-year-old son. The fewer young people who enjoy the exercise of a civil liberty such as the shooting sports, the fewer adults there will eventually be to defend that civil liberty.
This conditioning young people not to believe they have rights can exist in other contexts, of course. For example, the current American practice of denying American schoolchildren constitutional protection from locker searches, dog sniffs, metal detectors, and random drug testing is a good way to raise a generation with little appreciation for the Fourth Amendment.
As is typical with many gun control laws, the shotgun certificate system was enforced in a moderate and reasonable way by the government in the law's first years. Similarly, the rifle and handgun licensing system, introduced in 1920, had been enforced in a generally moderate way in the 1920s (p.422)and 1930s. However, as the public grew accustomed to the idea of rifles and handguns being licensed, it became possible to begin to enforce the licensing requirements with greater and greater stringency.
Severe enforcement of the rifle and handgun licensing system would not have worked in 1922. Too many gun owners would have been outraged by the rapid move from a free society to one of repressive controls. By initially enforcing the 1920 legislation with moderation, and then with gradually increasing severity, the British government acclimated British gun owners to higher and higher levels of control. The British government used the same principle as do people who are cooking frogs. If a cook throws a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will jump out, but if the cook puts a frog in a pot of moderately warm water, and gradually raises the temperature, the frog will slowly lose consciousness, and be unable to escape by the time the water gets to a boil.
The frog-cooking principle helps explain why America's Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), and the other anti-gun lobbies are so desperate to pass any kind of gun control, even controls that most observers agree will accomplish very little. By lobbying for the enactment of, for example, the Brady Bill, HCI established the principle of a national gun licensing system. Once a lenient national handgun licensing system was established in 1993, the foundation was laid so that the licensing system can gradually be tightened. The push has already begun, as President Clinton echoes HCI's demand that Congress close the "loophole" in the Brady Act that allows private individuals, those persons not in the gun business, to sell firearms to each other without going through the federal Brady background check.
The British "firearms certificate" system of 1920 had required that a person who wished to possess a rifle or handgun prove he had "a good reason." In the early years of the system, self-defense had been considered "a good reason," but, by the 1960s, it was a well-established police practice that only "sporting" purposes, and not self-defense could justify issuance of a rifle or handgun license. Parliament had never voted to outlaw defensive gun ownership, but self-defense fell victim to what Schauer calls "the consequences of linguistic imprecision." When a legal rule is expressed in imprecise terms there is a heightened risk that subsequent interpreters of the rule may apply the rule differently than the formulators of the rule would have. Thus, while self-defense was a "good reason" in 1921, in later decades the government had decided that a "good reason" did not include (p.423)self-defense. In practice, being a certified member of a government-approved target shooting club became the only way a person could legally purchase a pistol.
Under regulations implementing Britain's 1997 Firearms (Amendment) Act, gun club members must now register every time they use a range, and must record which particular gun they use. If the gun-owner does not use some of his legally-registered guns at the range often enough, his permission to own those guns will be revoked.
Having control over rifle and handgun owners through a licensing system, the police began inventing their own conditions to put on licenses. The police practice was not entirely legal, but it was generally accepted by a compliant public. Similar practices occur in United States jurisdictions such as New York city, where licensing authorities sometimes add their own, extra-legal, restrictions to handgun licenses. In the 1980s, then-New York Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward told his firearms licensing staff to refuse to issue any licenses for the Glock pistol. The prohibition ended when the media found out that Commissioner Ward himself carried a Glock pistol.
When the safe storage requirement was introduced for rifles and handguns in the 1930s, it was enforced in a reasonable manner by the police. Leaving one's handgun on the front porch was not acceptable; keeping it on a dark closet shelf was perfectly fine. Similarly, in the few United States jurisdictions that have imposed storage requirements in recent years, the law is usually enforced in a reasonable manner--at least for now.
From the 1930s through the 1960s, the security requirement simply meant that Firearms Certificate holders were told of their responsibility for secure storage. Starting in the early 1970s, the police began performing home inspections as part of the Firearms Certificate issuance in order to assess the applicant's security. After the 1996 Dunblane shootings, some police forces began performing spot checks on persons who already held Firearms Certificates. Apparently the home searches were done to make sure that the firearms really were locked up.
Parliament never granted the police home inspection authority, nor did Parliament enact legislation saying that a hardened safe is the only acceptable storage method. However, that is what the police in many jurisdictions require anyway. In fact, many gun owners who bought safes that the police said were acceptable are now being forced to buy new safes because the local police have arbitrarily changed the standards. In many districts, an "acceptable safe" is now one that can withstand a half-hour attack by a burglar who arrives with a full set of safe-opening tools.
Sometimes the police require the purchase of two safes: the first one for the gun and the second one for separate storage of ammunition. A Briton (p.424)buying a low-powered, £5 rimfire rifle may have to spend £100 on a safe. Likewise, a person with five handguns (before the 1997 ban) might have been ordered to add a £1000 electronic security system. Added to the cost of the illegal requirement for hardened safes is the escalating cost of Firearms or Shotgun Certificates. Home inspections are expensive for the police, and thus the cost of Firearms Certificates or Shotgun Certificates has been raised again and again, far above the rate of inflation, in order to cover the costs of the intrusive inspections, as well as the cost of many gross inefficiencies in police processing of applications. The net effect of the heavy security costs is to reduce legal gun ownership by the less wealthy classes, as in the days of Henry VIII, Charles I, who was later beheaded during the English Civil War, and James II, who was driven out of the country by the Glorious Revolution.
The increasing severity of the application of the gun licensing system is no accident. A 1970 internal government document, the McKay Report was turned into a 1973 British government Green Paper, which proposed a host of new controls. The British shooting lobbies, however, mobilized and the Green Paper was withdrawn. Law professor Richard Harding, Australia's then-leading academic advocate of gun control, criticized the Green Paper as "statistically defective ... [and] ... scientifically quite useless." Harding was looking at whether the proposed laws would reduce gun crime, gun suicide, or other gun misuse. The proponents of the Green Paper, on the other hand, did not care whether more gun control would reduce gun misuse. The earlier, secret draft of the Green Paper (the McKay Report) had stated that "a reduction in the number of firearms in private hands is a desirable end in itself."
The Green Paper was withdrawn thanks to strong pressure from British gun-owners--and never turned into a formal proposal for new law (a White Paper). However, the Green Paper still set the government's agenda for the next two decades. Some parts were saved for introduction when political circumstances were right, for example after a notorious gun crime. Other parts soon began to be enforced immediately, by police fiat.
One Green Paper item would have required prospective rifle hunters to receive written invitation from the owner of the land where they would shoot, and then take the letter to the police. The police would investigate the safety of the hunt and other factors before granting permission. Several Chief Constables adopted this proposal and others from the Green Paper as "force policy" and enforced them as if they were law. A certificate for rifle (p.425)possession now often includes "territorial conditions" specifying exactly where the person may hunt. While it is not legally necessary for shooters to have written permission to hunt on a particular piece of land, police have been stopping shooters, demanding written proof of permission, and threatening to confiscate guns from persons who cannot produce the proof.
Police abuses appear in every aspect of gun licensing. As Police Review magazine noted: "There is an easily identifiable police attitude towards the possession of guns by members of the public. Every possible difficulty should be put in their way." The stated police position is "to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of firearms, including shotguns, in hands of members of the public." Thus, without legal authority, the police have begun to phase out firearms collections by refusing new applications. Police departments have incorrectly told hunters that certain legal restrictions on hunting with semi-automatics also apply to hunting with pump-action guns. The police have also, again without legal authority, required applicants for shotguns capable of holding more than two shells to prove a special need for the gun. Furthermore, if a policeman has a personal interest in the shooting sports, that interest may disqualify him from being assigned to any role in the police gun licensing program. Policemen who know virtually nothing about guns, but who can be counted on to have a hostile attitude towards gun owners, are often picked for the gun licensing jobs.
Parliament has no interest in investigating police abuses of the gun licensing laws. One reason is that many of the abuses are instigated by the Home Office, which is controlled by the leaders of the party in power in Parliament. The courts are submissive to police "discretion." As a formal matter, applicants may appeal police denials of permit application, but the courts are generally deferential to police decisions. Hearsay evidence is admissible against the applicant. An appellant does not have a right to present evidence on his own behalf, nor does an applicant who has been denied have a right to find out the basis for the denial until the trial begins. The Labour Party, now in power, argues that rejected applicants should never be told the basis of the denial.
The only practical way that British gun owners could have avoided abuse of the licensing laws would have been to resist the first proposed laws (p.426)that allowed the police to determine who could get a gun license. However the gun owners never would have dreamed of resisting, because such a law seemed so "reasonable." Having meekly accepted the wishes of the police and the ruling party for "reasonable" controls, by the early 1970's British rifle and handgun owners found themselves in a boiling pot of severe controls from which escape was no longer possible. British shotgun owners, ignoring the fate of their rifle and handgun-owning brethren, jumped into their own pot of then-lukewarm water when they accepted the 1966 shotgun licensing proposals.
Gun control in Great Britain now proceeds on two fronts. When a sensational crime takes place, proposals for gun confiscations and for major new restrictions on the licensing system are introduced. During more tranquil times, fees are raised and increased controls are applied to relatively smaller issues.
An example of tranquil-period control was the Firearms Act of 1982, which introduced restrictive licensing for imitation firearms that could be converted to fire live ammunition. The original proposal had been to implement the 1973 Green Paper's outright ban on realistic imitation or toy firearms. The sponsor of the new law against imitation firearms promised that it would help stem "the rising tide of crime and terrorism," although he pointed to no crime or terrorist act committed with a converted imitation weapon. A new Crossbows Act outlawed purchase by persons under seventeen.
Under new "safety" regulations regarding explosives, persons who possess modern gunpowder or blackpowder are now subject to unannounced, warrantless inspections of their home at any time to make sure that the powder is properly stored. The government, of course, promises that its inspections will not be unreasonable, but "reasonableness" is often in the eye of the beholder.
While gun crime is not as common as in the United States, gun crime incidents inevitably attract sensational media attention that becomes the basis for further tightening of controls. In the fall of 1989, for example, a person who had been rejected for membership in a firearms club stole a handgun from the locked trunk of a club member and shot a Manchester policeman. In another case a probationary member of a firearms club, learning that he had a fatal disease, killed one club member, stole a gun from the club, and shot a personal enemy. The Home Secretary, at the urging of the (p.427)Manchester police department, issued a new set of restrictions on firearms clubs, including sharp restrictions on bringing guests to a range to shoot a firearm. The practical effect of the new restrictions was to reduce the entry of new members into many firearms clubs.
Thanks to decades of such restrictions aimed at restricting entry into the shooting sports, the vast majority of the public has no familiarity with guns, other than what media choose to let them know. Legal British gun owners now constitute only four percent of total households, with perhaps another small percentage of the population possessing illegal, unregistered guns. Given that many Britons have no personal acquaintance with anyone who they know to be a sporting shooter, it is not surprising that seventy-six percent of the population supports banning all guns. Thus, the people who used long guns in the field sports--who confidently expected that whatever controls government imposed on the rabble in the cities who wanted handguns, genteel deer rifles and hand-made shotguns would be left alone--have been proven disastrously wrong.
Strong rights usually need a strong sociological foundation. Approximately half of American homes contain a gun, and a quarter contain a hand gun. Thus, except in a few cities like New York where gun ownership is rare, gun bans in the United States are nearly impossible to enact; too many voters would be unhappy. Consequently gun prohibition in the United States must focus on very small segments of the gun-owning population. That is why "assault weapon" bans, which cover only about one or two percent of the total firearms stock, are so much easier to enact than handgun bans. Even with "assault weapons," it is usually necessary to exempt the Ruger Mini-14 and Mini-30 rifles since these rifles, while functionally identical to banned guns, have too large an ownership base.
A few sensational burglaries in the 1880s had created the first calls for restrictive British gun laws. A century later, some sensational crimes would initiate the final stages of British gun prohibition. In-between the 1880s and the 1980s, an initially reasonable and then gradually more restrictive licensing system had reduced the number of gun owners so far that they had little (p.428)political clout. The gun-owners were of much less political significance than the media, which had become venomously anti-gun.
On the morning of August 19, 1987, a licensed gun owner named Michael Ryan dressed up like Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" character and shot a woman thirteen times with a handgun. After shooting at a filling station attendant, he drove to his home in the small market town of Hungerford, where he killed his mother and his dog. In the next hour, he went into town and slaughtered fourteen more people with his handgun and his Chinese-made Kalashnikov rifle. Ryan disappeared for a few hours, reappeared at 4 p.m. in a school, and killed himself three hours later. A few days later, a double murder was perpetrated at Bristol, this one with a shotgun.
The media's reaction, especially the print media's, was intense. The tabloid press ran editorials instructing the public how to spot potential mass murderers--advising suspicion of anyone who lived alone or was generally a "loner," who lived with his mother, or who was a bit quiet. The tabloid press and the respectable press both pushed heavily for more stringent gun laws. Pressure also mounted for tighter censorship of violent television.
The Hungerford atrocity was the only instance in which a self-loading rifle had been used in a British homicide. Punishing every owner of an object because one person misused the object might seem unfair, but two factors worked in favor of prohibition. First, the cabinet leadership observed that the number of owners of self-loading rifles was relatively small, so no important number of voters would be offended. Second, shotgun owners, who are by far the largest group of gun owners, generally decided that they did not care what the government did to someone else's rifles.
Parliament responded. Semi-automatic centerfire rifles, which had been legally owned for nearly a century, were banned. Pump-action rifles were banned as well, since it was argued that these guns could be substituted for semi-automatics. Practical Rifle Shooting, the fastest-growing sport in Britain, vanished temporarily, although participants eventually switched to bolt-action rifles.(p.429)
The shotgunners, however, made a disastrous error. The Association of Chiefs of Police had long been pushing to bring shotguns into the restrictive "Section 1" of the Firearms Act, which strictly controlled rifles and pistols. The ACPO worked out a deal with the Thatcher administration to take a major step in the ACPO's direction. As part of the legislation responding to a crime with a rifle, controls on shotguns were made significantly more stringent. There was little criminological rationale for the extra restrictions on shotguns; indeed, the extra police personnel required to administer the licenses would have to be diverted from other tasks. A Home Office Research Study written the year before Hungerford had concluded:
To make shotguns subject to the same controls as pistols ... would have considerable resource implications for the police .... Nor is there any real optimism that anything would be achieved by such a move since pistols ... are already subject to the very strict controls and yet ... are used in more cases of armed crime than shotguns.
As a result of the 1988 law, shotguns that can hold more than two shells at once now require a Firearms Certificate, the same as rifles and handguns. Moreover, all shotguns must now be registered. Shotgun sales between private parties must be reported to the police. Buyers of shot shells must produce a shotgun certificate. Applicants for a shotgun certificate must obtain a countersignature by a person who has known the applicant for two years and is "a member of Parliament, justice of the peace, minister of religion, doctor, lawyer, established civil servant, bank officer or person of similar standing."
Most importantly, the law specified that an applicant for a Shotgun Certificate, which was required for shotguns capable of holding only one or two shells, could be denied if the applicant did not have a "good reason" for wanting to own shotgun. Although the statute placed the burden on proof on the police, to show that there was not a good reason, police practice immediately shifted the burden back to the applicant to show that she did have a good reason. Self-defense, of course, was deemed not to be good reason. Persons who were active members of shooting clubs, recreational hunters, and farmers engaged in pest control were all deemed by the police to have demonstrated good reason, but a person who merely wanted to retain legal possession of a family heirloom was not considered by the police to have a (p.430)good reason. By the time two cycles of renewals for the Shotgun Certificates, which were only valid for three years, had been completed, the number of legal owners of shotguns had fallen by a quarter. This sharply reversed the steady growth of gun ownership in the previous two decades.
While the relatively liberal pre-1988 shotgun system had allowed significant growth in the number of legal shotgun owners, the greater police discretion over rifles and pistol licenses had allowed police to reduce continually the number of legal owners of rifles or pistols. The 256,000 holders of Firearms Certificates in 1968 had been cut to 173,000 by 1994. Approximately one-third of the group of Firearms Certificate holders owned handguns.
The most important remaining difference between Firearms Certificates for rifles and pistols and Shotgun Certificates was that holders of the latter did not need police permission for every new acquisition. Once a person was granted as Shotgun Certificate, he could still acquire as many shotguns as he wanted, although he had to report each acquisition to the government. In contrast, Firearms Certificate holders have been required, ever since the original Firearms Act of 1920, to receive a police-granted "variance" for each new acquisition. Generally speaking, the police are skeptical about claims that Firearms Certificate holders have a "good reason" for wanting additional guns. Consequently, if a target shooter has one rifle in the .308 caliber, he will not be allowed to acquire a second rifle in the same caliber. To bring all shotguns under Section one of the Firearms Act, a step which has not yet been taken, would have huge implications for shotgun acquisition. A person who legally owned one 12-gauge shotgun would not be allowed to own more than one.
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd told an audience that most the provisions in the 1988 Firearm Act had been prepared long before Hungerford, and the government had simply been waiting for the right moment to push them.
The Hungerford cycle was repeated in 1996 when a pederast named Thomas Hamilton used handguns to murder sixteen children and a teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. The man was well known as mentally unstable. He (p.431)had been refused membership in several gun clubs. Citizens had written to the police asking them to revoke the man's gun license. Under Great Britain's already restrictive gun laws, the police could easily have taken away this man's guns. Indeed, the police had already investigated him seven times, but had done nothing.
The tabloid press went wild with angry stories about gun-owners, portraying anyone who would own a gun as sexually inadequate and mentally ill. The Labour Party immediately called for a ban on all handguns over .22 calibre, using the same rationale that had been employed in earlier gun bans: "We can think of no good reason why a larger calibre handgun should ever lawfully be held for sporting purposes." The fact that at least 40,000 Britons engaged in target shooting with guns over .22 caliber apparently did not qualify as a "good reason." Thus, "good reason" continued its metamorphosis. In 1921, "good reason" had meant "the applicant has no nefarious purpose." In 1996, "good reason" meant "no reason can be good enough, if the gun is a handgun."
The Tory government, headed by John Major, convened a Dunblane Public Enquiry. The Enquiry received presentations on firearms policy from groups and experts on all sides of the gun issue. The most powerful submission, however, based on what the report concluded, came from the British Home Office. The Home Office presented a report citing claims from two international studies that high gun ownership rates--even legal, regulated gun ownership--caused high rates of criminal violence. These claims were seriously flawed; in Great Britain, within the United States, within Australia, and within continental Europe, the regions with the highest rates of legal gun ownership (such as rural England, the Rocky Mountain states, Queensland, and Switzerland) tend to have the lowest violence rates. But the Dunblane Commission, misled by the Home Office, came back with a report that recommended dozens of ways to tighten the already-restrictive gun licensing system, and impose more controls on licensed gun owners.
The Home Office's deception of the Dunblane Enquiry highlights another condition that may increase slippery slope risks: the government's ability to produce "data" that "prove" the need for more government power. Deliberately misleading data from the government was hardly unique to the Dunblane Enquiry. In the United States, we have J. Edgar Hoover's production of false data about interstate car theft to boost FBI funding, deceptive anti-gun research created by the federal Centers for Disease Control, and a breathtaking variety of lies in support of the "War on Drugs" to name just (p.432)a few. Television, of course, can also be deceptive. In 1993, NBC News was caught red-handed rigging pickup trucks to explode and burn in order to support a news program. Since the term "assault weapon" came into the media vocabulary, the technique of showing footage of machine guns firing in fully-automatic mode while the voice-over discusses other types of firearms has become routine. This practice continues even after the station acknowledges that the image is false or the result of outright fakery.
While the Dunblane Enquiry did recommend many new controls, the Enquiry did not recommend banning all handguns. Prime Minister John Major's Conservative government had decided to accept what it knew would be the Cullen recommendations, tightening the licensing system still more, but not banning handguns. However, then Labour Party leaders brought Dunblane spokesperson Anne Pearston to a rally, and, in effect, denounced opponents of a handgun ban as accomplices in the murder of school children. Prime Minister Major, who was already doing badly in the polls, crumbled. He promptly announced that the Conservative government would ban handguns above .22 caliber, and .22 caliber handguns would have to be stored at shooting clubs, not in homes.
A few months later, Labour Party leader Tony Blair was swept into office in a landslide. One of his first acts was to complete the handgun ban by removing the exemption for .22s. The Home Office was unable to produce any statistics regarding the use of .22 pistols in crime. Prior data showed that the Firearms Certificate system worked about as well as any human system could to keep criminals from lawfully acquiring guns, or from stealing them from lawful owners. A study by the London Metropolitan Police Inspector of 657 armed robberies in the London area from January 1988 to June 1991 found that half the robberies were perpetrated with imitation firearms. Of the remaining 328 real weapons, only one involved a gun which had ever been within the Firearms Certificate system. Dunblane was the only British mass murder in this century with a lawfully registered pistol. But gun ownership in general, and pistols in particular, had become rare, and consequently anathematized, once a few generations had (p.433)grown up under the regime created by the Firearms Act of 1920. A two-to-one majority in Parliament found it commonsense that the crime of one person should lead to the collective punishment of 57,000 others.
Since 1921, all lawfully-owned handguns in Great Britain are registered with the government, so handgun owners have little choice but to surrender their guns in exchange for payment according to government schedule. Gun registration has laid a foundation for confiscation not only in Great Britain, but also in New York City, where the 1967 registration system for long guns was used in the early 1990s to confiscate lawfully owned semiautomatic rifles. Nevertheless, United States gun control advocates continue to insist that the United States gun rights advocates are "paranoid" for resisting registration because it might lead to confiscation. The gun control advocates reason that they do not intend to confiscate registered guns. However, the gun control advocates fail to consider what their successors might advocate. The British Parliament who created the gun registration system in 1920 had no intention of banning handguns. But that 1920 Parliament failed to foresee the danger that a registration system, even if created with the best intentions, could later be used for confiscation. Thus, it is eminently sensible for civil liberties advocates in the United States to resist registration of persons who exercise constitutional rights, not because registration is excessively burdensome in itself, but because registration amounts to greasing the slippery slope.
The handgun ban by no means has satiated the anti-gun appetite in Great Britain. When Scottish handgun owners dutifully surrendered their handguns many of them applied for permits to own rifles or antique handguns that remained legal. The Scottish Home Affairs Minister announced that he wanted "to send a very powerful message" against acquisition of alternative "weapons [that] are currently legal." He announced that the Scottish government would begin considering whether to tighten controls on shotguns. Consequently, while British gun owners gracefully gave away the right to own guns for protection, they are now finding their privilege to own guns for sport is under greater attack than ever. Britain's leading anti-hunting group, the League Against Cruel Sports, points to the "hundreds" of people killed by guns and "thousands" of guns used in robberies and demands a ban on all guns. The Blair government has announced plans to study whether airguns should be brought into the gun licensing system, (p.434)and whether the age limit on gun possession should be raised, which would prevent most teenagers from using firearms, even under adult supervision. A ban on all rifles above .22 caliber except for deer hunting is expected, along with a requirement that shotgun owners receive government permission each time they acquire a shotgun, as rifle owners currently must.
A ban on all real guns will probably not suffice, however. Many British gun owners now own deactivated "replica" guns that cannot be fired. The guns are merely decorative pieces, and are less dangerous than a cricket bat. For some gun owners, deactivation was the only way they could retain possession of a prized semiautomatic. Other gun owners simply found the hassles of the police licensing system too much to overcome, and had their family heirloom guns deactivated into non-firing ex-weapons. With deactivation, at least, the family could retain the gun without need to spend vast sums on police security requirements. This last "loophole," however, in the British gun laws may be closed in a few years, as the police are now lobbying to require that owners of deactivated or replica guns get the same license that would be required for guns which can fire ammunition.
Have all these controls and abusive enforcement of controls actually made Britain safer? Armed crime in Britain is higher than it has been in at least two centuries. Armed crime is literally one hundred times more common than at the turn of the century when Britain had no weapons controls. Crime victimization surveys show that, per capita, assault in England and Wales occurs between two and three times more often than in the United States. These same surveys demonstrate that robbery occurs 1.4 times more, and burglary occurs 1.7 times more. In contrast to criminologists in the United States, British criminologists have displayed little interest in studying whether their nation's gun laws do any good. Accordingly, definitive statements about cause and effect should be avoided. One can, however, say that as British gun laws have grown more severe, the country has grown more dangerous.
A.V. Dicey's classic The Law of the Constitution, "the most celebrated exposition of the rule of law," explained that the British common law of self-defense allowed deadly force to be used only as last resort in great peril. Dicey used a lawful shooting to illustrate the rule:
A is struck by a ruffian, X; A has a revolver in his pocket. He must not then and there fire upon X, but, to avoid crime, must first (p.435)retreat as far as he can. X pursues; A is driven up against a wall. Then, and not till then, A, if he has no other means of repelling attack, may justifiably fire at X.
Moreover, because citizens were legally bound to prevent the commission of certain particularly dangerous felonies committed in their presence by strangers, the killing of a nighttime burglar without first retreating was lawful, wrote Dicey. Dicey illustrated the prevention-of-felony rule by quoting a judge's advice that the proper action to take upon discovering a nighttime burglar was to shoot him in the heart with a double-barreled shotgun.
Today, as a result of Parliament's 1967 abrogation of the common law rules on justifiable use of deadly force, should a person use a firearm for protection against a violent home intruder, he will be arrested, and a case will be brought against him by the Crown Prosecution Service. In one notorious case, an elderly lady tried to frighten off a gang of thugs by firing a blank from her imitation firearm. She was arrested and charged with the crime of putting someone in fear with an imitation firearm.
With gun ownership for self-protection now completely illegal (unless one works for the government), Britons have begun switching to other forms of protection. The government considers this an intolerable affront. Having, through administrative interpretation, delegitimized gun ownership for self-defense, the British government has been able to outlaw a variety of defensive items. For example, non-lethal chemical defense sprays, such as Mace, are now illegal in Britain, as are electric stun devices.
Some Britons are turning to guard dogs. Unfortunately dogs, unlike guns and knives, have a will of their own and sometimes attack innocent people on their own volition. The number of people injured by dogs has been rising, and the press is calling for bans on Rottweilers, Dobermans, and other "devil dogs." Under 1991 legislation, all pit bulls must be neutered or euthanized.
Other citizens choose to protect themselves with knives, but carrying a knife for defensive protection is considered illegal possession of an offensive weapon. One American tourist learned about this Orwellian offensive weapon law the hard way. After she used a pen knife to stab some men who were attacking her, a British court convicted her of carrying an offensive weapon. Her intention to use the pen knife for lawful defensive purposes (p.436)converted the pen knife, under British legal newspeak, into an illegal "offensive weapon." In 1996, knife-carrying was made presumptively illegal, even without the "offensive" intent to use the weapon defensively. A person accused of the crime is allowed "to prove that he had a good reason or lawful authority for having" the knife when he did.
Early one evening in March 1987, Eric Butler, a fifty-six-year-old executive with B.P. Chemicals, was attacked while riding the London subway. Two men came after Butler and, as one witness described, began "strangling him and smashing his head against the door; his face was red and his eyes were popping out." No passenger on the subway moved to help him. "My air supply was being cut off," Butler later testified, "my eyes became blurred and I feared for my life." Concealed inside Butler's walking stick was a three-foot blade. Butler unsheathed the blade; "I lunged at the man wildly with my swordstick. I resorted to it as my last means of defense." He stabbed an attacker's stomach. The attackers were charged with unlawful wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon. The court gave him a suspended sentence, but denounced the "breach of the law which has become so prevalent in London in recent months that one has to look for a deterrent." Butler's self-defense was the only known instance of use of a swordstick in a "crime." Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, using powers granted under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, immediately outlawed possession of swordsticks. The Act has also been used to ban blowpipes and other exotica which, while hardly a crime problem, were determined by the Home Secretary not be the sorts of things which he thought any Briton could have a good reason to possess.
No prosecution for defending oneself is too absurd. Consider a report from the Evening Standard newspaper in London, dated October 31, 1996:
A man who uses a knife as a tool of his trade was jailed today after police found him carrying three of them in his car. Dean Payne, 26, is the first person to be jailed under a new law making the carrying of a knife punishable by imprisonment. Payne told ... magistrates that he had to provide his own knife for his job cutting straps around newspaper bundles at the distribution plant where he works .... Police found the three knives--a lock knife, a small printer's knife, and a Stanley knife--in a routine search of his car.... The court agreed he had no intention of using the knives for "offensive" purposes but jailed him for two weeks anyway.(p.437)
[The magistrate said] "I have to view your conduct in light of the great public fear of people going around with knives...I consider the only proper punishment is one depriving you of your liberty."
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Great Britain was the great exemplar of liberty to continental Europe, but the sun has set on Britain's tradition of civil liberty. The police search people's cars routinely. Public hysteria against weapons is so extreme that working men are sentenced to jail for possessing the simple tools of their trade. The prosecutions of a newspaper delivery men who carries some knives, or a business executive who saved his own life, would likely have horrified the British gun control advocates of the early twentieth century. There is no evidence that most of these gun control advocates, who only wanted to keep firearms out of the hands of anti-government revolutionaries, ever wanted to make it illegal for tradesmen to carry tools, or for women to stab violent predators. The gun control advocates of 1905-1920 could distinguish a Communist with a rifle from a tourist with a pen-knife. But while the early weapons control advocates made such a distinction, they could not bind their successors to do so as well. Nor could the early weapons controllers understand the social changes that they would unleash when they gave the right to arms the first push down the slippery slope.
Similarly, in the United States, few Congressmen who voted for the first federal controls on how Americans could consume medicine could have foreseen the "War on Drugs" that they were unleashing. Who could have predicted that a law requiring a prescription for morphine would pave the way for masked soldiers to break into a person's home because an anonymous tipster claimed that there were hemp plants, which were entirely legal in 1914, in the home? Who could have predicted that the Harrison Narcotics Act would pave the way for a Food and Drug Administration that would deny terminally-ill patients the medicine of their choice because the FDA had not satisfied itself that the medicine, available throughout Western Europe, was "safe and effective?" Who could have predicted that doctors would not be able to prescribe the most effective pain-killers, opiates, to the terminally ill who were suffering extreme pain? Who could have predicted that legislative action on opiate prescriptions would pave the way for a federal administrative agency to claim the right to outlaw speech about tobacco? Predictions of such events, had they been raised in 1914 on the floor of Congress, would have seemed absurd.
However, as too many Britons and citizens of the United States have learned the hard way in this century, extreme consequences may flow from (p.438)apparently small steps. The Firearms Act of 1920 was just a licensing law; the Harrison Narcotics Act was just a prescription system; and the serpent only asked Eve to eat an apple.
The late Richard Hofstadter, one of America's greatest historians and a critic of America's gun culture, condemned the "pathetic stubbornness" of Americans who cling to the notion that the right to bear arms protects liberty. Hofstadter ably expresses the position that the protections of the Bill of Rights are easily severable. One may discard certain sticks from the bundle of rights, without impairing the remaining rights. For example, from 1960 to 1970, Second Amendment rights declined as the first federal gun laws applying to ordinary gun-owners purchasing rifles, pistols, and shotguns were enacted, and many state or local governments enacted additional laws. The Tenth Amendment also suffered major blows as the federal government began acting on subjects traditionally reserved to the states. However, other civil liberties became stronger. For example, free speech enjoyed its strongest judicial protection ever; the Warren Court applied most of the criminal procedure guarantees in the Bill of Rights to state courts; and Congress, through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other legislation, began serious enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause.
The contrary view acknowledges that some rights may flourish, while others wither, but maintains that in the long run, all civil liberties are mutually protective. In an eighteenth century context, for example, strong jury rights were seen as important to protect free speech, so as to prevent the government from bringing abusive prosecutions for seditious libel. Likewise, strong property rights increase the number of people who are financially independent, and thereby better able to challenge the government in print or in court. Strong limits on central government power, such as a vigorous Tenth Amendment, protect Fourth Amendment values such as freedom from unreasonable searches, by limiting the sphere of federal police action.
Obviously there is some intuitive plausibility both to the Hofstadter "severability" view and to the "mutual protection" view. By 1999, however, one thing has become obvious. Great Britain cannot be cited as a successful exemplar of the severability theory. To the contrary, all civil liberties in Great Britain have suffered a perilous decline from their previous heights. The nation that once had the best civil liberties record in Western Europe now has one of the worst. The evisceration of the right to arms has not, of course, been the primary cause of the decline, although, as this Essay will discuss later, it has played a not inconsiderable role. More generally, the decline of all British civil liberties appears to stem from some of the same (p.439)conditions that have afflicted the British right to arms.
Journalist Duncan Campbell writes: "Britain has never been free in the way that most people--particularly foreigners--think. It has been getting more constricted throughout the 1980s ...." The 1980s were the same period when British gun control began to move from strict control to prohibition.
Some Americans did notice that the British government banned the book Spycatcher on national security grounds. Upholding the ban, one Law Lord wrote that, in the United States, "[t]he courts, by virtue of the First Amendment, are, I understand, powerless to control the press. Fortunately, the press in this country is, as yet, not above the law ...." When Spycatcher was published in the United States, the British courts finally voided the government's censorship as nugatory. Campbell notes the irony that the United States Constitution's First Amendment became "in this matter at least, the sole legal protector of free speech and a comparatively free press in Britain."
Conversely, British law is being used to undermine American free speech principles. A libel suit by former Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou against Time magazine was brought not in Greece or in the United States, but in England. Papandreou's lawyer explained that "the English law of libel is much more favorable than the American law of libel," and that Britain does not require libel plaintiffs who are public figures to prove that the publication was made with "actual malice."
Prior restraint of speech in the United States is allowed only in the most urgent of circumstances. In England, the government may apply for a prior restraint of speech ex parte, asking a court to censor a newspaper without the newspaper even having notice or the opportunity to present an argument. The prohibition of such prior restraints was one of the primary goals of the authors of the First Amendment. Thus, one of Blackstone's fundamental rules of civil liberty--the prohibition on prior restraints--has disappeared as Britain in the 1990s regresses to a standard below that of the 1760s.
The final years of an American presidency are routinely punctuated with tattle-tale books written by disgruntled former staffers. The books typically contain embarrassing revelations about the President and his entourage, such as the fact that President Reagan's schedule was sometimes (p.440)controlled by an astrologer consulted by Mrs. Reagan. In Britain, however, Queen Elizabeth II sought, and won, from Britain's highest court an injunction forbidding the publication of a book by a royal servant revealing that the Queen had once tripped over a drunken page and ended up beneath him.
Free speech in Great Britain is also constrained by the Official Secrets Act, which outlaws the unauthorized receipt of information from any government agency, and allows government to forbid publication of any "secret" it pleases. Notably, the Official Secrets Act was enacted in 1911, a year in which Britain was suffering from anti-foreign, anti-gun national security hysteria. The Official Secrets Act was expanded in 1920 and again in 1988, both years when gun controls were expanded. While the American government carries the burden of proving that a document was appropriately classified as secret, the British subject carries the burden of proving that a document should not be secret. America's Freedom of Information Act makes United States government files more open to public scrutiny than those of any other government in the world. Sarah McCabe, a founder of Oxford's Centre for Criminological Research, contrasts "the foolish obsession [with secrecy]" of the British government "with the openness, in superficial matters at least, of the security services in the United States." A hundred other British laws also prohibit the disclosure of information by civil servants. The laws create a chilling effect so that the press is afraid to publish, even when a daring civil servant does leak information. Former Prime Minister Edward Heath worries that the Official Secrets Act of 1989 has made it impossible for government scandals equivalent to the Iran-Contra affair to be exposed.
In the fall of 1988, at the same time that Prime Minister Thatcher pushed through the new restrictions on guns, her government enacted other laws restricting civil liberties. She forbade television stations to broadcast in-person statements by supporters of a legal political party, Sinn Fein. The ban even applied to rebroadcasts of archive films taped many decades ago. A confidential British Broadcasting Corporation memo announced the government's intention to keep journalists from broadcasting any statement (p.441)by United States Senator Edward Kennedy supporting Sinn Fein.
While the First Amendment protects the rights of even repulsive organizations like the American Nazi Party to speak and demonstrate, it is illegal in Britain to so much as publicly express racist views. The Obscene Publications Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act have been used as justification for the police to seize masterpieces such as William S. Burroughs' Junky, Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. British courts have never recognized a right to assemble or demonstrate.
The British press voluntarily submits to self-censorship unimaginable in America. A joint press/government committee sends "D-notices" to editors requesting self-censorship on specified national security subjects. The press almost always obeys. The BBC banned Paul McCartney's Give Ireland Back to the Irish, and a song by another group urging the release from prison of the Guilford Four. During the American-led war against Iraq, Julian Lennon's anthem Give Peace a Chance, ubiquitous on the American airwaves, was banned by the BBC. Two civil libertarians gloomily summarize: "As our allies become more open, Britain grows yet more secretive and censorious. Perhaps the real British vice is passivity, a willingness to tolerate constraints which others would find unbearable." It is interesting to contrast the bold assertiveness of the American press, which appears determined to defend freedom of the press under all circumstances, with the submissiveness of their British cousins. The same contrast of fierce independence versus submission likewise appears when one contrasts American and British gun owners, as will be discussed below.(p.442)
National security concerns do more than keep British citizens from learning about their government. The Security Service Act of 1989 provides: "No entry on or interference with property shall be unlawful if it is authorized by a warrant issued by the secretary of state." If committed pursuant to an order from the secretary of state, acts such as theft, damage to property, arson, procuring information for blackmail, and leaving planted evidence are not crimes. In the United States, no official of the Executive Branch can authorize such actions. Only a court can authorize a government breaking and entering, and only if the government presents particular proof of necessity.
Security continues to eat away at other traditional rights of British subjects. In Northern Ireland the jury has been "suspended" for political violence cases. Confessions are admitted without corroboration. Confessions are extracted through "the five techniques:" wall-standing, hooding, continuous noise, deprivation of food, and deprivation of sleep. Convictions may be based solely on the testimony of "supergrasses" (police informers).
The British justice system's response to Irish Republican Army terrorism within Britain has been particularly disturbing. In 1974, terrorists bombed pubs in Birmingham, killing twenty-one people. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, author of the 1967 shotgun controls, introduced the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill. Approved without objection in Parliament, the Bill was supposed to expire in one year, but has been renewed every year. Under the Bill, the police may stop and search without a warrant any person suspected of terrorism. They may arrest any person they "reasonably suspect" supports an illegal organization, or any person who has participated in terrorist activity. An arrested person may be detained up to forty-eight hours and then for five more days upon the authority of the Secretary of State. Of the 6,246 people detained between 1974 and 1986, eight-seven percent were never charged with any offense. Many detainees reported that they were intimidated during detention and prevented from contacting their families. The Bill also makes it illegal even to organize a private or public meeting addressed by a member of a proscribed organization, or to wear clothes indicating support of such an organization.
The Act allows the Secretary of State to issue an "exclusion order" barring (p.443)a person from ever entering a particular part of the United Kingdom, such as Northern Ireland or Wales. Persons subject to this form of internal exile have no right to know the evidence against them, to cross-examine or confront their accusers, or even to have a formal public hearing.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled the Prevention of Terrorism Act to be in violation of Article Five, Section Three of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires suspects to be "promptly" brought before a judge. Nevertheless, the British government refuses to abandon its preventive detention policy, and evades the European Court's ruling by invoking the Convention's Article 15 provision for countries to ignore the Convention on Human Rights "in time of war or other emergency threatening the life of the nation."
The Birmingham bombings that led to the Prevention of Terrorism Act resulted in the conviction of a group of defendants called the "Birmingham Six." The defendants confessed while being held incommunicado by the police. The various confessions were so factually inconsistent that they could not have been true. The forensic scientist whose testimony convicted the Birmingham Six later admitted that he lied in court. Amnesty International charged that the defendants' confessions were extracted under torture. Civil libertarians fear that the Birmingham case is only one of many instances of police obtaining coerced confessions.
Of course United States police have sometimes framed people and manufactured evidence. What is stunning about the Birmingham Six case is the rationale used by Britain's highest judicial body to deny the appeal:
If the six men win, it will mean that the police were guilty of perjury ... violence and threats, and the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted and that the convictions were erroneous. The Home Secretary would have to recommend that they be pardoned or remit the case to the Court of Appeal. This is such an appalling vista that any sensible person in the land would say: It cannot be right that these actions should go any further. They should be struck out.(p.444)
In essence, the court said that it would be better to imprison innocent men for illegal convictions than for the British police to be brought into disrepute. The British government finally released the Birmingham Six after they had spent more than sixteen years in prison.
Under 1998 legislation pushed through Parliament and signed into law in only two days, in "terrorism" cases:
the oral statement of a police officer above the rank of superintendent that, in his opinion, the suspect is a terrorist, is admissible as evidence of the matter stated and the suspect can be arraigned. However, the suspect cannot be convicted solely on the basis of the police statement.
a court or jury may draw inferences from a suspect's failure to mention a fact which is material to the offense and which he could reasonably be expected to mention in response to police questioning, provided the suspect has been permitted to consult an attorney. But the suspect cannot be convicted solely on the basis of the inferences.
upon conviction of a terrorism offense, money or other property in a suspect's possession or under his control at the time of the offense may, upon be forfeited if it has been used in furtherance of or in connection with the crime or the court believes it may be so used in the future.
Former Tory minister Alan Clark called the legislation "focus-group fascism" resulting from "gesture politics." Lord Lloyd of Berwick, the Law Lord who advises the government on emergency powers legislation was critical of the legislation, although he did not oppose it. He warned that "convictions based largely on the opinion of a senior police officer would not stand up in appeals courts or in Europe."
It should be no surprise, then, that the United Kingdom has been found culpable of human rights violations under the European Convention on Human Rights more often than any other member of the Council of European States except Italy.
In certain situations, Britain's highest court is the final court of appeal for Commonwealth countries. Unfortunately for citizens of those Commonwealth nations, the court's record on civil liberties issues is deplorable. In (p.445)this capacity, the court has upheld a law ordering newspaper publishers to obtain a government license and to post bond with the government. The court held that a Jamaican death sentence for a defendant who had not been represented by a lawyer was permissible--even though the Jamaican Constitution explicitly guarantees a right to counsel in all criminal trials. The laxness of judicial review results in administrative agencies suffering almost no legal constraints. The British courts, like other segments of British society, seem considerably more passive than their American counterparts.
The grand jury, which, like civilian gun ownership was an ancient common law institution, was abolished in 1933. Civil jury trials have been abolished for all cases except libel, and criminal jury trials are rare. Today, over ninety percent of all jury trials in the world take place in the United States. Even when a British subject does receive a jury trial, voir dire is far more restricted than in the United States.
While the United States has the Miranda rules, Britain allows police to interrogate suspects who have asked that interrogation stop, and allows the police to keep defense lawyers away from suspects under interrogation for limited periods. The American doctrine of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" bars use of evidence derived from leads developed in a coerced confession. Britain allows use of such evidence. Even the traditional right to silence has been abolished, as 1994 legislation now allows a defendant's silence to be used as evidence against him. Further, defense trial lawyers (barristers) often serve as prosecutors on other cases. The clubby, collegial relationship between prosecution and defense counsel discourages defense counsel from aggressive defense of clients. Four out of five defendants pleading innocent do not even meet their barrister until the first day of trial. It is not difficult for the police to obtain legal authorization to search wherever they want since, for example, wiretaps do not need judicial approval. In any case, formal legal constraints are irrelevant. A study of police searches by London's Metropolitan Police showed that a large percentage (p.446)of stops and searches were not supported by reasonable suspicion, and that the police did not care whether their searches comported with formal legal standards. One reason the police do not need to care about legality is that Britain lacks an exclusionary rule to deter illegal police acquisition of evidence. Indeed, it is unlawful in a British court to point out the fact that a police wiretap was illegal.
Upon instructions of police administrators, officers in several jurisdictions have begun compiling Japanese-style dossiers on individuals in their locality. Reports contain unsubstantiated gossip and non-criminal information, such as the fact that a woman is three months pregnant and living with her parents. The British police may arrest on "reasonable suspicion," rather than on "probable cause." They may arrest anyone who does not have a permanent address. They may detain a suspect for twenty-four hours without charges, another twelve hours upon authorization by a police administrator, and up to ninety-six more hours upon authorization by a magistrate. The police may prevent a detainee from communicating with his family or lawyer for up to forty-eight hours.
If guns had never been invented, many of the British government's modern invasions of civil liberties would still have taken place. Still, the advance of gun controls has played an important role in creating laws that do infringe upon other civil liberties, as well as in providing precedents.
To enforce the gun control laws, the police have been given broad search and seizure powers. Sections 46 through 50 of the 1968 Firearms Act authorized the police to search individuals and vehicles without warrants, to require the handing-over of weapons for inspection, and to arrest without a warrant, even in a home. The principle of warrantless searches for firearms was expanded to include searches for "offensive weapons" by the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill of 1984. Since "offensive weapons" are never defined, the police have nearly unlimited authority to search and seize. African combs, bunches of keys, and tools have been considered offensive weapons. In one case reported by the National Council of Civil Liberties, a workman carrying tools to his car was asked, "Would you use this tool to defend yourself if attacked?" Had the workman given an affirmative answer, he would have been subject to arrest for the felony of carrying an offensive weapon.(p.447)
The principle of warrantless arrests is now a general practice in British law, even for minor offenses or for failure to provide satisfactory identification to the police. When the Deer Act 1963 allowed warrantless arrests for poachers, few supporters foresaw that warrantless arrests for everyone, not just poachers, would become the norm in a few decades.
Today the practice that police may inspect private homes without a warrant is being established by the "safe storage" provisions of the gun laws. In many jurisdictions the police will not issue or renew a firearms or shotgun certificate without an in-home visit to ensure that the police standards for safe storage are being met. The police have no legal authority to require such home inspections, yet when a homeowner refuses the police entry, the certificate application or renewal will be denied. The 1989 extension of the safe storage law to shotguns--a reasonable concept in itself--has added several hundred thousand more British homes to those to which the police consider they have the authority to demand entry without a warrant. Finally, the gun control laws have helped teach that laws in practice are made by police administrators or London bureaucrats, rather than being the exclusive creation of Parliament.
What makes a civil liberty particularly vulnerable to a slippery slope? This section discusses some particular factors that have made gun rights, like most of the rest of the freedoms guaranteed in the American Bill of Rights, particularly vulnerable in Great Britain: its structure of government, and its civil liberties organizations. Before addressing those topics, this Essay will consolidate the factors that have been touched upon in earlier sections.
The first factor that undermined the British right to arms was a technological change when revolvers came to be seen by some persons as much more dangerous than previous weapons. This same phenomenon can be seen in the treatment of other technological advances, such as the automobile, which from the 1920s onward, has often been treated by the United States Supreme Court as a "Constitution-free zone", where searches and seizures in contravention of normal Fourth Amendment standards may take place.(p.448)
The second factor that undermined the British right to arms was the role of the media, with its lurid and exaggerated accounts of gun crime in the 1880s, or its vicious denunciations of recreational shooters in the 1990s. This suggests that slippery slopes may be less dangerous when the right in question is supported by the press, as free speech and abortion rights are in the modern United States. Conversely, slippery slopes may be more dangerous when the press is indifferent, as in the case of federalism and states' rights, or actively hostile, as in the case of gun rights.
The third undermining factor was the development of government mistrust of the people, as in the 1920 fears of Bolshevism. We may hear echoes of this today in the United States government's fears the militia movement and its allies. Certainly, however, the dangers posed by the modern militia movement are much smaller than the dangers posed by Soviet communism and its United States agents in the 1950s or by violent anarcho-syndicalism in the early twentieth century. Consequently, the related suppressions of civil liberties have been smaller.
The major "subversive" group in the United States today is not anarcho-syndicalists, militia members, or Fenians, but drug users. They are "traitors in the War on Drugs" according to much public rhetoric, and according to the United States' moralist-in-chief William Bennett, public beheadings of drug users would be a good idea. Over the last two decades, no force has been more important in eroding the civil liberties of all Americans, drug users and abstainers alike, than the War on Drugs.
The shifting of the burden of proof, both at law and in popular discussion, was the fourth factor degrading the British right to arms. Rather than the government having to prove that a particular gun-owner or a particular type of gun was dangerous, the gun-owner began to have to prove his "good reason," and the government began deciding to outlaw weapons that the government did not think anyone outside the government had a good reason to own.
The "added authority" problem described by Schauer was of great significance. Once the people agreed that Parliament had the authority to decide whether to ban any type of gun, or to decide how people could acquire guns, a wide range of restrictions became intellectually conceivable. Even more significantly, once the police were given authority over licensing, they were able to use that authority to impose many additional controls, and to reduce the number of licensed shooters. In addition, Parliament's allowing the Home Office to ban weapons by administrative edict has resulted in certain weapons such as swordsticks being banned for no good reason.(p.449)
This suggests that often the most important aspect of a particular restriction on civil liberty, at least in terms of slippery slope dangers, is not the content of the restriction, but who will decide its contours. For example, the 1994 Congressional ban on "assault weapons" contained a complete definition of what an "assault weapon" is, and gave the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms no discretionary authority to add guns to the banned list. Thus, the potential future expansion of the law was constrained. Conversely, the most important aspect of Canada's latest gun control law, Bill C-68, is not that it bans some handguns, but that it gave the Prime Minister and his appointees the authority to ban any other weapon they want, without asking Parliamentary approval. Thus, how much "added authority" one control creates for future controls is a fifth important factor in estimating slippery slope dangers.
Additionally, how many people are there who care to resist infringement of a right? Few politicians seriously propose a total gun ban in the United States because there are seventy million gun-owning households--about half the population. But only about four percent of the British population legally owns guns--a much smaller interest group. If, over the course of generations, the percentage of a population that is interested in a right can be gradually reduced, stricter controls become more politically feasible, and the stricter controls can further reduce the long-term number of people who exercise their rights.
This suggests the long-term importance of young people exercising their rights. If high school newspapers have large staffs that fearlessly report the truth, the future of the First Amendment is better protected. If, conversely, laws prevent teenagers from target shooting or hunting, the future of the Second Amendment is endangered.
A final potential reason that a polity might move further down a slippery slope is that the polity sees the previous step as being useful. For instance, if a City Council imposed a 10 p.m. curfew for sixteen-year-olds, and night-time crime perpetrated by sixteen-year-olds fell significantly and immediately, the city council would likely consider extending the curfew to seventeen-year-olds. In the United States, there is no shortage of studies claiming that laws tightening gun controls (like the Brady Act) or laws relaxing gun controls, like laws allowing trained citizens to carry a concealed handgun for protection, reduce crime. Scholars such as John Lott, Gary Kleck, Arthur Kellerman, Garen Wintemute, and others, carry on a steady debate about the empirical benefits of various firearms policies. Anyone who follows the firearms debate seriously will soon encounter one of these social scientists on a television interview. The gun control debate in Canada likewise includes scholars such as Gary Mauser and Thomas Gabor, who make various empirical research claims for or against particular gun policies.
From an American point of view, one of the truly odd characteristics of (p.450)the British gun debate is the apparent irrelevance of social science. To the extent that any research is cited, the research is from North America, or involves transnational comparisons. Nobody cites British quantitative research because none exists other than raw crime statistics collected by the Home Office.
The raw statistics do make some facts clear: when Britain had no gun control (early in the twentieth century) or moderately-administered gun control (in the middle of the century), Britain had virtually no gun crime. Today, Britain literally has substantially more gun crime, as well as more violent crime in general. From 1776 until very recently, the United States has suffered a much higher violent crime rate than Britain, regardless of whether British gun laws were liberal or strict. In recent years, however, the once-wide gap in violent crime has disappeared. This gap was closed by a moderate drop in American crime rates, coupled with a sharp rise in the British rates. One does not hear British gun control advocates touting statistics about how crime rates fell after previous gun laws were enacted. Rather, the advocacy is based on the "inherent danger of guns," and on the "horror" of Dunblane and Hungerford. Even though Britain shows that demonstrated empirical success is not essential for movement down a slippery slope, success does help. The drop in New York City's crime rate following Mayor Rudolph Guliani's aggressive policing policies, which were roundly condemned by the New York Civil Liberties Union, has encouraged other cities to adopt similar policies. This, in turn, made Guliani's brand of authoritarian conservatism an important element in the national Republican party's thinking about crime policy.
There are certainly other factors that may affect the potential danger of a given slippery slope. The seven factors that this Essay has discussed, however, could be usefully analyzed in many different situations to examine the relative risks of a slippery slope argument. In addition to these seven factors there are several other factors that made the right to arms so vulnerable in Britain--and which also have implications for civil liberties in the United States. It is to these additional factors that this Essay now turns.
When the government cuts back on civil liberties, it couches its actions in the reasonable-sounding language of "balancing." For example, under the Public Order Act of 1986, organizers of marches must give seven days notice to the police, and it is illegal for a person to participate in a march that (p.451)has not complied with the Public Order Act. The Act was initiated by Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, author of the 1988 gun controls. The Home Office claimed that it was balancing "the rights of those who wish to demonstrate and the interests of the wider community." The Police Act, authorizing incommunicado detention, was promoted as a "balance" between police powers and individual rights. Likewise, Hurd justified the 1988 gun controls as "a better balance between the interests of the genuine sportsman and the safety of the public as a whole." The gun lobby's concession that guns are only for sports, and not for defense, ensures that the balance is always tipped against the gun owner. If guns make no positive contribution to personal or public safety, the public's concerns about safety must always override the gun owners' interest in sports.
The rhetoric of balancing is dangerous because it tends to give too much weight to the short-term concerns of public safety. Thus, the American right that has been most subject to balancing, the Fourth Amendment, has suffered badly in the United States Supreme Court. More fundamentally, the "balancing" that legislatures or courts sometimes do is not their job, because the balancing has already been done. Whether in the 1689 Bill of Rights, which was to apply "for all time," or in the 1789-91 United States Constitution, a balance was struck. Because of this balance, governments were prohibited from doing certain things since, in the long run, public safety and liberty were both enhanced by preventing short-term considerations from controlling. Thus, when the Blaisdell Court "balanced" its way around the Constitution's absolute ban on the impairment of contracts, and upheld Minnesota's debtor relief law, the Court did not merely err--the Court usurped power and attempted to re-open the question that the Contracts Clause had decided with finality.
When rights are protected with bright lines, as the First Amendment usually is, then rights are particularly secure against slippery slopes. When rights are subjected to "balancing" (a/k/a "reasonableness") tests by courts, as the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause often is, then rights are particularly vulnerable. And when a society has lost the theory of constitutional absolutes as Britain has, and replaced this with "balancing," then every right is in danger.
Although the British government praises "balancing," the lack of checks and balances within the government itself endangers liberties. Any (p.452)United States law, including a restriction on liberty, must be approved by the legislative and the executive, enforced by the executive, and upheld by the courts. The independence of the legislature, executive, and judicial branches in the United States is a deliberate formula for government gridlock, for it ensures that government cannot speak with a single voice.
In contrast, the British Parliament is supreme. An act of Parliament that is clearly expressed cannot be questioned on constitutional grounds by any British court. A majority in Parliament means control of the entire government. The party leader--the Prime Minister--and the leader's close advisors have a much easier time turning their unchecked will into law than do their counterparts in the United States or Canada. The British system does not mean legislative supremacy, but rather executive supremacy, since the leader of the dominant party in Parliament faces no effective opposition or check. There is, 300 years after the Glorious Revolution, an unexpected new "monarch"--the Prime Minister. As a practical matter, the Parliament today acts as less of a check on the supreme executive's power than Parliament did in 1613, when King James I asserted the divine right of kings. The modern "servile but supreme parliament" is no longer a restraint on executive power, but instead an instrument of that power.
In the seventeenth century prelude to the English Civil War, as Parliament took control of the militia away from the King, Parliament exalted itself as the "epitome" of the nation, insisting "there can be nothing against the arbitrary Supremacy of Parliaments." Indeed, it was commonly said that "Parliament can do no wrong." The fiction of a King, who embodied all national sovereignty and could do no wrong, was replaced with the fiction of an equally absolute Parliament.
Unfortunately, modern Britain's politics derives more from the seventeenth century absolutism than from the eighteenth century common law (p.453)described by Blackstone, in which the "right of the individual" to arms was meant for "the natural rights of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression." In Blackstone's time, and for many decades thereafter, Britons believed that they had the same right that citizens of the United States claimed in the Declaration of Independence--to "alter or abolish" their government by force, if the government became too oppressive.
What a slippery slope Britain has descended in just a century! When the century dawned, Blackstone's right to resist oppression was the law. Today in Britain, only the Libertarian Alliance dares to argue about a right of resistance. Regarding the issue of the government's absolute sovereignty, the British government holds a tighter ideological grip over its subjects today than most British governments since 1689 ever dreamed of achieving.
Virtually no one in the debates surrounding the creation of the United States constitutional government, or in the two centuries of that government's existence, has asserted that any branch of government deserved absolute power. A person insisting that "Congress can do no wrong," would be making a joke. The "checks and balances" of the United States Constitution reflect the explicit choice of the its framers that government was itself something that needed to be controlled--by the internal checks of three equal branches of government. The United States' system of checks and balances constrains the central government by dividing its power. Thus, slippery slope problems in the United States take longer to develop than those in Great Britain. Thus, almost any slippery slope argument made in Great Britain is inherently more plausible than the same argument made in the United States, although the ultimate harm may be the same.
Because the United States Constitution's separation of powers is a very powerful protection against slippery slope degradation of its citizens' individual rights, United States citizens must be particularly vigilant that the separation of powers itself does not fall victim to a slippery slope. The British, after all, once separated their powers--between a House of Commons, a (p.454)House of Lords, and a Monarch. But over time, the first has arrogated to itself all but the tiniest remnant of the national government's political power. Indeed, there is now discussion of the House of Commons, by its own fiat, abolishing the House of Lords or the Monarchy.
Current conditions in the United States are, however, no cause for complacency. As Bruce Ackerman details in We the People: Transformations, the central government now exercises vast powers which were never granted by the text of the 1789 Constitution, and the separation of powers between the central government and the states has been severely damaged, far beyond the change in federal/state relations that the Fourteenth Amendment wrought. Also severely damaged is the separation of powers between the three branches of the central government. David Schoenbrod's superb Power without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation details how Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary have collaborated in a vast transfer of Congress's Article I lawmaking authority to the Executive branch. Additionally, the slippery slope of executive branch lawmaking continues to worsen. In earlier decades the Executive Branch made law almost exclusively through formal regulations or through quasi-judicial adjudications--a usurpation of the legislature's law making power and the judiciary's Article III powers. Currently, however, executive law making often tends to slip even the restraints of the Administrative Procedure Act, as the Executive branch invents "law" through the creation of "guidelines" implementing federal statutes. The "guidelines" are de facto law for the vast number of citizens and businesses attempting to comply with what the legions of federal enforcement officers demand. Although the guidelines are not formally enforceable in court, only a small minority of the victims of illegal executive law-making are able to spend the money necessary to go to federal court and win a ruling three years later that guidelines are not law.
Civil liberties in Britain lack the shield of a written constitution enforced by judicial review. Civil liberties endure only so long as Parliamentary majorities respect unwritten traditions or the statutes of previous Parliaments, such as the Bill of Rights. A civil liberties leader in the House of (p.455)Lords has argued for the importance of a written constitution:
Human rights are built into American life by the Constitution, and protected by a court, the Supreme Court of the USA. Not so in my country. "Human rights" is not a term of art in English law. Civil liberties--yes, our courts understand them and protect them. We rely on the common law: but the common law has no constitutional protection against the inroads of the legislature. Judges are, in terms of power, subordinate to parliament. Mr. Justice Brennan's approach to human rights is the pearl of great price that we have lost in the rough seas that prevail outside the world of a written constitution.
Ironically, while the British government believes that it functions just fine without a written constitution, the British government only grants approval to shooting clubs if they are "a genuine target shooting club with a written constitution." What topsy-turvy priorities for a body politic: Safety dictates that the law must demand "a written constitution" from each approved shooting club; but there is no "written constitution" demanded for the British government--which is vastly more important, and more dangerous than all the gun clubs put together.
The differing constitutional policies of the United States and Britain, and the differing fate of the right to bear arms in the two nations, can be traced in part to the revolutionary times that gave birth to the formal recognition of the right to bear arms in each nation. The Second Amendment was written just a few years after an armed United States fought a long and violent revolution that overthrew what many United States citizens considered an imperial dictatorship. The closest the British people ever came to successfully overthrowing a government was watching passively when William of Orange frightened James I into fleeing the country, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. And the resultant statutory "Bill of Rights" was as close as Britain ever got to a strong written Constitution protecting a right to bear arms. The resultant Bill of Rights enacted by Parliament in 1689 has turned out to be of little value in protecting even a small core of a "right" to own guns in Britain. In contrast, the appeal that a United States citizen (p.456)makes to the Bill of Rights is an appeal to the highest law, and a claim of entitlement. Gun owners in the United States, and a very large majority of the United States public, believe that they have a right to bear arms. In fact, legal scholarship now overwhelmingly endorses the "Standard Model" of Second Amendment interpretation, holding that the Bill of Rights provides a meaningful, individual right to keep and bear arms, which does restrict government. Akhil Amar observes how the United States' Bill of Rights grew in importance over time. It was like the Decalogue, with ten essential fundamental rules. The United States' Bill of Rights had an important advantage over its British ancestor: the United States Bill was part of a larger document, and that larger document--the Constitution--was universally acknowledged to be superior to the federal government. The United States' federal government was under the Constitution, everyone agreed. And therefore the United States' federal government must be under the Bill of Rights, since the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution. But the British Bill of Rights hangs by itself. It is not attached to the written constitution for the British government.
The lesson of slippery slopes is that the strength with which a right is expressed in fundamental law can make a great difference. The Second Amendment has undeniably made a huge difference in the progress of the gun debate in the United States. Imagine the debate if there were not millions of political activists, and a huge majority of the public, who believed that ownership of a guns was a constitutional right.
Contrast the fate of the right to arms in the United States with the fate of the right to medical choice. Suppose that Madison had included a right to medical liberty in the Bill of Rights, and the nation had ratified it. With an explicit constitutional right to medical choice, would United States citizens have ever allowed their government to get to the point that it denies the best painkillers (such as heroin) to terminally ill people in incurable pain? To deny various treatments to people who conventional treatments are failing to save from cancer? To use the interstate commerce power to make felons out of people undergoing chemotherapy who control their nausea by smoking a homegrown hemp plant--a plant which George Washington grew on his farm?
Thus, aspects of freedom that are traditional, but which are not enumerated in the Constitution, may be especially vulnerable to slippery slopes. For example, the right to privacy, the right to self-defense, the right to move around (by foot or by auto); and the right to medical freedom all deserve protection against further encroachment because small encroachments may snowball. Some readers will object that something on this paragraph's list of (p.457)unenumerated rights are not really rights at all, and deserve no protection. This objection confirms that the rights in question are at risk, and therefore need special guardianship from [errata: by] persons who believe in the right.
The United States' National Rifle Association is sui generis; it is the only gun rights lobby in the world to be one of the very most influential lobbies affecting its government. The American Civil Liberties Union is not as legislatively powerful as the NRA, but it too is vastly more influential on government than are the ACLU's foreign cousins.
The British lobbies accuse the United States of going too far. Commented the general secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties of England and Wales, "[u]nlike the American Civil Liberties Union, we feel that freedom of speech is not an absolute." Thus, Britain's NCCL decided not to oppose legislation prohibiting the public expression of racist views. The National Council on Civil Liberties favors suppression of racist speech, and has even refused to represent racist clients on other issues. Similarly, British gun organizations criticize the laxity of United States gun laws. When the Home Office imposed major new restrictions on gun clubs, the Chief Executive of Britain's National Rifle Association affirmed his assent by simply noting that "the Government saw a need." In the United States, the notion that a civil liberties group or a national shooting organization would support a reduction in freedom simply because "the government saw a need," is almost too absurd to contemplate.
The British gun-owners must accept much of the blame for their current predicament because of their concession that guns were only appropriate for sports. When the Home Office in the 1980s began complaining that some people were obtaining guns for protection, British Shooting Sports Council joined the complaint: "This, if it is a fact, is an alarming trend and reflects (p.458)sadly on our society." One hunting lobby official condemned "the growing number of weapons being held in urban areas" for reasons having nothing to do with sport. The major hunting lobby, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, defended the right to arms, but only, in its words, "the freedom to possess and use sporting arms."
The BASC's stance may appear to be a "reasonable" position, which demonstrates that gun-owners are not bloodthirsty nuts wanting to shoot people. Rather, shooters are harmless sportsmen, and licensed guns belong in the same category as cricket bats or golf clubs. In practice, however, the concession that guns are only for sports undermines defense of the right to bear arms. If guns are not to be owned for defense, then guns make no positive contribution to public safety. If the sovereignty of the central government is absolute, then the people's ownership of arms makes no positive contribution to a sound body politic.
British libertarian Sean Gabb points out that the British gun lobbies' support of gun licensing undermines the lobbies' arguments that licensed gun owners are not part of the gun crime problem. As Gabb writes: "[b]ut if control is needed, and if it can be made to work, the fact that it did not prevent Thomas Hamilton from shooting those poor children is surely an argument at least for tightening it in future." Gabb further argues that British gun owners have been losing battle after battle and have therefore shriveled in numbers because "you all failed to put the real case for guns--that their possession for defence is a moral right and duty, as well as a positive social good." Instead, the many eloquent MPs who spoke against handgun confiscation pointed to all the admirable sporting uses of sporting guns: by handicapped people in the paralympics; by British athletes in the Olympics and in the Commonwealth Games; and by ordinary Britons on a Saturday afternoon of innocent sport.
The anti-ban MPs spoke well, but the prohibitionists' argument, while simple, was intellectually stronger. There are substitutes for sports; displaced handgun shooters can still use rifles or shotguns or airguns. But there is no substitute for a child's life. Even if virtually all handguns are never misused, at the very least, once in a while a handgun will be. If complete prohibition saves one life, it's worth it. The score in this debate, for potential lives saved was Gun Ownership: zero; Gun Prohibition: perhaps one or (p.459)more. If this is the only calculus, then prohibition is a clear winner.
To Labour's winning argument, Prince Philip made another of his "insensitive" comments: that other sports were dangerous too. A person with a cricket bat would be able to commit a murder, he noted. True enough, and the media response to his comment was not very powerful on the logical front; the Prince's comment supposedly showed that he was insensitive to the Dunblane victims' families. In contrast, Labour arguments offered in Parliament on the day the total handgun ban passed were more logical. Namely: a gun is deadlier than other sporting tools, which is not surprising, since guns were designed for killing. If guns are to survive in a rational political debate, then they must be defended on the basis that guns are legitimate for shooting violent criminals when lesser force will not suffice. In the United States, even the gun prohibition groups concede that guns are used 60,000 to 80,000 times a year for self-defense. Most studies suggest that the number is in the hundreds of thousands, or millions. The number is undeniably large. This agreed-upon large number of legitimate self-defense cases weighs heavily in the debate on gun control. A logical public official must consider that, while a particular gun control proposal may promise a reduction in gun misuse that hurts people, the particular gun control might also impair some of the many instances of guns being used to save people. On the United States balance, there are potential lives saved on each side of the scale. In the British balance, lives are saved only on the prohibition side.
A particular right's vulnerability to a slippery slope may depend on whether its advocates can answer the following question: "If your right kills just one more child, is your right really worthwhile?" What if, after the infamous Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, a person who watched the parade had been inspired to emulate Hitler, and, three months later, he strangled two Jewish children? What could the ACLU say to their parents? The ACLU could argue that by making sure that the government can never control speech because of its political content, we help ensure that the government cannot suppress dissent. If government could suppress dissent, then hundreds or millions of children might be killed. We should remember, as the ACLU would add, that the Nazis felt it necessary to use their control of the press to prevent the German public from learning that the Holocaust was taking place. Thus, the ACLU could argue that its policy of defending Nazi speech is, ironically, important to the long-run prevention of Nazi practice. This absolutist ACLU position of free speech has become the law of the land.(p.460)
Our Nazi child-killing case was a hypothetical, but the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers really does face cases where enforcement of a criminal procedure element of the Bill of Rights lead to the release of criminals who murder children. Yet the NACDL can respond that its position saves lives; without a strong Bill of Rights, innocent people might be given capital punishment, or imprisoned for the rest of their lives.
Unwilling to support the right to keep and bear arms for defense, as opposed to the privilege to use sporting weapons, British gun owners have also been unwilling to band together for defensive purposes. While Britain has a large number of groups that promote particular shooting disciplines, such as the Clay Pigeon Shooting Association, the National Small-Bore Rifle Association, and the United Kingdom Practical Shooting Association, most of these organizations content themselves simply with running their own competitions. Getting involved in legislative affairs would hardly occur to them and they would never dream of getting involved in legislative affairs on an issue that did not affect their own discipline. The clay pigeon folks paid no attention to how the government was restricting handguns, nor did the handgunners care much about what the government did to the rifle shooters. Indeed, during the debate on the post-Dunblane handgun ban, one might hear a shotgunner claiming that people who enjoy practical pistol shooting are "killers," while a handgunner on a television program retorted that rifles and shotguns are more dangerous than handguns. This rhetoric is the political equivalent of gun-owners forming a firing squad by standing in a circle.
Contrast the my-shooting-sport-only stance of so many British gun-owners with the policy of the American Civil Liberties Union, which not only defends speech it favors, but also speech that it loathes, as was the case at Skokie. The ACLU understands that the principle used to suppress anyone's speech can be used to suppress everyone's.
The firing-squad-in-a-circle attitude of some British gun owners is apparent among some shooters in the United States. Some hunters complain when the NRA defends semi-automatic rifles used by target shooters. Some target shooters complain that the NRA is too involved in fighting for people who want to carry handguns for protection, and almost everybody is willing to let the already heavily-regulated machine gun shooters get regulated out of existence. Nevertheless, the historical accident that the shooting sports in the United States are unified under a single National Rifle Association helps mitigate the tendency to circular firing squads. Although there have been internal struggles, the NRA has always maintained a leadership and a political (p.461)stance that regards an attack on one type of gun as an attack on all types of guns. It is for this reason that the NRA defends the right to own small, inexpensive handguns, also referred to as "junk guns" or "Saturday Night Specials," even though the NRA's membership does not have much of a direct stake in the guns. The NRA recognizes that bans on any given type of gun just sets the stage for banning another gun and every time a gun is banned and its owners disarmed, there are fewer people left to stand up for the Second Amendment. It is true that many of today's legislators promoting a ban on small handguns for poor people bear no animus towards expensive skeet shotguns, but the British experience confirms that taking a mediocre handgun away from a poor person does, in the long run, endanger the ownership of $1,300 sporting shotguns.
Benjamin Franklin's advice to his fellow revolutionary Patriots that "[w]e must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately" is well understood by mainstream exercisers of First Amendment rights. Eminently respectable entities like the American Library Association or the Washington Post do not hesitate to file amicus briefs in cases involving non-mainstream defendants like Soldier of Fortune or Larry Flynt. This same "all hang together" advice transcends civil liberties boundaries. First Amendment advocates such as the ACLU, Second Amendment advocates such as the NRA, and Fourth Amendment advocates such as the NACDL, are needed to defend the full scope of their particular rights. Those who defend rights become stronger still when they defend the rights of each other. Twenty years ago, the lobbyist from the American Civil Liberties Union and the lobbyist from Gun Owners of America were never seen making joint visits to members of Congress. Perhaps the most important positive development for civil liberties in the 1990s was the forceful emergence of the "Leave Us Alone Coalition"--in which Christian home-schoolers and hemp activist hippies began to find common ground in their common desire to limit federal control of families and schools. In the same vein, groups like the Eagle Forum and Quaker social action groups worked together against wiretapping and the militarization of federal law enforcement.
Almost every time the British government has demanded more power, the great mass of British gun owners have placidly accepted the government's action without protest. The 1996-97 push for handgun confiscation (p.462)saw the first significant display of mass gun-owner activism in many years, with tens of thousands of law-abiding gun owners and supporters rallying at demonstrations, and letter after letter to M.P.s. It was the biggest and most powerful display of political activism by British gun rights advocates in the twentieth century. If the gun owners had rallied so effectively in 1967, or in 1920, they would not be on the verge of extinction today. If they can sustain the present level of political activism into the next century, they will at least have a chance of survival.
But the politics of British gun owners in most of the twentieth century are a failure. The consequence of the "reasonable" approach of the gun owners has not been a reasonable treatment by the British government. Instead, the government has pressed down restriction after restriction upon the British people, and as every restriction fails to halt the rising tide of crime, the British government invents still more "reasonable" gun controls to distract the public from the government's inept efforts at crime control.
As armed crime grows worse and worse, despite nearly a century of severe firearms controls, the British government expends more and more energy "cracking down" on the rights of the law-abiding British people. The undermining of the right to arms has paralleled the destruction of many other common law rights, including the grand jury right, freedom of the press from prior restraints, the civil jury, freedom from warrantless searches, the right to confront one's accusers, and the right against self-incrimination. People who want to argue that gun rights can be destroyed while other rights prosper must find some other country to use as an example.
The United States' gun control lobbies and their intellectual supporters brim with praise for Britain's "sensible" gun laws. In response, are citizens of the United States who cherish Second Amendment rights necessarily wrong for being reluctant to take any more steps down the slippery slope? Should those United States citizens who cherish other parts of the Bill of Rights look forward to their civil liberty standards becoming more like Britain's?
While slippery slopes are frequently invoked in political and legal debate, little attention has been paid to factors that contribute to the real, as opposed to the merely theoretical, danger that a first step down a slippery slope may lead to severe damage or even elimination of a civil liberty. This Essay has identified the following factors that helped lead to the destruction of the right to arms in Great Britain:
media sensationalism about abuses of the right and media hostility toward the exercise of the right;
technological changes that introduce new and socially controversial (p.463)ways of exercising the right;
the hesitation of extending civil liberties principles developed under old technologies to new technologies;
the creation of government jurisdiction, in the form of a licensing system, that created a platform for administrative constriction of the right;
political leaders gaining political benefits (such as diverting the public from the death penalty, or demonstrating the leader's compassion) from attacks on the right;
restrictions aimed at teenagers, which over the long term reduced the number of adults interested in the exercising of the right, and, consequently reduced the number of adults interested in defending the right politically;
shifting the burden of proof away from the government, which no longer had to prove the need for new restrictions or for the denial of a permit to exercise the right, and placing the burden on the individual, who had to prove his or her need to own a particular item;
restrictions created by administrative fiat that further reduced adult entry into or continuance in the activity, thus driving the exercise of the right to levels so low that rights advocates became an insignificant political group;
the production of deliberately misleading data by the government in support of restrictive legislation;
registration of the property of persons who exercised the right, which was later used to facilitate confiscation of property;
the government's loss of trust in ordinary citizens.
In addition, we identified one other potential factor that might encourage movement down a slippery slope, that being the prominent success of an earlier step down the slope; this factor did not appear to be present in England. None of the British gun controls resulted in any statistically noticeable reduction in crime in the years after their enactment.
These factors are not the only factors that could make a slippery slope situation dangerous; but when slippery slope arguments are raised, the presence (or absence) of these factors may indicate how real the slippery slope danger is. The more factors that are present, the greater the potential slippery slope risk.
This Essay has also identified several structural elements in the British system of government that contributed to the gradual elimination of the right to arms in Great Britain:
rights are subject to balancing against perceived government or social needs;
the government is not constrained by internal checks and balances;
there is a consensus that Parliament, which is, in practice, a few leaders of the majority party, rather than the people or the law, is sovereign;
there is no written constitution;(p.464)
the absence of a right in a written constitution impedes the growth of rights consciousness among the people.
Regarding most of these elements, the United States is radically different from Great Britain. Consequently, civil liberties of all types are stronger in the United States than in Great Britain. However, the erosion of federalism and of the separation of powers over the last half century in the United States should caution Americans against complacency regarding the security of their constitutional structure.
We also identified several factors about the political defense of gun rights in Great Britain that made the arms right vulnerable to the slippery slope. Most of these factors have parallels regarding the defense of other civil liberties in Britain:
the right was defended only on sporting grounds, and not on the basis that it protects people from dangerous criminals or from dangerously criminal governments;
the right's defenders accepted and even applauded a great deal of regulation of the right;
the right's defenders accepted the principle that the right could be further regulated whenever the government saw a need, rather than only when there was a genuine necessity for more regulation;
the right's defenders usually appeased the government, rather than resisting unjustifiable government demands for more controls;
people who exercised the right in one way were often unwilling to defend people who exercised the right in a different way.
As with constitutional structure, the American system is considerably more sound than the British one. Civil liberties organizations such as the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union are bolder than their British counterparts, and better able to articulate strong theories of right that can withstand heavy political assault and pressure to balance the right against other interests.
In the United States' political and legal debate, arguments for or against slippery slopes have heretofore often been made in a simplistic manner, with little more than assertions that slippery slope dangers do or do not exist. We hope that this Essay can provide a step toward a more complex analysis of slippery slopes by highlighting some of the elements that can increase or decrease slippery slope risks.
Slippery slopes are not inevitable, but neither are they imaginary. The British experience demonstrates that many civil liberties, including the right to arms, really can slowly slide all the way to the bottom of the slippery slope. While we have not aimed to convince readers to value any particular civil liberty, such as arms, speech, or protection from warrantless searches, we have attempted to show that it is reasonable for groups that do honor such rights, like the NRA, ACLU, or NACDL, to refuse to acquiesce in "reasonable" infringements of those rights. Even though, as John Maynard (p.465)Keynes observed, we are all dead in the long run, persons who cherish a particular civil liberty want that liberty to endure not just in their own lifetimes, but in the lives of subsequent generations. In the long run, the best way to protect a given civil liberty from destruction may be to resist even the smallest infringements in short run.
Professor of Law, Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota. J.D. (Dist.) 1970, Duke University School of Law; L.L.M. 1981, University of Florida Law Center. The authors would like to thank Derek Bernard, David Caplan, Brannon Denning, and Don Kates for helpful comments.
Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University School of Law; J.D. 1985, University of Michigan (M.C.L.); Research Director, Independence Institute, Golden, Colorado, http://i2i.org. Parts of this Essay are revised from material in David B. Kopel, Gun Control in Great Britain: Saving Lives or Constricting Liberty (1992) and David B. Kopel, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (1992) (named Book of the Year by the American Society of Criminology, Division of International Criminology).
See, e.g., Henry Geller & Jane H. Yurow, The Reasonable Access Provision (312(a)(7)) of the Communications Act: Once More Down the Slippery Slope, 34 Fed. Com. L.J. 389 (1982) (arguing that the Federal Election Commission review of a television station's refusal to allow a federal candidate "reasonable access" creates a slippery slope for government control of the media's editorial decisions); John Q. La Fond, Washington's Sexually Violent Predator Law: A Deliberate Misuse of the Therapeutic State for Social Control, 15 U. Puget Sound L. Rev. 655 (1992) (arguing that allowing the civil commitment of persons labeled as violent sexual predators creates a slippery slope to the widespread use of lifetime confinement of other people based on only a single crime); Jennifer L. Bradshaw, Comment, The Slippery Slope of Modern Takings Jurisprudence in New Jersey, 7 Seton Hall Const. L.J. 433 (1987) (discussing a decision upholding the Pinelands Protection Act and arguing that the slippery slope endangers Fifth Amendment property rights).
Of course slippery slope arguments are not made only as arguments against a potential infringement of civil liberty. See, e.g., James Q. Wilson, Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System (1997) (asserting that expert testimony about battered women's syndrome creates a slippery slope away from personal responsibility).
For example, Andrew McClurg, in his sophisticated critique of the rhetoric for and against gun control, calls "fallacious" the invocation of the "slippery slope" argument against the Brady Bill. McClurg acknowledges that some leading advocates of the Brady Bill had a long-term objective of banning all guns or all handguns. Nevertheless, McClurg considers the slippery slope to be deficient of empirical support; he finds no reason to believe that a law like the Brady Bill could set the stage for eventual prohibition. See Andrew Jay McClurg, The Rhetoric of Gun Control, 42 Am. U.L. Rev. 53, 84-89 (1992). In this Essay, we aim to answer the demand of Professor McClurg (and other gun control advocates) who ask for evidence that moderate gun controls actually could lead to gun confiscation.
See 1 W. & M., ch. 2 (Eng.); Hannis Taylor, The Origins and Growth of the English Constitution 415-17 (4th. ed. 1896).
See id. at 563-65. The word "militia" was not created until Elizabethan times, around 1590, although the system of popular defense had existed in some form for approximately a thousand years. The fact that most able-bodied males had national or local defense obligations, using weapons supplied by themselves, should not be taken to suggest that everything about military service was egalitarian. Feudalism was anything but. See, e.g., Michael Rhys Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England: A Study in Liberty and Duty (1962).
7 Edw., ch. 2 (Eng.).
2 Edw. 3, ch. 3 (Eng.). This "Statute of Northampton" reiterated the prohibition on misuse by those who "go or ride armed by day or night" in certain public locations. See id.
1 William Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 267 (6th ed. 1788)
Rex v. Knight, 87 Eng. Rep. 75 (K. B. 1686).
See 19 Hen. 7, ch. 4 (Eng.); 6 Hen. 8, ch. 13 (Eng.).
See 33 Hen. 8, ch. 6 (Eng.). See generally, Ralph Payne-Gallwey, The Book of the Crossbow 31-37 (1995).
See, e.g., Sir John Fortescue, On Government (approx. 1497).
Thai [the French peasants] gon crokyd, and ben feble, not able to fight, nor to defend the realm; nor thai haue wepen, nor money to bie thaim wepen withall. But verely thai liven in the most extreme pouertie and miserie, and yet dwellyn thai in on the most fertile reaume of the worlde. Werthurgh the French kynge hath not men of his owne reaume able to defende it, except his nobles, wich beyren non such imposicions, and ther fore thai ben right likely of their bodies; bi wiich cause the said kynge is compellid to make his armeys and retinues for the defence of his lande of straungers, as Scottes, Spaynardes, Arrogoners, men of Almeyn [Germans], and of other nacions, or ellis all his enymes myght ouerrenne hym; for he hath no defence of his owne except his castels and fortresses. Lo, this is the fruit of jus reale. Yf the reaume of Englonde, wich is an Ile, and therfor mey not lyghtly geyte succore of other landes, were rulid under such a lawe, and under such a prince, it wolde then be a pray to all other nacions that wolde conquer, robbe or deuouir it.
See Game Act of 1671, 22 & 23 Car. 2, ch. 25 (Eng.).
See Militia Act of 1662, 14 Car. 2, ch. 3 (Eng.).
See 1 W. & M., ch. 2 (Eng.).
James Madison's greatest insight as he prepared America's written Bill of Rights was that there is as much threat to liberty from a popularly elected legislature as there is from a monarch. See Jack N. Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution 290 (1996).
See 1 W. & M., ch. 2 (Eng.).
See Malcolm, supra note 18, at 121. Part II of this Essay is meant only to give a brief summary of the legal foundation of the English right to arms, and not to trace the complexities of its development during the Stuart period. For readers who want the full story, Malcolm's book is superb, as United States Supreme Court Justice Scalia has recognized. See Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law 136-37 (1997). For a critique of Malcolm's argument that the Convention Parliament created a right to arms, rather than recognizing a traditional right, see David B. Kopel, It Isn't About Duck Hunting: The British Origins of Right to Arms, 96 Mich. L. Rev. 1333 (1995). For a response to Carl Bogus's assertion that the 1689 Bill of Rights did not recognize any individual right to arms, see David B. Kopel, The Second Amendment in the Nineteenth Century, 1998 BYU L. Rev. 1359, 1523-24 (1998).
See, e.g., Rex v. Gardner, 87 Eng. Rep. 1240 (K. B. 1739).
William Blizard, Disultory Reflection on Police: With an Essay on the Means of Preventing Crimes and Amending Criminals 59-60 (London, 1785).
The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. st. 2 c. 2, and it is indeed, a public allowance under due restrictions, of the natural rights of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.
1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England *143-44 (1979) (1765).
4 Blackstone, Commentaries *82.
1 Geo. 4, ch. 47 (Eng.). The Act applied only in two cities and eleven counties that were thought most vulnerable to sedition. See id.
Rex v. Dewhurst, cited in 1 John MacDonell, Ed., Reports of State Trials, N.S. 529-608 (1820)).
See Clive Emsley, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, at 36 (1987).
See Edward C. Ezell, Handguns of the World 29 (1981). The Colt factory in London used interchangeable parts and was the first mass production gun factory outside the United States. See id. at 31.
See Colin Greenwood, Firearms Control: A Study of Armed Crime and Firearms Control in England and Wales 18 (1971). Breechloaders load from the rear of the gun, not from the muzzle, thus they are usually much quicker to reload. All modern guns, including revolvers, are breechloaders.
Wilber Miller, Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and London 1830-1870, at 115 (1977) (citation omitted).
See B. Bruce-Briggs, The Great American Gun War, The Pub. Interest, Fall 1976, at 50. Cf. Kelley v. R.G. Indus., Inc., 497 A.2d 1143 (Md. 1985). The Kelly case imposed strict liability on the manufacturer of a small handgun because the gun was supposedly only useful for crime. See id. Evidence of crime utility based in part on sales representative's statement: "If your store is anywhere near a ghetto area, these ought to sell real well." Id.
Greenwood, supra note 33, at 25. The 1870 Gun License Act was repealed in 1967 as part of a comprehensive revision of gun laws. There were a few gun controls of little general interest during the mid-nineteenth century. For example, section 4 of the Vagrancy Act criminalized possession of an offensive weapon with intent to commit a felony.
Roger D. McGrath, Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes 247 (1984).
See Jan A. Stevenson, Firearms Legislation in Great Britain, Handgunner, Mar.-Apr. 1988, at, 7, 9; Report on the Firearms (Amendment) Bill 41 (Michael Yardley & Jan A. Stevenson, eds., 2d ed. 1998). Until recent decades, the military had the same attitude, viewing civil shooters as potential good shooters for the military, and viewing civilian target shooting facilities as good places for training regular and reserve forces. Cadmus, Ranges-Inspection and Use, 35 Guns Rev. 834 (1995). "Cadmus" is a British gun rights author. The original Cadmus, from Greek myth, slew a dragon, was the first man to combine vowels with consonants, and founded the city of Thebes.
See 3 Edw. 7, ch. 18 (Eng.).
See Roger Andrew Lorton, Firearms Control in England and Wales: A Review of the Legislation; Its Hopes, Aspirations and Achievements 12 (1991) (unpublished LL.B. dissertation, Birmingham Polytechnic) (on file with author).
Frederick Schauer, Slippery Slopes, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 361, 367 (1985).
An example of this process was seen in 1975, when, during a floor debate, the author of Minnesota's first set of restrictions on mere possession of firearms pleaded with his colleagues to pass his bill even if it had only the two words "gun control" in it. See Letter from Norman Jensvold, who was present during the Senate floor debate, to Joseph Olson (Mar. 10, 1999) (on file with Joseph Olson).
See Charles Tilly, Collective Violence in European Perspective, in The History of Violence in America 4, 7 (Hugh Graham & Ted Robert Gurr eds., 1969) (report of the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence in America).
This Advertiser article was reprinted in J.W.G., Menace of the Pistol, 2 Am. Inst. Crim. L. 93 (1911).
See A. B. Zhuk, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Handguns 64-65 (1995).
See R. A. Steindler, The Firearms Dictionary 198 (1970). The Webley-Fosberry was an attempt to reduce recoil by using some of the energy from the explosion of gunpowder to load the next round into the firing chamber. The successful designs that made constructive use of recoil were not the "automatic revolvers," but the self-loading (semiautomatic) pistols invented in the 1890s. The semiautomatic pistols really were, unlike the automatic revolver, an important advance, since they could hold more than six rounds. Also, thanks to lower recoil, they were often more accurate. The media, however, would not discover the "menace" of semiautomatic pistols until 1989, when some of them were labeled "assault weapons."
The "plastic gun" that generated concern in the late 1980s was the Glock pistol, which included both plastic and metal components. The metal component weighed more than a pound and made an outline of the pistol easily visible to metal detectors and x-ray screens. Phillip McGuire, an official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who would later take a job with Handgun Control, Inc., testified before Congress: "There is still no evidence that we hold that a firearm intrinsically capable of passing undetected through conventional x-ray and metal detector systems exists or is feasible under any current technology immediately available to us." Testimony of Phillip C. McGuire, Associate Director, Office of Law Enforcement, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 101st Cong. (July 28, 1987). At that same hearing, Raymond A. Salazar, Director of Civil Aviation Security for the Federal Aviation Administration testified: "We are aware of no current 'non-metal' firearm which is not reasonably detectable by present technology and methods in use at our airports today." Nevertheless, anti-gun organizations and a credulous media waged an aggressive campaign warning about the dangers of undetectable plastic guns.
High-density, "cop-killer bullets" are also known as KTW bullets, after the initials of the three police officers who invented them for use in SWAT teams. The bullets had not been available for sale to the general public since the 1960s, even though NBC television discovered them in 1982 and announced that they were a tremendous threat to police lives. The teflon coating on some bullets is designed to reduce airborne lead particles at indoor ranges, but does nothing to make the bullet penetrate body armor any better. High penetrability comes from the use of dense materials, such as tungsten, instead of lead for the bullet.
N.Y. Times, May 23, 1913, at 9. See generally People ex rel. Darling v. Warden, 139 N.Y.S. 277 (N.Y. App. Div. 1913) (split decision) (upholding Sullivan law, but stating that while a licensing law was within the police power. "If the Legislature had prohibited the keeping of arms, it would have been clearly beyond its power.").
See George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England 1910-1914, at 89-91 (Perigree/Putnam 1980) (originally published in 1935).
See Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-308.2.01 (1998). See also People v. Rappard, 28 Cal. App. 3d 302 (Cal. Ct. App. 1972).
For example, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. §§ 1701-06 (1998)) is being used to prevent the export of high-quality computer encryption software. See Bernadette Barnard, Note, Leveraging Worldwide Encryption Standards Via U.S. Export Controls: The U.S. Government's Authority to "Safeguard" the Global Information Infrastructure, 1997 Colum. Bus. L. Rev. 429 (1997). New York City's rent controls, enacted as temporary measures due to a housing shortage in World War II, remain in effect over half a century later.
Report of the Committee on the Control of Firearms 2 (1918). See also Greenwood, supra note 33, at 38; Stevenson, supra note 40, at 10. The "Blackwell Committee" was chaired by Sir Ernley Blackwell, Under Secretary of State for the Home Department. The Committee met in secret and never made a report public. The Secretary, F. J. Dryhurst, was formerly Commissioner of the Prison Service. Other members represented the Metropolitan Police, the County and Borough Police Forces, the Board of Customs, the Board of Trade, the War Office, and the Irish Office.
See Colin Greenwood, "The British Experience," in Gun Control Examined 31, a collection of papers presented at Conference on Gun Control, Melbourne University, Aug. 27-28, 1988.
See Firearms Act, 1920, 10 & 11 Geo. 5, ch. 43 (Eng.). For more on the origins of the Firearms Act, see Clayton Cramer, Fear and Loathing in Whitehall: Bolshevism and the Firearms Act of 1920 (last visited Jan. 27, 1999) <http://cs.sonoma.edu/~cramer/fiream~1.htm>. In Great Britain, "firearms" refers only to rifles and handguns, and not to shotguns; in American usage, shotguns are also considered "firearms." Britons wanting to refer to rifles and pistols and shotguns would use the word "guns." For the sake of consistency, this Essay follows the British usage.
The word "handgun" is now interchangeable with "pistol." Both refer to a short-barreled gun that can be fired with one hand. "Pistol" was the original English term. See Normal F. Cooper, What Must We Do? 36 Guns Rev. 732, 732 (1996).
See Cadmus, Section Five, 33 Guns Rev. 42, 42 (1993).
Regina v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Northumbria Police Authority, reprinted in 2 Wkly. L. Rep. 590 (1988).
See Statutory Definition and Classification of Firearms and Ammunition Committee, 1934, Cmd. 4758.
See 312 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th ser.) 167-68 (1936). The laws were consolidated in the Firearms Act, 1937, 1 Edw. 8 & 1 Geo. 6, ch. 12 (Eng.).
National Firearms Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 1236-1240 (1935), 26 U.S.C. § 1132 (1935), now codified beginning at 26 U.S.C. § 5801 (1998).
See Statutory Definition and Classification of Firearms and Ammunition Committee, 1934, Cmd. 4758; United Kingdom, Parliament, The Control of Firearms in Great Britain: A Consultative Document, 1973, Command 5297, at 3 (misciting Bodkin); Jane Fiddick, Control of Firearms, Background Paper no. 207, House of Commons Library Research Division, Jan. 20, 1988, at 2 (misciting Bodkin); Stevenson, supra note 40, at 17.
See Derek Bernard, A Little Local Witch-Hunt, Target Gun, Apr. 1989, at 66.
William Shakespeare, King Lear, act 2, sc. 4.
A classic slippery slope argument posits that we should not do A, even though A is desirable, because our successors will use A as a precedent to do B, and all agree that B is not desirable.
See id. at 365-66.
Id. at 366.
Id. at 367. By "the danger case," Schauer means the feared future result of starting down the slippery slope today. For example, "censoring Ulysses ten years from now" could be the "danger case" for "censoring Penthouse today."
"The firearms and ammunition to which this certificate relates must at all times when not in actual use be kept in a secure place with a view to preventing access to them by unauthorized [British spelling] persons." Quoted in Colin Greenwood, Firearms Security: Law or Education, Australian Shooters, Jan. 1989, at 39. Breach of the provision is now punishable by a fine of up to 2,000 pounds and six months in jail. See id.
In one recent case a person traveling from a range to his home left ammunition hidden in a locked car for forty-five minutes. When the ammunition was stolen, the man was convicted of not keeping the ammunition in a secure place. See Marsh v. Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset, reprinted in Independent, May 8, 1987, discussed in Fiddick, supra note 68, at 8.
Advertisement, Am. Rifleman, Nov. 1940. The full advertisement states:
SEND A GUN TO DEFEND A BRITISH HOME.
British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes. The American Committee for Defense of British Homes has organized to collect gifts of pistols, rifles, revolvers, shotguns, binoculars from American civilians who wish to answer the call and aid in the defense of British homes. These arms are being shipped, with the consent of the British Government, to Civilian Committee for Protection of Homes, Birmingham, England .... The members of which are Wickham Steed, Edward Hulton, and Lord Davies. You can aid by sending any arms or binoculars you can spare to American Committee for the Defense of British Homes, C. Suydan Cutting, Chairman Room 100, 10 Warren Street, New York, N.Y.
Id. See also Duncan Long, Streetsweepers: The Complete Book of Combat Shotguns 6 (1987) (discussing the availability of shotguns).
The firm of Greenwald and Haughton, under contract from the United States government, offered to buy "all automatic pistols from .22 cal. to .45 cal." and all revolvers of sized .38 or larger to give to an allied nation in order "to perforate a parasite." Advertisements in The American Rifleman, Aug. 1943, at 50; Feb. 1944, at 50.
Home Secretary Sir John Simon had explained the ban by calling the Thompson "the weapon we are informed is used by gangsters on the other side of the water." 312 Parl. Deb., H.C. (5th ser.) 168 (1936).
Representative William G. Bray, Guns and Gun Laws--Fact and Fancy, Cong. Rec., July 18, 1968; Duncan Long, Assault Pistols, Rifles and Submachineguns 35, 43 (1986).
While the British government during World War II was somewhat less worried about loyalty of the people than the government had been during the previous war, target shooting was sharply reduced in order to conserve ammunition for the military. The Royal Air Force's Air Gunners were, however, encouraged to participate in clay shooting, since the skills necessary to shoot a flying clay disk with a shotgun (e.g., shooting ahead of the target) are much the same as the skills for shooting enemy aircraft with a machine gun. See Norman F. Cooper, Times Past and Present, 34 Guns Rev. 358 (1994).
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour 237-38 (1949). Nevertheless, even after the guns from the United States arrived, much of the Home Guard was poorly armed. The problem was threefold: the Army had priority in receiving weapons; the government was afraid that Communists might join the Home Guard; and the government was often uncomfortable with ordinary citizens possessing weapons. See generally S.P. Mackenzie, The Home Guard (1995).
At this point Prime Minister Winston Churchill had been replaced by Clement Atlee.
See London Public Records Office, Home Office 45, 21888. See also Bray, supra note 80; William R. Tonso, Gun and Society: The Social and Existential Roots of the American Attachment to Firearms 125 (1982).
See Cadmus, The Pass-a-Law Syndrome, 36 Guns Rev. 421, 422 (1996). Actually, there are plenty of reasons why someone would want a self-loading knife. Anyone who wants to open the knife with one hand while holding something in the other could use a self-loading knife. Such persons could include tradesmen, firemen, sportsmen, and persons who have lost the use of one arm or hand.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 requires that all persons purchasing firearms from a federally licensed firearms dealer fill out a registration form, the ATF Form 4473 (10-98), which is generally known as the "yellow sheet." See 18 U.S.C. §§ 921-30 (1998).
See The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, 1965, ch. 71 (Eng.).
Letter from Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (Scotland Yard), to Harvard Law Review Nov. 9, 1966, quoted in Stanley Mosk, Gun Control Legislation: Valid and Necessary, 14 N.Y. L. F. 694, 709 n.54 (1968) (The N.Y. L.F. is now the New York Law School Review).
See Barry Bruce-Briggs, The Great American Gun War, The Pub. Interest, Fall 1976, at 60-61; Colin Greenwood, Does Legislation Reduce Armed Crime? Daily Telegraph, Sept. 13, 1966 quoting Yardley & Stevenson, supra note 40, at 58-59.
See Criminal Justice Act 1967, Part V. The 1967 law was consolidated with previous firearms laws into the Firearms Act, 1968, 16 & 17 Eliz. 2, ch. 27 (Eng.).
18 U.S.C. §§ 921-30 (1998).
See Sapsted, Control of Shotguns Farcical, Say Police, The Times, July 10, 1987.
£ and No Questions Asked, The Mail (London), Sept. 2, 1984.
Some police forces, such as West Midlands or Merseyside, conduct thorough investigations and require personal interviews even for renewals; others, such as North Wales, move more rapidly. See Police Lack Resources to Make Checks for Licenses, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 23, 1987, at 14.
See Ninja gun gangs are invading Britain--MP, London Standard, May 29, 1986, at 15.
See Home Office, Firearms: What You Need to Know About the Law 2 (1984).
See generally Firearms Act 1968, supra note 91. Gifts of any gun to a person under fourteen are illegal. Gifts of a shotgun to a person under fifteen are illegal. See Godfrey Sandys-Winch, Gun Law 118-22 (1990).
Prime Minister Tony Blair's "New Labour" party now calls for taking the next step: making it illegal for a person under the age of eighteen to use a gun, even under immediate adult supervisor. See The Hon. Lord Cullen, The Public Inquiry into the Shootings at Dunblane Primary School 13 (Mar. 1996), cited at <http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/scottish/dunblane/dunblane.htm>. A few American states, such as Massachusetts and New York, have similarly restrictive rules.
See New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985).
See Veronia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995).
See Home Office, Firearms, What You Need to Know About the Law 1, 2 (1984).
British felons sentenced to a term of three or more years are permanently barred from owning firearms (rifles and pistols). People sentenced to terms of three months to three years face a five-year prohibition. See Tony Jackson, Legitimate Pursuit: The Case for the Sporting Gun 40 (1988) (published in association with the British Association for Shooting and Conservation).
See Greenly v. Lawrence, 1 All E.R. 241 (K. B. 1949) (upholding lower court's reversal of police denial of application to renew firearms certificate for revolver possessed for self-defense). See also Fiddick, supra note 67, at 3; Sandys-Winch, supra note 98, at 30.
See id. at 373.
See Francis Cowper, Massacre in a Market Town, N.Y. L. J., Oct. 5, 1987, at 2.
See Home Office, Firearms: Approval of Rifle and Muzzle-loading Pistol Clubs (1998) <http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ppd.oppu/club981.htm>.
See Cadmus, Abuse of Authority, 36 Guns Rev. 25, 26 (1996).
See Fees, 31 Guns Rev. 9 (1991). According to a study by the accounting firm Cooper and Lybrand Deloitte, a reasonably efficient firearm certificate licensing system should cost no more than £35 to administer. See id.
The Control of Firearms: A Consultative Document, Green Paper, Command 5297 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, May 1973).
In 1973, members of Parliament sent 1,174 suggestions for improvement in the proposed bill to the Home Office, and 4, 573 members of the public wrote to the Home Office to oppose all or part of the bill.
Richard Harding, Firearms Use in Crime, 18 Crim. L. Rev. 772 (1979).
Quoted in Colin Greenwood, The Sun Sets on British Gun Owners, American Rifleman, May 1989, at 26.
See Cadmus, Territorial Conditions, 19 Guns Rev. 38 (1979).
See George Wallace, Shotguns and the Law, Shooting Magazine, Oct. 1989, at 28. See also Mid Glamorgan, Police Policies, in Letters to the Editor, 31 Guns Rev. 56 (1991).
Quoted in Colin Greenwood Reviews Police Policy, Shooting Times & Country Mag., Dec. 27, 1979; Cadmus, A Question of Numbers, 18 Gun Rev. 665 (1978) (police statement in letters to gun owners who were attempting to renew certificates).
The proposal (never enacted into law) to ban new gun collections or additions to old collections was made in the Green Paper, supra note 112, at 17. For a prospective collector's difficulty with the police, see Hutchison v. Chief Constable of Grampian, 1977 S.L.T. 98 (Sh. Ct. 1977).
See Unmodified Pumps and Autos, 29 Guns Rev. 825 (1989).
See Cadmus, Magazine Mischief, 30 Guns Rev. 645 (1990).
See Richard Law, Shooters Rights, Guns & Shooting, Oct. 1993, at 54.
Some Britons favor putting all bows under a licensing system identical to that for guns. The crossbow, which has historically associated with highwaymen, will likely be controlled first, since long bows, which have been associated with English military valor at Agincourt and other medieval battles, have a better pedigree.
In the United States, Handgun Control, Inc., has proposed "Brady II" legislation that would make many American gun-owning homes subject to four unannounced warrantless inspections per year.
See Home Office, Gun Clubs: Home Secretary Plans New Controls (press release), November 14, 1989.
Persons who hold a Firearms Certificate do not need government permission in order to form a private club and shoot together at a target range they build, but government approval is necessary if club members wish to be able to shoot each others' rifles at the range, or occasionally to invite guests who do not have a Firearms Certificate. Cadmus, Abuse of Authority, 36 Guns Rev. 25, 25 (1996).
See generally, e.g. Pat Kane, We Have to Be Careful Out There, Sun. Times, May 22, 1994 ("a fascination with guns around the darker fringes of the male psyche ... men of this generation are so fundamentally insecure about their personal power that guns could seem a ready option"); Lynne Truss, The Times, May 24, 1994 ("It's the chaps who fire relentlessly at targets that it's hard to understand, who seem most creepy and dangerous."); Dressed to Kill--Just for Thrills, The Observer, Sept. 12, 1994.
See Martin Killias, Gun Ownership and Violent Crime: The Swiss Experience, 1 Sec. J. 171 (1990).
See Gallup Poll from 1988, discussed in R.A.I. Munday, On Liberty (unpublished essay).
See Memorandum from S.C. Helsley, Assistant Director, Investigation and Enforcement Branch, California Department of Justice, to G.W. Clemons, Director, Division of Law Enforcement, California Department of Justice 1 (Feb. 13, 1991) (on file with authors). See generally Bruce H. Kobayashi & Joseph E. Olson, In Re 101 California Street: A Legal and Economic Analysis of Strict Liability for the Manufacture and Sale of "Assault Weapons," 8 Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. 41 (1997).
It was not surprising that a murderous psychopath would choose to dress up like "Rambo," the machine-gun spraying character popularized by Sylvester Stallone. Ironically, Stallone, who now lives in Great Britain, touts gun prohibition and criticizes gun policies in the United States for being uncivilized. Perhaps before demanding a government crack down on law-abiding American gun owners, Mr. Stallone ought to apologize for his own role in spurring mass murders by the mentally deranged, including at Hungerford.
See Malcolm P.I. Weller, The Anatomy of Violence--Part I, New L.J. Sept. 11, 1987, at 858.
See Tony Jackson, Legitimate Pursuit 48 (1988).
See Woody Haut, Hysteria, the Free Market, and the Hungerford Massacre, Rolling Stock No. 14 (1987), at 15.
See Cadmus, Section Five, 33 Guns Rev. 42 (1993).
Opponents of the ban had argued for a special exemption for disabled people, since semiautomatics have low recoil, and are hence easier to shoot for persons with less upper body strength. One pro-control Lord replied that a handicapped person "would probably have a harder job to hold on to the rifle than an able bodied person if someone wanted to steal it." Lord Atlee worried about the possibility of "a disabled person who was also mentally unstable." House of Lords, Official Report, Oct. 19, 1988, at cols. 1134, 1131.
See Capt. Bruce Breckenridge, A Shooting Sport is Dead, Australian Gunsports, Summer 1990, at 60.
Home Office Research Study No. 89 of 1986, quoted in Jersey Pistol Club News, Jan.-Mar. 1991, at 5.
See Firearms (Amendment) Act, 1988, ch. 16, § 2(1)(2) (Eng.).
See Sandys-Winch, supra note 98, at 29 (citation omitted). See also George Wallace, Countersignatory Rears Ugly Head, Shooting Times & Country Magazine, Oct. 12-18, 1989, at 8. A somewhat weaker countersignature requirement had already been in force for shotguns. See Fiddick, supra note 67, at 10. That requirement had been imposed by the police without statutory authority. A 1984 Police/Home Office working group had found the countersignature useless, and advised abolition. See Cadmus, Conspiracy to Disarm, 31 Guns Rev. 926 (1991).
See Cadmus, Good Reason Abuse, 29 Guns Review 862 (1989).
A police decision regarding good reason will not be overturned by the courts unless it is arbitrary and capricious. See Hutcgusib v. Chief Constable of Grampian, 1977 S.L.T. 98 (Sheriff Ct.).
Home Office guidance states that the good reason language for shotguns "does NOT require the applicant to make out a good case for being granted a certificate but rather extends the chief officer's ground for refusing one." Firearms Law--Guidance to Police, ¶ 7.6, quoted in Lorton, supra note 43, at 72.
In 1969, there were 701,562 Shotgun Certificates. By 1988, the number had risen to 971,102. By 1994, the number had declined to 740,441.See Cadmus, The Villains, 35 Guns Rev. 925 (1995) (citing data from the Home Office).
See id.
See Cadmus, The Dangerously Ugly, 33 Guns Rev. 926 (1993).
See Richard Law, Shooters Rights, Guns & Shooting, Sept. 1993, at 54 (discussing Hurd's speech to students at St. Edwards, Oxford).
See Saray Lyall, Scottish School Killer Had Stormy Past, N.Y. Times, Mar. 15, 1996, at A6.
George Robertson & Jack Straw, Control of Guns: The Labour Party's Evidence to the Cullen Inquiry (May 1996), available at <http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/~johnny/dunblane/labour.html>.
See Office of Legislative Affairs, Lord Cullen's Inquiry into the Circumstances Leading up to and Surrounding Events at Dunblane Primary School on Wednesday, 13 March 1996, at 11.
See R.A.I. Munday, Does the Level of Firearms Ownership Affect Levels of Violence? (Submitted to the Dunblane Enquiry 1996); Peter H. Jackson et al., Was the Dunblane Inquiry Misled? (Nov. 9, 1996), available at <http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/~johnny/dunblane/misled.html>.
See David Barnham, Above the Law 86-87 (1996).
See, e.g., Lynn Simner & John P. Morgan, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence (1997).
See Brian Dylan, After the Blowup, U.S.A. Today, Feb. 11, 1993, at 1.
See Scott Baltic, Bang Bang! You're Wrong!, Colum. Journalism Rev., Feb. 1994, at 11 (criticizing the media for gross inaccuracy in the assault weapon debate). See also Wound Ballistics Expert Exposes Media AK Fakery, Gun Week, May 5, 1989, at 1 (describing phony footage of AK-47 assault rifles staged for television news program); Joseph Tartaro, The Great Assault Weapons Hoax, 20 U. Dayton L. Rev. 619 (1995).
See The Hon. Lord Cullen, The Public Inquiry into the Shootings at Dunblane Primary School, Mar. 1996, at 13 <http://www.official-documents.co.uk/document/scottish/dunblane/dunblane.htm>.
See Norman Cooper, Time to Remove the Gloves, 37 Guns Rev. 56 (1997) (Sir Patrick Lawrence, former Chair of the Conservative Party, told Cooper that the Anne Pearston rally caused Major's switch). The ban was implemented by the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, 1997, ch. 5 (Eng.).
See Firearms (Amendment)(no. 2) Act, 1997, ch. 64 (Eng.). Labour's original proposal to the Cullen Inquiry was that single-shot .22s, which need to be reloaded after each shot, should remain legal, but the Party's aggressive use of focus groups and polling had apparently convinced Blair to go further.
See Dominic Grieve, Hansard, June 11, 1997, at pt. 43, col. 1232.
See Hawkins, Hansard, June 11, 1997, at pt. 39, col. 1212.
But see Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301 (1965) (holding that postal regulations requiring those who receive "foreign Communist propaganda" by mail to complete a short registration form is an excessive burden on the exercise of First Amendment rights).
James Rougrie, Shotguns Review on Cards, Says McLeish, The Scotsman, Nov. 4, 1997, at 6, quoted at <http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/~johnny/dunblane/scot4nov.html>.
Tony Jackson, Legitimate Pursuit: The Case for the Sporting Gun 94 (1988).
Airguns are powered by compressed air, rather than by gunpowder and they fire a small pellet or a BB.
See Jason Bennetto, Purge on Rifles and Shotguns, The Independent, July 17, 1997, at 1.
See Patrick A. Langan & David P. Farrington, Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-96 (1998)
Richard A. Epstein, Symposium: The Legacy of Goldberg V. Kelly: a Twenty Year Perspective: No New Property, 56 Brooklyn L. Rev. 747, 765 n.33 (1990).
A.V. Dicey, The Law of the Constitution 345 (8th ed. 1915). The more liberal American rule, which does not generally impose a duty to retreat, is discussed in Richard Maxwell Brown, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society (1991). See also Model Penal Code §3.04(2)(b)(ii)(A).
See id. at 347-348, n.45.
See Cadmus, Arms for Self Preservation and Defense: Part II, 35 Guns Rev. 750 (1995).
See id.
See, e.g., Firearms Act (1968), § 5(b) (outlawing "any weapon of whatever description designed or adapted for the discharge of any noxious liquid, gas or other thing").
See International Briefs, Animal's Agenda, Dec. 1989, at 29.
See Criminal Justice Act 1988, ch. 33, § 139 (Eng.); Gilbert A. Lewthwaite, Britain's Conservative Party Hopes to Outlaw Knife-carrying in Anti-crime Drive, The Sun, Oct. 8, 1987, at 25; Gail Tabor, British Justice 'a Travesty'; Arizonan Won't Visit Again, Arizona Rep., Nov. 10, 1991, at B1, B6.
See Francis Cowper, London's Parallel to the Goetz Case, N.Y.L.J., Oct. 20, 1987, at 2.
See Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Offensive Weapons) Order 1988 (barring sale or transfer of swordsticks and martial arts weapons).
See The Harrison Narcotics Act, 38 Stat. 785, 786 (1914).
See Genesis 3:1-6.
See Clay S. Conrad, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine 32-34 (1998).
Duncan Campbell, The Thatcher Government vs. the British Press, Columbia Journalism Rev., May/June 1989, at 33. Campbell is associate editor of New Statesman and Society magazine.
Attorney-General v. Guardian Newspapers Ltd., 3 All E.R. 316 (Lord Ackner 1987).
As the United States Supreme Court has stated, "liberty of the press ... has meant, principally although not exclusively, immunity from previous restraints or censorship." Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697, 716 (1931). See also New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
See generally Donald Regan, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington (1988).
See Passages, Maclean's, Aug. 6, 1990, at 6.
See Official Secrets Act 1911, 1 & 2 Geo. 5, ch. 2 (Eng.).
The period was also marked by a mostly unfounded German spy hysteria. See K.D. Ewing & G.A. Gearty, Freedom Under Thatcher: Civil Liberties in Modern Britain 137 (1990).
See Terence DeQuesne & Edward Goodman, Britain: An Unfree Country 24 (1986).
See Civil Liberties in Conflict 205 n.20 (Larry Gostin ed. 1988) (citing Sarah McCabe, National Security and Freedom of Information, at 185). See also A.W. Brian Simpson, Detention Without Trial in the Second World War: Comparing the British and American Experiences, 16 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 225, 228 (1988) (noting that British government files are routinely closed for thirty years, and sometimes closed for longer periods with no public accountability.)
See Paddy Hillyard & Janie Percy-Smith, The Coercive State 115 (1988).
See id. at 118-19.
For example, the ban applies to footage of Eamon de Valera, former president and Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, during the early 1920s when de Valera was leading the Irish war of liberation against Britain. See Ewing & Gearty, supra note 194, at 246.
Labour Member of Parliament Ken Livingstone denounced the plan to "prevent access to radio and TV by those who are critical of government policy in Ireland." Campbell, supra note 185, at 35. On the other hand, South African President P.W. Botha applauded the move, and suggested that South Africa emulate the British plan. See id.
See DuQuesne and Goodman, supra note 195, at 119. The ban on racist speech does not mean that all malicious public expression of bigotry is prohibited. For example, vicious statements that would be illegal if made about people of color are considered admirable if made about people who own guns. While the details of bigotry change from one historical period to another, the underlying spirits of ignorance, self-righteousness, and hatred remain constant.
For example, television personality Jonathan Ross called gun club members "a shambling bunch of no-hopers." Jonathan Ross, Sunday Express, July 7, 1996. Boy George, the transvestite pop singer, asserted, "Guns are vile things and people who belong to gun clubs are seriously weird .... Only the police and criminals need guns." For a character like Boy George to deride other people by calling them "seriously weird" is an impressive display of chutzpah. See generally The Boy George Homepage, <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~geena/boygeorge.html>. Boy George had earlier earned notoriety for participating in a government campaign denouncing heroin at the same time that he was secretly using heroin. See Junk Rock: Boy George's Fall from Grace, <http://www_personal.umich.edu/~geena/ktbcstuff/articles/drugs.html>.
Boy George's "seriously weird" comments brings to the fore one aspect of the psychological basis of some self-righteous crusaders. Do some crusaders in favor of laws to criminalize homosexuality have private insecurities about their own sexuality? Do some crusaders who do not trust other people to own guns have private fears about their own ability to control violent impulses?
See id. at 165.
See id. at 248 (citing Independent, Nov. 11, 1988; Independent, Feb. 13, 1989). The Guilford Four, convicted of perpetrating an IRA bombing, were set free after many years in prison when it was admitted that the police had fabricated evidence and had extracted confessions by beating them. The story is told, with some fictional alterations, in the movie In the Name of the Father.
See id.
See Ireland v. United Kingdom, 2 European Human Rights Rep. 25 (1978)
See Barry James, Justice in England Undergoes Stress, L.A. Times, Apr. 7, 1985. The "five techniques" were condemned by the European Court of Human Rights as inhuman and degrading. See Ireland v. United Kingdom, 2 European Human Rights Rep. 25 (1978).
See Hillyard & Percy-Smith, supra note 197, at 257-58, 272. See also Ewing & Gearty, supra note 194, at 216. The Irish Bishops' Commission for Prisoners distributes a leaflet to Irish emigrants to Britain that warns young people that, if arrested, they should expect "rough, accusational anti-Irish treatment" and should be prepared for "disorientation resulting from solitary confinement ... and lack of contact with anyone except the police." The leaflet advises Irish to "sign nothing" without first consulting a lawyer. Mary Holland, Ireland Laments Her Innocents Imprisoned Abroad, Observer, Oct. 22, 1989, at 2.
See Hillyard & Percy-Smith, supra note 197, at 273. See also Regina v. Secretary of States for the Home Department, ex parte Stitt, quoted in Ewing & Gearty, supra note 194, at 217) (requiring reasons for exclusion "would be fraught with difficulty").
See Brogan v. United Kingdom, 11 European Human Rights Rep. 117 (1989).
See generally Kevin Dawson, Pressure Mounts to Reopen Birmingham Case, The Sunday Tribune, Oct. 22, 1989, at A15; James Carvel, PM Clings to Detention Powers, The Guardian, Oct. 21, 1989, at 1.
The first time the Prevention of Terrorism Act was used was after another pub bombing in the English town of Guilford. Four people were arrested, held incommunicado in prison for a week, and coerced into false confessions by administration of drugs and by threats against their families. While the "Guilford Four" were being held, the police used the time to fabricate evidence against them. Although members of the Irish Republican Army already in prison confessed to the Guilford bombings, the Guilford Four were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Several leading English statesmen, including Roy Jenkins, felt that the men had been framed. A campaign to free them continued for fifteen years, until, upon discovery of police notes of fabrication of evidence, the Guilford Four were released from prison. See generally R. C. Longworth, Perjury, Abuse of Prisoners Lead to Criticism of British Police, C.J. Int'l., Sept. 1990, at 19.
See Ewing & Gearty, supra note 194, at 18-19. Among the better-known cases involving Irish defendants allegedly tortured into confession by the police are the Guilford Four, the Maguire Seven, and U.D.R. Four. See Craig R. Whitney, Faith in British Justice System is Shaken by Abuses and False Jailings, N.Y. Times, June 2, 1991, at 1, 12.
McIlkenney v. Chief Constable of West Midlands Police Force, 2 W.L.R. 872 (C.A. 1980).
Seventeen members of the ruling party in Parliament objected to the lack of time for discussion but not to the substance of the bill. BBC News, (last visited Feb. 7, 1999) <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/ newsid_163000/163833.stm>.
See Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act of 1998, 1998, ch. 40, §§ 2A-(2) to (3) (Eng.).
See id. at §§ 2A-(4) to (6).
See id. at § 4-(3).
BBC News (last visited Feb. 7, 1999) <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk_politics/newsid_16400/164559.stm>.
London Telegraph (last visited Feb. 7, 1999) <http://www.telegrahp.p&atmo+yyyyyyyp&pg+/et/ 98/9/4/nbil04.html>.
See Attorney-General v. Antigua Times Ltd., 1976 App. Cas. 16.
See Robinson v. The Queen, 1985 App. Cas. 956.
See David Henderson, Innocence and Design--The Influence of Economic Ideas on Policy 36 (1985); Cento Veljanovski, Privatization in Britain -- The Institutional Constitutional Issues, 71 Marq. L. Rev. 579 (1988).
See Philip John Stead, The Police of Britain 147 (1985).
See id. at 150. Although the prosecution can dismiss as many potential jurors as it wishes, the defense's peremptory challenges are limited to three. See Hillyard & Percy-Smith, supra note 197, at 157.
See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).
See Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994 (Eng.)
See Stephen Gillers, The Prosecution and Defense Functions: Do They Promote Justice? The Record 626, 661-63 (1987). Such an arrangement is too much, even for the United States' armed forces. In the mid-1970s, recognizing the corrosive effect of this "cozy" arrangement on the administration of justice, each military service created a separate defense branch within its Judge Advocate Corps. Zealous representation was deemed a crucial priority.
See Barry James, Justice in England Undergoes Stress, L.A. Times, Apr. 7, 1985, at 2.
See DuQuesne & Goodman, supra note 195, at 26 (discussing the Interception of Communications Act, July 25, 1985). American wiretaps authorize only the recording of conversations regarding the subject of the tap. British wiretappers are required to record all conversations on the tapped line. See Ewing & Gearty, supra note 194, at 70.
See Kuruma Son of Kaniu v. Regina, 1 All E.R. 236, 239 (1955) ("the test to be applied ... is whether it is relevant to the matters at issue. If it is, it is admissible and the court is not concerned with how the evidence was obtained.")
Nelson Pickett, Barry's a bit British, but all bobby, Or. J., Nov. 4, 1981, at 8.
See Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984, ch. 60 (Eng.).
See Duquesne & Goodman, supra note 195, at 111 (citing §71 Debate on Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, House of Lords, June 21, 1984). The bill is codified as Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984, ch. 60 . (Eng.). The original prohibition against carrying "offensive weapons" was the Prevention of Crimes Act, 1953, 1 & 2 Eliz. 2, ch. 14, § (1), (Eng.).
See, e.g., New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981) (allowing the search of an automobile in order to protect the officer's safety, even though the occupants of the automobile were under arrest, under restraint, and in the police car); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925) (allowing warrantless searches of automobiles).
See, e.g., David B. Kopel & Paul H. Blackman, No More Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It (1997).
The reason is obvious, during the period from 1988 to 1993, as legal gun ownership fell by 22%, the violent crime rate increased by 33%, the robbery rate increased by 80%, and the firearm assisted robbery rated increased by 117%. Home Office (1995). See also, Toni Marshall, In Britain, call it Fleece Street: Rates for robbery, assault top those in U.S., study finds, Wash. Times, Oct. 13, 1998, at A13.
Hillyard & Percy-Smith, supra note 197, at 259. Road blocks are now routinely used to prevent people from attending unauthorized demonstrations, including anti-nuclear activities and coal mining strikes.
See Silas J. Wasserstrom, The Incredible Shrinking Fourth Amendment, 21 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 257 (1984).
See Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell, 290 U.S. 398 (1934).
See Webb v. Outrim, 1907 App. Cas. 81 (P.C. 1907).
The real power struggle is behind the scenes, in the informal advisory bodies with access to Secretaries of State, in the Cabinet committees, in the meetings of Ministers with their powerful back-benchers, and in the informal cabals that focus energies on future policy. A bill before the House signals the end of the real battle and the start of a squabble over detail.
Id. at 6.
See J.J. Craik-Henderson, The Dangers of a Supreme Parliament, in Lord Campion et al., Parliament: A Survey 94 (1952). British MP and constitutional scholar L.S. Amery points out that while in the United States the individual is the starting point of sovereignty, and government receives what is given up by the individual, in Great Britain the people and the government possess what Amery calls "independent and original authority." L.S. Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution 12-13 (1964). Legislation is initiated by the government, and the purpose of Parliament is to provide a forum for the people to reject a governmental action. Id. at 21. Amery describes the British system "of democracy by consent and not by delegation, of government of the people, for the people, with, but not by, the people." Id. at 33.
Lois G. Schwoerer, "No Standing Armies!" The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth Century England 46-49 (London, The Johns Hopkins University Press 1974) (1697). As one British scholar wrote, in rejecting the American assertion that there should be no taxation without representation, "a supreme and uncontrollable power must exist somewhere in every state." James Macpherson, The Rights of Great Britain Asserted Against the Claims of America (1776), quoted in Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States 1607-1788, at 130 (1990).
United States Supreme Court Justice William Paterson, a signer of the United States Constitution, contrasted the English system of government, where "the authority of Parliament runs without limits," to the United States government, where "the Constitution is the sun of the political system, around which all Legislative, Executive, and Judicial bodies must revolve." Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 304, 308 (1795).
Canadian law professor Edward Morgan explains that "[i]n the British constitutional tradition, sovereignty resides in the Crown rather than the people, and thus flows from top down rather than bottom up." Edward Morgan, Act of Blindness, State of Insight 13 B.U. Int'l L.J. 1 n.133 (1995). What the United States calls "domestic tranquility," Britain calls "the Queen's Peace." The different phrasing reflects the British assumption that the government is not simply an arbiter between individuals, but an independent power, sufficient unto itself with the authority to take whatever steps it needs to protect its own interest in peace. Likewise, criminal cases in the United States are prosecuted in the name of the people, while British cases are prosecuted in the name of the monarch. One nation is the "United States," the other the "United Kingdom." The head of state in one country is "Mr. President," and in the other "Your Highness." Likewise, the British anthem "God Save the Queen" became in the United States, "My country tis of thee, sweet land liberty, of thee I sing." The monarch no longer exercises political power in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the monarchy symbolizes the distinction between the sovereign and the subject.
See Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention in 1787, not to promote efficiency, but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of government powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.
Id. Just as the First Amendment protects an independent press so that it may perform a "checking function" against the government, the right of the people to bear arms serves as the ultimate check. See, e.g., Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1890 (Fred B. Rothman & Co. 1991) (1833). "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms ... offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if those are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Id.
As the great Whig pamphleteer John Trenchard warned: "All title arises from an equal distribution of Power; and he that gets an overbalance of Power ... takes away the title from the rest, and leaves them a possession without a Right, which is a Tenure at the Will of the Lord." John Trenchard, A Letter from the Author of the Argument Against a Standing Army to the Author of the Balancing Letter 14-15 (London 1697), quoted in J.R. Weston, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue 1660-1802, at 91 (1965).
See generally Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Transformations (1998). Ackerman celebrates all these changes, and argues that the Constitution can be changed in ways outside the constitutional amendment process. Whether or not one agrees with Ackerman, he is undeniably correct that modern practice is very different from the text of Constitution that was adopted in 1789-91 and in the Reconstruction Amendments.
See generally David Schoenbrod, Power without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation (1993).
See generally Robert A. Anthony, Unlegislated Compulsion: How Federal Agency Guidelines Threaten Your Liberty (1998).
The Right Honorable The Lord Scarman OBE, House of Lords, Foreword, in Civil Liberties in Conflict xiii (Larry Gostin ed., 1988). Professor John Dunn of Cambridge finds that the language of British civil liberties "has more the flavor of moral criticism ... than confident appeal to existing or positive constitutional law." In addition, writes Dunn, "the far greater salience of conflicts of class interest in British politics greatly accentuates the externality and conceptual instability of political defenses of civil liberties." John Dunn, Rights and Political Conflict, in Civil Liberties in Conflict, supra, at 21, 23.
When the Law Lords upheld a temporary injunction against the publication of Spycatcher, one of the dissenting Lords complained: "Having no written constitution, we have no equivalent in our law to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America." Attorney-General v. Guardian Newspaper Ltd., 3 All E.R. 316 (1987) (Lord Bridge of Harwich, dissenting).
Home Office, Firearms: Approval of Rifle and Muzzle-loading Pistol Clubs (1998) (visited Feb. 7, 1999) <http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ppd.oppu/club98.htm>.
See generally Akhil Amar, The Bill of Rights (1998).
Some writers, such as Garry Wills or Dennis Henigan argue that common American beliefs about the Second Amendment as an individual right are misguided, but these writers also acknowledge that popular beliefs about the Second Amendment indeed do play a major role in the current gun control battle.
See Britain Plans to Give Police Power to Curb Violent Acts or Threats, N.Y. Times, Dec. 11, 1985. See also Public Order Act, 1986 ch. 64, § 18 (Eng.).
When American Nazis were denied a permit to march in the Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois, the American Civil Liberties Union went to court and won a permit. See Collins v. Smith, 578 F.2d 1197 (7th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 916 (1978).
ACLU President Norman Dorsen criticizes the NCCL for not opposing curbs on racist speech. Dorsen observes that these curbs, originally intended to protect blacks, "are now used against blacks in their communities, trade unions on the picket lines, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament." Norman Dorsen, Is There a Right to Stop Offensive Speech? The Case of The Nazis at Skokie, in Civil Liberties in Conflict 129 (Larry Gostin ed., 1988). Police in Skegness and Mablethorpe used the act to control what they considered a "craze for obscene T-shirts and hats." Ewing & Gearty, supra note 194, at 122.
Despite its relative docility, the National Council for Civil Liberties has been branded a subversive organization by MI5, the national security agency. See Campbell, supra note 185, at 34.
The NCCL turned away a racist transsexual who was pursuing a legal claim to state medical care. The NCCL also rejected a rank-and-file member of the racist National Front who was roughed up while the police conducted a warrantless search of her home and destroyed her property. See Larry Gostin, Editor's Notes, in Civil Liberties in Conflict 118-19 (Larry Gostin ed., 1988).
Ken West of the National Pistol Association stated: "We certainly do not believe that one should be able to obtain firearms by buying them from a supermarket." Transcript, "Gun Control Special," European Journal #20/89 (Oregon Public Television).
Jan A. Stevenson, Sit Perpetuum? 100 Years at Bisley, Handgunner, Nov. 1990, at 21. The Clay Pigeon Association endorsed the new controls as well.
Jackson, supra note 165, at 74.
Advertisement, Sporting Gun, Nov. 1989, at 35.
Sean Gabb, Open Letters to the Gunowners of the United Kingdom, Aug. 21, 1996 (last visited Feb. 7, 1999) <http://freespace.virgin.net/old.whip/guns4.htm>.
Sean Gabb, A Fourth Open Letter to the Gunowners of the United Kingdom, Oct. 16, 1996. A real case for gun ownership can, however, be made both on moral grounds and on the basis of pragmatic considerations. See, e.g., John R. Lott, Jr. More Guns Less Crime (1998); Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz, Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun, 86 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 150 (1995); Jeffrey R. Snyder, A Nation of Cowards, The Pub. Interest Fall, 1993, 40.
A Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw explained to Parliament on the night when all handguns were banned, "I recognize, as I have always recognized, that many law-abiding shooters will be inconvenienced or worse, and I regret that. But I am in no doubt about where the balance should be struck between the right to practice a sport and the right to life--especially the right to life of a child." Jack Straw, Hansard, June 11, 1997, at pt. 27, col. 1170.
The Queen's office promptly announced that the entire Royal Family felt very sensitive about everything having to do with Dunblane.
Here the British sporting shooters interject that many of the guns with which they shoot are far removed in design from guns that were designed to kill. The Britons are right that a gun such as a custom-designed Holland & Holland sporting clays shotgun is designed solely for sports, from start to finish. But it is still a shotgun, and shotguns were originally made for firing lead or steel shot downrange to kill a person or an animal. Besides, Tony Blair's New Labour would likely be willing to ban another sport if lives could be saved and the political calculus for prohibition were positive.
See Kleck & Gertz, supra note 285, at 164 (estimating that there are 2.5 million successful defensive gun uses per year in the United States, mostly involving brandishing the gun rather than firing it, and summarizing previous studies).
See Collins, 578 F.2d at 1197.
John Walter, Editor's Column, 37 Guns Rev. 5, 7 (1997).
In this regard, the NRA, which represents consumers, not manufacturers, is simply following the wishes of its gun rights activist constituency. At the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, a meeting of Second Amendment activists organized by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the nation's second-largest gun rights group, the participants each year adopt a "NATO doctrine" resolution for gun rights--whereby an attack on one form of gun ownership is to be treated as an attack on all. (The original NATO doctrine held that a Soviet attack on a vulnerable or isolated NATO member, such as Turkey, should be regarded as an attack on all NATO members. Even if the Soviets had solemnly promised that they only wanted to capture Berlin or Ankara, and had no interest in London, diplomatic realists understood that to allow the piecemeal conquest of small democratic nations would eventually put even the most powerful democratic nations in mortal danger.)
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Op-ed originally published in Sunday’s Amarillo Globe:
Column – Andy Wilson: Perry spews hot air on warming
AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry’s recent essay (“EPA ‘science’ doesn’t add up in global warming equation,” Dec. 27, 2009) is full of hot air and not much else.
The governor’s outrage produces more heat than light, revealing his ignorance of science and penchant for quoting dubious and discredited economic studies funded by energy companies.
The real inconvenient truth is that Texas cannot afford to make meaningless political statements any longer, especially when there’s work to be done – carbon regulation is coming whether the governor throws a tantrum or not. We can shout at the wind or harness it into a clean energy future.
Planning for a low-carbon future now will pay dividends in the future as the world comes to Texas for the clean energy we can supply in abundance. But if we choose to pout rather than produce, we risk missing the clean energy train.
Already, Texas wind turbines are providing electricity, not to mention jobs and tax revenue, and we’re blessed with some of the best solar potential of any state. According to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, West Texas families pay less for their electricity, thanks in large part to all those wind farms. Peer-reviewed economic studies, including one by the Union of Concerned Scientists, show Texas families stand to save $980 annually in energy costs by enacting clean-energy legislation.
The scare-tactics scenarios the governor laid out use phony statistics from studies underwritten by dirty energy lobbyists who are afraid of competition from these low-carbon upstarts. If you dig deeper into these studies, even under their highest cost projections, U.S. economic growth remains robust and millions of new jobs are created, hundreds of thousands of which would be in Texas.
Given our high-tech, manufacturing, and energy leadership experience, Texas should be attracting green energy technologies already. But instead, we’re losing major solar and battery manufacturing to states which are less sunny but more savvy, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Maybe Perry should spend less time posturing and complaining about science he doesn’t understand and more time enacting strong policies to attract clean energy jobs and industry to Texas, the same way Amarillo has in their recent announcement to bring as many as 750 new wind turbine manufacturing jobs to the area.
The truth about the hacked e-mails Perry references that purport to discredit global warming is this: It’s a tempest in a teapot, and every scientist knows it. If we’re looking for a “smoking gun” that disproves the settled science of climate change, we would need glaciers and ice caps to stop melting at record levels worldwide. We would need temperatures and drought throughout Texas to recede, rather than having the last decade be the hottest and driest on record.
Since we only depend on the research of scientists at the University of East Anglia, a town and university so small, I challenge you to find it on a map, for a very small portion of the corpus of scientific knowledge on climate change, we would need much more than a few choice words from scientists behaving badly to contradict that. To discount all climate science based only on these emails would be the same as disqualifying University of Texas from playing in the Rose Bowl because of the criminal misbehavior by one of their bench wide receivers.
But the good news is that whether you believe in global warming or not, all of our tools to solve it are the same tools we need to solve our current crises and create a better future for Texans.
Worried about unemployment? Energy security? The loss of American manufacturing? Clean energy development cuts into all of these problems, and just happens to help save the planet while we’re at it.
So at the start of a new decade, let’s be winners, not whiners. Texas should be getting in front of federal legislation and putting in place the policies that ensure that the nation will turn to us for their future renewable energy needs for the 21st century, the same way they have for the past century with oil and gas.
Doing anything less, Gov. Perry, certainly seems … well, un-Texan.
Andy Wilson is the Global Warming Program director for Public Citizen’s Texas Office.
By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas. | <urn:uuid:c7acde9e-1b3e-4eb6-b131-3cc107fe02fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://texasvox.org/tag/electrical-reliability-council-of-texas/ | 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 | 0.940414 | 956 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Posted by Bob on October 26, 2003
In Reply to: Suckers.... posted by mo on October 24, 2003
: I am trying to figure out a phrase that I use to hear kids say years ago....it was something like :
: "I don't buy suckers..... I just lick em'?" I know that isn't the correct phrase, it's as close as I can recall. Can any one help me out here?
"Sucker" is a regional variant for lollipop (also spelled lollypop), a hard candy on a stick.
Of course, there are so many other definitions of sucker and lick that one could construct any number of other variations on the meaning of that sentence, including "I don't bribe gullible people, I just beat them into submission." Etc. | <urn:uuid:fdeaf4c6-11e2-4c22-9f45-df7b27359e2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/25/messages/541.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984666 | 170 | 1.515625 | 2 |
PlanaTech, an Italian design firm, is making waves in the Flying Dutchman class with a newly constructed hull that is radically different than any FD before.
Yesterday, I took the chance to ask PlanaTech’s chief, Luca Ungaro, a few questions about his new FD, why he believes his design could be the fastest FD ever, and how he uses a ProStart to analyze the boat’s performance.
Velocitek: Provide us with a brief introduction of PlanaTech? What does your logo symbolize?
I think our logo is an excellent way to briefly introduce PlanaTech.
Our logo depicts a traditional Drakkar – Danish for “longship.” The Drakkar represents the Danish half of my family that has a long tradition of ship building and worldwide navigation.
The left half of the Drakkar is a technical CAD design. CAD is a cornerstone of PlanaTech’s operations.
It allows us full control of both shapes and functions, ensuring the optimization of the systems that define a race boat. The other half of the Drakkar is a stylization dedicated to Italian design and beauty.
The union of the Drakkar with the CAD design is a perfect representation of PlanaTech’s philosophy: we are a group of people who firmly believe that only the right balance between tradition and modern technology can generate valuable products.
Your past work has mostly been in large, racing yachts (TP-52, GP-42). Why switch to the FD dinghy?
TP-52s, GP-42s, the construction of these large race boats belongs to the esteemed Latini Marine shipyard where I worked for many years. In that time, I learned the use of advanced composites and became proficient in racing sailboat design. PlanaTech and Latini have now joined forces with the mission of incorporating everything we know about designing large, racing yachts, into the design of new dinghy hulls.
Why begin our quest with the Flying Dutchman? Two reasons – the FD is an open design class that allows the use of advanced composites and many other innovations. It is also the class on which I have always raced. So, why not choose it as our debut in the world of dinghies?
What technologies were central to your design process?
The project was carried out in-house with 3D CAD software. All of the boat’s parts were designed in CAD: hull, deck, cockpit, structures and all the fittings of the deck hardware. The 3D design was then exported for the CNC milling of the individual boat plugs.
Your stated goal is to make PlanaTech’s FD design the fastest FD ever. What are the key innovations and advancements in your new FD that will allow you to realize this goal?
The key innovations are the entire design and construction process. We decided not to build a prototype that was to be modified after testing. The boat was designed and the performance was tested through computer simulators . These tests was repeated for X number of times with different shapes. Before arriving at the final version, 13 iterations were designed. Finally, when we reached the desired targets, we proceeded with the construction of the hull.
Another key innovation in our FD is the boat’s materials. The boat is built entirely of prepreg carbon fiber with the use of unidirectionals and multiaxials.
We have now constructed the first two hulls. The amazing thing is that they are not separate prototypes, they are identical. They are the first two hulls in the series of the new PlanaTech Flying Dutchman!
You’ve sailed the new FD a few times now, how has it performed? Any surprises?
The first time we tested the boat was an incredible experience.
The combination of the hull’s water lines and extreme stiffness has given birth to a boat very different from any Flying Dutchman I have sailed in the past. The helm is much more responsive, the sail controls are very sensitive, the acceleration is impressive, and when the wind strengthens and the sea state worsens, the boat rises to the occasion.
It has performed above and beyond our expectations.
Usually, very stiff boats are difficult to sail because the margins of error are very small. However, our boat is very easy to steer and maneuver. It’s truly a boat for crews of all levels. This was definitely our biggest surprise.
Using our Velocitek instruments, we completed some speed tests between our boats and those of other yards. The results speak for themselves:
The polar graphs of the two PlanaTech FDs circumscribe the one of the competitor boat … this means that our boat is considerably faster on all points of sail and also, it has the best angles to the wind!
How does Velocitek aide your testing?
Our Velocitek tools have opened many windows of opportunity for us. I believe that even if these boats have shown their superiority on the water, they still can have hidden potential. You can discover this hidden potential faster by using a data-centric approach to testing. We owe Velocitek our thanks for giving us a way to easily acquire data and store it for later analysis.
Where do you hope to be in a year?
This year will be long and intense. We hope to establish ourselves and bring home our first victories. There is a good chance that by next year, the FD will not be the only dinghy we produce. In fact, we are already working on a new project! But as for right now, we are excited about bringing our new Flying Dutchman to a few big regattas and showing our creation to the world.
Thank you on behalf of the whole PlanaTech team for giving us this space!
- Luca Ungaro
Velocitek: A big thanks to Luca and PlanaTech providing us with such an in depth look into their operation. Wondering what PlanaTech will do next? You can keep up with PlanaTech by visiting their website: http://www.planatech.it/ and FaceBook page: http://www.facebook.com/Planatech | <urn:uuid:83242689-1198-4460-b6ee-f7b51ce41b27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.velocitek.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961913 | 1,290 | 1.5625 | 2 |
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. -- With cultural and ethnic consumer demographics changing so quickly, retailers are finding it difficult to satisfy the needs of a more diverse shopping clientele.
Many retailers are turning to less conventional produce items with the hopes of attracting a wider clientele, according to Karen Caplan, president of Frieda's, a specialty produce company based here.
"It's a challenge," Caplan said. "What we're hearing from retailers is that they're gaining all this demographic information, and that they know there are not just separate pockets of individual consumers shopping in stores, and they want to make as many people happy as possible.
"They look at the nonconventional produce items as a way to service the needs of a continually [changing] produce shopper."
But retailers can get caught in a number of traps, Caplan said, especially when they do not truly know their clientele.
"We've gone into stores where [retailers] say, 'Twenty percent of people who shop our stores are Cuban,' so they have this huge Cubanic section," she said.
"They may not know that they [Cubans] shop at a local market down the street, or that they also have a high Asian population or a high German population."
The key to being successful in these diverse markets is knowledge of who the clients are. For instance, a retailer may set out to devote space to his Hispanic shoppers.
"He says, 'I'm going to put an Hispanic set in -- I'm going to look at Mexican items,' " Caplan said. "They may not be aware that their shoppers are Cuban, or Guatemalan or Brazilian.
"You have to really find out what the demographics are -- it's not Hispanic, it's Guatemalan or Mexican or Colombian," she said. "And then find out which fresh produce items are in demand."
This means knowing what shoppers at particular stores want, and while there are numerous ways to speculate about demographics, Caplan said she knows of no better way than face-to-face communication.
"I personally think the best way to do that is ask your shoppers," Caplan said. Caplan suggests retailers train produce personnel to "work the floor" in the department, to get a feel for what shoppers want.
Caplan said simply stocking the most eclectic produce selection, just for variety's sake, is probably not the answer.
"If they have 700 items in their produce department, they're either going to be collecting a lot of dust, or are just going to get thrown out,"
Caplan said. However, it is important for retailers to focus on the items that are important to shoppers, she added. | <urn:uuid:2ca6d316-0da5-4776-be6a-498e49725d73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://supermarketnews.com/print/archive/home-demographic-data-retailers-urged | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971258 | 555 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Since January 2007, SQA has issued a revised, easier to use and understand Scottish Qualifications Certificate (SQC) to candidates. The SQC is a candidate's life-long record of their qualifications. As a result of feedback and in consultation with candidates, the certificate is designed to make it a clearer layout and easier to read.
The certificate has three sections:
The certificate also gives Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) information. The SCQF describes qualifications in terms of level and credit points which makes it easier to understand and compare different types of qualifications. The level indicates the complexity of the learning and the credit points shows the learner effort needed to achieve the qualification. One aim of the SCQF is to help make easier credit transfer between different learning programmes. The SCQF level and credit points of SQA's qualifications are shown on the certificate. The Profiles section shows the total credit points at the SCQF level achieved by the candidate.
The guide below explains these changes and shows you how to read the certificate.
If you have any questions on the new SQC, please speak to your Business Development Manager.
Where can you take this course? | <urn:uuid:83fd6fe3-0140-456c-882d-0f9a10e057d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/14098.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938977 | 245 | 1.648438 | 2 |
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris speaks with KPCC radio host Patt Morrison (off camera) in Charlotte, North Carolina on September 6, 2012 during the Democratic National Convention.
Job numbers released the morning after President Obama’s DNC speech put a damper on the Democrats’ morning-after buzz — so much so that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney dubbed it a “hangover.” But at least one California Democrat has a different view.
August unemployment is down to 8.1 percent, a slight decrease from July (when it was 8.3 percent). But analysts say that’s because many job seekers have just stopped looking for work.
State Attorney General Kamala Harris, one of the rising stars at the Democratic National Convention, points out that nearly a 100,000 jobs were added last month.
She says the economy is turning around, but it’s not fixed yet.
And she says that’s why Barack Obama should be re-elected. She says the President has been making "every attempt" to improve the economy and there's "empirical evidence of the success of those attempts" — ergo, Americans should let him stay and complete the job. | <urn:uuid:2121e492-c3b6-47d5-a016-99c794813733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/tagged/community-college | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956947 | 249 | 1.625 | 2 |
Beijing gets smug to cut through the smog
For Beijing residents, the pollution issue really isn’t new.
“I’m just coming out to breathe some fresh air,” I heard a guy joking with a friend in the street of the Chinese capital. If the British have a fascination for talking about the weather, then Beijingers certainly bond through small talk about pollution.
Looking out the window of my Beijing apartment can be inspirational. Well, I could be really anywhere in the world. With the level of smog, I can imagine being in any fantasy doomsday movie, or Mordor of The Lord of the Rings, or Gotham of Batman.
This is the third day in which air quality in Beijing has plunged to a new low. Data from the Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre showed particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) reaching over 900. The recommended level of PM2.5 according to the World Health Organisation is 20.
Schools have been instructed to stop outdoor activities for the next three days. People suffering respiratory or cardiovascular illness were advised to stay indoors. Thirty percent of Beijing's buses have been taken out of traffic to avoid further pollution.
If you take a deep breath, you can smell car fumes or coal dust. Even for a long-term resident with a not particularly sensitive nose, the air has a slight burning sensation in the throat.
The news portal Sina.com published an article on polluted cities in history, mentioning the death of 12,000 people in London in 1952 due to a heavy smog. It was a reminder that Beijing is not alone.
Its citizens, though, have become less tolerant of the issue.
“We keep shouting about the figure, but nothing is being done to lower emissions," user Basonglangwang wrote on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. "It’s like the thief has stolen a bag and is shouting about the theft. Sometimes the thief is shouting louder than other people. The government needs to act.”
More responsible residents of the city took it upon themselves to show the extent to Beijing’s pollution.
Photographer Wang Yikun took photos on 364 days, from November 22, 2011, untill November 21, 2012, to show the level of pollution in the city. Wang said Saturday was the worst he has seen in his whole life.
The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau announced that the pollution is expected to continue this week, making mask-sellers the only happy people in the city. Many places have been reportedly out of stock of PM2.5-prevention facial masks since last week. | <urn:uuid:ed018493-d251-4394-9851-ffd271c6b2dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/asia/beijing-gets-smug-cut-through-smog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963509 | 551 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Glowsticks are not an environmental sound product as they produce phenols, a toxin and the chemically coated plastic is not recyclable.
That being said, the amount of phenol produced is very small and the size and number of glowsticks used makes them a minimal problem (probably filling the equivalent of a few 55 gallon drums at Roo.)
They do make LED glowsticks now that are very cheap ($0.50 - $2.00 each) and are reusable so if you like the big glowies, buy these online and they're likely cheaper than getting the "bad" ones at Walmart.
I prefer the smaller bracelets and the cost difference there is considerable (pennies for the "bad" ones and dollars for the "good" ones.) I try and do what I can to be environmentally conscience but I like to give away glowies at festivals, especially to the kids in the crowd so I'm not sure I am worried enough to change this habit. I cannot afford to give away 500 LED glowies like I did glow bracelets at Phish on Sunday.
BTW, You could fit all 500 of my glow bracelets in a one gallon jug so, as I said, I'm not too worried about my environmental impact on this count. I know everyone should try and do everything but trying to do everything just leads to burn out (trust me, I know) and so I accept I'm human, flawed and imperfect and do the best I can on a consistent basis.
A hundred happy kids are worth a gallon of garbage IMHO. I'll try and make a point of picking up a gallon of someone else trash as a trade.
Good point though, making everyone think about the environmental impact of glowies. It is often overlooked.
Post by questionablesanity on Jun 17, 2009 9:32:39 GMT -5
Glowsticks are cool to see, but in the big picture, they are a total waste of time and money. PLus the negative impact on the environment. I bought a few just to use instead of a flashlight, but I would never buy them to throw. Especially at a Phish show when the lights are kick ass enough. To each their own.
A Thieve's Parade 2/24 Conspirator 2/26 Kevin Smith 3/11 Keller 3/17 Papadosio 3/18 JJ Grey 3/25 Bela Fleck/Edgar Meyer 3/26 Toubab Krewe 3/27 O'Death 4/11 Budos Band 4/22 EOTO 4/28 Summer Camp 5/6-29 All Good
Did anyone see the glowstick war that took place about 1/2 way through the sunday set? Oh my god. The balloons with EL wire, lasers, the deluge of glowsticks, and some killer pink/orange wash on the audience (courtesy of CK5) made that whole scene look like some kind of space war.
I will be posting video from Friday and Sunday... We where a big part of the mass glowsticks this year )... we where right near the balloons floating high in the sky page side sunday night and same spot friday... over the weekend we threw out about 25,000 glowsticks... good fun for all! | <urn:uuid:40607f66-9a68-464e-ba78-1f41b28fddb0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inforoo.com/thread/19110/pics-phish-friday-night-glowstic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945364 | 670 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Previous studies have demonstrated a lack of diversity in orthopaedics; however, it is unclear whether this observation is unique to orthopaedics or similar to other surgical fields. The present study compares diversity in the field of orthopaedics with diversity in other surgical and nonsurgical fields. To our knowledge, no previous study has placed this issue in a comparative perspective between specialties at both the residency and faculty levels.Methods:
Public registries from 2006 and 2007 were used to determine the composition (according to race, ethnicity, and sex) of the orthopaedic workforce in the United States, including medical students, orthopaedic residents, orthopaedic faculty, and full professors. The diversity of orthopaedic residents and faculty was then compared with that in five other specialties. In addition, the applicant pools to orthopaedic and general surgery residencies were compared.Results:
Within the 2006 orthopaedic workforce, there was a significant decrease in the representation of African-Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian-Americans, and women from medical schools to orthopaedic residencies (p < 0.001). African-Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and Asian-Americans were underrepresented among orthopaedic faculty compared with their representation in orthopaedic residency programs (p < 0.05). Furthermore, women and Asian-Americans were disproportionately underrepresented as full professors compared with their presence on the faculty at academic orthopaedic institutions (p < 0.05). When compared with other surgical specialties, African-Americans and Hispanics/Latinos made up a significantly smaller proportion of orthopaedic residents than general surgery residents and neurological surgery. Orthopaedic surgery had the lowest representation of female residents and faculty (p < 0.05 for all comparisons). In examining the applicant pool, orthopaedic surgery was less diverse than general surgery (p < 0.001). Furthermore, African-American and Hispanic/Latino orthopaedic applicants also submitted a lower average number of applications than Whites or Asian-Americans.Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that on a comparative basis, orthopaedic surgery lags behind general surgery and other surgical and nonsurgical fields in terms of the representation of minorities and women. Thus, given similar capabilities and qualifications of applicants, a concerted effort could be made to recruit more diverse residents and faculty. | <urn:uuid:8d396705-047d-4cc2-962f-9524ab195c84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jbjs.org/article.aspx?articleid=5764 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949038 | 489 | 1.78125 | 2 |
What do great caddies have that others don’t?
I’ve read only the first 20 pages of Billy Mott’s just-published golf novel, The Back Nine (Knopf, $24), about a man who returns to golf as a caddy after 25 years away from the sport. So I’ll save most of my comments on it for later in the week. But you may want to check out the book before then if you’re looking for Father’s Day gift ideas for a golfer who loves to read (or if you’ll be opening the packages and are hoping to avoid getting another tangerine-colored polo shirt).
The first chapters of The Back Nine include this memorable description of what the best caddies have that others don’t:
“The best ones are in control of their wits, able to stay with the shot and think ahead at the same time. They’re admired, revered, and paid for their cool, for the knowledge and ease with which they carry out their tasks. They keep every club clean, are there when needed, and most importantly, know when to leave their player alone. And a good caddy always knows where the ball is; no matter how far off line, deep in the rough or the woods, he’ll find it and within seconds know the play, always aware of his position on the course and what shot to hit. He’ll know if his player should try to run the ball up to the green or just punch out, take his medicine and try to save bogey, maybe hole a putt and make par. ‘No, no,’ he’ll quietly insist. ‘You can’t make birdie. Forget it. Play for par.’ He gives just the right amount of information so his player can swing freely, play to his strengths and avoid his weaknesses. A nervous caddy makes mistakes, says the wrong thing and gets blamed for a bad shot or, worse, the whole round. And in a way, he is responsible. Indecision and lack of clarity are at the root of every bad shot.”
© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:38807ffd-1a00-4550-becc-5e5126d3d144> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/maybe-check-out-this-golf-novel-for-father%E2%80%99s-day/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=6c7ec013d9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958818 | 472 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The above Swedish language book features stories of children
who were the result of Swedish women who fell in love with foreign airmen and other soldiers who were interned
in Sweden during WWII, along with stories of
emergency landings, bailouts, escapes from POW camps, etc.
It is interesting to note that the picture of the crashed plane on
the front cover is that of the crashed Lovely Lady's Avenger, my great uncle's plane.
It is, however, a different photo from a different angle than any
of the images I have!
Charles Seth WWII Era Photos & Info
Note: this is an ongoing research project. Please return often to learn more or view updated information.
Charles Seth 1943
Charles Seth is my great uncle and a veteran of WWII. He served as part of the 466th Bomb Group in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a navigator, which was based out of AAF Station #120 near Attlebridge, England. During his service he navigated, mainly, aboard two different B-24 'Liberator' bombers, Lovely Lady and Lovely Lady's Avenger (see below). On June 21, 1944 he was involved in a crash landing in Lovely Lady's Avenger, but I think his stories are best told in his own words...
Other pages on this site;
links to these can also be found
throughout the text below
Sgt. James N. Branum
Lt. Lynn J. Fostmeier
Rättvik, Sweden, 1944
"Most of the planes got their names from the pilots and crews. There wasn't really any normal procedure to cover this. A name was picked and the crew chief saw to it that the nose art was handled..."
Photographed by Charles Seth
Taken on or after June 2, 1944
Photographed by Charles Seth
Taken on or after June 7, 1944
Photographed by Ken Bemis
Taken on or after June 17, 1944
|Designation:||B-24H-15-FO||Mfd. By:||Ford Motor Company|
|Serial #:||42-52569||Mfd. In:||Willow Run, MI|
[If anyone has any further information at all on the Lovely Lady (including photos!), please email me.]
"The original Lovely Lady was flown by us from the States to Europe via the Southern route
which was from
Florida to South America,
across the south Atlantic to Africa and then up to England.
We flew Lovely Lady for 3 missions (#2, 5 & 6) over germany,
it was too damaged to fly it was lent to another crew
who crash landed it on a mission that very next day.*
We then flew about 9 missions in borrowed planes [names?]. I think it was one of these borrowed planes that we flew back to England without instruments (as told in the newspaper article, see below). I noticed in that article they got the name of the plane wrong - they call it "Lovely Lady II" which was incorrect - that story went through several people from the time we related it to the news at our base in England and the time it was published in the Watseka, Illinois paper.
After borrowing planes for awhile, we were thereafter issued a later "J" model B-24 which we named Lovely Lady's Avenger..."
* The other crew, #619, flying Lovely Lady on mission #7, April 9th, 1944 crash landed her at a farm called Saksfjeldgard, south-east of Rodly on the island of Lolland, Denmark. Missing Air Crew Report (MACR) #3844. Some of that crew didn't make it and were apparently (temporarily) interred there.
LOVELY LADY'S AVENGER
|Designation:||B-24J-145-CO||Mfd. By:||Consolidated San Diego|
|Serial #:||44-40093(N?)||Mfd. In:||San Diego, CA|
"We also flew Lovely Lady's Avenger for a number of missions, starting with mission #38 on May 27, 1944, prior to the mission in which we ended up in Sweden (see Last Bombing Mission below), beginning with mission #38 on May 27, 1944. I noticed that the picture I had of the nose art (see upper right) shows 3 bombs painted on the plane. When we took it to Sweden we had 12 bombs painted on it (each bomb is for one combat mission), so that picture was taken at the air base shortly after we got the plane (could have been when the name was painted on it). The large 'U8' on the fuselage (shown on one of the crash photos) was code to indicate the 786th Bomber Squadron."
466TH BOMBARDMENT GROUP (HEAVY)
You can read about the 466th Bombardment Group at the following sites.
To the right you'll see the various insignia relating to Charles' plane crew. The first is the insignia for the 466th Bomb Group. The second is the tail pattern and colors for the 466th Bomb Group (each Group's tail pattern and colors uniquely identified it). The third is the insignia for the 786th Bomb Squadron of the 466th (the other squadrons in the 466th were the 784th, 785th and 787th Bomb Squadrons).
Not shown are two other insignia. First there was a "Circle-L" on the top of the right wing, which was the "tail code" for the 466th Bombardment Group. Second, there was an N which was the RCL, or Radio Call Letter.
ATTLEBRIDGE, ENGLAND (AAF Station #120)
The village's name refers to the bridge (brycg) reportedly built by Ætla and is 8 m NW of Norwich. The air base there, designated AAF Station #120, was used by the 466th Bomb Group from 7 Mar 1944-6 Jul 1945. It was originally built for the RAF No. 2 group light bombers, then later saw use by the 319th (B26 Marauders), the 466th Bomb Group (B24 Liberators), RAF 105 and 88 Sq. (Bostons, Blenheims), and No. 320 (Dutch) Sqdn.
The base is now a turkey farm, with the tower used as offices.
"The full designation of my crew was Crew #609, 786th Bomber Squadron, 466th Bomb Group, 2nd Air Division, 8th Army Air Force. My crew's pilot was Lt. Leo Mower from Fountain Green, Utah. The one newspaper article of mine had Mower's name mispelled and home town wrong, in case you noticed (see below). I didn't join this group until Feb. '44, just before leaving for Europe, and therefore I didnt know any of the crew until then." Note, the call sign for the 786th Bomber Squadron was "Agram."
Crew # 609, taken after crash landing in Sweden.
Crew members were...
Back Row, L-R
Sgt. George Hamas, Waist Gunner; Lt. Charles Seth, Navigator;
Sgt. James (Jim) Nelson Branum, Nose Gunner; Sgt. Edward Magalski, Engineer
Front Row, L-R
Lt. Lynn J Fostmeier, Co-Pilot; Sgt. Walter Taylor, Radio Operator;
Sgt. Harry Brainard, Tail Gunner; Lt. Leo Mower, Pilot
"Our total was 23 missions flown, with 30 missions being the maximum limit at that time. I verified my records and found that I flew the following missions: 2-5-6-9-10-12-14-19-20-26-36-38-41-43-44-47-50-53-56-58-60-61 and our last one No. 64!! Mission #47 was D-Day." (See 466th Missions List for date and other details on these missions.)
|The bridge in this Google map appears to be the rebuilt modern day bridge.|
BOMBING MISSION #58: TOURS, FRANCE
June 17, 1944 (11 days after D-Day)
"This clipping (below) shows a railroad bridge, near Tours, France, that was on a main supply line. We were in Lovely Lady's Avenger and carried 2000 lb bombs that day. For better bombing coverage we were ordered to bomb from around 5,000 feet instead of our regular 20,000 feet, a height unusual for heavy bombers. The raid was carried out in the afternoon instead on early morning, another aspect of this raid that was different than typical bombing runs."
"The picture in the clipping shows that we did a pretty good job on the bridge. Every thing worked well and all planes returned safe."
Photographed by Charles Seth
Photographed by Charles Seth
BOMBING MISSION #64: LAST BOMBING MISSION
June 21, 1944 (15 days after D-Day)
"Left England in Lovely Lady's Avenger at 5 am heading for Berlin with a full load of 500 pound bombs for delivery to air fields and munitions plant..."
"Weather was clear and cold (Outside temp at 20,000 feet was minus 40 below zero). Made trip to Berlin, made bomb run and headed for home when anti aircraft guns filled the sky with lots of flak and exploding shells. We were hit in two engines (note feathered props on one engine), started to loose speed and altitude and couldn't keep up with group so we were flying alone. Had ideas of bailing out but one of the gunners had holes shot in his parachute so decision was made to stay with plane as long as we could . We were down to about 10,000 feet and made quick decision to go to Sweden (neutral country) which was about 100 miles or so across the Baltic sea. It was about 500 miles or so back to England across the North Sea which was very cold water (couldnt last long if we had to ditch the plane there - easy decision)."
"About half way to Sweden a German fighter plane started chasing us and we couldnt fire back, but 2 American P-38s, my favorite fighter, came to our rescue and chased him off."
"While we were heading for Sweden and we knew the plane was badly damaged, we realized our hydraulic system was damaged and the nose turret, which James Branum, was in, wouldn't turn because we were low on hydraulic fluid, so he was stuck (Locked In). We had a manual system to turn the turret so the doors would open, so he could get out. As I was turning the crank, the chain kept creaking and cracking, and we were afraid it might break. Jim said to me, QUOTE Charlie if you break that chain I will haunt you the rest of your life (we laughed about it much later). The chain didn't break, we got him out Ok, and finished up getting ready for landing in Sweden."
"Made it to southern tip of Sweden and the little town of Malmö (see map) and crash landed on a little hill just short of runway... not quite enough power to pull up over the hill. That is where the pictures were taken."
"Every one of us (8 fliers) got out Ok - just a little shaken up but nothing serious. As this was a neutral country we were treated very nice and well taken care of. We stayed at the Grand Hotel in Rättvik, Sweden (190 miles north west of Stockholm) for our 5 months visit to Sweden. It was a nice hotel and a nice little town on Lake Siljan."
"One of the pilots, after finishing his missions, was assigned to air transport command, flying night missions to and from Sweden in an unmarked, black painted B-24. That was good for me and my crew..."
"In early December we were put on a plane and flown to Ireland, then to England back to our old base. Few days there and then by air to New York, by train to Chicago and then by train to Bloomington, IL. Arrived there Dec 23 to be home by Christmas."
"Sixty years ago. It has been a long time....."
MISSING AIR CREW REPORT
Whenever an air crew went missing, there was a Missing Air Crew Report, or MACR, filed. The report regarding Crew #609 (Charles' crew), when they went missing (i.e. crash landed in Sweden), was MACR #6164.
The above left crash photo was provided by Charles Cadogan in the UK. The photo was marked "Bulltofta, Malmö" and dated "June 1944." The photo was discovered in his late grandfather's photo album. His grandfather was a Swede named Hans Wachtmeister, who lived in Malmö during WWII and was head of the department of construction of Malmö harbour (byggnadschef vid Malmö Hamnförvaltning). Hans was a keen and prolific photographer as well as an aircraft enthusiast, enjoying early passenger flights within Europe before WWII.
Note the N on the tail and the "Circle-L" on the wing. The N was the RCL, or Radio Call Letter. The "Circle-L" was the group's tail code.
The above right crash photo was taken by an unknown photographer. However, I found the image posted by "Rudolf Filip" in this britmodeller.com forum post, here.
Two more images of Lovely Lady's Avenger after it crashed. The color photo is wonderful!!! Photographer unknown, provided by Ingemar Melin, who also wrote this text about the crash.
"The 21th of June it was crowded at Bulltofta. The day before had not less than 21 heavy American bombers that landed there. This day there would be 8 more planes to land. Four Liberators and four fortresses. One of Liberators was "Lovely Ladies Avenger" from the 466th Bomb Group, flown by Lt. L. Mower. Over the radio, he announced that they had problems with two engines and fuel leakage. He was advised to call for fighter escort and either try to reach Sweden or jump. Just before 11:00 he landed at Bulltofta, but due to leaky hydraulic system there were no working brakes. The plane came in from the north, went off the track, and rolled up over the crest of Hohögsbacken (today near the entrance of IKEA). Below the hill they came to a halt. The crew of eight men escaped unhurt, but the plane was scrapped on site. An opportunistic amateur photographer took a picture with his box camera just when 'Lovely Ladies Avenger' breaks the edge of the hill."
"Her very spectacular landing in combination with the fact that her location was reachable for civilans made her probably one of the most photographed US bombers in Sweden..."
BULLTOFTA AIRFIELD, MALMÖ, SWEDEN
Throughout WWII, Sweden (a neutral country) saw forced & crash landings on their soil by a large number of both Axis and Allied damaged aircraft. And because of its location at the southern tip of Sweden, for Allied pilots and air crews Bulltofta airfield in Malmö, Sweden was one of several easier alternatives to flying a heavily damaged aircraft back to their originating air base in England. The peak of this activity for Malmö was June 20th-21st, 1944, when at least 25 bombers force landed at the small Bulltofta airfield... including Lovely Lady's Avenger on the 21st.
See other sections of this page and also the newsletter article "Bulltofta: June 20-21, 1944" in the link below for more information. The article even mentions specifically the forced landing of Lovely Lady's Avenger and includes another photo of the aircraft after the crash!
Sweden: After the Flak (pdf)
Bulltofta, Malmö, Sweden (Wikipedia article)
Malmö, Sweden (Wikipedia article)
The first clipping tells about Charles' MIA status when his bomber went missing (i.e. when they crash landed in Sweden). The second clipping tells about his safe return. Note that the details of his safe return were not revealed at that time...
This clipping tells about how, on a previous occasion, Charles had helped his pilot bring their instrument-crippled aircraft in for a safe landing (this is also mentioned briefly in the third paragraph of the clipping just above left). Note that the name of the pilot, his home town, and the name of the aircraft were reported incorrectly. The pilot was actually Lt. Leo Mower from Fountain Green, Utah. The aircraft's name was actually Lovely Lady. | <urn:uuid:3d52bdc3-43b9-403e-9816-b91a33bdc82a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sodabob.com/Photos/CSethWWII/?MenuID=60 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974104 | 3,549 | 1.507813 | 2 |
William C. Hubbard, a member and former chair of the USC Board of Trustees, and a partner in the firm of Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough, received an honorary doctor of laws degree. He told graduates they are now qualified to do what lawyers do best – right a wrong.
“That is your opportunity. Even more, it is your responsibility,” Hubbard said. “There is too much rancor, too much yelling, and not enough civil discourse. You can lead a renaissance of civil discourse. It is your duty to do so.”
“Don’t say, ‘I can’t do that.’ Say, ‘How can I make that happen?” he said. “The only limit is the limit of your own courage. Have courage, hope, be civil, right a wrong, and never forget, especially on glorious days like today, to have fun.”
At the Koger Center, the School of Medicine awarded degrees to 78 graduates Friday afternoon. Dr. O’Neill Barrett Jr., a retired doctor and professor of medicine, told the graduates to put the needs of patients and families first as they start their medical careers. “We ought to serve, not be served,” said Barrett, who said that he hoped the new doctors’ “ongoing thoughts will be of the patient, the patient, the patient.”
An honorary doctorate of public administration was presented to Charles D. Beaman Jr., president and chief executive officer of Palmetto Health, at the School of Medicine commencement. | <urn:uuid:35287bc3-f94a-4e9b-8e6f-f0f0f75d54ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=967&pg=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96913 | 333 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Getting started with Eclipse 4 Application Development - Tutorial
The Eclipse Rich Client Platform is companies’ choice #1 when high-quality customer or in-house desktop applications have to be developed.
In June, the next generation of this wildly successful framework for building desktop applications was released to the public which finally brings lots of technical innovations to desktop application developers.
This tutorial will give you a jumpstart into the new concepts of the Eclipse 4 Application Platform. If you have previous experience developing with RCP 3.x, but limited or no experience with e4, this tutorial is designed for you. We show how Eclipse 4 will improve your products in terms of testability, reusability, and flexibility.
Based on a sample RCP application, we introduce the most important features of the new platform, such as the Application Model, Dependency Injection and the new Programming Model. The introduction is completed by an overview of the most important services available, such as the selection or preference services as well as the Event Bus. All topics include hands-on examples that we’ll work through together. Finally, we demonstrate how innovations from Eclipse 4 can be integrated into existing applications based on Eclipse 3.x and introduce possible migration paths. | <urn:uuid:7e7ed459-7e6e-426e-8af1-92b991a6d436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eclipsecon.org/europe2012/sessions/programming-model-eclipse-4-application-development | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941536 | 249 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Photo by David von Becker
Daubechies transfers to emeritus status
Posted November 30, 2012; 11:49 a.m.
Mathematics professor Ingrid Daubechies' transfer to emeritus status was recently approved by the Princeton University Board of Trustees. It was effective Sept. 1, 2011.
Daubechies, the William R. Kenan Professor of Mathematics and Applied and Computational Mathematics, Emeritus, is best known for her analysis of wavelets and their applications. In dozens of published articles and papers, she also focuses on other aspects of time-frequency analysis and applications to mathematics, science and the arts.
Among her many honors, Daubechies received the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics in 2000 and the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics' Pioneer Prize in 2008. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Daubechies received her bachelor's and doctoral degrees in physics at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she also served as a research assistant and research professor. She was a technical staff member of the mathematics research center at AT&T Bell Laboratories and a professor at Rutgers University before joining the Princeton faculty in 1994.
Now a faculty member at Duke University, Daubechies is also a visiting senior research scholar in mathematics at Princeton this academic year. | <urn:uuid:aa603420-8746-4632-bdc3-db96e0976668> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S35/42/93C28/index.xml?from=2007-07-01&to=2007-08-01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956221 | 295 | 1.515625 | 2 |
They're not Orlando. And they certainly aren't Las Vegas. But that's the point of the towns on the annual America's Dozen Distinctive Destinations list selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
For the past 11 years, the organization has chosen locales that might not be obvious vacation destinations, but nevertheless harbor rich cultural and recreational experiences and "exude an authentic sense of place."
The 2011 winners were announced today and the NTHP wants you to vote for the place that deserves the No. 1 spot (or just has the most fans). Voting continues through March 15 and stuffing the online ballot box is allowed -- you can vote once a day -- but you must be 18 or older and a U.S. resident. Voters are automatically entered to win a two-night stay at any Historic Hotel of America.
And the winners are:
Alexandria, Va. – The culturally rich Washington, D.C., suburb sports an "extraordinary blend of early America and modern chic, (with) an eclectic mix of neighborhoods, historic sites, dining and shopping."
Chapel Hill, N.C. – Well-preserved historic districts and a bustling downtown are some of the assets in a city nicknamed the "Southern Part of Heaven."
Colorado Springs, Colo. – The historic Rocky Mountain town has fabulous views of Pikes Peak from almost everywhere in town.
Dandridge, Tenn. – Set in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, the southern Appalachian town has "a welcoming small town spirit and a charming historic downtown."
Eureka, Calif. – The beautifully preserved Victorian seaport on the state's northern coast boasts "a lively Old Town, the Carson Mansion -- one of the most photographed homes in America -- and nearby forests of majestic old growth redwoods."
Muskogee, Okla. – Once the unofficial capital of Indian Territory, the town has a multi-cultural history that blends Native American, African American and Euro American influences. It celebrates that history with a number of festivals in its vibrant downtown.
New Bedford, Mass. – Scenic beaches, maritime history, architectural and historical riches and a growing arts community make this former whaling port an attractive place.
Paducah, Ky. – The river town has thriving historic districts with one-of-a-kind shops and eateries. It's a community that "creatively celebrates its cultural and artistic heritage."
San Angelo, Texas – "A bustling downtown historic district and vibrant cultural offerings" exude authentic Old West ambiance.
Saint Paul, Minn. – "Visitors can browse the quaint shops of Grand Avenue, dine in the strikingly restored warehouse district, or be awed by the stately mansions along Summit Avenue."
Sheridan, Wyo. – The town has a lively Main Street commercial district, plus lots of recreational opportunities in the shadow of the Big Horns.
Sonoma, Calif. – "The town offers all the perks of being in the heart of wine country, with the added benefit of a laid-back vibe that complements the award-winning wine and food."
Did the National Trust leave any deserving towns off the list? Weigh in here. | <urn:uuid:1b141edd-2c7f-4dae-b775-6cce66e085a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://travel.usatoday.com/destinations/dispatches/post/2011/02/meet-the-usas-newest-top-12-distinctive-destinations-which-should-be-no-1-1/143003/1?csp=34travel | 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 | 0.933328 | 662 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Dental Implants | Dental Implants Derry, N.Ireland
Foyle Dental Spa has a dedicated Implant team in the practice led by renowned specialist Dr. James Hall. Whether you have full dentures, partial dentures or a single missing tooth, implants are the answer. They look natural, feel natural and can prevent further bone loss and the resulting “sagging” of facial tissues when teeth are lost. Ranging from single tooth replacements, to full mouth reconstructions, this is the most effective method of replacing missing teeth.
A More Natural Approach
A dental implant is a small, sturdy, titanium post that acts as the root structure would for a natural tooth. A dental implant is placed into your upper or lower jawbone. After the bone has grown around the implant, implants can hold a crown, bridge or over-denture just like roots hold natural teeth in place. Implants are very durable and can last a lifetime. They require the same maintenance as natural teeth; this includes brushing, flossing and regular dental check-ups. Many patients have told us that dental implants have transformed their lives, enabling them to smile with confidence! | <urn:uuid:68be2975-db0e-4f19-adff-e721757af875> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foyledentalspa.com/dental-implants.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934742 | 239 | 1.59375 | 2 |
It's been a long time since I bought my first home, but I remember the process being exciting, nervous, stressful and fun all at the same time.
Owning a home is a top priority for many Canadians, for both emotional and financial reasons.
If you're in the market for that first big purchase, consider my tips to avoid financial disaster.
Probably the most common problem I see is firsttime home buyers extending themselves too far. Remember, this is your first home and not likely to be your last. According to Sandra Rinomato from Property Virgins, "The average Canadian moves every three to five years."
Keep this in mind when shopping for a home, and don't worry about having all of your wants covered. Prioritize what's most important and remember that you can eventually move up when financial resources allow.
Stay with in your means
Lenders use two ratios to determine the amount of debt a borrower can manage: Gross Debt Service Ratio (GDSR) and Total Debt Service Ratio (TDSR). Your GDSR - which includes the total cost of housing payments (principal, interest, taxes, and heating) - should not be more than 32 per cent of your gross monthly income. Your TDSR - which is your entire monthly debt load (which includes other debts such as car loans and credit card payments) - should not be more than 40 per cent of your gross monthly income.
Aside from these formulas, it's important to use some common sense. When you go to the bank or a mortgage broker, they will often tell you the biggest mortgage you can qualify for based on your income.
Too many people become house poor because they overextend themselves. Buy a house based on what you can afford, not what you qualify for, and make sure you have a good understanding of your monthly cash flow.
More than a mortgage
On a monthly basis, the cost of owning a home or condo is more than just your mortgage payments. You must also factor in insurance, property taxes, utilities, maintenance or condo fees. You may also want to consider extra lumpsum costs, such as furniture, renovations and landscaping.
Also be aware of closing costs, which can include everything from tax adjustments to home inspection to legal fees. Your real estate lawyer will deal with closing costs and make adjustments for taxes paid, land transfer tax and any outstanding utilities.
Far too often, people determine affordability via the monthly payments. We don't need cash to buy anything these days. When it comes to mortgages, this thinking can be dangerous because we can make things appear more affordable simply by extending the amortization period to lower payments. At one time, the banks wanted to help Canadians make real estate more affordable by offering 40-year mortgages. Extending the amortization to 40 years reduces monthly payments by about 21 per cent, but it almost doubles the total interest paid over the life of the mortgage. This is why the government eliminated 40-year and 35-year mortgages.
We also see people moving toward Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOC), which can allow for significantly lower monthly payments. But with lower payments, the debt can take a lot longer to disappear. It's smarter to work toward quickly paying off our debts using higher payments.
Use the Home Buyers Plan
The government allows firsttime home buyers to borrow up to $25,000 out of their RRSP toward a house purchase. Although you don't have to pay interest or tax on that money, you do have to pay that back over a 15-year period. If you don't repay 1/15th of the borrowed amount per year, you'll have to add the amount as income. Using this plan can go a long way in reducing the total amount of debt that goes into buying your first home.
Jim Yih (twitter.com/jimyih) is a financial expert who puts financial education programs in the workplace.
For more of Jim's articles, visit his award-winning blog, RetireHappyBlog.ca | <urn:uuid:b0386c49-7279-401e-9f20-fc6de5f62f16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.househunting.ca/vancouversun/home-renovating/fiscal+prudence+your+guide/6855431/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965136 | 831 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The 1940 Files: Immigrants in GreenpointPosted: April 18, 2012
Next up in my initial 1940 census snapshots are my maternal grandparents, who emigrated from Germany’s rural Upper Franconia district in the mid-1920s and settled in Greenpoint.
Names: John and Eva Rudroff
Relationship: Maternal grandparents
Background: After crossing the Atlantic, John (1886-1969) and Eva (1895-1963) didn’t move around. They moved to 39 Sutton Street in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn shortly after they married in 1927, and that was it until Grandpa died in 1969. This was where they raised my mother and her twin brother. It was also the place from which Grandma Eva sent a care package after World War II to cousins in bombed-out Wurzburg, one of whom recited the exact address (with zip code) to me forty years later, by way of explaining just how memorable that package was to her as a little girl.
• Did the 1940 census taker get the surname spelled right? In 1930, the enumerator listed it as “Rutkoff.”
• How did Grandpa’s employment and wage information stack up? Mom always said they were very lucky that he held on to a good job at Standard Oil of New York all through the Depression years.
• Yay for the 1940 enumerator, who spelled the name the same way my grandparents spelled it. OK, so my grandma was listed as “Eve,” not “Eva,” but whaddya gonna do. Also consistent with other family records, my grandfather was a naturalized citizen (he became one in 1933); my grandmother was not (and never did become one).
• Grandpa and Grandma Rudroff had both completed eight grades of school, according to this census. My mother and her brother, now 12-year-old twins, had completed six, and I assume that they were in the seventh grade at the time the census was taken.
• As I expected, Grandpa’s job was “fireman, oil co.,” meaning he tended boilers at the Standard Oil of New York plant not far from where the family lived. During the week of March 24-30, 1940, he’d put in 32 hours, which was on the low side compared to some other entries on the page. (Most were in the range of 40 to 45 hours, although one factory watchman listed a whopping 84 hours.)
• Grandpa’s yearly salary was $1,150, or about $17,680 in today’s dollars. Not bad, but definitely below the yearly average for the mid-1930s in New York City ($1,745, or $27,425 today). This squares with my mother’s description of her childhood as being free from anxiety over where the next meal was coming from, but without a lot of spare change for anything besides the necessities.
Takeaway: At first glance, I don’t see a lot of surprises here, but then, this is a pretty familiar part of the family story. However, I am having a lot of fun comparing the information on this entry to a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Report, 100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending, the source for the New York City average salary figure listed above. If you’re curious about how far your family’s income might have stretched, check it out (at the link, you can download a .pdf file).
Next time: The mysterious distant cousin. | <urn:uuid:8493bb8f-7be7-4584-bf23-6536bed9aea4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scribbler714.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/the-1940-files-immigrants-in-greenpoint/?like=1&_wpnonce=13170383b7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974958 | 755 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Thu, Feb 14, 2013
Legislature Added Aviation To List Of Recreational Activities
The 89th General Assembly of Arkansas passed House Bill 1020 on February 7, essentially protecting private airstrip owners throughout Arkansas from litigation from non-commercial aviation activity on their land. The bill added “aviation” to the other recreational activities listed in the state’s existing Recreational Use Statute. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Joe Jett (D) of Clay County and included 17 cosponsors. HB1020 passed both state houses with overwhelming support for what many of the Legislators called a “common sense statute.” Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe signed the bill on Monday, February 11.
Spearheading the bill through the process were Yasmina Platt of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and David Myrick, Arkansas Liaison for the non-profit Recreational Aviation Foundation (RAF), headquartered in Bozeman, MT. Actual text of the amendment reads, “to extend the limitation of liability for permitting the recreational use of land to a landowner who permits the free use of the landowner’s property for flying and landing aircraft.”
"This amendment will encourage the 200 owners of Arkansas’ private airstrips to more readily allow aviation activity on their airstrips, encouraging more people to enjoy all the recreational and tourism activities that Arkansas has to offer,” Myrick said.
With the passage of this bill, Arkansas joins 16 other states that have added aviation to their laws covering liability for certain recreational use. John McKenna, president of the RAF added, “we’re pleased with the success of this amendment. It protects landowners and preserves low-impact access by air – ideally near camping and scenic and recreational destinations.”
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“We need a world-class system of weather prediction in the United States – one, as the National Academy of Sciences recently put it, that is ‘second to none'." So>[...]
Send Them A Story -- We Don't Mind! Do you need another set of eyes to see that story you can't believe Jim just wrote? Want to spread Hognose's unique wisdom and perspective to th>[...]
Cites 'Strong Record On Aviation Security' The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) has endorsed Congressman Ed Markey for the U.S. Senate, specifically noting his proven rec>[...] | <urn:uuid:40a50fd6-c052-4b94-9c3a-de86bbdd971f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aero-news.net/emailarticle.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=63d26974-dfab-4709-9b75-07334626965c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944087 | 588 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Tired of mind-altering drugs in packages with pictures of the Scooby-Doo cartoon character on them, two Shadyside women want their village to launch a local war on drugs.
Well, why not?
Throughout the Ohio Valley, lawyers who read about the women's crusade last week probably were rolling their eyes. Tiny little towns like Shadyside have no business enacting bans on specific drugs, after all.
Again, why not?
Ashley Ostrander and Terri Laquaglia attended last week's meeting of Shadyside Village Council, complaining about sales of synthetic marijuana. They - and quite a few other people - worry the new-style dope, often in colorful packages and with harmless sounding names, may be drug pushers' way of getting their hooks into a new generation of youthful customers. "Some of the packages even have Scooby-Doo on them," Laquaglia told council.
Village action, perhaps even a local ban on synthetic mind-altering drugs, may be needed, the women suggested. It's an idea heard in other local towns, too.
There's a reason you don't hear about drug arrests and prosecutions under municipal ordinances. Communities, especially small ones like those in East Ohio and the Northern Panhandle, don't have the resources to enact and enforce drug restrictions such as those found in state and federal statutes.
Do you want to be the municipal court judge who has to decide whether the chemical in a defendant's possession when he was arrested contains 3-hydroxycyclohexyl? That's one of the substances included in synthetic marijuana, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
In both Ohio and West Virginia, state laws have been enacted to crack down on synthetic marijuana and other chemistry lab drugs. The DEA has rafts of rules on what's legal and illegal.
How's a small town to manage such complexities?
But the bad guys and gals are constantly bringing out new and improved - from the standpoint of staying ahead of state and federal anti-drug definitions - substances to sell to folks who want a cheap and, they hope, at least temporarily legal high.
It takes months, sometimes years, to enact laws in Columbus, Charleston and Washington. Rest assured, the bad guys are quicker on the draw. Their goal, again, is to produce new high-inducing chemicals they can sell legally until state and federal agencies and legislators catch on and amend the rules.
Village councils can act within hours. And they don't really have to know the chemistry.
Think about it this way: Upon learning a new synthetic marijuana is being sold in packages featuring pictures of, say, Mickey Mouse, a village council can simply pass an ordinance banning sale of dried herbs in Mickey Mouse packages.
Outrageous? Of course. But do you really want to be the store owner who, knowing full well what you're selling, appeals a municipal court fine to a higher court? It's cheaper to simply stop trying to sell mind-altering drugs.
Look at it this way: It's a sneaky, underhanded way for municipal councils to fight a sneaky, underhanded way of selling drugs that, if not illegal today, will be banned by state and federal governments tomorrow.
Unfair? Give me a break.
Myer can be reached at: Myer@news-register.net. | <urn:uuid:bb3a1f9a-93eb-402c-be1c-a52b6fdd8f73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/575157.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954549 | 696 | 1.742188 | 2 |
At times, these companies do put out "studies" that appear to have been prompted by their own thinking. But if one digs a little, the reasons for the same become all too obvious.
Last week, Gartner, one of the better-known of these firms, put out a study, claiming that the Mac OS X operating system provided a more appealing desktop platform for the "enterprise" than GNU/Linux. (The use of the word enterprise baffles me - whence did it spring? Did the inspiration come from the starship Enterprise? Or is it used to indicate that a company is a creature with some initiative?)
Of course, nobody needed advice from Gartner to conclude that OS X is indeed more appealing than GNU/Linux. Any fool with a semblance of sight can see that, after using the two platforms for all of 10 minutes.
But that was only the start of Gartner's fulminations. The study, entitled "Enterprise Mac Clients Remain Limited, but Apple's Appeal is Growing", (the use of capital letters carries that much more authority, I guess) authored by Michael Silver, Neil MacDonald, Ray Wagner and Brian Prentice, went on to claim that even though they had discovered this "appeal" in OS X, the Mac was unlikely to take away any of Windows' business desktop share. No, it would only affect GNU/Linux.
And what was the basis for these conclusions? A throwaway line: "In many instances, Macs are replacing Unix and Linux workstations, rather than Windows PCs". No specifics. No company cited. No number of PCs in any study indicated. It comes from Gartner and therefore it has to be true. Fox News has a similar throwaway line: "Some people are saying..."
This kind of kite-flying is called "predicting." Sure, but even predictions need some basis, don't they? Even that crank astrologer looks at the lines in your palm and then tries to stuff you up with crap, doesn't he? But Gartner can fly these kites without a piece of string. | <urn:uuid:6bf3ce77-8887-4370-acca-b2ef9a6ec8bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/8109-shill-season | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963293 | 437 | 1.65625 | 2 |
What do you do for a living? It’s a fairly innocuous question asked at parties (and tax time) that, for most of us, brings a straightforward response: “I’m a [blank].” But what if there’s no short answer — if you roam many fields and, out of megalomania and perversity, call yourself anything and everything under the sun? In short, what if you were Salvador Dalí?
Take a brief timeout from your own work to watch the shamelessly self-promotional proto-Warhol’s 1952 appearance on What’s My Line? — where blindfolded panelists try to unmask his identity. Dalí answers in the affirmative to nearly every question — yes, he writes books, does sports, and can be considered a leading man. As this unbounded self-definition draws howls of laughter from the studio audience, a frustrated Arlene Francis finally throws up the Hail Mary question: “Is there something quite unusual about our guest?” In the words of Groucho Marx: You bet your life.
to a friend | <urn:uuid:bf14ff8f-b0c0-40cd-8ed9-31fae6c16a52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.veryshortlist.com/vsl/daily.cfm/review/476/Web_video/salvador-dali-on-whats-my-line/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938296 | 235 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins! Just you wait!
Today is Eliza Doolittle Day, which is most likely a meaningless event for anyone but film buffs and Audrey Hepburn fans. For the uninitiated of the musical and film adaption of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, this holiday is derived the scene in which Eliza, angered at her teacher, fantasized about the day she'll have her revenge:
One day I'll be famous, I'll be proper and prim,
Gone to St. James so often I will call it St. Jim.
One evening the King will say, "Oh, Liza, old thing,*
I want all of England your praises to sing.
Next week on the twentieth of May, da-da-da-da-da-da-DA,
I proclaim Eliza Doolittle Day!
All the people will celebrate the glory of you,
And whatever you wish or want I gladly shall do."
"Thanks a lot, King," says I in a manner well-bred,
"But all I want is 'enry 'iggins 'ead!" dum-da-dum
(Watch the entire scene here)
If cutting off the head of your elocution teacher is not your cup-a-tay, perhaps you can celebrate by eating a lot of chocolates or impersonating a duchess. I wouldn't recommend the whole mouthful of marbles thing though, choking hazard and all that ;) | <urn:uuid:d412489e-e112-44e5-92fb-1a20123ecb2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zanyholidays.com/2008/05/eliza-doolittle-day.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94402 | 318 | 1.546875 | 2 |
This is an important, comprehensive and superbly-executed series. It makes an outstanding contribution to the appreciation of German mid-Baroque (the generation before J.S. Bach) organ music in general and the work of Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) in particular. It is wholeheartedly recommended for a variety of audiences. For:
One thing must be made clear at the outset: remarkably, no two pieces of Pachelbel's are the same. If they use the same form, they're different in length; if they require the same attention span, they differ in register; if they allude to the same religious source, they differ in approach; if they originate in similar sound worlds, they use different tempi. And so on. For that reason, it was not hard for Payne and his producers on the enterprising Centaur label to arrange releases which respected this richness and emphasize the variety. But Payne's musicianship nevertheless would have been sufficiently accomplished not to have needed Pachelbel's immense imaginative genius in order to have produced such a stimulating set of collections! Still, the listener's attention to the series never never flags; each new track on these well-produced and presented CDs offers something exciting and new. That's quite an achievement over almost 200 works.
This freshness has little to do with the fact that over the course of these 11 CDs Payne plays on a different organ almost every time. They're mostly in Germany and Switzerland, though Volume 2 was recorded in Texas. And they're generally unrestored. This imparts additional interest, of course: different acoustics, new atmospheres, contrasting sounds altogether. But that Payne's strengths in performance also overlay the variations in venue and circumstance confers a sense of the consistency on the music, indirectly revealing Pachelbel's genius.
For the purposes of this review, hardly any single pieces are singled out for attention: the totality of Payne's achievement is necessarily made up of its parts. And they're all as they should be. There are high points… the "Hexachordum Apollinis" (mostly on CD 5) and the "Magnificat Fugues", for example; and individual gems such as the Chorale Preludes on the very first disk as well as the gentle yet penetrating pieces that occupy disk 4. But in fact each piece has something to recommend it, something different; and something special which Payne draws out ‐ without fuss or glare. Just letting the music lead where it will.
Another important point is that works (such as the 21 suites) conceivably intended for the organ may in fact be better suited to the harpsichord (etc): Pachelbel typically only indicated "clavier" on his scores, not all of which were published in his lifetime. So the questions of what the corpus includes for what would extend to a whole waking day if enjoyed all at once are important ones. The decisions of Payne and his producer(s) seem always to have been wise and sustainable ones; and ones likely to satisfy the specialist as well as casual listener.
Given his stature, perhaps surprisingly little is generally known and appreciated about the life and pre-occupations of Johann Pachelbel: he perfected the South German organ tradition; played a major part in developing the chorale prelude and fugue; wrote a significant and substantial body of sacred choral music as well as keyboard and chamber music; and was a teacher of renown… his pupils included Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721); and was much more widely known during his comparatively short life than subsequently. It would be nice to think that Pachelbel is now due for the same sort of revival as has begun for Biber and Buxtehude in recent years. There is only one substantial study of Pachelbel in English – and that unpublished as such but available from UMI: the PhD dissertation of Kathryn Welter, "Johann Pachelbel: Organist, Teacher, Composer, A Critical Reexamination of His Life, Works, and Historical Significance" (1988, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts).
Born in Nuremberg, pachelbel developed an early interest in Italian music from his teacher (Caspar Prentz) in Regensburg who had himself been a pupil of Johann Kaspar Kerll, a composer taught by Frescobaldi and much influenced by such composers well outside his immediate (local) circle as Carissimi. What's more, Italian music was one of the prevailing tastes in Vienna, where Pachelbel worked for five years in his early twenties. He may have been taught there by Kerll too. From 1678 to 1690 the composer lived and worked in Erfurt with close connections to the Bach families. After short stays in Stuttgart and Gotha, Pachelbel moved back to Nuremberg in 1695 to spend the last years of his life as organist there.
At various points in his career Pachelbel was invited to take up positions without the usual examinations; he was admitted to the Gymnasium Poeticum at Regensburg when the school was already over quota; the authorities at Gotha contributed – exceptionally – towards Pachelbel's traveling expenses; he was twice offered positions at Stuttgart and Oxford University. It's obvious he was considered an exceptional musician by his contemporaries.
As far as his stay in Nuremberg is concerned, there is a double irony: the town was notorious for its resistance to "outside" cultural influence. Pachelbel is unlikely to have heard Italian performers there nor to have been influenced first hand by those of the same cosmopolitan musical disposition as he so palpably exuded. On the other hand, the virtual lines of descent from other major figures outside this milieu (see above), and with the Bach family (above, again), meant that he was no isolate or self-taught eccentric. Indeed, the lyrical, at times almost rhapsodic nature, the flair and ebullient style of many of the pieces we hear in the course of this collection are clearly the result of multiple significant influences other than those which the courts and towns in which he lived could have offered by themselves.
Yet now, despite Pachelbel's seemingly bottomless creativity, his sensitivity to the music which in fact did influence him, his urbanity and obvious professional modesty, he is known by just a handful of works, rarely performed and under-recorded. This set of complete organ works from Centaur by Joseph Payne – recorded actually over the last ten years and still standing in the catalog as a high point of its kind – deserves at the very least to broaden his acceptance amongst non-specialists and even with those who are otherwise well versed in music of the period.
Joseph Payne was born in 1941 in Mongolia, of British and Swiss parents. He received his training in those two countries, and the United States, where he is now based (in Boston). As early as 1965, at the age of 24, Payne began to record (then somewhat) recherché repertoire – of virginal pieces, before that instrument (or even that instrument family) had gained the acceptance with mainstream music-lovers that we now take for granted. Not that "unusual" areas have been Payne's only distinguishing characteristic: in the mid 1980s his world première recording of the Bach Neumeister chorales was immensely successful. It's clear from the vigor, breadth of vision and unbounded confidence from first to last in this series that Payne would prefer not to have Pachelbel considered wither a minor or a "specialist" composer.
In this Centaur set he has not recorded a "survey" per se. Some such enterprises are complete for the sake of it and necessarily (and often understandably) contain their fair share of second rate, uninspired or mundane material. In this case almost every single track stands up in its own right, repays careful and repeated hearing and has a variety of interests and appeals. Such appeals are also valid aside from the historically significant position that Pachelbel occupied and to which his musical importance is all too often sadly relegated. That is, Payne consistently and cleanly reveals the soul and substance of Pachelbel's intentions.
The organization of pieces across the CDs is also to be commended. There is variety. Intentionally, surely. But also sequences which aid a more concentrated and in depth appreciation of Pachelbel's concerns: the grouping of figurative, then abstract, experimental then rhetorical. This all underlines Payne's impressive grasp of how the composer "works". From the first note, and across all eleven discs, Payne achieves an assured balance between control (his approach has been described as somewhat "conservative", which should not be taken to mean either unadventurous or stodgy) and spontaneity.
Indeed, each piece emerges as an event in its own right. As though the performer had just sat down afresh each time and were only interested at that moment in articulating what the music at hand had to communicate. This is quite an achievement. Particularly when set alongside his gift for understanding and exposing the overall, persistent and changing pre-occupations of the composer. In other words, Payne's is a very honest and durable approach. Not only does he enable us to dip in and out of the series; but also to accumulate a comprehension of the music's overall directions and strengths.
To return to the "conservative" epithet, Payne has in many ways provided us with a "Reference" set of interpretations. But the key word is still interpretations. There is never anything perfunctory about the generosity yet exactness of tempi in Payne's consideration of the structure of each piece. Nothing either lazy or gratuitously lustrous in the luminosity with which he articulates their harmonic and melodic richness. Not a hint of the guileful in the judicious ornamentation employed. Nor anything humdrum about the way in which Payne underlines the way that Pachelbel's key changes work their magic. In other words informed precision is employed in the same way as a good dictionary compiler works, rather than an illustrator.
There is a "rival" set of the Pachelbel Complete Organ Works, on Dorian, with Antoine Bouchard. It too decisively lifts the composer out of the crazy compilation and soppy sampler pits into which the marketeers would have him fall. Payne's series, though, has greater authority and stability while not missing out on opportunities to point up Pachelbel's individuality, creativity and flair. Both sets are similarly priced and run to eleven CDs.
To return at the end to Pachelbel's legacy is to note the many students whom he influenced. Amongst these was his son, Hieronymus, who lived from 1686 to 1764. In Hieronymus Johann expressed great confidence as his most gifted pupil. Indeed Hieronymus succeeded his father in the posts at Erfurt and Nuremburg. The eleventh CD in the set contains four pieces by Hieronymus; they provide a further angle on the greatness of the part which Pachelbel senior played in the Golden Age of Lutheran church music. It's as significant a movement for music as was Napoleonic Vienna or the France of Louis XIV. Yet we seem able only to appreciate it by rare glimpses into isolated pieces. Perhaps Payne's achievement will illuminate the treasure chest of which it consists.
Each set of liner notes is well-written, by Payne himself, and contains just the right of background historical information; discussion on the works and relevant detail on Pachelbel's relation to them; and facts about the organs used. Each booklet has a different and appealing photograph of a location associated with the recording and/or the composer. As is obvious by now, this is a landmark series; it reveals so much about the music it explores. Above all, perhaps, it will provide to specialist and generalist alike a huge wealth of immensely enjoyable, memorable and beautiful music. Unhesitatingly recommended in every way.
Copyright © 2009, Mark Sealey | <urn:uuid:71356f0c-2fe4-443b-a96c-4119c8ae2a53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/c/cen02352a.php | 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 | 0.974338 | 2,489 | 1.53125 | 2 |
During the typical job interview, you'll be asked a lot of questions. But do you really understand what the interviewer needs to know?
"Most students have no idea why a recruiter asks a particular question," says Brad Karsh, a former recruiting professional for advertising giant Leo Burnett and current president of career consulting firm Job Bound. "They tend to think it's a competition to outwit the interviewer."
The reality is that employers have neither the time nor inclination to play games with you, especially when hiring. Your interviewer is not trying to outguess you -- he's trying to assess your answers to six key questions:
Do You Have the Skills to Do the Job?
According to Karsh, the employer must first determine whether you have the necessary hard skills for the position, e.g., the programming knowledge for a database administration job or the writing chops to be a newspaper reporter. "By really probing into what the candidate has done in the past, an interviewer can tap into hard skills."
But the interviewer is also looking for key soft skills you'll need to succeed in the job and organization, such as the ability to work well on teams or "the requisite common sense to figure things out with some basic training," says Terese Corey Blanck, director of student development at internship company Student Experience and a partner in College to Career, a consulting firm.
Do You Fit?
"Every organization's first thought is about fit and potentially fit in a certain department," Corey Blanck says. That means the interviewer is trying to pinpoint not only whether you match up well with both the company's and department's activities but also whether you'll complement the talents of your potential coworkers.
Do You Understand the Company and Its Purpose?
If the organization fits well with your career aspirations, you'll naturally be motivated to do good work there -- and stay more than a month or two, Corey Blanck reasons. "I don't want someone to take the position because it's a job and it fits their skills. I want them to be excited about our mission and what we do."
How Do You Stack Up Against the Competition?
You're being evaluated in relation to other candidates for the job. In other words, this test is graded on a curve. So the interviewer will constantly be comparing your performance with that of the other candidates'.
Do You Have the Right Mind-Set for the Job and Company?
"I'm always looking for someone who has a can-do type of attitude," Corey Blanck explains. "I want someone who wants to be challenged and is internally motivated to do well.
Corey Blanck points out that an employer can't train for this essential trait. "But you can hire for it. And if you don't, you'll end up with a lower-performing employee."
Do You Want the Job?
Most employers know better than to believe everyone they interview actually wants the position being offered. They understand some candidates are exploring their options, while others are using an interview with a company they don't care about to hone their interview skills.
So you have to prove you really want the job, says Al Pollard, senior college recruiter for Countrywide Financial. "I use the ditch-digger analogy: Many of us can dig ditches, but few are willing to -- and even fewer want to."
Thanks to Peter Vogt, Monster Senior Contributing Writer / Career Advice Monster | <urn:uuid:14c0cac7-6fec-4bba-9f9e-13a7417224a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ziaullahkhan.blogspot.com/2011/06/six-interview-answers-you-need-to-get.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963467 | 706 | 1.679688 | 2 |
by Devesh Agarwal
The announcement that AirAsia is joining hands with the Tatas and Bhatias with the intention to start a new airline in India will put the a significant policy dilemma in front of the Government of India related to foreign direct investment (FDI) in civil aviation by foreign airlines, and might just land-up derailing the goals of the fledging policy.
While the policy is not explicit, so as to avoid any problems before the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the policy is framed to help the weak balance sheets of existing India airlines, and more importantly the banks, many of them government owned, who have already loaned vast sums of money to this sector.
When the cabinet approved the policy on September 14, 2012, the press statement said
"......there has been a need to consider financing options available for private airlines in the country, for their operations and service upgradation, and to enable them to compete with other global carriers. Denial of access to foreign capital could result in the collapse of many of our domestic airlines, creating a systemic risk for financial institutions, and a vital gap in the country’s infrastructure"Two weeks after the policy was announced, India's civil aviation minister, Ajit Singh, told the Business Standard
“We are not giving licences for greenfield airlines. As of now, FDI (foreign direct investment) in aviation can come only through existing airlines."
|Indian civil aviation minister Ajit Singh.|
Thanks to years of regressive policies of the Indian government, and the ludicrous taxation structure, especially on aviation fuel, Indian carriers carriers' balance sheets are awash with red ink.
Air India has over $10 billion (over Rs. 55,000 Crore) in liabilities, while Kingfisher Airlines is in for over $3 billion ($16,000 Crore).
Even the country's more "financially stable" carriers like Jet Airways and SpiceJet has are stress situations with skewed financial ratios, and growth strongly hampered by a lack of capital.
With much of the money being siphoned in to Air India, and the financial implosion of Kingfisher, Indian financial institutions neither have the funds, nor the appetite, to lend any more to the airline sector. FDI is needed.
However, if foreign airlines are allowed to set-up new greenfield airlines, they need not risk investing in the existing airlines. They can start fresh, with no liabilities, benefit from not making or suffering past mistakes of operations or policy, bring in expertise and massive financial strength, and blow away the fledgling domestic sector.
We have already seen this happen in the international sector, where the government in its infinite "wisdom" required Indian carriers to operate for five years before they could fly international, while allowing even newly formed foreign carriers to operate to India, thus giving foreign carriers time to establish themselves with nil to minimum competition. Today, Indian carriers are restricted to the sidelines, while the unofficial national carrier of India is not Air India, but Emirates; with India contributing over 11% of the airline's total capacity. No small feat, considering Emirates is the world's third largest airline by seat capacity.
India's largest private carrier, Jet Airways, is negotiating with Abu Dhabi based Etihad to sell them a 24% stake for about $300 million (Rs.1,600 Crore), which is a premium considering Jet's total market capitalisation (mcap) is just Rs.4,575 Crore. Just as a comparison, AirAsia Berhad mcap is Rs. 12,842 Crore.
Jet leads Indian companies with a sky-high debt to equity ratio of 84 times, almost 1,000% of the next company in the list, or 4,300% of the 1.95 of AirAsia). Its total debt is in excess of Rs 11,030 crore. Thanks to losses over the years, the company's reserves have depleted almost 50%, thus declining equity, and leading to the increase in the company's debt to equity ratio. The airline needs to raise equity capital by inviting FDI from foreign airlines.
Earlier this week, the Chairman of Etihad, Sheikh Hamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, delayed the deal citing concerns on policy flip-flops by the government. How will Etihad view an approval to an "India AirAsia"?
That will have to be gauged in the time to come, but, for certain, allowing foreign airlines to set up greenfield airlines will have a negative impact on the attractiveness of existing airlines, and by extension the health of their debts, and the health of the Indian financial sector.
Even as an unabashed believer in capitalism, in my humble opinion, while an "India AirAsia" will lead to lower fares and more competition, ultimately it will be we tax-payers who will be left holding the proverbial bag as the government will be forced to bailout the banks.
Allow foreign carriers to set-up greenfield airlines, but after a period of time, may be three years, for now, get them to invest in Jet, IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir, and if the government ever comes to a logical sensibility, Air India.
I am advocating the same approach as of Mr. Ratan Tata, a leading member of the "Bombay Club" which over 20 years ago, proposed a similar go slow approach on liberalisation.
As usual, your thoughts, comments, feedback and counter-views are welcome.
The video below is a panel discussion on FDI in civil aviation, soon after the policy announcement, from NDTV. If you cannot see it on mobile or on the RSS feed, please visit the main Bangalore Aviation website. | <urn:uuid:7f7bb989-54ab-4f72-ab27-f0c526ce487b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bangaloreaviation.com/2013/02/opinion-approving-airasia-tata-airline.html | 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 | 0.938072 | 1,176 | 1.726563 | 2 |
JFK, Newark airports reopen on limited schedule
New York: Two of the biggest airports serving New York - John F Kennedy and Newark Liberty International - have reopened.
The first passenger flight to JFK arrived from Long Beach, California, at 7:04 am (local time) today. The JetBlue flight carried 150 passengers.
The first flight into Newark, New Jersey, was a FedEx plane that landed at 7:12 am.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Ron Marsico says the two airports reopened "on a very limited operational schedule."
He urged passengers to call their carriers before heading to the airports.
Some terminals at Newark had lost power during the superstorm but electricity returned yesterday.
New York's LaGuardia Airport remains closed. Authorities are assessing the impact of the storm on the airport. | <urn:uuid:6077ecb5-21dc-46fb-8286-3a9ba2d4ecec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zeenews.india.com/print.aspx?nid=808607 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945532 | 168 | 1.507813 | 2 |
ISLAMABAD: Two day consultation on “Adapting System Approach to Child Protection in Pakistan” concluded with a consensus among the provinces to share the modules and Standard Operating Procedures. Organised by Child Rights Legal Centre (CRLC) in collaboration with Save the Children, the consultation revealed an important fact that the government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) apparently had a lead in child protection mechanism with its Child Welfare Department actively involving stakeholders in various projects. However, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government was also working on many projects for child protection. However, it was revealed that the Punjab government, who had taken the initiative of child protection a decade ago, is now lagging behind all the provinces.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2011.
More in PakistanTribune Take: Calling the call girls | <urn:uuid:2259d30e-08a2-47b6-b18a-f153e02ad1eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tribune.com.pk/story/311275/child-protection-punjab-lags-behind-in-child-protection/ | 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 | 0.956275 | 182 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A 60-year-old Windsor man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in the 2009 stabbing of his wife.
Melkioro Gahungu was originally charged with second-degree murder but the charge was reduced to manslaughter because of the unique circumstances of the case, Gahungu’s lawyer Brian Dube said on Tuesday.
Gahungu was sentenced on Friday but will receive credit for time already served, thereby reducing his prison stay to four years and nine months.
The manslaughter sentence is consistent with Gahungu’s claim that he never intended to kill his wife Maria Nzokilandevi, Dube said.
The incident was a result of being very drunk and followed a physical altercation where insults were hurled, he said.
The stabbing occurred in June 2009 at the couple’s home on Reginald Street. Neighbours discovered Nzokilandevi’s body when two of the her children came out from the residence crying and screaming.
The neighbours entered the unit and found Nzokilandevi’s body on the floor in a room upstairs next to a tote with several empty beer bottles and a 12-inch bloodied knife.
Gahungu was arrested by police shortly afterwards.
“There were a number of other stressors in (Gahungu’s) life at the time,” Dube said. He had only recently arrived in Canada from Burundi with his family, was unemployed, did not speak English, was illiterate and his marriage was breaking down. It was very difficult for him to adjust to life in Canada.
Gahungu and Nzokilandevi fled Burundi during the civil war in the 1990s. Gahungu was a Hutu and Nzokilandevi was a Tutsi and their mixed marriage made them an enemy to both sides in the war, Dube said. They fled with their children to neighbouring Tanzania and spent 14 years in refugee camps. “They barely made it ouf of Burundi alive,” Dube said.
The family made it to Canada in 2008 and shortly afterwards, the marraige broke down, he said. The incident happened about seven months after their arrival here.
Dube said negotiations with the Crown went on for some time because off the nature of the case. Psychiatric assessments were also completed.
“Given the background it was a very unique case,” Dube said.
Gahungu and Nzokilandevi have five children, Dube said, plus one who died while they were still in the refugee camp in Tanzania. The two eldest ones are in Australia, while the three youngest ones, aged 18 and under, live in Windsor and are in foster care.
“Obviously it’s a tragedy for the family,” Dube said. | <urn:uuid:76d4ee5c-bb25-4e62-97af-3d1f858808ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/02/07/man-sentenced-to-10-years-for-manslaughter-in-2009-stabbing-of-wife/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989409 | 606 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The Internet has been abuzz this week about John Piper's message at the 2012 Desiring God Pastor's Conference, in which he claims that God intends for Christianity and the Church to have a decidedly "masculine feel." You can follow the link to hear Piper's remarks in their full context or visit the sites of other bloggers to see fuller excerpts of his message. (Scot McKnight provides the fullest account I've seen thus far.) For my purposes, I'm not going to consider the message in full. I think what follows is a sufficiently long enough excerpt to reveal Piper's point and allow for a measured response (which I will provide in two parts):
God has revealed himself to us in the Bible pervasively as King, not Queen, and as Father, not Mother. The second person of the Trinity is revealed as the eternal Son. The Father and the Son created man and woman in his image, and gave them together the name of the man, Adam (Genesis 5:2). God appoints all the priests in Israel to be men. The Son of God comes into the world as a man, not a woman. He chooses twelve men to be his apostles. The apostles tell the churches that all the overseers—the pastor/elders who teach and have authority (1 Timothy 2:12)—should be men; and that in the home, the head who bears special responsibility to lead, protect, and provide should be the husband (Ephesians 5:22–33).
From all of this, I conclude that God has given Christianity a masculine feel. And, being a God of love, he has done it for the maximum flourishing of men and women. He did not create women to languish, or be frustrated, or in any way to suffer or fall short of full and lasting joy, in a masculine Christianity. She is a fellow heir of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). From which I infer that the fullest flourishing of women and men takes place in churches and families where Christianity has this God-ordained, masculine feel. For the sake of the glory of women, and for the sake of the security and joy of children, God has made Christianity to have a masculine feel. He has ordained for the church a masculine ministry.
What I mean by “masculine Christianity,” or “masculine ministry,” or “Christianity with a masculine feel,” is this: Theology and church and mission are marked by overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ, with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, and contrite courage, and risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading, protecting, and providing for the community—all of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s the feel of a great, majestic God, who by his redeeming work in Jesus Christ, inclines men to take humble, Christ-exalting initiative, and inclines women to come alongside the men with joyful support, intelligent helpfulness, and fruitful partnership in the work.
Before I offer my response to these claims, I feel that I have to admit that the topic of this sermon and the hubbub surrounding it wearies me. I'm weary of this sort of argumentation and the conclusions drawn from it. I almost didn't write this post. In reality, I don't want to. But, I do feel a responsibility to respond when I see particularly false or damaging theology--and in this case, I see both. And, in the name of defending myself and my sisters in Christ, I humbly offer the following response to Piper's "masculine Christianity."
First of all, we should note that in the way he has constructed his argument, Piper's conclusions about God giving Christianity a "masculine feel" flow from some important claims about the overarching narrative of Scripture--a narrative that he also gives a decidedly "masculine feel." First, he asserts that God has revealed himself "pervasively" in masculine terms, including becoming incarnate in a man.
These points are difficult to contest and I see no reason to do so. Scripture does speak of God almost exclusively in masculine terms. There are a number of important instances where God is revealed in feminine terms, but these places stand out precisely because they are out of the ordinary. Moreover, no one can debate that Jesus Christ was a man. What I find strange about these observations, however, is that Piper does not even try to contextualize these points. There is a fairly obvious reason why the God of the Old and New Testaments is revealed in majority masculine terms: Israelite culture and religion was dominated by men, most if not all of the literate Israelites were men and, as a result, their stories were written in masculine terms. Furthermore, the Son of God became incarnate as a man in the context of a first century Jewish community in Roman controlled Palestine. To have becomes incarnate in a woman would have been ludicrous, to put it baldly. No woman could have garnered the kind of authority and following that Jesus did, as a man. Within the Israelite faith, males were the "public," establishment spiritual leaders. Certainly, there were important female leaders (and such instances, I think, point to the fullest intention of God that men and women share leadership in God's Kingdom), but these were abnormal in the Israelite narrative. As a result, even apart from theological reasons why the Son of God would be incarnate in a man, there are good cultural and historical reasons that must come into play, as well. Once some context is provided for Piper's masculine characterization of the Israelite narrative, one realizes that he is moving from description of the situation to prescription without any justification for the latter.
Second, Piper suggests that there is some significance in the fact that God named humankind as a whole "man" (=adam) before differentiating "man" into male and female. This statement is rather strange, even if true based upon a bare reading of the text in Genesis 1. What exactly is Piper getting at? Because humanity is called "man" prior to being differentiated into male and female, "man" is somehow the standard for humankind as a whole? Is Piper suggesting that man is the paragon for what is human and woman is human only in a derivative way? Nevertheless, this point has no bearing whatsoever on the supposed masculinity of Christianity. Yet again, Piper doesn't take into consideration the cultural reasons why adam would be the foundational name for humankind. (Nor does he seem aware of just how counter-cultural the Genesis 1 creation narrative is in light of ancient near eastern views of women. He seems to be arguing for a solidification of male normativity for humankind from a narrative that is, in my view, designed to subvert such a notion!)
Third, Piper observes that the Hebrew priesthood was reserved for men, Jesus chose twelve men to be his apostles, and the apostles taught a standard of male-only leadership for the churches. Again, I don't contest the first two points. But, even so, Piper seems to entirely overlook the presence of notable female leaders and prophets in the Israelite narrative (i.e., Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Esther, Judith), as well as "the Women" that were known to be close associates and supporters of Christ's ministry (not to mention Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles). Furthermore, the case for "male-only" restrictions in early church leadership is not even close to "open-and-shut," as Piper assumes. Doubtless, he would explain away the notable women of the early church whose importance is revealed in Scripture, even if we have to read the New Testament very closely to find it. (Of course, being at a Desiring God Pastors Conference, there is little doubt that Piper can assume he is surrounded by pastors who are already convinced on this matter, so there's no real need for him to argue this point.) But, the women are there. And, there are many reputable, orthodox scholars who strongly contest the "masculine" picture he is painting of the early church.
Nevertheless, why am I belaboring these points? These issues are not Piper's central claim, of course. And, he has argued for these points in more detail in other locations. They are "old news" for those familiar with Piper's brand of patriarchy. But, I think it is important to recognize that while he suggests through his rhetoric that these premises naturally lead to his conclusion--that God intends Christianity to be "masculine"--the truth is that the logic does not follow. Piper is drawing conclusions that do not follow from his premises. Even if he is right about all of the above points, even if it is God's ordained purpose for all male leadership in the churches and male headship in the home, it does not thereby follow that God intends for masculinity to be the "feel" or overall "tone" of the Church's ministry and mission. In fact, to be perfectly frank, I find this claim so spurious that it borders on laughable.
Why this claim is so laughable and how it is, in itself, based upon highly problematic notions of "masculinity" will be the subject of my next post. Stay tuned... | <urn:uuid:0cce9076-5bc4-4f8b-b52f-fc64cc4ad0cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinklaughweepworship.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-response-to-john-pipers-masculine.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969143 | 1,921 | 1.585938 | 2 |
By Luke Brinker
Pundits portrayed Mitt Romney’s “fire people gaffe” as an egregious act of political malpractice, unbecoming of a presidential candidate during a time when so many Americans are out of work. But as I’ve written before, there are more substantive reasons to consider Romney emblematic of the one percent. Still, when two-thirds of Americans see “strong conflicts” between rich and poor, even the slightest hint of tone-deafness could damage Romney as much as, say, his regressive tax policy.
Yesterday brought another remark that raises serious questions about Romney’s skills as an effective political communicator. In an interview on NBC’s Today program, Romney insinuated that critics of his Bain Capital record – and of financial industry practices in general – are motivated by petty “envy,” and that discussions about income inequality should occur behind closed doors. Via Greg Sargent, here’s the transcript:
QUESTIONER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I’m curious about the word envy.Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, isenvious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?
ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on 99 percent versus one percent, and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent, you have opened up a wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
QUESTIONER: Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as envy, though?
ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like.But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.
From a substantive standpoint, Romney’s statement that “it’s fine to talk about [income inequality] in quiet rooms” is especially troubling. Absent a public discussion about the increasing share of wealth accruing to the top one percent and the difficulty of escaping poverty, it’s unclear how any progress can be made toward solving those issues. Politicians respond to the political preferences of those who are most politically active (giving campaign contributions and the like), and those individuals are overwhelmingly the wealthiest Americans. If left to policymakers in “quiet rooms,” these issues would most likely not even be addressed.
No less damning is Romney’s dismissal of concerns about his Bain tenure as nothing but “envy.” This son of an auto executive, governor, and cabinet secretary resembles more and more the overindulged rich kid who shows you all his toys and says, “Bet you wish you had all this.” | <urn:uuid:40a6f747-2cc3-464b-bb5c-27f56804acb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://politicsnotasusual.com/2012/01/12/mr-one-percent-and-the-politics-of-envy/ | 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 | 0.965932 | 686 | 1.75 | 2 |
PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- The ACLU of Maine is asking for the Justice Department to step in and prevent Maine Republican Party Chair Charlie Webster from sending out postcards to newly registered voters in some rural Maine towns.
Webster caused a stir November 13 when he told NEWS CENTER's Don Carrigan,"In some parts of the state, for example in some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens of black people who came and voted election day. Everybody has a right to vote. But nobody in town knows anybody who's black. How did it happen, we're going to find out."
Two days later, Webster said he planned to mail out a thousand post cards at his own expense to newly registered voters in unnamed rural towns to see whether any come back as undeliverable.
In their letter to the Justice Department, the ACLU of Maine and the Brennan Center for Justice write that the sending of postcards should be considered "harassment" and a violation of the National Voter Registration Act, particularly because Webster cited the race of the voters as a possible red flag. They're asking the Justice Department to investigate Webster's intentions and stop him from sending any postcards.
The ACLU's Zach Heiden said, "We're concerned about his future plans, not his speech. He says he plans to investigate in a harassing way a number of newly registered voters, including African-American voters. That's clearly not allowed under civil rights laws."
Webster said he did not understand why the ACLU would pursue the issue. "Unless I did something what would be the complaint?" Webster said.
When asked whether he still planned to send the postcards he said, "I have no idea. It's an old story. I don't know why they're pursuing it."
The Republican Party is scheduled to elect a new state chair Saturday. | <urn:uuid:bf3c077e-5c17-4fa2-b37f-b762296eb6ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlbz2.com/news/article/223349/3/ACLU-asks-Justice-Department-to-investigate-Websters-intentions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976078 | 377 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Friday, 13 January 2012 00:00
It’s that time of year again. Long Island school districts begin the frustrating process of budget development where residents believe their votes have little impact. Taxes seem to go up each year, while there are constant threats of cuts to children’s programs, especially after school activities and buses. The 2012-13 budgets will likely be more frustrating than in recent decades due to the two percent tax cap, State budget deficits and child poverty on Long Island.
For years we’ve heard that Long Islanders do not get their fair share of state school aid but the recent rise in child poverty on Long Island helps underscore a much more serious problem: its negative impact on our children’s education. It is well known that socioeconomic factors have almost twice the impact on a child’s education than the quality of their schools. Teachers routinely complain that the kids that need the most help have (apparently) missing parents. What Albany doesn’t realize is that a growing number of working class families on Long Island tend to have both parents working, often at more than one job. If instead these working class families got an appropriate level of state school aid, perhaps they could spend more time with their children and truly have a beneficial impact on their education.
New York State provides close to the nationwide average of 56 percent funding from state and federal sources. Yet Long Island schools get less, significantly less than the average. For example, the working class community of Hicksville gets only 15 percent aid, while the upstate school district of Elmira gets 70 percent aid but has similar size, demographics and cost per student as Hicksville? This large inequity in state aid is due to the arcane state aid formula that equates ability to pay school taxes with the book value of your home; it’s called the wealth factor!
Worse yet, Westbury, the third poorest school district on Long Island in 2010 received only 22 percent state aid. Adding insult to injury, many homes in Westbury are underwater due to the collapse of the real estate bubble. Yet the state considers Westbury residents to be about four times as wealthy as upstate Elmira residents even though Westbury homes are only about half the size of their upstate brethren.
The great irony is that the wealth formula intended to help working class communities is actually hurting Long Island communities who end up paying for two schools districts. With real estate taxes we pay for our schools, with state income tax we pay for upstate schools. To correct this basic unfairness I propose that state school funding be done on a regional basis. I do not dispute that poorer districts should get more funding than rich districts but the value of one’s home should not be used to measure wealth across 400 miles of a widely disparate state. Let’s make sure that both upstate or downstate school districts get a fair share of state funding to help children obtain a good education and help keep at least one parent in the house to help with homework. If done on a regional basis, a district such as Westbury would get 70 percent aid, Hicksville would get about 50 percent, currently 12 percent, and very wealthy school districts would get about the same level of aid as they currently get. | <urn:uuid:e948a25d-d646-4f2a-888e-04b862dd1581> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antonnews.com/hicksvilleillustratednews/opinion/20342-letter-school-budget-season.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969561 | 664 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Papers heading into an electronic future
Helsingin Sanomat's new eReading video and blog show how a newspaper may look in the future
By Olavi Koistinen
The prophets of doom believe that the print newspaper is a product that has passed its sell-by date and is on its way to the wastebasket of history.
The picture is already such an old one that it has become a bit foxed around the edges and has started to yellow.
"The end of the printed newspaper has been predicted for donkey's years now", sighs Helsingin Sanomat managing editor Kaius Niemi.
Niemi believes that the paper newspaper is not going to disappear anywhere anytime soon.
However, in the years ahead newspapers as we know them will very probably find themselves put up alongside a lot of new forms of displaying the familiar news content.
"The pace of technological development has really stepped up of late", says Niemi.
New devices have come onto the market that are designed for reading books and newspapers, and they are being developed at a hectic rate.
At the same time, the capacity of smartphones has moved ahead in leaps and bounds and the display screens have grown larger and more eye-friendly.
The most eager consumers already read their news from their mobile phone.
Those less convinced just shake their head in disbelief - who wants to squint and peer at a little image like that?
Nearly everybody, on the other hand, is reading their news from a larger screen, attached to a PC or a notebook computer.
The big publishing houses are scratching their heads over how they can secure their income flow, now that they have gone and decided themselves that they should distribute content for free on the Internet.
Helsingin Sanomat's new blog, entitled "HS Next", shows how newspapers' new distribution channels are changing content, reading habits, and not least the business's commercial prospects.
The blog was opened up to readers last Wednesday, and will include input from Niemi himself and fellow managing editor Reetta Räty, as well as editor-in-chief Reeta Meriläinen and a number of the paper's development staffers.
The first entry includes a video (see link below) that demonstrates how the future interactive Helsingin Sanomat could look in a tablet or electronic book device.
The user experience development company Linja Design has produced one vision of the development path that the paper might take in the future.
Whilst Niemi is not about to take it literally as the one-and-only way forward for Hesari, he applauds the demo as a means of showing how things could move ahead in a more electronic direction.
The video itself is naturally in Finnish on the HS website, but an English-language version has been posted on YouTube and it is linked below.
It is well worth a look, and there is nothing to stop one from commenting on it in the blog or even to our own firstname.lastname@example.org email, either.
Helsingin Sanomat / Edited from an article first published in print 10.3.2010
HS Next blog (in Finnish)
Watch video: eReader vision by Helsingin Sanomat and Linja Design (YouTube)
OLAVI KOISTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat | <urn:uuid:47ac5e74-f0b3-4b74-93c5-80628054dc2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Papers+heading+into+an+electronic+future+/1135254463737 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960112 | 691 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Philadelphia Orchestra to Exit Bankruptcy, Lawyer Says
The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, the symphony featured in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” won court permission to exit bankruptcy after cutting musicians’ salaries and benefits by about $4 million a year, the orchestra’s attorney said.
The 112-year-old symphony has already raised the $3 million needed to pay debts tied to its bankruptcy, allowing it to leave court protection sometime next month, Lawrence G. McMichael, with the Philadelphia law firm Dilworth Paxson LLP, said in an interview today.
“We passed the hat around the community and we got people to donate,” McMichael said.
Orchestras across the U.S., including the seven biggest, have been cutting costs to balance the quality of their programs with what the local communities can afford. Philadelphia’s is the largest orchestra to file bankruptcy.
Leaving bankruptcy will make it easier for the orchestra to raise the $5 million needed for normal operations this year, McMichael said. Orchestras, including Philadelphia’s, typically rely on donations in addition to ticket sales to pay expenses.
While in bankruptcy, the orchestra eliminated all its debt and reduced expenses by $6 million a year. In addition to the labor savings, the orchestra will pay about $1 million less in annual rent for its main performance space and save about $1 million a year after ending its relationship with the Philadelphia Pops, another orchestra.
The orchestra filed for bankruptcy one year ago in Philadelphia, partly because of the high cost of musicians’ pensions, according to court papers. Two smaller orchestras, in Louisville, Kentucky, and Syracuse, New York, also filed for bankruptcy amid falling attendance and donations.
Philadelphia is among the seven biggest U.S. orchestras, measured by budget, according to Judith Kurnick, spokeswoman for the League of American Orchestras. The others are based in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland and Chicago.
Under conductor Leopold Stokowski, the orchestra recorded the music for Disney’s 1940 animated movie, Fantasia, the first feature-length film devoted to celebrating classical music.
The case is In re The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, 11-13098, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).
To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Church in Wilmington, Delaware at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:d42de0d4-b52c-46cd-8aad-2f4e6164e372> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-28/philadelphia-orchestra-to-exit-bankruptcy-lawyer-says.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93266 | 516 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The death of Andy Griffith was sad news for several generations of Americans who grew up watching him on shows like 'The Andy Griffith Show' and 'Matlock.'
But back before he was Sheriff Taylor, Griffith was known as a singer and critically acclaimed Broadway star. It was during those days that he performed in Tampa.
Way back on July 31, 1955, Griffith was the headlining act in a two-show performance at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in west Tampa.
Photos from the day show the billboard proclaiming Griffith's "first time in Tampa," along with some of the supporting acts.
Those other names included WTVT's own Ernie Lee and a young rock 'n roll star -- described in the show's program as "one of the newest and most exciting new personalities in the hillbilly field" -- named Elvis Presley.
The pictures are from a book about Elvis called "The King on the Road" by Robert Gordon. You can see the photos and learn more on this website: http://www.scottymoore.net/fthomer.html
FOX 13 / WTVT-TV
Didn't find what you were looking for? | <urn:uuid:d805f9bd-70ee-4f70-97aa-4c5963df052d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/18941626/2012/07/03/andy-griffith-dies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971034 | 244 | 1.625 | 2 |
Buy Malt Mill Whisky online - Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Malt Mill Whisky Distillery
Founded by Sir Peter Mackie in 1908, after a long running legal battle for the sales rights to Laphroaig whisky, Malt Mill was built within the grounds of the current Lagavulin distillery on the Isle of Islay.
Mackie had hoped to produce a style of Scotch whisky similar to Laphroaig and went to great lengths to recreate the flavour profile, he even hired workers from Laphroaig in an attempt to match the recipe.
Malt Mill was a small scale distillery using traditional production methods with its coal fired pot stills. It produced a modest 113,500 litres of whisky in its first year, a fraction by comparison to its well established neighbours. The distillery remained active until 1962 when it was finally absorbed by its landlord, Lagavulin, where the stills were re-housed and remained in production for another seven years.
Malt Mill distillery - immortalized in the Ken Loach film The Angels' Share - was never bottled as a Single Malt, however, very occasionally highly sought after bottles of Mackie's Ancient Scotch do surface but they are always quickly snapped up by collectors. Few of us will ever be lucky enough to sample this legendary whisky but if you're really determined to satisfy your curiosity, then older white label bottlings of Lagavulin (1972 - 1979) might be as close as you'll ever get. | <urn:uuid:a4d3c892-e3be-4b9d-b12a-9cfe62a4bbd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whiskymarketplace.com/malt-mill-whisky | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968576 | 308 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Microsoft, Google and Data Center Glasnost
One of the best-attended Tuesday sessions at The Uptime Institute’s Symposium 2009 in New York was a presentation by Google’s Chris Malone. As has been noted elsewhere, Malone’s talk summarized much of the information that Google disclosed April 1 at its Data Center Efficiency Summit. But there was a noteworthy moment during the question and answer period when Daniel Costello approached the mike.
Costello is one of the architects of Microsoft’s CBlox data center container strategy. Keep in mind that Microsoft has yet to finish its first containerized facility in Chicago, and Costello had just watched a video documenting Google’s completion of a data center container farm in Sept. 2005, nearly three years before Microsoft announced its project. Would there be tension, or perhaps a debate about the dueling designs?
“Microsoft applauds Google’s openness in presenting this information,” Costello said. “It’s moving us forward to a data center glasnost of sorts.” Glasnost, for those with short memories, was the policy of openness and transparency that Mikhail Gorbachev introduced in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
Over the past year Microsoft has been actively discussing some of its data center innovations and best practices at industry events. Responding to Costello, Malone said Google intends to pursue a similar path, reversing years of secrecy about its data center operations. “One of the reasons we’re here is to share in the industry discussions,” said Malone, who added that Google has now joined The Green Grid, one of the industry consortiums on energy efficiency.
There are differences in the two companies’ approaches. Microsoft is talking publicly about its future data center design plans, like the “Generation 4 ” plan for roofless container farms. Google’s disclosures thus far have focused on older facilities that likely don’t represent the 2008 model year for its data centers. And as happened at Uptime, there will be continuing debates in the industry about how much of the innovation seen at Google and Microsoft is relevant to smaller data centers.
But when it comes to expert information on best practices, more is better. Like the end users, the data center industry has its share of information siloes, and its good to see that starting to change. Much hard work remains. But Glasnost is far better than a data center Cold War.
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The Port Authority Bus Terminal seems designed to make the commuters who use it—mostly from New Jersey—feel at home; it resembles a suburban shopping mall, albeit a rather dreary one.
But the commuters who pass through the Port Authority en route to the suburbs and the tourists who arrive on long-distance bus lines have long been assaulted by some of the most unsavory elements of urban life. Panhandlers try to intimidate passers-by into forking over change, apparently having learned fear is more profitably exploited than guilt. Hustlers accost tourists, demanding to know where they are going and hoping to collect a small fee for telling them how to get there. Others offer to carry baggage, and sometimes carry it away.
This past December, the Port Authority finally began doing something about these problems, and about the most visible and pervasive blight on the terminal—the vagrants. They had provided a constant, visible reminder that the authorities were unable or unwilling to provide for the safety and comfort of the people for whom the terminal was built. They sat around drinking; they rooted through garbage, looking for cans and bottles to redeem the nickel deposit. They slept everywhere: in passenger waiting areas, in stairwells, in front of the Eighth Avenue Subway entrance, even on curbs next to the loading buses.
Over a period of several months last year I realized that one fellow had put down roots at Gate 210, where I caught my New Jersey Transit bus to Hoboken. One day I got fed up with his presence. I went to the nearby courtesy phone and rang the Port Authority Police, asking that an officer be sent to remove the intruder. It was done, but the next day he had returned. Every day for the next few weeks I called the police and had the vagrant removed, and every time he came back.
Once I received no answer when I tried to call the police. I ventured down to the terminals concourse and found a Port Authority police officer. I told him there was a vagrant sleeping in my gate.
You mean a homeless person? the cop asked.
The officer told me there was little he could do. A Legal Aid Society lawsuit, he claimed, had won for the homeless the right to sleep in the terminal. He reluctantly accompanied me back to the gate, however, awoke the man, and ordered him to leave. The next day, of course, the loiterer was back.
Things have improved markedly under the new program. Posters around the terminal announce the rules: no sleeping, panhandling, public drinking, smoking, or loud radios. Those caught engaging in forbidden activities are evicted and referred to appropriate social services. The police seem serious about the effort: When I wandered around the terminal for half an hour one December afternoon, I found only three people sleeping on the floor; previously, I could have seen that many by standing in one place.
Predictably, the Port Authority has come in for some criticism over the effort. THE HOMELESS ARE MOVING ON BUT THE CRIMINALS STILL LINGER reads a recent New York Times headline. The argument is familiar: The resources being directed against those euphemistically called homeless could be used to fight real crimes.
There are two problems with this argument. First, as George Kelling has noted in these pages, disorder leads to crime. The chaos that prevailed at the terminal until December may well have been what made it a magnet for criminals. Second, the current crackdown is noticeably improving life for the terminals users. No longer must they endure filth and squalor simply to get to and from work. It may not seem like much, but its made the city a bit more livable. | <urn:uuid:5d6003e1-c183-49b7-b759-b228cfe9945a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.city-journal.org/article02.php?aid=1564 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972054 | 760 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Tester puts Montana first with Forest Jobs bill
(BIG SANDY, Mont.) - Senator Jon Tester says progress on his popular Forest Jobs and Recreation Act is an example of the responsible, bipartisan cooperation that Washington, D.C., needs more of.
Tester's landmark proposal, which is supported by Montanans across the political spectrum, creates jobs by requiring the logging and restoration of at least 100,000 acres of timber in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests. The bill, which also creates permanent recreation areas and protects hunting and fishing habitat, will be considered by the Senate after November's election.
At a rally in Missoula, Tester said that this summer's record-setting wildfires and persistent smoke make passage of his bill more urgent than ever.
"We can't wait any longer," Tester said. "We need to responsibly manage our forests, and living here in Missoula you folks know exactly what I'm talking about. You see the effects and smell the effects of doing nothing."
In light of the millions of acres Montana lost this summer to wildfire and beetle kill, Congress needs to put politics aside and recognize the urgency of the moment, Tester said.
"This bill is a product of Montanans working together responsibly to do what's best for Montana and to create jobs, and Congress could learn a lesson from the way Montanans found this solution," Tester said.
Tester has always kept the latest version of his bill on his website at tester.senate.gov/forest. | <urn:uuid:8dc07eb5-eb4d-46b5-a8f8-95c14c9d02ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tester.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2660 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954368 | 327 | 1.835938 | 2 |
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only.
A psychiatrist who has treated former military personnel at Guantánamo prison camp is telling a story of prisoner torture and guard suicide there, recounted to him by a National Guardsman who worked at Guantánamo just after it opened.
Dr. John R. Smith, 75, is a Oklahoma City psychiatrist who has done worked at military posts during the past few years. He is also a consultant for the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Services, and is affiliated with the Veteran’s Affairs Administration Hospital in Oklahoma City. The court-appointed psychiatric examination of Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, was conducted by Smith. A few years ago, he became a contract physician, treating active duty members of the US military in need of psychotherapy.
Smith spoke on February 22, 2008, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, held in Washington DC. His presentation dealt with the psychological impact on guards of working at Guantánamo . He focused on a chilling case history, of a patient he called "Mr. H."
Smith described Mr. H as a blue-collar Latino in his 40s who had done routine service in the National Guard for years before being called up to Kuwait. Then, shortly after 9/11, he was diverted from Kuwait to Guantánamo . The detention camp had just opened. Mr. H was deployed there to work as a guard.
Untrained for the job, Mr. H was taken aback by the detainees. They threw feces and urine on him, said Smith, and tried to get him to sneak letters out, telling him that if he didn’t, "they would see to it that his family suffered the consequences." The prisoners also mocked Mr. H, that his being in the military made him "a traitor" to Latinos and other minorities. Mr. H was confused and terrified.
Meanwhile, according to Smith, "this good Catholic man with a family who had pretty much always followed the rules" was called on to participate in torture. One of his jobs was "to take detainees to certain places and see that they were handcuffed in difficult positions, usually naked, in anticipation of interrogation." Mr. H often watched the questioning. He saw prisoners pushed until they fell down, then cut. They responded to the torture with "defecation, vomiting, urinating," and "psychotic reactions: bizarre screaming and crying."
Smith noted that Mr. H said he was "required to handcuff and push to the ground detainees who were naked." The prisoners were also made to "remain on sharp stones on their knees." Detainees, Mr. H told Smith, would try to avoid interrogation by rubbing their knees until they bled in order be taken to the prison hospital.
According to Smith, Mr. H’s comment about these events "was poignant and simple: ‘It was wrong what we did.’" While still at Guantánamo , he responded to being a participant in torture "with guilt, crying and tears. But of course it was forbidden to talk with anyone about what he was experiencing." He "became more and more depressed." Apparently, so did other military personnel. Smith said Mr. H told him that in the first month he was at Guantánamo , two guards committed suicide.
Smith said that by the time he saw Mr. H, he "had become very ill. He was suicidal, terribly depressed, anxious," and "riddled with insomnia and horrible dreams and flashbacks." He had already seen two military therapists and not improved. But those therapists "were active duty and he didn’t dare tell them" what had happened at Guantánamo . Smith was not active duty, and after two or three sessions Mr. H opened up. With medication and psychotherapy, he became less suicidal but was still too sick to do any more military service.
Three years later after treating Mr. H, Smith got three new patients who were guards at Guantánamo on later tours. They said conditions were much improved –"they loved it at Guantánamo and went swimming in the Caribbean." Still, one guard was having problems directly related to his work there. He "described having to cut down a detainee" who tried to hang himself after chewing through an artery in his own arm. There was blood everywhere. When the guard left Guantánamo , he was suffering from "anxiety attacks, panic attacks."
Smith said his presentation at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting was the first time he’d ever spoken publicly about his Guantánamo patients. He decided to talk, he said, because he is concerned that veterans are generally ineligible for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) disability benefits if the condition is not caused by combat. He considers the guards of Guantánamo "an overlooked group of victims." But in making that case, Smith stepped into a unique role. Heretofore, almost all accounts of torture at Guantánamo have come from non-governmental human rights groups or detainees and their defense lawyers. The FBI accounts in 2004 were contradictory. Smith, a prestigious physician, relayed accounts from inside the military.
DEBBIE NATHAN is a New York City-based journalist who writes frequently for CounterPunch. She can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:2b64a3c5-9ceb-41f6-9100-1c3051b54fa8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/02/26/confessions-of-a-gitmo-guard/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987872 | 1,120 | 1.664063 | 2 |
why LOHAS isn’t going to save the world
Just in case you’ve been hiding in a cave with bin Laden, Elvis Presley and the tattered remnants of a global democracy, LOHAS (Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability) is the next big thing.
With a global market value in excess of $300 billion, and growing at a rate of between 20 and 300% (depending on who you talk to, and which sub-section of the market you’re looking at) it seems that times couldn’t be better for the organic-sprout eating, hybrid-car driving, Fair-Trade wearing moral collective-barometer.
I oughta know – I’m one of them.
But the trouble with LOHAS (aside from the fact that it’s yet another acronym to remember) is that it’s been co-opted by eco-consumerism – and as such, seems destined to fail before it’s even really got out of the gate.
It wasn’t that long ago, addressing an audience of Wellness professionals, that I recounted the story of how I came to be doing what I’m doing …. in a moment of Newtonian inspiration involving a mango, ocean and post yoga bliss, recognising the enormous potential inherent in simply changing the way we consume.
I declared that ‘this market, more than any other, has the potential to fundamentally and irrevocably change the world for the better’.
That was before watching marketers support well-intentioned but misguided entrepreneurs flood the market with a plethora of products the world would truly be better off without – catering to the need of the individual to feel as if they are actively involved in the same great battle for our survival.
Row after row of ‘toxic free’ soap, bottled water from the Pacific, shrink-wrapped smoked salmon from Tasmania, tins of organic tomatoes from Equador.
And don’t get me started on the massive carbon cloud hanging over the meat freezer at Wholefoods.
As the founder of the Sea Shepherds recently declared (and I’m paraphrasing here):
Better to be a vegan driving a hummer than a carnivorous cyclist
It’s a sickness – an addiction to ‘personal change’ without a deep appreciation for the compounding nature of personal choice. An addiction to ‘freedom’ – at least the poor substitute for freedom (freedom of choice) we’ve settled for.
As Gibran once said:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
In many countries – capitalist democracies in general, and the USA in particular – it seems time for individual freedom to be sacrificed in service to a greater freedom – that of the freedom for all of us to live.
We have no time left for political correctness. We have no time left to be polite. What we really need is for our apparently enlightened leaders to declare a state of emergency with little concern for what it will cost them personally (do we really want to be standing on the scorched earth singing REM‘s ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it ….. and I feel fine’?)
O! to see Oprah take a stand and move from serving the ever-escalating and largely vacuous demands of the Baby Boomers to ensuring that their as yet largely-unborn great-grandchildren inherit a world worth inheriting.
Maybe it’s time we went in search of real discomfort – not the discomfort that comes from confronting a pattern of neurotic behaviour that sees us dating mysogynists, matriarchs and alcoholics. Let’s embrace the inevitable discomfort of answering the question
in the face of what we know about the state of the world, and our part in it, how is it most prudent to act?
There is no stone that should remain unturned, no sacred cow we should not consider making burgers out of. It’s time for discussions about politics, religion and consumerism to take centre stage, for all of us to call into question the irrational and dangerous beliefs that have brought us to the precipice. It’s time to wage war on superstition and unsubstantiated belief and embrace reason.
Your lifestyle choice IS my concern – your diet is my concern, your means of transportation is my concern, your politics are my concern, your religion is my concern.
Whatever you believe or do that in any way impacts upon my freedom to live is my concern – and it’s time for some unapologetic and rigorous questioning. And if you don’t like it – move to Iran or China (or turn back the clock twelve months in the USA)!
The LOHAS market is a transitional market – one that has arisen largely in response to a global outcry against waste and in favour of a more prudent and economically conservative lifestyle. It’s a market dripping with potential. But this potential is only going to waste while so many of us drive our SUV’s across town to ‘buy organic’ – instead of taking the time to nurture our own veggie patch, or better still a community garden.
There is a responsibility that comes with knowledge about health & sustainability – and that is to do something with that knowledge.
Let’s take these conversations – that so often take place on blogs, around coffee shops and in bars – and elevate them to the point of civil unrest before this is the only option remaining to us.
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- The Baby Boomer Legacy (usnews.com) | <urn:uuid:ecbca556-fba7-4e96-b7ae-9fef40d9455b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uncompromise.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/why-lohas-isnt-going-to-save-the-world/ | 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 | 0.932534 | 1,208 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Apart from being obvious, the findings of research done by the PDSA, which shows that dogs which have not been obedience-trained and socialised at a young age grow up to be a nuisance to all, could equally well be focused on the children it thinks should be taught at school how to be good owners ("Owners urged to train dogs", The Herald, November 8).
I would argue that school teachers have enough to do teaching rather more important skills.
It would be interesting to substitute the word "children" for "dogs" in the final paragraph of Ellen Thomas's article: "The charity's research warns that the primary cause of the anti-social behaviour is a lack of socialisation and obedience training when the dogs are young"
Although it took longer, I think I was more successful with my children than with my current Jack Russell.
Joyce Hunter Blair,
33 Main Street,
Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Kirkcudbirhgshire.
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Moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. Please be patient if your posts are not approved instantly. | <urn:uuid:a468a98f-3c9f-4b04-aa3c-bd29e0b84083> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/train-the-children-before-their-dogs.19379334 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962685 | 315 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Sex, wars and landscapes of the brain: Brent Dedas explores three common themes throughout art
Brent Dedas has been thinking about sex a lot lately. OK, not just sex, but war and the landscape as well. The thought process behind his current exhibition at the Louisville Visual Art Association has evolved since his graduate school days, years of filling up notebooks with ideas and observations. Multiple trips to European museums fueled the fire, and finally, a couple of years ago, he was ready to create drawings based on his notebook concepts.What was he seeing that started it all? He’s analyzed art history in a unique way, realizing that the bulk of the artwork produced over the centuries has been about sex/sensuality, war/violence and landscapes/cityscapes. “I’m interested in the three things and how they tie together,” he told LEO by phone from his new home in Toledo, Ohio. “I wanted to do something that’s a bit different from the typical art show, that’s very narrow in topic. I wanted to come up against a challenge.” He found that challenge. His vision produced works full of dark voids — his reference to landscape scarred by acts of violence. His surfaces are so pitted they might as well be the surface of the moon. They’re coupled with the lighthearted touches that human nature produces in rough times: 1930s-’40s girly pin-ups (thank you Betty Grable) and “nose art” from World War II airplanes. “Bombshell #2” is an acrylic on canvas, brick chips and silver aluminum painting with an outline of a pin-up superimposed over the holes. “Pitfalls,” created from the same media, places silhouettes of two medics carrying a wounded soldier over the rough terrain.The brick chips on many of his pieces have multiple meanings, he said. “Bricks are all about construction; the broken bricks are fragments of something that’s been destroyed. My dad is a construction worker, so I grew up on construction sites. That has influenced how I feel about construction and destruction.” The title of the show references not only the makeup of human nature but also to the process Dedas uses to produce his art. For “Our Chemistry,” a large beautiful triptych of gold and silver, he threw acid at a steel panel and waited for the immediate reaction. “I like the fact that through the destruction, you’re creating something new,” he said. “There’s an element of control, but I don’t know exactly (what will happen). I like to make room for the accidents.” He also uses very thin aluminum leaf, similar to the more familiar gold leaf, to add more dimension. Dedas’ use of chemicals to form his color palette and shapes is difficult and brave. Calling him a painter leaves a lot unsaid. He’s actually a mad scientist posing as an artist. Luckily for him and for us, it succeeds beautifully.LVAA also presents DinnerWorks, now in its 21st year. Handcrafted dinnerware by national artists are placed in decorative table settings by designers. Louisville glass artists Peter Eichhorn and Sarah Tucker created square curved glass plates. The table decorations, created by Jason Jennings, are relatively simple and refined, even with the elaborate birdcage used as the centerpiece. The overall elegance is enhanced by the potted orchids.Mississippi studio potter Conner Burns and designer Rick Kremer took an opposite approach and put together a table setting dedicated to the homeless. The point is further driven “home” by the fact that the table is placed inside a large cardboard box. Burns’ organic ceramics are accompanied by plastic cups and various glasses — the only things missing are jelly jars. Kremer, an architect with the Louis & Henry Group, will be the speaker for LVAA’s “Food for Thought” lecture series on Feb. 12. Contact the writer at email@example.com• ‘Our Chemistry: Sex, War and the Landscape’ by Brent DedasThrough March 2• ‘DinnerWorks’Through March 1Louisville Visual Art AssociationWater Tower3005 River Road896-2146www.louisvillevisualart.orgDinnerworks special events:•AfterDinnerWorks cocktail celebration: Friday, Feb. 8, 6-9 p.m., $30 ($25 members).•DinnerWorks Brunch: Sunday, March 2, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., $30/$25. •Raffle: The drawing for a porcelain bowl by Michael Weisner: Sunday, March 2, during the DinnerWorks Brunch, $10. | <urn:uuid:f97f1e4a-9fdc-4f3c-86f7-08111bce5d47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leoweekly.com/arts-entertainment/other/sex-wars-and-landscapes-brain-brent-dedas-explores-three-common-themes-thro | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956475 | 1,016 | 1.75 | 2 |
Thursday, July 12
Good morning, TexMessengers! Today in 1962, The Rolling Stones performed their first-ever concert, at the Marquee Club in London.
Texas senator John Cornyn attacked President Barack Obama’s tax plan Wednesday, criticizing the president for “heading in the wrong direction” as he seeks to alleviate the burden of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts.
Without lawmaker intervention, wide-scale tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush will expire on New Year’s Day, a move that threatens the country’s already struggling economy. Obama unveiled a plan Monday that calls for Congress to extend tax cuts for only the lower and middle income earners, while allowing taxes to increase for families with incomes upwards of $250,000 a year.
Cornyn said Obama’s plan hurts small businesses and “job creators” at a time when economic growth is “anemic compared to what it was in 2010.”
“This is not the time, 118 days before the general election,” Cornyn said, “To raise taxes on the people we depend upon to create jobs.”
What’s missing from Obama’s tax plan, Cornyn said, is an understanding of the burdens placed on businesses by the current tax code. Many are challenged by “double taxation” that goes along with being a corporation, Cornyn said, and others seek to leave their businesses – and jobs – abroad in efforts to avoid tax rates.
Cornyn intends to offer an amendment to the jobs bill currently on the floor of the Senate, he said, that will create a sort of insurance policy against raising taxes on small businesses, calling for a supermajority of votes in order to pass those raises.
Obama’s tax plan is “heading in the wrong direction,” Cornyn added. Instead of making additional burdens, the Republican senator argued, the legislature “ought to be looking for ways to lighten that load.” The “common sense” solution, Cornyn added, would be to keep all of the expiring tax provisions so lawmakers can address a revision of the tax code.
“I think a vote in favor of jobs and the economy would mean keeping the expiring tax provisions at the current rate for the near tearm hopefully, so we can begin the important process of tax reform,” Cornyn said.
Every morning, we share some headlines from the 2012 presidential campaigns.
Reader Comment of the Day
In response to our Texas on the Potomac article “Rep. Jeb Hensarling says ‘Obamacare’ will become less popular over time” reader “CSA” wrote in the comments forum:
“Yet another out of touch right wing Republican. He ignores the opinion polls he doesn’t want to hear. More and more people are warming up to the Affordable Care Act for a number of reasons. One of which is those w/pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage. Those death panels Sarah Palin warned about had been around for a long time. Now they are gone.”
We do need to watch how the money is spent, however; as we all know, there are often wolves masquerading as sheep whenever “money is on the table.”
The money needs to be spent on the purpose for which it is intended — not for bonuses, etc., as we saw with the bank bailouts.?”
TxPotomac lets you know what stories to look out for later this week.
? Thursday, July 12: New America Foundation panel discussion: Oil and Energy Outlook in 2013. New America Foundation, 1899 L Street N.W., Suite 400, 9 a.m.
? Thursday, July 12: House Energy and Commerce — Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing on the American energy initiative. Rayburn building, 9:15 a.m.
Tomorrow and beyond:
? Tuesday, July 31: Texas Senate runoff election | <urn:uuid:2b98dcb9-72e0-4be9-943f-b47af7132a08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-on-the-potomac/2012/07/texmessage-john-cornyn-says-obama-tax-plan-%E2%80%98heading-in-the-wrong-direction%E2%80%99/ | 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 | 0.95085 | 832 | 1.59375 | 2 |
On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told attendees at a security conference that our torturer, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, should manage the transition to democracy in Egypt.
She backed off that stance yesterday.
On flight home from Germany, Secy of State Clinton says “we cannot and would not try to dictate any outcome” in Egypt.
Clinton says “I am no expert on the Egyptian constitution,” but if Mubarak resigns, presidential elections would have to be held in 60 days.
Wisner is a lobbyist for Patton Boggs, representing the Government of Egypt.
PJ [Crowley] would have been better served to say somsething like, “having utterly failed in his mission for his country, Wisner has gone back to his day job pushing whatever policy his clients think, regardless of its benefit to America.”
Here’s Fisk’s explanation.
The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a “personal capacity”. But there is nothing “personal” about Mr Wisner’s connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises “the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government’s behalf in Europe and the US”. Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.
Patton Boggs states that its attorneys “represent some of the leading Egyptian commercial families and their companies” and “have been involved in oil and gas and telecommunications infrastructure projects on their behalf”. One of its partners served as chairman of the US-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce promoting foreign investment in the Egyptian economy. The company has also managed contractor disputes in military-sales agreements arising under the US Foreign Military Sales Act. Washington gives around $1.3bn (£800m) a year to the Egyptian military.
Nicholas Noe, an American political researcher now based in Beirut, has spent weeks investigating Mr Wisner’s links to Patton Boggs. Mr Noe is also a former researcher for Hillary Clinton and questions the implications of his discoveries.
“The key problem with Wisner being sent to Cairo at the behest of Hillary,” he says, “is the conflict-of-interest aspect… More than this, the idea that the US is now subcontracting or ‘privatising’ crisis management is another problem. Do the US lack diplomats?
“Even in past examples where presidents have sent someone ‘respected’ or ‘close’ to a foreign leader in order to lubricate an exit,” Mr Noe adds, “the envoys in question were not actually paid by the leader they were supposed to squeeze out!”
By and large, the Obama Administration response to this admittedly difficult challenge has been not-horrible. But both Wisner’s selection as envoy (which would have been horrible even without the Patton Boggs connection, given his ties to his daddy’s coup-happy CIA, Enron, and AIG) and Hillary’s outspoken support for Omar Suleiman were unforced errors. | <urn:uuid:a19051c9-e8a7-4694-9d34-c13870e10655> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/07/hillary-cant-decide-whether-to-impose-democracy-or-not/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974511 | 698 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Science Wait, Why Are There Gay Men?
posted by June 26 at 10:40 AMon
If being a gay man is an inborn, inherent trait with some genetic basis—as the massive, overwhelming, credible, sound, tenable, probable, corroborating, confirming, affirmative collection of scientific evidence states—why are there gay men at all? It’s a trait that strongly discourages procreative sex. Less sex with women means less babies and therefore less spreading of the gay genes.
These alleles should drop out of the population.
Well, what is known about gay men and their family members?
i. Gay men are everywhere, persisting in every culture and in every human population at more-or-less the same frequency—regardless of how much a culture loves gay men.
ii. The sisters, mothers and aunts of gay men have more babies than those without a gay brother, son or nephew—but only if the relation is through the gay man’s mother.
iii. A gay man’s male relatives are more likely to be gay—but only if related again through the gay man’s mother.
Well, we can come up with a few possible explanations, and see what best fits these observations.
1. Kin Selection.
The idea? A gay man in the family can only help make the heterosexual relatives pop out more kids and have the kids do better after birth. Babysitting, sexual counseling, consoling, food preparation, hunting…. it’s all gotta be good for making kids, right? Even if the gay uncle, brother or son doesn’t have babies himself, all those related babies are so much better off, the gay alleles survive to make future gay men!
Sadly, this appears to not be the explanation.
This is the gay-is-like-sickle-cell-anemia argument. If having two gay alleles makes you gay, and therefore less prone to baby-making, perhaps having one gay allele makes you a better straight man. Therefore, straight men carrying one gay allele and one straight allele do better than their all straight allele counterparts—the gay alleles survive!
3. Maternal effects
In other words, the ever popular mom-made-you-gay theory. Genetically this time. For almost all genes, we get one copy from mom and one copy from dad. For a few of these genes, one of these copies is always turned off from the mom or dad, called genetic imprinting. For example, while dads tend to want the biggest babies possible, mothers tend to prefer surviving childbirth—genetically speaking here. So, the mother’s copies of the genes for growing big tend to be turned off in the baby. Perhaps the same thing is going on for genes that make boys straight.
4. Sexually antagonistic selection.
This is the general blame-women theory. Perhaps the gene for making a gay man (not so good for future reproductive prospects) is super good for straight women (making baby making more likely and easier).
Ok, well which is it? Andrea Camperio Ciani, Paolo Cermelli, Giovanni Zanzotto recently published a possible answer in PlosONE.
Running the available empiric data about gay men through a whole bunch of models of these possibilities, they discovered one combination that best fits reality and a few aren’t really possible at all.
Overdominance seems really unlikely. None of the models including this idea fit the data all that well. Nor did the models based on maternal effects. It appears that mom cannot make you gay. Sorry.
The best fits needed two genetic loci (two genes), with at least one of these loci on the X chromosome. Recall, while women get two X-chromosomes, men only get one. Additionally, at least one of these alleles must be sexually antagonistic—in favor of women reproducing if they have it, even if it makes you gay as a boy.
Or, as the authors of the study stated:
Our analysis allows us to draw several conclusions that clarify the basic evolutionary dynamics of the genetic factors influencing human male homosexuality and the related female fecundity increase, resolving a number of open questions. As a main point, we can exclude the GFMH propagation mechanisms based on overdominance (male heterozygote advantage), because none of the models (1b), (5a), (5b) account satisfactorily for the sexual-orientation asymmetries of requirement (B1). At this level of genetic analysis, we can also exclude maternal effects, including maternal genomic imprinting, as they lead too easily to GFMH extinction or fixation, against requirement (A). Only the hypothesis that the GFMH are characterized by sexually antagonistic selection (i.e. the GFMH favor one sex and disfavor the other) produces viable population genetic models (see the case (4) above) leading to the persistence of the trait at low frequencies and capable of accounting for the related pedigree asymmetries. For this reason, predictions of possible widespread diffusion of male homo- or bisexuality in human populations are not warranted, as stable low levels of this character are actually compatible with a broad range of parameters in population genetic models.
For what could this allele be? Well, an obvious choice is digging dudes. If a woman has an allele that really makes her like guys, she’s more likely to have babies than a woman who has a less guy-loving allele for this gene. If she passes on this dude loving allele to her son, via the X-chromosome, perhaps he’ll be gay. But since she’s having more babies, it’s a wash.
(Updated for clarity and some more details.) | <urn:uuid:c7181daf-9da3-4ccb-a9b3-ca657c46ac2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/06/wait_why_are_there_gay_men | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93264 | 1,208 | 1.601563 | 2 |
|The rapid advances in science and technology of the past decades have now made it possible to communicate instantaneously with millions (if not billions) of people worldwide. Communication is becoming ever more efficient and powerful, and the exchange of information and knowledge will, in the 21st century, establish itself as the primary foundation on which the development of civilization takes place. The creation of “cyberspace” and the Internet is therefore launching the world into an entirely new and exciting era -- and one that places the yearning for information and knowledge at the apex of all human endeavors.|
|Journalism and academic discussions of our world will of course be deeply influenced by this radical transformation, and further advances in science and technology can only increase the speed at which traditional journalism and academic thought is undermined and transformed. A revolution in journalism is inevitable, and certainly desirable.|
|What will the implications of this revolution in journalism be for human thought, and for political, economic, and religious behavior? While pondering these difficult and indeed profound questions, consider listening to the beauty and genius of Antonio Vivaldi (1675-1741):|
|Click here to listen to the Concerto for 2 Cellos in G minor|
Click here to listen to the Concerto for Oboe & Violin in B-flat Major.
|It is difficult to say, but we can assume that the implications may be quite profound. The world is undergoing radical change, and World Affairs Monthly is designed to provide the worlds leaders -- the decision-makers and policy-makers, the heads of state, politicians and senior ministers of world governments, the leading thinkers and managers of global capitalism -- with the information and knowledge they need and indeed require as they work to prosper in the complex and competitive world of the 21st century.|
|World Affairs Monthly was established by Thomas R. Pochari, its publisher and editor, with the express aim of catalyzing this revolution in journalism. Mr. Pochari will utilize state-of-the-art information technology to bring into focus our fast changing world. The publisher has plans to offer a printed version of the magazine, but the date for this has yet to be decided. Click here to read the Press Release which was issued in March 2002.Thomas R. Pochari was born in 1958 in Denver, Colorado. He studied at Santa Clara University in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in 1980 earned a BS in psychology. He has traveled throughout the world, to more than 80 countries, spending a total of about five years in continuous on-the-ground travel. He is a prolific writer, and his analysis of world affairs is respected and admired by many of the worlds policy-makers and leaders in both the developed and developing world. |
|His contacts around the world are extensive, and he regularly communicates with the senior officials of the worlds governments and international organizations. His published writing on the Middle East and Islam, some of which is translated into Arabic, has been particularly influential in the Arab and Muslim world, and he has been a featured guest on Al Jazeera, the satellite TV station broadcast from Doha, Qatar.|
Click here to read the letter that Al Jazeera wrote to Mr. Pochari.
|In April 2002 the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) appointed Mr. Pochari to serve on the Business Advisory Council, which is a small, prestigious group of conservative businessmen and women dedicated to advocating a progressive, conservative, pro-business agenda in Washington. Tax reform and debt reduction will be an important focus of the Business Advisory Council's work.|
|In January 2003 the NRCC's Business Advisory Council named |
Mr. Pochari Businessman of the Year (from California). For more information, please visit the Business Advisory Council's web site: http://www.businessadvisorycouncil.org. On June 28, 2003 Mr. Tom Reynolds, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, named Mr. Pochari a member of the Republican Party's Honor Roll. On August 27, 2003 the National Republican Congressional Committee awarded Mr. Pochari a Gold Medal for his efforts on behalf of the Republican Party and the Business Advisory Council.
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University of Waterloo >
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UW) >
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
|Title: ||Hydrogen Production From Catalytic Ethanol Reforming In Supercritical Water|
|Authors: ||Tuan Abdullah, Tuan Amran|
|Keywords: ||Ethanol Reforming|
|Approved Date: ||21-May-2009 |
|Date Submitted: ||2009 |
|Abstract: ||As a means to produce high pressure hydrogen in order to reduce compression penalty, we propose to reform liquid fuel (e.g., bio-ethanol) in supercritical water (pressure above 221 bar and temperature greater than 374°C).
Catalytic ethanol reforming in supercritical water for hydrogen production has been carried out in a high pressure packed bed reactor made of Inconel-625. Since Inconel-625 contains mainly nickel, it is expected that the reactor itself can be active toward ethanol reforming. Therefore, a series of tests were first performed in the empty reactor, whose results are a benchmark when studying reforming in the presence of a catalyst. Ethanol reforming in the empty reactor was studied in the temperature range of 450 to 600°C and showed coking/plugging problem at 575°C and above. The ethanol conversion with the empty reactor could be as high as 25% at 550°C and residence time of about one minute. The main reaction products with the empty reactor were H2, CO and CH4.
A catalyst screening study was performed to investigate the performance of nickel and cobalt as active metals, supported on γ-Al2O3, α-Al2O3, ZrO2 and YSZ for temperatures between 475°C and 550°C. The presence of the catalyst did increase the activity of ethanol reforming, especially at higher temperatures. All experiments in the catalyst screening study were carried out with non-reduced catalysts. Nickel catalysts were found more active than cobalt, likely because of higher reducibility. Indeed, the higher amount of oxygen in Co3O4 compared to NiO requires more hydrogen to fully reduce the metal oxides. Both Ni/γ-Al2O3 and Co/γ-Al2O3 showed little activity below 500°C, and led to failed experiments due to coking/plugging at temperatures of 525°C and above. The strong acid sites on γ-Al2O3 are responsible for high selectivity toward ethylene, a known coke precursor. The support α-Al2O3 in combination with Ni was active, but yielded lower H2 selectivity and higher CH4 selectivity than the zirconia-based catalysts. The Co/α-Al2O3 shows low activity. The ZrO2-based catalysts were active and yielded high H2 selectivity, but were found very fragile. Finally, the YSZ support was strong and yielded good conversion. Below 550°C the activity of Ni/YSZ is higher than that of Co/YSZ, but at 550°C both catalysts yield nearly complete conversion. The advantage of Co/YSZ is then higher H2 selectivity and lower CH4 selectivity compared to Ni/YSZ.
Therefore, Co/YSZ was selected for a more detailed study. The effect of temperature, flowrate, residence time, catalyst weight, Co loading, concentration, and pretreatment with H2 were considered. Two methods for catalyst reduction were applied: ex-situ reduction where the catalyst is reduced in a different reactor and in-situ reduction where the catalyst is reduced in the SCW reactor prior to ethanol reforming. At 550°C, Co/YSZ converts all ethanol for residence times as low as 2 s, even with non-reduced catalyst. At 500°C the activity of the in-situ and ex-situ reduced catalysts were similar and greater than for the non-reduced catalyst. At 475°C the ex-situ reduced catalyst showed low activity, comparable to that of the non-reduced catalyst, but the in-situ reduced catalyst yielded much higher conversion. The better performance of the in-situ reduced catalyst was attributed to active metal sites on the reactor’s wall after pre-treatment in H2. The low activity of the ex-situ reduced catalyst is due to the fact that, when exposed to supercritical water for less than 30 minutes, it re-oxidized to CoO. The temperature of 475°C is then too low to generate sufficient hydrogen that will start reducing the catalyst.
Finally, analysis of reaction pathways for ethanol reforming over Co/YSZ showed that the reaction proceeds mostly via ethanol dehydrogenation to form acetaldehyde, the latter species reacting with lattice oxygen on the catalyst to produce acetone and CO2. Acetone is then reformed by water into CO and H2. Finally, H2 and CO react via the methanation reaction to form CH4. Over Co/YSZ it was found that the water-gas shift reaction is fast (CO selectivity most of the time is less than 0.5%), but the methanation reaction is kinetically controlled. Stopping the methanation reaction before equilibrium allowed for H2 selectivity higher than what is expected at equilibrium (likewise, CH4 selectivity is smaller than equilibrium value).
For well-controlled reaction Co/YSZ is a promising catalyst that can be highly selective toward hydrogen during ethanol reforming in supercritical water.|
|Program: ||Chemical Engineering|
|Department: ||Chemical Engineering|
|Degree: ||Doctor of Philosophy|
|Appears in Collections:||Faculty of Engineering Theses and Dissertations |
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UW)
All items in UWSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:af019fb0-866e-48f2-b9b1-d7f6f2d9bc73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/4441 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941937 | 1,231 | 1.71875 | 2 |
News ArchivePlease be aware that although the information on this page was accurate at the time of publishing, it may not now be, and therefore should not be relied upon.
|29 March 2004|
Royal College Praises Emergency Assessment Unit
Following a recent visit to the hospital's Emergency Assessment Unit (EAU), Professor Carol Black said the unit was an excellent example of how acute and general medicine was a valid speciality in its own right.
The NNUH has been a pioneer in emergency medicine ever since a Medical Assessment Unit was created at the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital ten years ago. Since then the number of medical emergency patients admitted each month has risen from 400 to 1400.
Professor Black's comments come as the Trust hopes to appoint a third Consultant specialising in acute and general medicine to join Dr Paul Jenkins and Dr Robert Mallinson. This follows the introduction of a specialist training programme for registrars at NNUH.
The four-year programme has the backing of the Royal College of Physicians and aims to give qualified doctors the experience they need to diagnose acutely ill patients when they come through the doors as an emergency.
The trainees join a rotational programme which takes in the James Paget Hospital, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn and Peterborough General Hospital, as well as NNUH.
"With such a high number of admissions, our medical teams need access to senior opinion round the clock," says Dr Jenkins. "Our training programmes are designed to ensure that doctors have the relevant experience and confidence to deal with patients who are critically ill from a diverse range of conditions."
"The Trust has been visionary in devising training programmes and procedures to deal with these very challenging cases, " explained Dr Jenkins, who has been a consultant physician at the NNUH for more than 22 years.
"Our new training scheme recognises the importance of good teamwork and the need to treat the patient holistically, rather than concentrating on a specific range of problems or symptoms. It also emphasises the skills required in the management of the critically ill patient and, to this end, there is a large formal component of intensive care medicine included in the programme."
The initiative to create a new speciality in acute medicine began five years ago with the creation of a national Society of Acute Medicine. This is now a 150-strong group with representatives from various disciplines including nurses, anaesthetists and physicians.
Dr Jenkins is president of the Society, which aims to promote training and development and set standards in acute medicine.
"The following list of 'firsts' we have achieved in recent years shows how much the EAU team has to be proud of," he added.
- 1994 The first Medical Assessment Unit (MAU) in the country was created at the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital to deal with acutely-ill patients. Now known as the Emergency Assessment Unit, this is split between surgical and medical patients who require rapid diagnosis and a high level of individual care.
- 1995 The Trust began training senior nurses to take emergency calls from GPs who need advice in treating acutely-ill patients. This has been a great success and is now emulated by hospitals all over the country.
- 1996 saw leading-edge work between MAU and the Norfolk Mental Health Care NHS Trust in developing a psychiatric nurse-led service to help those suffering from self-harm.
- 1996 An outpatient service for patients with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) was pioneered out of MAU by the haematology team, led by Dr Jennie Wimperis. This service has since won the prestigious Nye Bevan Award and has been emulated by numerous hospitals throughout UK.
- 1997 A pioneering training scheme for anaesthetists specialising in intensive care to develop skills in acute medicine was developed by the Trust. Since then, 12 anaesthetic trainees have completed attachments and this has proved to be a highly successful initiative. "It is particularly beneficial to have doctors from different backgrounds combining their skills in treating severely ill patients and the project looks likely to be extended to national training programmes, " says Dr Jenkins
- 2003 England's first recognised training programme for registrars in acute and general medicine commenced in North Anglia, centred on NNUH.
- 2003 The first wave of senior nurses was trained to admit, examine and start treatment for patients was commenced in EAU. Only a few hospitals in the UK have similar services.
Media contacts: Andrew Stronach or Hayley Gerrard on 01603 287200 | <urn:uuid:54e849af-b33b-44eb-ac76-c7c68355b0cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/News.asp?ID=30 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962328 | 930 | 1.765625 | 2 |
After adding street-level imagery for Australia, Japan, Spain, France, Italy, and New Zealand, Google's mission for the US is almost completed. "Today marks our biggest launch of Street View imagery to date: we're doubling our coverage in the United States. Several states — Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota — will be getting the Street View treatment for the first time. We've also added imagery for Memphis, Charleston (SC), and Birmingham, and we've filled in lots of gaps across the country," explains Google's blog.
Many people complained that the recent Google Maps redesign made it more difficult to find places that have street-level imagery, but this should no longer be necessary, at least for the US.
Street View turned out to be fun, useful, expensive, yet profitable and a test bed for new technologies. | <urn:uuid:ca92e3ab-d1da-4ee1-ad8a-03b51cdca974> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-street-view-covers-almost-entire.html?showComment=1248160757139 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940984 | 174 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s love affair with automobiles got off to an inauspicious start. His first car nearly got him killed, and not because he was driving too fast. In the summer of 1994, at the age of 19, Jackson plunked down $53,000 in cash made from peddling drugs on the streets of New York for a charcoal gray Toyota Land Cruiser. He tricked it out with a rooftop bike rack, new wheels and a sound system with a bass that thumped so hard it rattled the license plate against the back hatch.
A few months later, Jackson was driving his car through a rough neighborhood when a stranger pulled up next to him, flashed a menacing look and asked, “Yo, where Black at?” “Black” was the street name of a notorious–and violent–gangster. Jackson quickly put it all together: Black had a similar-looking car. Jackson shrugged at his questioner and, luckily for him, the man drove off into the night. | <urn:uuid:e96dcdf3-2efa-400e-abd5-4f995505072a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smsby50.com/blogs/news | 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 | 0.969742 | 215 | 1.671875 | 2 |
American Cancer Society Relay For Life of Washington County will launch its annual fundraising and awareness campaign 6 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 17, at the UK Cooperative Extension Office, 211 Progress Ave.
Volunteers and relay participants will gather for a soup cook-off. Teams will collect votes for their soup in the form of donations.
“We want everyone to come,” said Vickie Grassman, senior community representative for the American Cancer Society.
Thursday’s soup cook-off is the inaugural event for this year’s fundraising campaign. The campaign culminates on June 7, with an overnight event at St. Catharine College to raise money for the American Cancer Society.
“Last year, Washington County raised over $33,000 for the fight against cancer,” Grassman said. “This year our goal is $36,000, but we’d like to raise even more.“
Since Relay For Life began in 1985, volunteers have raised over $4.5 billion dollars worldwide. The money has led to historic research breakthroughs, better treatments, and ultimately more lives saved, Grassman said.
“Relay For Life is important because it gives us the opportunity to celebrate our cancer survivors, remember those we have lost and fight back against this disease that has taken too much from us,” she said. “We are working to create a world with less cancer and more birthdays.”
The world’s largest grassroots fundraising movement, Relay For Life mobilizes communities throughout the country to celebrate people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost, and provide participants with an opportunity to fight back against the disease.
To join the Relay For Life efforts, call 1-800-227-2345 or 502-560-6020, or visit www.relayforlife.org/washingtonky. | <urn:uuid:6a77f837-db04-4843-a93d-1cc326a36763> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thespringfieldsun.com/content/ready-relay?mini=calendar-date%2F2013-03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935341 | 393 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The folks at WordStream have put together an excellent infographic covering 20 different ways that Google has a mobile presence. Even if you might not agree with WordStream’s assessment of how effective particular areas are, it’s a great guide for navigating the mobile world of Google. See the full infographic here.
Inside Gatorade’s Social Media Command Center
In the realm of marketing, Gatorade is probably best known for splashy commercials featuring some of the world’s most famous athletes. However, a new effort behind the scenes of the PepsiCo-owned sports drink maker is putting social media quite literally at the center of the way Gatorade approaches marketing.
The company recently created the Gatorade Mission Control Center inside of its Chicago headquarters, a room that sits in the middle of the marketing department and could best be thought of as a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media.
Full Story: Mashable
How much time is spent on social networks? | From iAcquire & Survey Monkey’s study:
“From 2011-2012 time spent on social media has increased by roughly 30 billion minutes (or 37%). You may have thought Facebook increased the most, however there was a 4% dip in user visiting the site. However, Pinterest’s visits increased by 1000% (that is a whole lot of pins). This is a useful insight because it shows the social media market is not solely Facebook, a social media strategy needs to be holistic and flexible.”
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