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In the last months I get lot's of request about how to size a cooling unit for Fermenters, room cooling (I assume aging room) in Pubbreweries.
Anybody outthere who can post some basic calculations, so that visitors to Probrewer.com have a start in looking at equipment?
A practical rule of thumb: Buy a glycol chiller sized at one ton of cooling per every barrel of brewhouse size. 15 Barrel Brewhouse = 15 Ton Chiller. If you ran a cooler box cooler with a glycol coil that should cover it also.
That is over generalizing because actual cooling requirements vary with each brewery depending on how many tanks they have, and other requirements.
I've seen the general rule hold up very well in many breweries though.
Last edited by zbrew2k; 08-19-2005 at 10:16 AM.
15 tons? that chiller is the size of a chevette! How about more like 7 to 10 for a 15BBL....and that's with tons of cooling to spare.
I will pull the exact calculations, but I have been running a 10bbl with about 5 tons with no problem. The real issue is what are you cooling? If you're just cooling FV's you won't need as much as if you are also cooling the second stage of a 2-stage heat exchanger.
12,000 BTUs per ton (about)
Yeah, Larry you're right, especially in a Brewpub with 1-3 fermentors and a cold box for the bright beer tanks. 15 tons is overkill. It was a generaliztion and I framed the question with a multi tank packaging microbrewery instead of a pub. So I would agree a 10ton would be better.
Generalizations are all you can expect without more information. How many tanks of what size are you cooling? How many jackets of what size? How much insulation? Crashing to what temperature? What is your fermentation profile--2 days or 10 days? How often do you brew? Are you crashing more than one tank at a time? Using bare PVC glycol piping or insulated copper clad in a PVC jacket? What is the ambient temperature (climiate)? Will you have a cooled glycol reservior? Do you use the glycol as coolant for a second stage heat exchanger? Using the same glycol for a cold room? Any plans for additional future cooling capacity? So many things to consider that a rule of thumb is all you can get without details of the particular installation. Then again, more cooling capacity is better than less. Aim high and let the equipment work less. The manufacturers of the equipment might be the best source of information. Wish I could help more. Cheers! | <urn:uuid:c1170d22-7199-4f8f-9d83-47991d79431c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?3672 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947088 | 569 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The United Nations in the country has praised the media in the country for accurate coverage and balanced news stories.
“The UN is very glad about the state of the media in the country. Since its establishment it has closely been working with various media in accessing information that is beneficil to the public and the world in general,” the UN Resident Coordinator and Country Representative Alberic Kacou said at a Tentative Programme for Editors Forum meeting held yesterday in Dar es Salaam.
Kacou said that over the past eleven years in the country, there has been an outstanding coverage of issues relevant to the UN’s role in Tanzania.
“We are very appreciative of how different stories are covered and this is a great opportunity for the public to gain news on what we are actually doing or done over recent years,” he said.
He said the continued engagement of the forum was very encouraging as it enables the editors to increase interest in the UN’s programme of cooperation with the government.
According to Kacou, the UN has done many efforts in making the system easily accessible to queries from the media.
These include revamping of the UN Tanzania website, which now has a special media section containing information of relevance, he explained.
He said the UN members of the communication group seek to be readily available and have also facilitated direct meetings between the editors’ forum and government officials around the Universal Periodic Review in Zanzibar and at several other occasions.
“The UN is gratefully welcoming the media to access different information from the United Nations Development Assistance Plan (UNDAP) in covering stories that will benefit the public,” he added.
Kacou further called for effective cooperation with the media in the country in helping increase public knowledge on various issues. | <urn:uuid:9ed8a3f0-de7a-4843-8d11-f2a6fcef7a87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php/hl=23tion=com_content.com/2006/0220web/?l=41157 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956857 | 373 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Always wanted to learn how to create your own sounds
but have no idea where to start?
Videos are an awesome way to learn!
I’ve created an in depth video to show you what all goes into the process of creating your own sound packs!
To go over the video quickly, I recorded them with a hand held recorder (you can use any microphone), brought them into FL Studio, sliced them inside Edison (was careful not to take dip into any of the other sounds), then started layering, EQing, compressing etc.
Now, don’t get me wrong, sound design takes SKILL, something that I haven’t practiced much at all. If you want to learn how to create your own sound packs, it will take time, but there is a market for them, and if you’re good, your sound design could get you a career if you know how to market yourself, and you got the skills!
Thanks for watching, and if you are interested in checking out my new CD, here’s the link!
Here’s a free download to the kit that I created in this video. | <urn:uuid:c92720dd-fe9a-40b0-9aa7-25a7f7924776> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beatstruggles.com/how-to-make-your-own-sound-pack/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940159 | 241 | 1.546875 | 2 |
How to Read the Bible
One of the biggest reasons people don't read their Bible is because they don't how to go about doing it. So we wanted to take an episode and address how to read the Bible in a very practical way. A special thanks to Cokesbury and The Bara Initiative for working with us in this episode. No matter at what point you are in this series, take a look at this video for the week.
Website - http://preposterousproject.com/
On Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/iampreposterous
On Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/preposterousproject
Music by - http://opsound.org/artist/alexanderboyes/ | <urn:uuid:3a3b5fb7-45c9-4a7c-a19f-528ace12a312> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/media/entry/3382/how-to-read-the-bible | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930108 | 153 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Tai Chi Manchester offers instructional classes, workshops and demonstrations in all aspects of Chen-style Tai Chi and Qigong. Tai Chi Manchester aims to develop an understanding of these arts that is accessible to all and hopes everyone will benefit from these arts through its teachings and practices.
Tai Chi Manchester aims to stay true to the original principles and philosophies of Tai Chi and Qigong. Tai Chi is a martial art and a system of exercises that engage all elements of the body based on the Doaist yin-yang philosophy of balance. Qigong (pronounced Chi Gung) literally means energy work. Qigong exercises involve meditation, deep breathing, gentle movements and light stretching to stimulate the body and the cultivation of internal energy or Qi.
Tai Chi and Qigong exercises, when practiced regularly are known to help relax the mind and improve health and well being. Benefits are known to include stress reduction, an improvement in circulation and lung capacity and increased flexibility. Tai Chi and Qigong can be practiced by anyone, regardless of physical ability and age. It’s great for people who want to lower stress levels, people who want to improve general health and well being, those who wish to improve their fitness and flexibility and those recuperating after illness.
Tai Chi Manchester was founded by Aamir Rafi. Aamir has been studying Chinese martial arts and Qigong since 1998 and has been fortunate to have learnt from some of the worlds best teachers. He has been principally studying Chen Tai Chi and Qigong since 2003. He hopes to promote the benefits of Tai Chi and Qigong through Tai Chi Manchester so that it may become accessible to all. We hope that you will enjoy Tai Chi and Qigong with us and use Tai Chi Manchester for many years to come.
For further information on regular sessions, courses and workshops, email firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:0b65c2a1-9525-4e1d-a2e4-fc858a16c5d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taichimanchester.com/ | 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 | 0.955092 | 387 | 1.539063 | 2 |
This is going to be the first in a series of blog articles focusing on wine making problems. One of the best ways to ensure great wine making results is to understand the most common errors people make.
Mistake #1: Inadequate Equipment
Winemaking equipment, such as fermentation pails, carboys and spoons often seems similar to items that may be around the home. However, in many cases, proper wine making equipment and utensils are made of special materials, and this can influence your finished product.
Re-using plastic pails from other sources, like buckets that previously held food products, is always a mistake. The food odors will have sunk into the plastic, and will taint the wine. Also, plastic items not intended for food purposes, such as brand-new garbage pails must never be used for wine making. The pigments, UV protectants and plasticizers (chemicals used to keep the plastic from becoming brittle) will leach into the wine, and could affect your health.
Saving a few dollars by using suspect equipment is not worth it. It is better to invest in good equipment to help ensure the quality of your wine.
Tomorrow Wine Making Mistake #2 – Cleaning and Sanitizing….
Blog Content © 2009 Vintners Circle Franchising LLC. Any duplication or use of information from this blog without reference and linking to www.VintnersCircle.com is strictly prohibited. | <urn:uuid:a18d619d-0733-411a-ab3f-ceefe1a78a4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vintnerscircle.com/blog/tag/wine-making-error/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964139 | 298 | 1.726563 | 2 |
In case you missed it, Arizona declared its independence yesterday. Yes indeed, Arizona has decided that it is too good to remain part of the union, and as one of the four more recent ratifiers of the Constitution acted on its buyer’s remorse and split from the union as its Governor, Jan Brewer, signed into law a bill that for all practical purposes forces visitors from other states to travel to Arizona with a U.S. passport under the protection of the U.S. Secretary of State, the esteemed Hillary Rodham Clinton (like Bill, I cannot resist mentioning her whenever I have a chance).
Unlike the signing of the U.S. Declaration in 1776, this was not a multi-signatoried event with Founding Parents traveling to the capital over a series of weeks and months to sign. It happened before TV cameras with the swipe of a pen by a single individual so that now, if you are in Arizona and either looking or behaving in a way that some officer of the law perceives as alien, you must now, by law, produce proof of legality. Arizona will evidently be issuing some kind of national I.D. document, but if you are not from Arizona, you would be well advised to have your passport on you at all times while within its borders. The papers must be on your person at the time you are stopped. You can be arrested for not having your papers with you while looking or acting alien. Exactly what is meant by that phrase has yet to be defined, so, at the moment, it is impossible to know how we might alter our looks or behavior in order to slide beneath Arizona police radar.
It is so interesting that this is being called an “Immigration Law” far and wide in the press when it is, in fact, a vote of no confidence in the federal government and secession from it. Given the wide publicity a few weeks ago of Virginia’s celebration of what state officials argued was a War of Secession, you would think that the concept of secession would be fresh in the minds of media reporters.
As I have argued here on many occasions and as former President Bill Clinton reminded everyone last weekend, words mean something, and we should be careful about how we select our vocabulary. Immigration law can be enacted only by a country, not by a state. This is not an immigration law and resembles immigration law far less than it does the use of national I.D. cards to classify groups as seen in Nazi Germany.
In the event that Arizona is on your itinerary and you do not have a current U.S. passport, of course it is our beautiful and efficient Head Homegirl to the rescue. Just go here to her website. She will make sure you are protected while within the borders of the Country of Arizona.
In case you missed this historic occasion, here is the video.
more about “Arizona“, posted with vodpod
Okay, after you had to be subjected to that, here is one of my favorite pictures of the lovely Secretary of State to rinse your eyes on. Is she not the prettiest SOS you have ever seen? Goddess!
Read Full Post » | <urn:uuid:b94dc3dd-fc11-4b78-ae0d-bdba612c32ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://departmentofhomegirlsecurity.wordpress.com/tag/arizona/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972396 | 647 | 1.828125 | 2 |
After talking to Dad, Fynn changes the marks in all the boxes from Native American/American Indian to white. Why do you think he does this?
What does Mrs. Owen's home tell you about her as a person?
When Rain finds out that the rumor about her and Galen involves them at least making out, she says, “I wonder if this was how it felt to be Lorelei.” Why does Rain make this connection? What does it suggest about Lorelei's reputation and gossip about girls in general? Have you ever had a particularly hard time with gossip before? How did Rain or Lorelei's situation compare to yours?
When Rain talks to Fynn, she tells him, “It's your fiancée and the baby you never bothered to tell me about.” Is Rain just upset, worried about Natalie? Or has she been angry with her brother for some reason? Why do you think she feels this way? Does she really know what's been happening between Fynn and Natalie? Is she tired of change? Does she feel left out? Or protective? What do you think?
Because of their talk in this chapter, Rain says, “For all the land and ocean between us, Dad had understood more than I ever would've guessed.” Does this father-daughter connection come as any kind of surprise to you? Why or why not? | <urn:uuid:46c6cef5-6853-45e5-bcde-14f9f5ed16d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.com/cyn_books_forkids/rain/rain_chapters/12_didsomebodysay.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986042 | 293 | 1.6875 | 2 |
|Colombo Declaration of the 15th SAARC Summit - Tourism|
|Friday, 08 August 2008 00:00|
Page 12 of 22
24. The Heads of State or Government underscored the vital contribution that tourism could afford to the economic development of the SAARC region. They agreed to make every effort to implement the comprehensive action plan adopted by the Second Ministerial Meeting held at Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. These efforts would include facilitating the movement of people through improved travel infrastructure and air, sea and land connectivity among the SAARC countries, collaboration in human resource development and the promotion of SAARC as a common destination through public-private partnerships and joint campaigns. | <urn:uuid:a5db341c-4be6-45a4-85d7-bdd8deabb282> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slmission.com/statements/90-mission-statements/167-colombo-declaration-of-the-15th-saarc-summit.html?start=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934515 | 138 | 1.6875 | 2 |
2. Lincoln did enjoy an evening stroll about Washington and might have taken down a vampire or two some night. But probably not.
3. Henry Ward Beecher decried avarice for visiting young men "in dreams, and vampire-like" feasting on its victim. This was in one of his "Seven Lectures to Young Men," delivered early in his career, before he became the subject of the sex scandal of the century . . . for preying vampire-like on one of the women in his congregation.
Actually the most UnDead thing about Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter may be that Johnny Cash seems to be doing the voiceover from beyond the grave. | <urn:uuid:737fd3b9-414f-48a6-840d-056f0d82db27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://loisleveen.com/index.php/site/blog-single-entry/80/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975398 | 138 | 1.640625 | 2 |
House & Senate Races
Sun November 11, 2012
Senate Win In Wis. A 'Turning Point' For Gay Rights
Originally published on Sun November 11, 2012 2:05 pm
Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin's sexual orientation was never really a factor in her victorious campaign against Republican former Gov. Tommy Thompson. Advocates for gay rights see that as a watershed moment for the movement.
Baldwin won a seat many thought she couldn't, defeating one of the state's most successful politicians in the process. The celebration Tuesday night in Madison was euphoric.
The enthusiastic crowd was never louder than when Baldwin acknowledged making history.
"I am well aware that I will be the first openly gay member of the U.S. Senate," she said.
Not About Being Gay
Afterward, supporters like Linda Willsey remained "sky-high."
"Dreams do come true in politics," says Willsey, who has known Baldwin for more than 25 years.
"The fact that she's the first openly lesbian woman candidate to win a U.S. Senate seat is great, but that's not why she won," she says. "It wasn't even an issue in this race."
In fact, the words "gay candidate" were rarely — if ever — spoken on the campaign trail. Baldwin, instead, mostly talked about two other words: "middle class."
Analysts say Baldwin won primarily on the same issues as President Obama in Wisconsin, including the economy.
"No one was questioning whether or not she could lead because of her sexual orientation, and that's so amazing," says Katie Belanger, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, a statewide gay rights advocacy group.
Belanger says the fact that Wisconsin voters didn't seem to care about Baldwin's sexual orientation — combined with Tuesday's victories for marriage equality in neighboring Minnesota and in three other states — represents a major step forward.
"I think that when we look back on the movement for LGBT equality, we're going to look at Nov. 6, 2012, as a significant turning point, if not the turning point in this movement," she says.
Joining The Conversation
For Baldwin, the milestone of being the first openly gay candidate elected to the U.S. Senate is the latest in a series of firsts. She was the first openly gay candidate elected to the Wisconsin Assembly, and the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to Congress.
Based on those experiences, Baldwin says this historic election changes things in one specific way.
"If you are not in the room, the conversation is about you. If you're in the room, the conversation is with you, and that ... has a very transformative effect," she says.
Baldwin says she doesn't have a specific gay-rights agenda she'll immediately push in the Senate. She says her top priority will be the issues she talked about in the campaign, including preserving Medicare, middle-class tax cuts, creating jobs and fixing the economy.
But she also notes that what happened Tuesday reflects a "sea change" in voters' attitudes toward gays, lesbians and marriage equality in just a few short years.
"There were several glass ceilings smashed on Tuesday, and ... I'm proud to have been one of those," she says.
To be sure, Baldwin and others say the gay-rights movement still has a long way to go, but never before has it gained so much on one Election Day. | <urn:uuid:efc4b45e-1319-4934-b996-a44318406cbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wmra.org/post/senate-win-wis-turning-point-gay-rights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980981 | 707 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Wow! What a year for the Museum. As well as the permanent collections which were admired by thousands of visitors, we have had a year of awe-inspiring temporary exhibitions and displays cleverly curated by Museum staff and visiting curators.
The year began part way through an exhibition of Dutch Landscapes kindly loaned from the Royal Collection by Her Majesty The Queen. With artists such as Aelbert Cuyp, the 17th Century Dutch painters focused on the countryside and the sea to convey a pride in their homeland following the Eighty Years War with Spain. Influences from Italy could be seen in the poetic luminosity and warm tones of the 38 paintings which we had on show until March.
Jan van der Heyden-A country house on the Vliet near Delft ©2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
The Fashion & Textile Gallery began the year as host to two beautiful exhibitions. Paquin Winter 1911 celebrated the centenary of an evening gown created by French fashion designer, Madame Paquin, who was credited as being the first female couturier to have founded fashion houses abroad, and Study, Design & Create: The 98 Lace Group featured stunning works of art by some of the country’s greatest makers of contemporary lace, inspired by the Museum’s own internationally significant Blackbourne Lace Collection.
Evening Gown designed by Madame Paquin
Study, Design, Create: The 98 Lace Group
At Easter we reflected upon the subject matter of one of our most treasured pieces, El Greco’s moving painting, The Tears of St Peter. Visitors to the Easter display admired the celebrated work alongside some other formerly unseen works by Spanish artists and marble sculptures from the permanent collections. Meanwhile, June Crisfield Chapman’s display of wood engravings delighted visitors with their liveliness of line and ability to express rhythm and character with themes of plant forms and characters from literature and the theatre.
El Greco’s The Tear’s of St Peter
June Crisfield Chapman’s wood engraving ‘Echinopsis’
In April, the Museum unveiled a programme of Contemporary Art & Fashion. Six month pass holders were able to return time-and-again to see five contemporary exhibitions spread over the ensuing months. In the Fashion & Textile Gallery visitors were able to take in the wonders of an intricately created wedding dress by Lucile, Fashion Designer & Titanic Survivor, and enthuse over the exuberant creations of international milliner, Stephen Jones: From Georgiana to Boy George whose captivating hats habitually adorn celebrities and royalty.
Wedding dress designed by Lucile, Titanic Survivor
Stephen Jones with swan headdress designed for Giles Deacon’s Spring Summer collection
Elsewhere in the Museum they could explore the turbulent relationship of artists Frieda Kahlo & Diego Rivera in a photographic exhibition, Complicidades highlighting their careers during the time of the Mexican Revolution, or marvel at the bronze sculptures of Sensation Generation’s Keith Coventry, Black Bronze White Slaves, featuring dark themes of urban decay and the decline of society. And for two weeks during the Summer visitors could watch historical costumier, Luca Costigliolo, of BBC2 Victorian and Edwardian Farm fame, recreating a pink dress worn by our founder, Joséphine in her portrait.
Keith Coventry’s Kebab Machine, courtesy of Haunch of Venison Gallery
And whilst the nation was enjoying unrivalled glory in the London 2012 Olympics, we had our own display of local sporting heroes’ memorabilia and a programme of events including inspirational talks by Rebecca Jenkins, Robert Swan OBE and Graham Ratcliffe MBE, a sport-themed family fun day, kite making and cycle maintenance workshops and a film show. Our Sporting Life was opened by local equestrian and Olympic medal winner, Karen Dixon, and contained medals and trophies, such as the replica of the football World Cup won by West Auckland in 1909/1911, photographs and sports equipment belonging to sportsmen and women from Teesdale and its surrounding area.
Sporting memorabilia as part of Our Sporting Life exhibition
After a decidedly damp Summer, with flash floods in Barnard Castle in July leading to a bowling green which looked more like a swimming pool, we were blessed with glorious sunshine and balmy temperatures for the Park Opening on Sunday 2nd September. David Bellamy did the honours of opening our park redevelopments by cutting a hand woven vine made by the Friends of The Bowes Museum suspended between two hand-carved totem poles leading to the new children’s playground. Following Pimms in the grounds, and bird-themed children’s craft activities, visitors were wowed by Ben Potter’s birds of prey on the parterre gardens at the front of the Museum.
David Bellamy opening the redeveloped Museum park
Ben Potter’s Birds of Prey
Autumn began in a flurry of colour, feasting and celebration of all things foodie! Following an interesting display of local artists’ work promoting Teesdale Open Studios, and an exhibition of varied works by local artist, Linda Birch, illustrator of Bagpuss and Simon and The Witch, came Feast Your Eyes: The Fashion of Food in Art.
Work by Ann Whitfield, part of Teesdale Artist’s Network
Linda Birch’s Bagpuss illustration
Celebrating the representation of food over the past five centuries, Feast your Eyes explored fashions in food and drink throughout Europe from the 16th to the 21st Century. As well as a recreation of a Victorian Supper from a watercolour kindly loaned by Lord Salisbury of Hatfield House by food historian Ivan Day, and four 3D maquettes created by Philip Haas after Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons, the exhibition was a riot of colour and exuberance with paintings from our own collection as well as loans from the Tate, Goldsmiths Company and the Laing, to name but a few. To accompany the exhibition, The Bowes Museum Cookbook was published with recipes created by our award-winning Café Bowes Chef, Ben and Rosemary Shrager, of recent I’m a Celebrity fame, opened the exhibition with great gusto.
Feast Your Eyes exhibition – recreation of a Victorian supper
Rosemary Shrager signing copies of The Bowes Museum Cookbook at the preview
A display of Charles Dickens memorabilia, complete with replica house, has run all year in The Streatlam Galleries, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of Dicken’s birth in February, and Northumbria University’s Fashion Marketing Students have displayed their work celebrating the Titanic Legacy in the Fashion & Textiles Gallery throughout December.
Replica Charles Dickens house kindly loaned by Margaret Watson
Work by Northumbria University’s Fashion Marketing students entitled Titanic Legacy
As if that was not enough to entice visitors, 2012 has seen lots of events, from seasonal outdoor markets, to family fun days and children’s workshops, an antiques fair, gallery talks, daffodil planting, opulent weddings, car rallies, a Mexican Fiesta, a tea tasting, outdoor theatre and numerous concerts.
Go Wild Family Fun Day in February
Mexican Fiesta in June as part of Vamos! Festival 2012
Santa’s Grotto at the Christmas Market in December
And finally, our beautiful Silver Swan has played, barring a few day’s conservation, every day this year at 2.00pm. The 240 year old automaton has this year been recognised as featuring in Australian Booker Prize winner, Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears, about a clock expert who is given an automaton to restore while dealing with the loss of her lover. The heroine is as bewitched by the Silver Swan as visitors are today.
The Silver Swan plays every day at 2.00pm
Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears
The Bowes Museum would like to thank all those who have visited in 2012. Wishing you all a very Happy New Year and hope to see you in 2013!
By Alison Nicholson, Digital Communications Officer
An article about our Silver Swan appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal, written by freelance writer Richard Holledge, Magic Wrought by a Merlin:
The BBC’s Meet the Author with Peter Carey, describes his storyline and the inclusion of an automaton in The Chemistry of Tears: | <urn:uuid:0920c983-6e1d-4702-937d-812ef29bcb0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebowesmuseum.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939093 | 1,757 | 1.773438 | 2 |
23903_000_009Three members share insights discovered during regular scripture study.
The word of the Lord in the scriptures is like a lamp to guide our feet (see Ps. 119:105), and revelation is like a mighty force that increases the lamp’s illumination manyfold,” says Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “We encourage everyone to make careful study of the scriptures and of the prophetic teachings concerning them and to prayerfully seek personal revelation to know their meaning for themselves” (“Scripture Reading and Revelation,” Ensign, Jan. 1995, 7). The following accounts from members offer insights gleaned from study of and prayer about the scriptures.
Serving with Sincerity
Reading again of Ammon’s brave encounter with the Lamanites at the waters of Sebus reminded me that Ammon did not seek his own glory. Instead of marching triumphantly at the head of the other servants, he went back to the stables and readied the king’s horses for a trip to see Lamoni’s father.
Ammon’s intention upon leaving the land of Zarahemla to live with the Lamanites was to “cure them of their hatred towards the Nephites, that they might also be brought to rejoice in the Lord their God, that they might become friendly to one another, and that there should be no more contentions in all the land” (Mosiah 28:2). Ammon was offered three opportunities for power that would have given him great influence among the Lamanites. First, King Lamoni offered Ammon his daughter to be his wife (see Alma 17:24). Then, after the events at the waters of Sebus, Lamoni offered him anything he desired, including protection by the Lamanite armies (see Alma 18:21). Shortly thereafter, Lamoni’s father offered Ammon anything he asked, up to half the entire kingdom of the Lamanites (see Alma 20:23). All three of these offers could have given Ammon great influence.
Yet Ammon turned down these opportunities. I wondered why, and then I recalled the passage in Doctrine and Covenants 121:41–42 [D&C 121:41–42] that reads: “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
“By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile.”
I realized that through Ammon’s genuine display of love and dedication, King Lamoni came to realize that Ammon truly wanted to serve him and was not in his kingdom to gain control or to destroy him. Lamoni’s father also came to accept the sincerity of Ammon’s purpose and even asked to be taught the gospel.
Ammon’s love for the Lamanites was sincere. I believe that he was a powerful missionary not because he was physically or mentally strong but because he dealt with others with genuine love.
, Vienna Ward, Oakton Virginia Stake
Placing Others First
For me, one of the most revealing scriptural texts about the Savior’s example is in Philippians 2 [Philip. 2]. Although not frequently quoted, it is an important reference in guiding us to make correct choices. The imprisoned Apostle Paul wrote this epistle to the Saints in Philippi, the earliest congregation he founded in Europe. Although the Apostle Paul seems to have had a special affection for the Philippian Saints, he was concerned about dissension within the Church that apparently was being fueled by the pride and selfishness of some of the members. So he taught them that the key is to have “this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philip. 2:5)—in other words, to think and act like the Savior.
But how did the Savior think and act? The interesting passage that follows is a poetic form that may well have been an early Christian hymn, possibly already familiar to the Philippian Saints:
“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
“But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
“And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
The first line in the Greek version of this passage is literally “being already in the form of God.” The text then points out the distinction between the glorious Lord of pre-earthly life and His mortal appearance as a “servant.” This contrast brings to mind the comparison of the son and servant in the Old Testament extended family unit. Historically, the firstborn son was the most important person in the family next to the father. It was he who would inherit the larger portion of the estate and probably ultimately assume leadership of the family. Servants had no such natural privileges. Therefore, the comparison of son and servant symbolizes those of highest and lowest rank, respectively. For the eldest son to voluntarily give up his rank and inheritance and assume the role of a servant would be astonishing.
Thus, an important teaching of this text is the Savior’s infinite selflessness. In the premortal realm the Lord did not seek His own aggrandizement but chose to become a servant to all in bringing about the Atonement.
The next lines in Philippians show the Savior’s willingness to put aside His own comfort. Faced with suffering and death on the cross, He could retreat and seek His own comfort and safety or follow through with His vital mission of service. The choice between fulfilling Heavenly Father’s purposes and seeking our immediate comfort often faces us, as it did the Philippian Saints. When faced with such choices, we should look to the Savior for our example, as the Apostle Paul emphasized.
Our yielding to selfishness is usually associated with a limited perspective rather than a consideration of the ultimate consequences. Thus, the text emphasizes the outcome of the Savior’s choices from an eternal perspective. Because He was willing to give up personal position in order to serve others and because He remained committed to His promises despite sufferings greater than any of us could bear, He was able to bring about the Atonement. Through this, He found infinitely greater joy in the fruits of His work than He could have realized without His sacrifice. As our perfect and personal example, He is constantly challenging us to follow Him.
, Valley View 12th Ward, Salt Lake Valley View Stake
Drawing Near to the Lord in Our Weakness
Perhaps as some others, I’ve felt there are some parts of my personality that I wished weren’t there. Saddened by these flaws and troubled at my lack of progress in overcoming them over the years, I sought help in the scriptures.
I received new hope after reading Ether 12:27: “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”
This scripture is familiar, but when I read it again while pondering some of my problem areas, it struck me with new meaning. I realized I needed to find for myself how the Lord viewed me if I am to discover each weakness and, with His help, make it a strength. Also, the idea that God helps us recognize our weaknesses is a wonderful reason to talk to Him! It was then that I felt His guidance directing me toward new growth.
My first awareness of His guiding hand came shortly after my scripture experience, while attending a class on anger—because I thought someone else needed it. The instructor asked me to describe how I was doing in regard to anger. I could tell him more about how the strangers in the class felt than I could find words to tell how I was feeling. Suddenly it came to me that we often possess weaknesses we see in others.
This realization brought added meaning to the Savior’s teachings on the Sermon on the Mount when He said, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matt. 7:3).
The discovery that some of the characteristics I have the least tolerance for in others are sometimes my own shortcomings was eye-opening and humbling. By focusing on my own growth and progress, I have learned I need not spend time worrying about others. I am now better able to admit my wrongs. Instead of justifying my mistakes, I now sorrow for them, try to forsake them, and repent. And surprisingly, embracing the fact that I have shortcomings has allowed me to understand some personal character strengths, like being outgoing, aware of others, and open-minded.
Moroni relates the Lord’s promise to him regarding this: “And because thou hast seen thy weakness thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father” (Ether 12:37; emphasis added).
This scripture study has made me more conscious of my personal responsibilities.
Proverbs 3:4–6 [Prov. 3:4–6] says: “So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” I have found when I do so, ultimately I’m happier.
, Riverton Seventh Ward, Riverton Utah North Stake | <urn:uuid:b80f8a82-7aef-4f52-8107-85d4af885174> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/03/feasting-on-the-word?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971409 | 2,146 | 1.789063 | 2 |
|Chronological and political information|
Doctor Shilaea Motacc was a female Human scientist. A prestigious expert in planetary propulsion and large-scale propulsion systems before she was thirty, Motacc was an unwitting pawn for dark Jedi Karae Nalvas in his scheme to build a flying city to wreck havoc in the planet Genarius in 31 BBY. When she discovered the truth, she left Nalvas and joined his enemies in an attempt to stop the chaos she had helped to build.
Born in 60 BBY, Shilaea Motacc became a scientist and a recognized expert and researcher in her specialized field, large-scale propulsion for both planets and planetary platforms, before she was three decades old. As she had always been fascinated by the unrelated field of archaeology, Motacc also found time to work in archaeological probing projects, getting some field experience. She had already worked as an independent researcher in propulsion for a number of years before 31 BBY.
Motacc was then approached by Fesvk Wefos, a manager of Usable Resource Location, Recovery, and Development Corporation, with a job offer. Wefos told Motacc that U.R.L.R.D. wanted to expand their operations to the gas giant Genarius, in the Cularin system, and wanted to hire her for the development of a new propulsion system for flying cities. However, Wefos was really a dark Jedi, Karae Nalvas, who aimed to build a flying fortress with which he could attack and destroy the cities of Genarius. Nalvas used the Force and his personal charm to convince Motacc without revealing his identity or scheme.
Motacc joined U.R.L.R.D., and was given a vacation in Rorkee, a resort city of Genarius, as a bonus. Rorkee featured simulated archaeological digs with supposed proofs of pre-Republic aliens inhabiting Dorumaa, and Motacc was eager to visit them. U.R.L.R.D. wanted to send some college students later, to join Dr. Motacc and research with her.
During her vacation, Motacc visited the Sanads of Rorkee hotel, befriended sabacc ringer Kli-Klu Niib and repeatedly visited the Cabana Bar to enjoy barman Hurrwarr's Double-Dip Outer Rim Rumdrops.
Some of Nalvas's business partners were looking for a less-than-licit way to profit from Motacc's abilities, and were ready to obtain her help forcefully. They organized a kidnapping to take place during a caused cave-in, with local archaeologist and guide Blibbie helping them ensure that nobody would be harmed in the disaster. The conspirators, who found jobs in the dig site, would take Motacc to a work area under the Sanads building and retain her there in a prepared cage. The only access to their lair was through a tunnel ending in the hotel's kitchen.
The capture was a success, even if Motacc had a chance to kick several of the sentients grabbing her. Motacc was secretly confined, and Rorkee's authorities notified her accidental decease.
Motacc's wardens did not want to reveal their identities or any information leading to them. She was kept in a cage with weight-sensitive alarms, and watched by two guards. She was visited by an unidentified hooded male sentient, who said that his master would be satisfied to use Motacc's knowledge to finish his job. Beyond that, she only heard partial conversations with no useful information.
Motacc's kidnappers took her personal effects from the hotel to the dig site, apparently to avoid the kitchen entrance. They also bought all the available Double-Dip Outer Rim Rumdrops from the Cantina Bar, paying in cash but forgetting there the glasses of one of them. Some of them visited local masseur Ulo Enan because of their injuries during the capture. Several of the involved dig workers, including Bibble, began behaving strangely. Although Rorkee's authorities refused to answer any question about the happening, or to return Mottac's corpse to her relatives, many locals such as the bellsentients Ta'Sen and Trago Smusch, believed that Dr. Motacc was still alive.
Karae Nalvas, wanting to recover his minion, pretended to be worried boss Wefos and hired some independent adventurers. Nalvas sent them to Rorkee, where they pretended to be college students sent by U.R.L.R.D. The adventurers eventually found and rescue Motacc, although the guilty people's identities were still unknown.
Soon afterward, Nalvas's old enemy Alec, a Jedi Knight, discovered Wefos's secret identity and began hoarding contacts and resources to fight him. Alec stole the blueprints of the flying city Nalvas had been building, Conkesta and copied them in case Nalvas could recover his originals. Nalvas unsuccessfully took measures to kill Alec.
At the same time, Motacc discovered that some of her new workmates were involved in her previous kidnapping in Rorkee. Scared, Motacc looked for a way to escape. She found or was found by Alec and some contacts of his, who were eager to help Motacc. After discovering Nalvas's true plans, Motacc agreed to assist Alec and his friends in their own plan to stop Nalvas.
Motacc told Alec that the Conkesta had an important, still-unsolved deffect in its propulsion software: The correct string of commands could disable the controls and sent the city to space, where it would surely explode as it was not spaceworthy. Motacc and several of Alec's slicer friends worked together to develop a computer virus to cause that effect once uploaded in the propulsion system main control. However, unbeknownst to them, their obviously-untested program would really cause the opposite effect: Instead of catapulting the city away from the planet core, it would make it fall to the core.
Alec and Motacc met with the heroes of Cularin in the Bath Rabbud's. Alec wanted the so-called heroes to perform an individual raid in the Conkesta with the specific purpose of accessing the main computer and loading the virus. Motacc explained the workings of her code, the data she knew about the Conkesta and her personal motivations in the same briefing. Motacc, who was not a fighter, would not participate in the raid; and Alec vainly tried to stop Nalvas elsewhere while the heroes of Cularin were busy with their mission. The Conkesta was destroyed when it fell to the planet core.
Personality and traitsEdit
She was a brilliant and passionate researcher. Due to her expertise in planetary propulsion and its uses for large-scale artificial propulsion systems, in 31 BBY she was considered one of the greatest young minds in her field in the whole galaxy. She was also a talented archaeologist and at that point she had worked in several research projects and academic digs.
Motacc was a strong-willed, courageous young woman: She attacked the people trying to overpower her even if she was alone, unarmed and against a clearly-prepared, numerically-superior force in Rorkee. Later, when she was thrown into a cage, she withstood her seizure and, apparently, suffered no permanent sequels after her liberation. She was not fearless, however: When she discovered that some of her new fellow workers had been after her ordeal, she felt worried and looked for a way out. Once the Jedi Alec helped her, Motacc bravely offered to help him against a powerful and sly dark Jedi—although she herself ran little physical risk. | <urn:uuid:7ec6ab2b-eb4c-45f2-b32c-287faaf62316> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shilaea_Motacc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979486 | 1,596 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The glittering 81st Annual Academy Awards have just ended, showering prestigious honors on its winners, and pumping lots of money into the economy.
February 23, 2009 4:38 by Aarti Nagraj
The Oscars are given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a body that was founded in 1927 by 36 influential people in the motion picture industry at the time. It’s an honorary membership organization, and currently includes more than 6,000 artists and professionals.
Apart from the Annual Academy Awards, the body runs several events throughout the year including public screenings, exhibitions, panel discussions, tributes, and lectures, gives out grants and scholarships for media study. It also produces merchandise like posters and books. | <urn:uuid:94310cd4-494b-463f-8f82-fbc0f55dcab0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kippreport.com/fcs/the-oscars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958475 | 150 | 1.78125 | 2 |
(KMOV) -- A News 4 investigation into where Missouri food stamps are being spent is catching the attention of lawmakers in Jefferson City.
In January 3,521,974 worth of food stamps were spent outside the state, including transactions in places like Hawaii, Florida, and California. During that same time period 363,682 dollars worth of TANF benefits (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) were withdrawn from ATMs outside Missouri.
Mark Parkinson (R-District 16) is pitching legislation to change where Missouri EBT benefits can be accessed. Click here to see House Bill 816.
Parkinson said, "I would like to see 100 percent of the money funneled through the federal government to the state, to a food stamp recipient to be spent in Missouri, to help Missouri retailers."
Jeanette Oxford (D-District 59) said she will challenge Parkinson's legislation. Oxford says the food stamp program is scrutinized, and contains very little fraud. She also said there are many logical reasons why food stamp and TANF recipients need to spend the benefits outside Missouri. Oxford said, "In the cases of people who might be in California or Hawaii, a friend of mine just spent four months in Utah as her mother was dying. People on food stamps sometimes have those family emergencies."
News 4 also spoke with Wendy Evans, she worked as a caseworker until retiring in 2006. Evans said, "Unfortunately there were lots of cases of fraud that we would find out about and the real unfortunate part was very little was done about it." Evans says improving the program would require adding more food stamp fraud investigators. The state of Missouri currently has 20 people to investigate food stamp fraud.
According to Mark Parkinson the bill would contain a provision allowing members of the military to continue receiving Missouri EBT if they are required to move out of state. A spokeswoman at Ft. Leonard Wood tells News 4 the number of military members receiving public aid is small, they are still working to provide a number.
News 4 will continue tracking the progress of House Bill 816. | <urn:uuid:3f6f2538-9850-4e0b-9610-6c957bf8d09d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kmov.com/news/broke/Missouri-Lawmaker-Proposes-Changes-to-Food-Stamp-Program-117717968.html?ref=prev | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978458 | 423 | 1.617188 | 2 |
We wave goodbye to the spectacular past two weeks of the London Olympics and hand over the Olympic flag to Rio De Janeiro. In sight of this, we see the emergence of the identity created by Brazilian design group Tátil Design.
“Imagine a brand born with a huge challenge: to represent the Passion and Transformation of a city and an entire country, and project these values to the rest of the world.
A brand that must express unity. Inspire achievement and optimism. Avoid clichés and present Rio de Janeiro as the site of the largest sporting event in the world — to its very own Cariocas, and to athletes and people around the world.
This important and much coveted project united 138 Brazilian design and branding companies around a shared dream: to design the brand that would become part of our city’s history and of the history of the Olympic Games.
That was the beginning of the project that granted Tátil the pleasure and privilege of creating the brand for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
THE TÁTIL WAY OF BUILDING A BRAND
By using design and branding as powerful tools, Tátil designs ideas that connect people and brands in a sustainable fashion, creating memorable experiences.
Tátil believes that in order to maintain sustainable relationships with its target audiences, brands need to take social responsibility and contribute to the transformation of our current scenario.
More than design, more than form, each brand must have a soul and a purpose.
We work as a multidisciplinary creative team, combining innovation with in-depth research, to ensure that we reveal the goal behind each brand.
A vision of the future, reflected in a series of daily guidelines and practices, serves to strengthen the brand’s presence in people’s lives and its commitment to transforming the present, thus generating value for all people.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
This thought process guided us throughout the creative process.
We brought together a multidisciplinary team in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
We researched the universe of the brand and its previous incarnations, as well as other competitions and international events.
We wanted to truly understand the underlying structures behind Passion, Transformation and the Cariocas.
We created several Rio 2016 planets and pollinated each one with multiple references, concepts, trends and articles.
We conducted brainstorming sessions to discover its essence, its purpose and explore how to create relevant expressions and experiences.
More than 40 people, including strategists, designers and editors, participated in the process.
The team exchanged the best references and further developed these collectively.
The final brand was the result of a truly collaborative effort.” | <urn:uuid:7f50bfc1-03b8-4251-b4c5-ac43877b7cb0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theenglishgroup.co.uk/blog/2012/08/13/rio-2016/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932241 | 549 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The idea of the park - which will be built on land on Nevada and Orange avenues and Barton Road - has been in discussion for several years, with some concept plans going back to 1996, said Fred Cardenas, director of the Quality of Life Department.
In anticipation of the city's 125th anniversary, City Manager N. Enrique Martinez asked Cardenas and his staff to put concept plans together in time for the year-long celebration.
Six or seven community organizations from a variety of focuses were invited to meet with Cardenas and company to discuss what elements they would like to see in the park.
Those ideas were collected and presented to Shawn Burch, president of Landscape Architect Inc., who then implemented them into concept design plans.
"(He) came up with three different layouts...and the final design concept (comprised) all three designs and input from the groups," Cardenas said.
The park's mission is to provide all residents educational opportunities that interpret the history of Redlands through its various periods.
To help that mission succeed, 11 amenities were added to concept plans.
They include a 150- to 200-person capacity amphitheater, "zone transition" structures, a riparian zone, a Native American "village," an ethno-botanical and water conservation demonstration garden, a Zanja reconstruction area, an archeological dig, a vineyard, a replicated water wheel and a historic citrus grove.
Since the park will be adjacent to Grove School, Barton House and the Asistencia Museum, various stakeholders for the park have indicated additional amenities would help create a true learning experience, city officials said.
The additional amenities include direct connections to both the Barton House and Asistencia, a public restroom building in addition to the Barton School House, a renovated animal pen, a bus loading zone, safe school street crossing, an Inland Empire Resource Conservation District, an olive and fruit tree grove, an arboretum area showcasing native tree species, a park maintenance garage, an organic garden for Grove School, an area for a Farmers Market and an accessible trail systems throughout the park.
Dozens of trees donated by Jack Dangermond will also make up much of the park, Cardenas said.
Students, staff and administrators at The Grove are looking forward to seeing the park become a reality, especially to support curriculum.
A Montessori-based public charter school, The Grove teaches its students "real world" activities through experiences.
Once the park is built, students from the school will do some of their work there, said Grove Principal Gena Engelfried.
"It will be the ideal opportunity for the school to be larger in the community when it comes to engagement," she said.
Since there is currently a vacant piece of land, which was donated to the city, students already see it as a park, Engelfried said.
"And they already see themselves as stewards of the park," she said.
Cardenas said he does not have a plan for when construction on the park will begin, but the city is making strides on the permits needed and plans.
"We think that by mid-January or at the end of January we will be ready to do all the work in terms of planting," he said, adding that plans could change depending on what the City Council directs the city to do.
How it will be paid for is another hurdle that needs to be taken care of, he said.
Despite those bumps in the road, talk around town is positive when it comes to the park and plans, Cardenas said.
"There are some groups, particularly the ones who have been working on this for 10, 12 years, that would love to see this project go forward," he said. "(But) we will have to wait and see." | <urn:uuid:7d761b6f-68cc-4ddf-b44e-dad52ddd5823> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/ucla/ci_22141775/plans-heritage-park-redlands-unveiled | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968867 | 786 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Bluegrass and Modern Country Music – kissin’ cousins or estranged relations ? Although they claim common ancestry (Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry and Bill Monroe were all hugely influenced by Jimmie Rodgers, and many others were influenced by the Original Carter Family), it has been many years since modern country and bluegrass music split off in different directions from their acoustic string band origins. Up until the end of the 1960s you could hear bluegrass played by some country radio stations (most frequently by smaller stations located in more rural areas), and artists such as Jimmie Skinner, the Willis Brothers, Lee Moore, Grandpa Jones and Frank “Hylo” Brown straddled the two genres. Mainstream artists such as Skeeter Davis, Carl Smith, Porter Wagoner and the duo of George Jones & Melba Montgomery would record albums of bluegrass songs. By the end of the 1960s, however, bluegrass was nearly extinct on country radio. True, there were a few songs, usually associated with movies (“Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” “Dueling Banjos”) or television shows (“The Ballad of Jed Clampett”), which achieved some airplay, but those were few and far between.
Today bluegrass is largely banished from country radio. Yes, various performers such as Keith Urban or Rascal Flatts will gratuitously drop a banjo or a mandolin into their songs, but their music isn’t bluegrass. Yes, artists such as Alison Krauss or Rhonda Vincent will occasionally grace a Nashville artist’s album as a duet partner for a song or two, but those songs really aren’t bluegrass either. And yes, the soundtrack to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, sold millions of copies – but how often did your local country station play any of the songs from the soundtrack?
The last bluegrass act regularly to receive country radio airplay was the duo of banjo player Roland “Sonny” Osborne (born 10/29/37) and his mandolin-playing brother, Bobby Osborne (born 12/9/1931). Sonny and Bobby were born in Hyden, Kentucky, but when Sonny was very young, the family moved near Dayton, Ohio where they had their first experiences as performers. As children, their father instilled a love for traditional music. Bobby picked up the electric guitar as a teenager and played in various local bands. A few years after his brother began playing the guitar, Sonny picked up the banjo. Both were greatly influenced by the likes of Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Alton & Rabon Delmore and Bill Monroe.
Being six years older, Bobby was first out of the gate. During the autumn of 1949, he and friend/banjoist Larry Richardson joined the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. This effectively changed the band from Delmore Brothers sound-alikes into a pioneering bluegrass band. They recorded a number of sides together including the original version of “Pain In My Heart.”
In 1950, 13 year old Sonny joined his brother in the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers. Following his tenure with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Bobby joined forces with Jimmy Martin to form a band called the ‘Sunny Mountain Boys’. Following the breakup with Martin, Bobby briefly joined the Stanley Brothers, singing high baritone above Carter’s lead and Ralph’s tenor. Unfortunately, before this trio was able to record, Bobby was drafted into the military in November of 1951.
During Bobby’s military service Sonny continued his musical career. During the summers of 1952 and 1953, Sonny played banjo for Bill Monroe. Also, Sonny recorded a number of singles for small record labels such as Kentucky and Gateway. I do not know how many sides were released by Gateway, but I am aware of at least forty-two songs being recorded, featuring Sonny on banjo and vocals, Carlos Brock on guitar and vocals, Billy Thomas on fiddle, Smokey Ward on bass and Enos Johnson on mandolin and vocals.
In late 1953, Bobby & Sonny teamed up with Jimmy Martin and performed on a local Detroit radio station billed as “Jimmy Martin and The Osborne Brothers.” Bobby & Sonny lasted two years with the mercurial Martin, during which time they recorded a few singles for RCA. They left in 1956 to work with Charlie Bailey on the WWVA Big Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia, where they would stay for four years. A few months later they joined forces with lead singer Harley “Red” Allen and formed their own band–thereafter becoming known as the Osborne Brothers.
Shortly after joining forces with Red Allen, The Osborne Brothers signed a deal with MGM records. Their fifth single for MGM, “Once More,” reached #13 in 1958. While no more singles charted nationally for MGM (many of their records were regional hits), the Osborne Brothers continued to record, refining their sound. Red Allen left the group after the first album, but Sonny & Bobby soldiered onward, with other outstanding vocalists such as Benny Birchfield helping complete the harmony trios. They would record three more albums for MGM before leaving for Decca in late 1963. Many of these albums included songs that would later become hits when re-recorded for Decca.
The Decca years found Sonny and Bobby experimenting with the instrumentation of their music. They experimented slowly at first, using an electric bass, then added additional instruments such as steel guitar and piano, and Sonny’s own creation, the electric six-string banjo. The hybrid country bluegrass sound proved quite popular with fans and disc jockeys alike. They were soon booked on the major country package shows of the day. With their voices being featured on their own major label recordings and on others from Conway Twitty to Bill Monroe, their name became synonymous with harmony singing. From 1966 to 1976, the Osborne Brothers would chart 16 times. While none of these songs were huge national hits, the records sold well and were mostly huge hits in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic areas. Several of their songs such as “Ruby (Are You Mad),” “Roll Muddy River,” “Son of A Sawmill Man” and “Rocky Top” became bluegrass standards, with the latter even being designated as an official Tennessee State song.
The Osborne Brothers were inducted as members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1964. They were voted as the CMA’s “Vocal Group of the Year” in 1971, and received nominations in the category in 1970, 1974 and 1975. From 1971-1978 they were honored by Music City News as the nation’s top bluegrass group. Along the way, they became one of the first major bluegrass groups to appear extensively at bluegrass festivals.
The eighteenth (and last) charted single for Sonny & Bobby was “I Can Hear Kentucky Calling Me” in early 1980, which peaked at #75. By 1980, the chasm between the sound of bluegrass and modern country music had grown too deep for bluegrass to get any airplay on country radio. Ricky Skaggs would have considerable success on country radio during the years just ahead, but the records that charted well for Skaggs were far less grassy than the hybrids that the Osborne Brothers had been charting in the 1960s and 1970s.
Following their departure from Decca/MCA in 1975, The Osborne Brothers signed with Country Music Heritage (CMH) records and gradually reverted to traditional bluegrass instrumentation and have stayed there ever since. The Osborne Brothers were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music’s Hall of Honor (the genre’s equivalent to the Country Music Hall of Fame) in 1994 and were elected to the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2002.
He Osborne Brothers continued to perform until Sonny Osborne retired from performing in 2005 after a shoulder operation affected his ability to play the banjo. Bobby Osborne continues to perform to this day, with Rocky Top X-Press, the band he formed after Sonny’s retirement. At 79 years of age, Bobby still tours – his busy schedule can be checked out on his website www.bobbyosborne.com .
The Osborne Brothers were pioneers in being among the first bluegrass groups (possibly the first bluegrass group) to include modern country instruments such as drums, electric bass, electric guitar, electric banjo, guitjo (a banjo neck on a guitar body) and steel guitar into bluegrass music. Many other acts would follow suit, even traditionally oriented groups such as Jim & Jesse McReynolds. Perhaps of greater importance was the vocal trio style created by the Osborne Brothers in conjunction with Red Allen, sometimes dubbed as “inverted stacked harmony”. This sound, unique and electrifying, featured Bobby singing a high lead line, Sonny singing baritone, and finally Red Allen singing the tenor as the lowest part. Although Red left after the first MGM album, subsequent vocalist such as Benny Birchfield , Dale Sledd and others kept the excitement going, setting a pattern many other groups,both bluegrass and modern country tried to duplicate, although few with such panache.
The Osborne Brothers recorded four albums for MGM and 14 albums for Decca/MCA during the vinyl era. All of these records are worthwhile. If you found all 18 of the albums and played them chronologically you would hear a detailed history of the evolution of bluegrass music as the Osborne Brothers occasionally strayed into “newgrass” before the term was invented. The Decca/MCA albums are especially interesting as the Osborne Brothers covered many classic country songs as well as contemporary country material.
Unfortunately, little of the classic MGM and Decca/MCA material is available on CD, except for on two terrific (and quite expensive) boxed sets issued by Bear Family which contain all of the MGM and Decca/MCA material.
Leaving MCA/Decca after 1975, the Osborne Brothers joined the tradition-oriented Country Music Heritage (CMH) label, issuing at least ten albums for CMH, including a wonderful double album with Mac Wiseman. The CMH albums straddle the vinyl, cassette and CD eras, so you may find those albums in any or all of those formats.
Four albums were issued on Sugar Hill and five on Pinecastle. The Pinecastle albums all were issued on CD, however, only Once More, Volumes 1 & 2 were released on CD by Sugar Hill.
There was a live album issued on RCA in April 1982 titled Bluegrass Spectacular. This album, recorded in October 1981 at Opryland’s Theater By The Lake, features the Osborne Brothers with guests the Lewis Family and Mac Wiseman. Hairl Hensley and Roy Acuff do the opening introductions. For this performance, Paul Brewster sings the additional harmony Hal Rug plays steel guitar and former Texas Troubadour Leon Rhodes plays electric lead guitar. As far as I know this is the only RCA album, although RCA Camden issued something in 1968 called Bluegrass Banjo Pickers which has a few Sonny Osborne tracks (I’ve never seen the actual album)
The Ernest Tubb Record Shop currently has available both of the Bear Family Box Sets at $99.98 each. If you are a diehard fan, it’s definitely worth the money to buy these, but for the casual fan, they are overkill. It is possible (sometimes) to find these sets for less money on sites such as www.overstock.com and www.countysales.com . Also you may be able to find used sets on sites such as www.musicstack.com .
The only other CD available covering the Decca/MCA years is titled Country Bluegrass. It sells for $9.98 and has ten of their chart hits including “Rocky Top,” “Roll Muddy River” and “Ruby (Are You Mad).” It’s inadequate, but essential.
ET has eleven more titles available, all of which come from post-1975. They do have the terrific Essential Bluegrass Album (with Mac Wiseman) which was a double album with 24 songs.
ET also has available six solo albums that Bobby Osborne has issued plus an album with Jesse McReynolds titled Masters of The Mandolin. I have several of Bobby’s solo albums – they are good but something was definitely lost from the vocal blend when Sonny retired. Moreover, Bobby has lost some of his upper range over the years, especially on the more recent albums and when he performs some of the old Osborne Brothers classics, he has had to do them in lower keys. This point was brought home by Bobby’s performance on the Opry in July 2011, where Bobby has clearly changed the chord progression on the chorus of “Rocky Top” to make it easier to sing.
Currently www.bobbyosborne.com has six of Bobby’s solo albums available for sale as well as ten Osborne Brothers CDs and two DVDs of the Osborne Brothers in concert. | <urn:uuid:8f532d9c-f38f-4553-96ad-e339cfcf775e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mykindofcountry.wordpress.com/tag/carl-smith/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978391 | 2,742 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Alabama gator hunts go smoothly on opening night
Hunters enjoyed windless conditions, low tides, cloudless skies and a night lit by a full moon and occasional yellowish fireballs as the Perseid meteor shower peaked Saturday morning.
Twenty gators were harvested on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta on the first day of this weekend's hunt, and another 14 were harvested in the new south-central Alabama area in Dallas, Wilcox and part of Monroe counties also enjoyed the sweet success of filling their tags.
s huge alligator sent a ripple of excitement through a large crowd of spectators gathered at Roland Cooper State Park to see the first alligators ever killed in a regulated hunt on Millers Ferry and its tributaries, according to Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Conservation Enforcement Officer Keith Gauldin, who also coordinates the southwest Alabama hunts.
The Odenville resident's male gator that he found in Big Cedar Creek measured 12 feet, 9 inches and strained the scale before the digital reading settled at 661 pounds, Gauldin said.
Fifty tags were issued for the first south-central Alabama hunt.
Daniel Brown of Saraland made the most of his first tag, bringing the heaviest Delta gator to the scales at the WFF District V office on the Causeway. His 561 lb male measured 11' 8".
Brown said he and his crew of his brother Bruce Brown of Saraland and Joey Rowell of Citronelle located the animal at about 1:30 a.m. as it swam the Mobile River near a well-known local bait-catching spot called "the bubbly hole."
There, outfall pipes from a paper company debarking operation roils the water's surface. Algae growing on the pipes attract small baitfish, which in turn attract larger fish that ultimately gain the attention of alligators.
Brown said he was able to get a treble hook in the gator at about 2:30 and it took roughly 2½ hours to get it secured to the boat and dispatched. Then the real work of loading it into the boat began. They called some friends who were hunting nearby and it took five of them to finally get the animal rolled into the friend's boat because it had lower gunwales.
They made it to the scales just as the sun was clearing the treetops over Daphne.
"I just bought a new gun safe and his skull mount is going to look perfect sitting on it," Brown said.
Upon overhearing that, one of his friends said, "Man, you may need a bigger safe."
A very familiar face also made it to the scales just before the sun rose.
With help from her husband Aaron Boone, her brother Jeremy Parks of Magnolia Springs and friend Morris King of Mobile, Darlene Boone's 10-foot, 351-pound male pulled from the Apalachee River was the fifth straight big alligator she's taken.
The Loxley residents individually buy 30 chances to be drawn for one each of the 125 tags issued for the Delta hunt in the state's computerized random drawing that awards the tags.
Aaron Boone has drawn two tags. The only hunt Darlene Boone missed was in its inaugural year and only because she found out about it after the application deadline had passed.
"My husband hunts everything -- deer, turkey, squirrels, ducks, but this is the only thing I hunt," she said. "I love this."
The first weekend of the 2011 hunt in each of the southwest Alabama areas wraps up tonight with hunting allowed from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Monday morning. Scales at Roland Cooper State Park and on the Causeway close at 7 a.m.
The second split in both hunt areas starts Friday.
By: Jeff Dute
Posted by OL'MAN Outdoors at 5:04 AM | <urn:uuid:3874a50d-1933-4eca-a0d3-937d6bf2e58c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://olmanoutdoors.blogspot.com/2011/08/alabama-gator-hunts-go-smoothly-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971441 | 805 | 1.695313 | 2 |
After weeks of endless rain the sun is at last coming out and the forecast is for summer to at last arrive.
And tomorrow there will be a Brit standing on the top of the podium in the Champs Elysees.
Britain is slowly waking up to cycling. It has not historically played a large part in our sporting culture, but a combination of British cycling success at the Olympics, the ‘Lance Armstrong effect’, and an increase in people cycling to work in order to beat traffic and high transport costs means that cycling is cool in a way it has never been before. But probably a majority of Brits still do not get the scale of what is going to happen tomorrow.
For Bradley Wiggins to win the Tour (which he will, barring some extraordinary accident) is a much bigger deal than it would have been for Andy Murray to win Wimbledon. It is a bigger deal than it would have been for England to win the Euros. For non-cycling Brits the scale of the Tour simply isn’t understood. A million people will line the Champs Elysees tomorrow, and millions more have stood at the side of Belgian, Swiss and French roads these past three weeks waiting for the blur of colour as the peleton screams past. The Tour is the largest annual sporting event in the world. It is carnival and national icon and physical test sans parallel. And I love it.
The bike is a very simple machine. A small child often gets their first real sense of freedom wobbling along on a bike. A rusty old jalopy can be a helpful way of nipping to the shops. Or thousands of pounds can be spent on a race ready carbon beauty. But it is all basically two wheels suspended from a frame of two triangles. I think it is this very simplicity that makes competitive cycling what it is – that something so basic can create (in David Millar’s words), “beauty, suffering, grandeur and panache.”
When Wiggins wins the Tour it will be a moment of incredible individual achievement. It will also be a result of phenomenal teamwork. This is perhaps the least understood aspect of cycling by non-cyclists – that it is teams that compete in the Tour, and an individual can no more win the race that a lone footballer can win a game. This means that there is a psychological appeal about cycling which other sports often lack – and perhaps that is why the French are so drawn to it, whereas we more black and white Anglo-Saxons prefer more straightforward games. The politics of the peloton, with deals struck, friends and enemies made; the significance of aerodynamics; the different specialisations of domestique and climber and sprinter – all spread out over three weeks of torture and beauty make the Tour uniquely compelling.
It is because of this psychological depth that cycling has generated a rich seem of profound and painful and beautiful writing. The peculiarities of cycling seem to lend themselves to an artistry of description. (Try The Escape Artist by Matt Seaton or The Death of Marco Pantani by Matt Rendell.)
And then there is France. Probably the most beautiful country in the world – an unfolding tapestry of mountain and coastline and vineyard and sunflowers. It’s the sunflowers of course. That defining image of the Tour de France, as the peleton pours through field after field of sun-turned yellow.
Everything is turning yellow. | <urn:uuid:ed64e092-5ade-4b5b-9b78-b33f5287e356> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://matthewhosier.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951535 | 708 | 1.554688 | 2 |
May 20 2013 Latest news:
Tabby Cook, six, is helping to raise money for Children in Need by asking her friends and classmates at Fressingfield Primary School to guess the number of sweets in a jar. L-R Tabby Cook, Amy Nab, Phoebe Shears, Jessica Amps
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
SWEET idea is a charity triumph
A GENEROUS schoolgirl is hoping her fundraising idea will add up to a sweet success.
Six-year-old Tabby Cook is helping to raise money for Children in Need by asking her friends and class mates at Fressingfield Primary School, near Eye, to guess the number of sweets in a jar. Each guess means a 20p donation to Children In Need and the lucky guesser will win the sweets.
Tabby said, “I really wanted to raise money for children who need some extra help. I am hoping to raise lots of money.”
Tabby is getting to school early every morning so she can ask parents and children to take part before school starts.
Niall Cook, Tabby’s father, said: “We are really proud that she wants to help others and has come up with a really good idea to raise money.”
Are you raising money for Children in Need? Tell us about it using #CiN #Suffolk on Twitter and upload your photos, news and video at suffolk.iwitness24.co.uk | <urn:uuid:65022993-8e5c-44ef-b2ef-b976eb74f4f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/fressingfield_tabby_is_sweet_on_fundraising_for_children_in_need_1_1692405 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954605 | 306 | 1.625 | 2 |
Is there anyone not fascinated by the notion of time travel? Whether the pull is simple curiosity about what the past was really like, or wonder about the future one is doomed to miss out on, there is just something irresistible about the possibilities of traveling up and down the time continuum at will. Or, perhaps, the lure is more personal, a desire to right some personal wrong we have done or suffered, for instance. Whatever the reason, Will Entrekin is here to tell you to be careful what you wish for – because you might just get it.
If Chance Sowin, the main character of Entrekin’s new novel, The Prodigal Hour, had arrived for work at the World Trade Center just a few minutes earlier, his life might well have ended on September 11, 2001. Survival, however, does not mean that Chance’s life has not been changed forever. He is no longer the person that entered the building that morning with his naïve optimism intact. Chance knows that he is one of the lucky ones, and he feels almost obligated to take charge of his life, to make himself a better man than he was on September 10. Now, it is a question of where to begin.
Chance is from New Jersey and, when his father asks him to move back home until he can figure out what he wants to do next, Chance decides to take him up on the offer. For the second time in just a few weeks, though, Chance’s arrival time is fated to get him almost killed. He gets home just in time to interrupt what appears to be a home invasion by a man threatening his father. When in the ensuing scuffle his father is shot dead, Chance is left to deal with federal agents who hint that his father may have been working with international terrorists.
That Chance refuses to believe his father, a prominent research scientist, could have been involved in research on behalf of any terrorist group, is not surprising. The notion is so farfetched that he is not even temporarily shocked by it. The real shocker for him comes from Cassie, a young woman Chance shared his first kiss with when they were kids: his father has invented a time machine and she knows how to use it.
Now what? Should they use the time machine to go back in time to save Chance’s father from being murdered – and what will happen if they do? If they save Dennis Sowin’s life, will they inadvertently alter the future in a way that causes other innocents to die – perhaps by the thousands? Thus begins an adventure that will see Chance and Cassie visit some of history’s most intriguing hotspots. Only when the pair decides to “improve” upon the past, do they get in trouble. Will they, and the rest of us, survive their not so subtle tinkering with the past?
I enjoyed The Prodigal Hour, my fellow time-traveler wannabes. I think you will, too.
Rated at: 4.0
(Review Copy provided by Publisher) | <urn:uuid:a8053701-507b-4cae-b063-7f4758b82274> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookchase.blogspot.com/2011/06/prodigal-hour.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979527 | 631 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Planning will start this summer to fill in a missing link on a bike path stretching for 140 miles across Wisconsin.
Officials in Dane County timed the announcement of the Capital City Bike Trail connection to coincide with Earth Day.
"The need for this missing trail link has been highly recognized by bicyclists for more than a decade, said new Dane County Executive Joe Parisi. "With this link in place, one could ride from Governor Dodge
State Park all the way to Miller Park.”
Under the plan shared by Parisi, a combination of money from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will be tapped to cover the $270,000 in planning costs. Actual construction of the trail would follow, with the cost yet-to-be determined.
The goal is to create a primarily off-road path from Wagon Trail Rd. in Madison to the western end of the Glacial Drumlin Trail in Cottage Grove. The route would follow the corridor of the Union Pacific Rail Line.
Construction of the first 1.6 miles on the eastern portion of the connection is scheduled to start in 2012. The initial cost will be $340,000.
The timing of the full project will depend on the availability of money from the federal Transportation Enhancement Program and the cost of the property acquisition, which could be substantial.
The Capital City Bike Trail is roughly 17 miles, mostly asphalt, connecting the Military Ridge Trail west of Madison to the city's campus, Monona Terrace and eastern business district.
The Glacial Drumlin Trail is roughy 52 miles, mostly crushed stone, that starts in Waukesha and ends in Cottage Grove. It connects to the New Berlin Recreation Trail, extending the reach into Greenfield Park in Milwaukee County. | <urn:uuid:2148ac72-9886-4bf6-80a1-1527bf9e837d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.silentsports.net/blogs/120604774.html?action=quotecomment&cid=65698369 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932663 | 361 | 1.695313 | 2 |
We all know how difficult it can be to mix acoustic instrumentation into a synthetic track. However, there are a few producers that can do this exceptionally well. Although they might not have played the instruments themselves, their talent derives from the ability to mesh the natural and synthetic into one gigantic club mix. Below are some production demonstrations and music videos for a few artists that do this very well.
Chris Lake’s “If You Knew”
“If You Knew” is an example of blending acoustic instruments into an otherwise dirty house jam. Using “soft synths”such as a piano patch, Chris Lake is able to incorporate unique textures otherwise heard in other forms of contemporary music. The song is driven by vocalist Nastalae’s disco feel – bringing to life the deep piano parts while providing extra emotion. Due to its hint of ’80s influence, some may consider the song nu disco. However, it does lack the heavy use of sampling most commonly heard in this genre. If you like soloing, at 2:20 Lake shows us his piano skills. | <urn:uuid:0a9f3c91-781b-45ae-8c99-941195dabac0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ourstage.com/blog/tag/layering | 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 | 0.958985 | 228 | 1.765625 | 2 |
That first edit is the most difficult. It is also the most important. It is in this edit that we must get the shap of our text right.
Which is worse poor writing, or poor structure? I guess it depends who is reading. If you’re a literary sort of person you’ll probably persevere with a lack of plot in order to enjoy the poetry of the language. Nevertheless, even that lover of words can feel cheated if in the end the story goes nowhere. Many of the rest of us want to be engaged, want to be taken out of our own world or want the satisfaction of reading a story whose shape we recognise.
Interestingly many an editor will read the sample chapters before they look at the synopsis. They have to be engaged by the writing before they look to see if an acceptable structure exists. They’ll still reject, though, if the structure’s not there.
Usually, if someone can write well they can structure well, but the latter may take more effort and may be more of a struggle.
The first edit has to be about getting the plot right. The tension must mount and there must be a credible gap between that all important crisis and resolution. The resolution must be believable and not created by a “deus ex machina”, a sudden favourable twist of fate beyond the control of the protagonist. We are more satisfied if our heroes control their own fate.
Even the best writers can get this wrong. Goodness knows I’m as in love as the next person with Stephenie Meyers’ Edward Cullen, and I love the dreamy, literary voice she has bestowed upon Bella. However, what happened? One minute Bella is about to be ravished by another vampire, the next angel-vampire Edward is at her side and there hasn’t even been a struggle. Oh I’m hooked all right, but if there weren’t great moments of tension elsewhere in the story, if the books weren’t so well written, if we didn’t have such a fabulous romance and such a gorgeous love interest, she would not get away with this weakness.
Our first task is to hone our work into shape. It is the biggest edit. We may have to do away with whole scenes or even characters. We may have to extend others and add in extras. We have to recognise when our characters or our settings have taken us off for a walk in the park. Fascinating though all these details often are, we have to get back to the spine of our story.
Don’t worry. All of that work has not been in vain. It has helped you to know your characters and your setting better. But your reader does not need that amount of detail. You must somehow condense all of that knowledge into those details which carry the story forward. Oh, you will, because now you know all that you need to know so well. Something magical happens.
The first cut is the hardest, the deepest and the most important to get right. Then, as subsequent edits take place, a beautiful, polished, publishable piece of work emerges. | <urn:uuid:0efe0024-d257-4901-b119-846a48ad0c78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://writinghood.com/style/the-first-cut-or-edit-number-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95766 | 649 | 1.5625 | 2 |
A wonderful story about and interview with the inventor of rational emotive behavioral therapy appeared in last Tuesday's New York Times.
From the article:
"Do you know why your family is trying to control you?" he asked a volunteer who joined him at the front of the room. "Because they're out of their fucking minds."
Another volunteer, Kristin Bell, spoke of her sister who had been killed by a drug dealer eight years before. "Why can't you understand that some people are crazy and violent and do all kinds of terrible things?" Dr. Ellis asked. "Until you accept it, you're going to be angry, angry, angry."
It is Dr. Ellis's conviction that people can always rationally choose to change and that a psychotherapist's job is to nudge them, gently or or otherwise, in the right direction.
That view has defined his career and has helped usher in an emphasis on quick results over profound insights.
On a recent morning, Dr. Ellis laid out his principles for 50 visiting psychotherapists who had arrived for a three-day workshop.
"All humans are out of their fucking minds."
"They're not only disturbed. They get disturbed about their disturbances."
Just because people do not like adversity, they decide that it should not exist, Dr. Ellis complained.
To counter people's natural tendency toward self-criticism, Dr. Ellis says, "I teach U.S.A., Unconditional Self-Acceptance: you always accept you no matter what you do."
Dr. Ellis said that when preparing to take on a risky challenge, people should be encouraged to say they would like to do well, but too bad if they don't.
Rational-emotive-behavioral therapy is focused not on excavating childhood, but on confronting the irrational thoughts that lead to most self-destructive feelings and behavior.
"The trouble with most therapy," Dr. Ellis said, "is that it helps you feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action." | <urn:uuid:47c62e49-b8f9-4fcd-96cd-59b5ccfc47c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/albert-ellis-the-lenny-bruce-of/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97508 | 433 | 1.804688 | 2 |
While the souring economy has left many industries struggling,
that's just not the case for private education lenders and textbook
publishers. The desolate job market has spurred an ongoing spike in college enrollment and -- with tuition and fees rising twice as ...
While the souring economy has left many industries struggling, that's just not the case for private education lenders and textbook publishers. The desolate job market has spurred an ongoing spike in college enrollment and -- with tuition and fees rising twice as fast as inflation -- banks have generated enormous earnings by lending to strapped students. At the same time, publishers have jacked up the cost of textbooks, which now rival the tab for a semester of community college. As we've pointed out repeatedly, Congress' history of putting bankers before students coupled with Illinois officials' recent cuts to state-subsidized financial aid has left a growing number of students buried under a heap of debt. Over the weekend, the Peoria Journal-Star's editorial board identified these disturbing trends in higher education and wondered if "Illinois colleges are to be for the privileged only."
A few members of Illinois' congressional delegation are trying to ensure that's not the case. Regular readers know that this year is shaping up as one with historic potential for reform. Just last month, the House passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 (H.R. 3221), which would free up $87 billion over the next decade by pulling the plug on the Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL) program that has allowed bankers to siphon away federal education money at the expense of students. The measure would in turn use that money to raise Pell grants to $6,900 from $5,350 and guarantee their future funding. On a swing through Northern Illinois University on Monday, Rep. Bill Foster urged Illinois' college students to push back against lenders who are fighting the reforms in the Senate. If the bill passes, it will amount to the largest increase in student aid in the nation's history. More from the Northwest Herald:
“You need to get involved, and call your senators,” Foster told a crowd of students gathered in the Sky Room of the Holmes Student Center. “This issue is too important to let sit.”
Foster is also joining Sen. Dick Durbin in his ongoing effort to drive down the cost of college textbooks. Last week, Durbin introduced the Open College Textbook Act (S. 1714), which would create some competition against publishing companies who have found a way to profit by slipping costly supplemental materials -- such as online guides and CDs -- into textbook packages. As a result, the Public Interest Research Group estimates that the average student will spend between $800 and $1,200 on books alone this year. Durbin's proposal would create a grant program that rewards universities who create books that are accessible on the Web. Foster's bill -- the Learning Opportunities With Creation of Open Source Textbooks (LOW COST) Act of 2009 (H.R. 1464) -- would require federal agencies that spend upwards of $10 million a year on scientific outreach to set aside at least 2 percent of their budgets to create their own open-source materials. During an interview with WGIL, Durbin explained his frustration regarding this issue:
"I've been in a battle for years now with the textbook publishers who've been ripping off kids and their families, I think, with outrageous charges for textbooks," Durbin says. "Now, we've got to find ways to deliver the information that young people need to learn in the most cost-effective way. I think this is it."
As for Illinois officials, we're still waiting to see how they'll address the $220 million shortfall in the Monetary Award Program (MAP) that's left 138,000 college students in the lurch this spring. Today and tomorrow, Gov. Pat Quinn will rally with students at the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University and once again push his proposal to fill the shortfall by adopting a $1 per-pack cigarette tax. Hundreds more students will take that message to the General Assembly on October 15 when the veto session begins.
Well give the PJ-Star editorial board the last word: "[L]awmakers would do well to keep in mind that for the modern economy, a college diploma is no longer the luxury it once was. It's a necessity, if Illinois is to keep up with the rest of the world. Find a way."
Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Amin Tabrizi. | <urn:uuid:6d412c5d-d750-4ec6-ae52-7e6f1a338ba0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.progressillinois.com/2009/10/7/solving-college-cost-problem | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953198 | 930 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Sat June 30, 2012
Kofi Annan Appeals To Leaders For Solution In Syria
Originally published on Sat June 30, 2012 7:32 am
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. Kofi Annan is making a big push today to try to keep his peace plan for Syria on track. Mr. Annan managed to get all of the U.N. Security Council members in some key countries in the region together in Geneva today to support his ideas for promoting a political transition. He is calling it the action group. But diplomats still don't seem quite ready to act. So far, they've spent the day wrangling over language for a final communique. And it's not clear that the major powers really have the influence to stop a war which has already killed tens of thousands of people. NPR's Michelle Kelemen has been traveling with Secretary of State Clinton and was there in Geneva. Michelle joins us now. Thanks for being with us.
MICHELLE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Nice to be here, Scott.
SIMON: First of all, what's in Mr. Annan's plan?
KELEMEN: He's calling for Syrians to put together a national unity government and then write a constitution and have new elections. The U.S. calls it a detailed political road map. But what we've seen so far has been fairly diplomatic language. You know, Russia doesn't want this to look like the outside world is demanding regime change. So, Annan's proposal's made clear that this is going to be a Syrian-led process. But the former U.N. secretary-general, who's now this joint U.N. and Arab League envoy has pointed out that it would be naive to think that the parties could do this alone. So, the idea is that countries with influence on Bashar al-Assad's regime should use that influence to get this political plan implemented. And those with influence with the opposition to do the same, to get them to the negotiating table.
SIMON: How much of the impetus for this plan derives from the fact that the Syrians shot down a Turkish recon plan last week?
KELEMEN: Well, he was planning on holding this already, but does add a whole new dimension, and Turkey is part of what he's calling this action group. It's Turkey, it's several Arab League countries and it's all five permanent U.N. Security Council members. So, that drama does cast a shadow really over this today. And it's one of the things that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised with Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, when she met him in St. Petersburg before we arrived here. And she was really pushing this issue that this is a regional conflict. You have the tensions with Turkey. You have the potential for spillover in Lebanon. There's concern in Jordan. So, that this is really the time for the international community to get its act together on this.
SIMON: Do you see any signs, Michelle, that when all is said and done the Russians are really getting ready to ease Bashar al-Assad offstage?
KELEMEN: You know, Scott, they've said they're not wedded to him but they've also made clear that they don't think the world should be dictating Assad's future. So, the language that Kofi Annan has been using has been very diplomatic. He says that his international unity government can include members of the government and the opposition but not ones that will be unacceptable to others or too divisive. I mean, that clearly means Assad will be out of the picture. U.S. officials say they're not going to be able to get the opposition to agree on anything that allows Assad to be at the negotiating table. So, this plan is really about a post-Assad Syria without demanding that upfront or naming names in that specific way.
SIMON: And I gather Mr. Annan wanted all of this to be hammered before they met today. But I gather it didn't seem to be a lot of signs of unity and amity.
KELEMEN: No. You know, what looked like a pretty simple idea turned out to be the source of a lot of diplomatic wrangling. The Russians wanted changes that the U.S. felt really gutted the agreement. Secretary Clinton tried to hammer that out with Lavrov on the eve of this meeting, but U.S. officials are sounding really quite downbeat now. They say that discussions remain challenging. They say they want a plan that's credible and strong and that we just may not get there. And, you know, if I were to sum up U.S. policy on Syria, I'd say it's mainly about blaming Russia for not helping. And you can be sure that they're going to blame Russia again if this doesn't work out today.
SIMON: Any sense, Michelle, that diplomats think that even this plan would make any difference on the ground?
KELEMEN: Well, you know, none of Kofi Annan's six-point plans have been working so far. There's not even a cease-fire. Unarmed U.N. monitors have had to suspend their operations and are sitting at their bases unable to do their job. So, it's really hard to see a diplomatic communique having a real impact on the ground, but there's also a feeling that there aren't really other options out there.
SIMON: NPR's Michelle Kelemen, who's traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Geneva today. Thanks so much.
KELEMEN: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:38af8c3a-c102-42f4-8ff5-aaad728d8694> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wmub.org/post/kofi-annan-appeals-leaders-solution-syria | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974483 | 1,179 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Will car sharing pioneer Zipcar move into the emerging industry of peer-to-peer car sharing, or enabling neighbors to rent out other neighbors’ vehicles? Well, Zipcar hasn’t launched such a service, but it’s invested in one of the new peer-to-peer car sharing startups Wheelz, the companies announced on Wednesday.
Wheelz, which only launched last September at Stanford University, has raised a Series A round of $13.7 million from Zipcar as well as Detroit-based transportation investors Fontinalis Partners. Other peer-to-peer car sharing startups like RelayRides and Getaround have also found major backing from venture capitalists and auto companies.
While Zipcar buys and owns (or leases) its own fleet of cars for sharing, Wheelz is promoting the use of other people’s cars. Wheelz also is targeting a narrower audience to start: college towns and connecting students who have cars with those who don’t but need them. The idea is to provide money-making opportunities for students, many of whom don’t need their cars often if they live on or close to campus, while making it easier for those who need rides for trips to, say, grocery stores or weekend outings.
Wheelz joins a growing number of companies promoting the idea of collaborative consumption, which refers to the use of the web for sharing goods and services (see GigaOm Pro’s analysis of the trend). It maximizes the use of stuff, while reducing clutter and waste. The concept works not just in sharing cars but sharing living spaces and has spawned a series of startups across verticals, such as RelayRides, thredUP and Airbnb.
While car sharing isn’t mainstream, it has gotten enough traction among consumers, particularly the younger urbanites, to spawn at least a dozen startups in cities around the world. Peer-to-peer car sharing especially has caught the fancy of investors and entrepreneurs, and there were at least five peer-to-peer car sharing businesses here in the San Francisco Bay Area alone as of last fall. The business model also arguably involves more logistics and liability issues because the companies don’t own the vehicles and must ensure that both loaners and borrowers are happy with the service.
Right now, car sharing services like those from Zipcar and City Car Share tend to offer members the ability to rent cars in 15 minute integrals, and cars are parked around urban areas, can be unlocked using a key fob, and can be reserved on the web or a cell phone. In addition, car sharing services often include fuel in the service fee. In contrast, more traditional car rental businesses tend to rent cars through actual stores, mostly rent cars only during business hours, and most of the time, don’t include fuel in the price. | <urn:uuid:cd9e67be-82f0-41f4-b060-fb2145303b0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gigaom.com/2012/02/22/zipcar-backs-peer-to-peer-car-sharing-startup-wheelz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961724 | 584 | 1.601563 | 2 |
|A tad over 300 yards from the back tee, no. 15 is perhaps Boat of Garten's most idiosyncratic hole. (Courtesy of David J. Whyte/Linksland.com)|
BOAT OF GARTEN, Scotland -- Although the name suggests that a view of the sea might be a distinct possibility, Boat of Garten could hardly be situated either higher up or further from the Scottish coast. Sitting pretty at over 1,000 feet above sea level in the middle of the Scottish Highlands and inside Cairngorms National Park, the pretty village of Boat of Garten derives its name from the ferry that used to cross the mighty River Spey – the fastest flowing river in Scotland that surges past both the village and the golf course on its way to the North Sea.
Situated on the edge of town and sandwiched between the river and the Strathspey Steam Railway, Boat of Garten Golf and Tennis Club can trace its illustrious history right back to 1898 when the original six holes were laid out over pure heathland. Two further holes were added in 1910 and the tennis courts were opened in 1921. But the most important date of all is 1930 when extra land became available and the legendary James Braid submitted his design.
Since it was opened in 1932, the 18-hole Boat of Garten golf course has been tweaked a little; the 14th tee was relocated, the fourth and 13th were converted into par 5s and, most recently, alterations have been made to the opening par 3.
But the magic of James Braid and the remarkable individuality of all the holes is still unmistakeably present in the delightful design that threads through the silver birch, heather and gorse. All the holes at Boat of Garten are christened, some with names that are almost unpronounceable to everyone other than a native Scot. The signature sixth is said to have been among Braid's favorite holes. In providing wonderfully lofty tees, several of the holes, but in particular the sixth and 12th, make full use of the available elevation, of which there is plenty.
Certainly Boat of Garten's most idiosyncratic hole is the curious 15th. A tad over 300 yards from the back tee, it can be driven. There is a deep gulley two-thirds of the way up the fairway, however, and although it's grassed and therefore not a real hazard, a shot out of it is both completely blind and quite a challenge. Many prefer to lay up short of it with anything from a 5 to an 8 iron to give them a clear shot in.
"There are quite a few blind shots out there which frankly makes it a bit tougher for visitors than it is for the members," observed Alan Boxx, the Match and Handicap Convenor at the club.
A feature of the golf course for which Braid can't take any credit is the spectacular mountain backdrop provided by the Cairngorms. Another natural asset is the abundant wildlife, of which the hares and deer are a particular feature. Indeed, Boat of Garten is more famous for its ospreys than it is for its great golf course. Arguably more famous than both the ospreys and the golf course put together is singer Bob Dylan, who has occasionally been sighted in the area since his brother David recently bought a house in nearby Nethy Bridge. The rumour is that he enjoys a round of golf but, unlike the deer and hare, he's not yet been sighted on the course.
Although under 6,000 yards long, Boat of Garten Golf and Tennis Club is a true test of golf. An exceptionally beautiful course with wonderful views of the River Spey and the mighty Cairngorms, it is little wonder that TV commentator Peter Alliss lists it among his favorites. Although hilly, it is eminently walkable and you might even have enough strength left after a round for a set or two on the all-weather tennis courts. An absolute must if you are ever in the area.
Photos courtesy of David J. Whyte/Linksland.com
June 7, 2010
Although in his 60s, with a handicap of 15 and lifetime earnings comfortably below $100, Clive Agran nevertheless still believes he can win a major. Arguably England's most gifted golf writer, when not dreaming of glory he's scouring the globe simultaneously searching for lost balls and great golf courses.
Any opinions expressed above are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the management.
Darren Clarke learned to play the game at Dungannon Golf Club, a pretty parkland course right in the middle of Northern Ireland. While the course is pretty enough and the green fee is almost embarrassingly reasonable, the appeal of Dungannon is the opportunity to pay homage to the 2011 British Open champion, Clive Agran writes from County Tyrone.
... full article » | <urn:uuid:a17e4ddb-b6c4-40b4-9f12-bdb8e9243ca8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.golfeurope.com/course-reviews/boat-of-garten-golf-and-tennis-club-scotland-11360.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967497 | 1,016 | 1.84375 | 2 |
AVALON – The flames and smoke are gone, the tourists are coming back and the Rufino, Campos and Hernandez families, part of the Latino immigrant work force keeping things running here, are again receding into the background of this island known more for its bison and bungalows than as a center of immigration.
“Thank God that the fire didn't destroy the island or else I would be out of work,” said Agustina Rufino, 48, a Mexican who has lived here on Santa Catalina Island for several years and drives a tourist trolley and taxi along this town's picturesque streets.
The large Mexican community on the island emerged to the wider public view when nearly 200 Mexican immigrants who evacuated the island stayed overnight at a Red Cross shelter on the mainland.
The majority of people who stayed at the shelter were of Mexican descent, most of them with roots in the state of Jalisco. They form “the backbone of our tourism industry labor force,” said Wayne Griffin, president of the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce.
Nearly half of the town's population of 3,400 is Hispanic, according to the census, but Mayor Robert Kennedy said he thought the figure was closer to 70 percent.
Angelica Campos, 22, arrived in Avalon four years ago from Jalisco, following family members. “Relatives tell other relatives about how calm and beautiful it is here,” Campos said, “and they come looking for work and a better life.”
The immigrants mostly keep a low profile. An untold number are here illegally, and their presence has caused friction in the past but, by and large, residents said, incidents have been few.
While most residents of the island headed for ferries to the mainland during the fire last week, an unknown number of illegal residents stayed behind in apartments, fearing that the Coast Guard would discover them and turn them over to immigration agents.
Last year, some young people and a few adults organized a march for immigrant rights along Avalon's narrow streets, most often navigated with golf carts. It took some non-Latino residents by surprise, said Irene Rufino, 18, Agustina Rufino's daughter. “I did it because I felt it was giving support to the immigrants,” Irene Rufino said.
But generally, the national immigration debate can seem a distant echo here.
“Our community of Avalon is ethnically diverse,” Kennedy said. “We're one big, happy family. There is a difference in culture, but Americans here embrace the Mexican culture.”
But that has not always been the case. In 1994, Ralph J. Morrow Jr., then the mayor, asked federal authorities to crack down on businesses that employed illegal immigrants. Soon afterward, Morrow's house was pelted with eggs and limes.
Residents who remember the 1994 crackdown said only a handful of people were arrested and taken away by immigration officers. “They walked them to the boat in front of everybody on the street as an example to others who didn't have papers,” said Agustina Rufino's husband, Gregorio. Now, he said, you hear of a few arrests, but the raids do not appear to be frequent.
The pastor of Catalina Bible Church, Jason Gant, said he had tried to reach out to Latinos with little success. He said that English classes at the church were sparsely attended and that immigrants did not often show up for town hall meetings or other gatherings. The lack of participation, Gant said, “causes a conflict in the community and troubles the community.”
“We try to integrate them in a loving way, and they're unresponsive,” he said. “I want them to stay and integrate into the community.”
Josefina Hernandez, 25, who works as a maid, said Americans generally treat her and other immigrants well.
“They try to learn Spanish and we try to learn English,” Hernandez said. “And when we speak English, they encourage us to keep learning.”
Celia Barriga, 47, said Mexican immigrants filled many jobs here that Americans did not want. “They tolerate us because they need us,” she said.
Gabriel Valdez, a seasonal worker, said one problem im migrants found on Catalina was the lack of affordable housing, which “limits immigration to the island.”
Mexicans have a long history on Catalina. Until 1848, the end of the Mexican-American War, the island was Mexican territory. In 1919, William Wrigley Jr., of the chewing gum empire, bought the island and transformed it into the resort town it is today. That change was aided by many Mexicans who were hired to help build various projects on the island.
“They have been an important part of the island going back to the 1920s and '30s,” said Griffin, of the Chamber of Commerce.
Valdez, 51, who works as a waiter, said the immigrants needed the work to improve the lives of their families in Mexico.
Valdez, a former teacher in Mexico who has been working on the island off and on for 20 years, has made far more than he did in his native Mexican state of Sinaloa – enough to pay for private school for his two children there. “I make more here without working myself to death,” he said. | <urn:uuid:4fc4c818-dce9-4daf-b275-4479a4ba4b00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070529/news_1m29avalon.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980811 | 1,145 | 1.78125 | 2 |
President Obama / J. Scott Applewhite, AP
President Obama said Sunday the economy is poised for growth, but not if Washington "dysfunction" gets in the way.
"Washington cannot continually operate under a cloud of crisis," Obama told CBS News in his annual Super Bowl Sunday interview. He urged Congress to avoid an upcoming series of automatic spending cuts.
Obama, who has granted a pre-game Super Bowl interview every year of his presidency, also urged the Boy Scouts of America to drop its ban on gays, expressed concern about the safety of football, and said he would not hesitate to order women into combat.
In a discussion of the economy, Obama said that he is not interested in further raising income tax rates to reduce the federal debt, but that more tax revenue from the wealthy is needed in the form of closing loopholes and deductions; the president also said that he wants to reduce red ink through "smart" cuts in the budget and more efficient administration of existing programs.
The president spoke just days after news that the economy shrunk slightly in the fourth quarter of 2012, a development Obama attributed to a sharp drop in defense spending brought on by uncertainty over the "fiscal cliff" and other political disputes.
The White House and Congress forestalled the fiscal cliff -- a series of automatic tax hikes and budget cuts -- with a New Year's Day agreement that raised income tax rates on households that make more than $450,000 per year. The deal also deferred automatic spending cuts for two months, to the start of March.
In his CBS interview in the Blue Room at the White House, Obama urged Congress to avoid those automatic spending cuts -- the sequester -- by coming up with a new debt-reduction plan.
As for his own plan, Obama said the issue now is not tax rates, but eliminating loopholes and deductions that favor only special interests. "There is no doubt we need additional revenue, coupled with smart spending reductions, in order to bring down our deficit," Obama said.
If the economy is to pick up, Obama said, "we can't have Washington dysfunction get in the way."
On other issues, Obama said:
-- He hopes the Boy Scouts of America follow through on a proposal to lift a ban on gays. The president says gays and lesbians "should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does."
-- He has no qualms about ordering women into combat, pursuant to a recent Pentagon directive, because they are already in combat "as a practical matter." Women "have carried out their jobs with extraordinary patriotism and distinction," Obama said.
- He loves football, but organizers at all levels need to do what is necessary to make the game safer. While professional football players are adults who have union protection, Obama said he is more concerned with safety in youth, high school and college football leagues. "I want to make sure we're doing everything we can to make the sport safe," Obama said.
If he had a son, Obama said he'd "have to think" about whether to allow him to play football.
The president was not asked -- and did not offer -- a prediction on the Sunday evening game between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers. "I've got some wings waiting for me upstairs," he said.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Obama: 'Cloud of crisis' threatens economic growth | <urn:uuid:0ef31fe2-5942-4f89-8643-c264484d9ed2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jacksonsun.com/usatoday/article/1887839 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970169 | 691 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Debbie Dye at Augusta Youth School of Dance specializes in teaching the tiniest of dancers. Her students can be as young as 2 1/2.
"It's the perfect age to establish basic dance principles," she said. "They're so loving and so willing at that age. It's just fun to teach and mold and see what you can do with a child at that age. It's rewarding."
Ms. Dye has been teaching preschoolers since the 1970s, when she would travel to various area nursery schools and give dance lessons. Later she established her own studio, The Augusta Youth School of Dance.
"Preschoolers, their little minds go a mile a minute and their attention span is a mile a minute, and you've got to be prepared to move as fast as their minds. You have to move like that in order to hold their attention." | <urn:uuid:fb479ddb-2349-49b8-a95d-035302cf789b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/11/02/met_554136.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987967 | 180 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Now, to an explosive headline about the 9/11 attack in libya that killed four americans, including america's ambassador, chris stevens, the white ho. The white house described it as a mobile riot,... See More
Now, to an explosive headline about the 9/11 attack in libya that killed four americans, including america's ambassador, chris stevens, the white ho. The white house described it as a mobile riot, talk bed, officials called it a terrorist attack, highly engineered and de deadly. Abc's jake tapper has the details. Reporter: That's right, george, and this 180 comes on the heels of criticism that the white house downplayed this terrorist attack, less than two months before the election. Secretary of defense leon panetta today acknowledged that the attack that killed four americans in benghazi, libya, on the anniversary of 9/11 was not only carried out by terrorists, it was premeditated. As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place, that it became clear that there were terrorists who had planned that attack. Reporter: The white house first suggested that the benghazi attack was spontaneous. The result of that anti-muslim video inciting mobs throughout the region. Jake, let's be clear, these protests were in reaction to a video that had been spread to the region. Reporter: What happened at benghazi -- we certainly don't know. We don't know otherwise. We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack. Reporter: But sources tell abc news that intelligence officials on the ground immediately suspected that the attack was not tied to the movie at all. Arousing their suspicion? The fact that the attackers knew where to get ambassador stevens after he'd fled to a so-called safe house, half a mile away. The building was hit with insurgent mortars, suggesting the terrorists knew what they were doing. Some administration sources tell abc news they were concerned after the white house began pushing the line that they attack was spontaneous and not the work of terrorists. The white house says assessments have changed over time as intelligence has been confirmed. President obama has repeatedly said the investigation is on to find the killers and bring them to justice. And george, abc news has confirmed that the fbi, which has been dispatched to libya to lead the investigation, has not even reached benghazi yet, 16 days after the attack, largely due to safety concerns. Now, officials worry, by the time the officials from the fbi get to the site, it will have been picked clean, george. Such a dangerous situation right now. Okay, jake, thank you. And at the united nations
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate. | <urn:uuid:8107e5a8-3dfd-41c1-8238-e2a48058e466> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/libya-attack-terror-link-17343652 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984266 | 580 | 1.554688 | 2 |
I hate when I eat my feelings then see it the next day. No. Stop.
"Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words “I love you” are not enough to make up for that. Don’t kid yourself that they are."written by Susan Forward, When Your Lover Is a Liar (via rosettes)
MANDATORY SING ALONG SONGS IF THESE SONGS COME ON YOU CANNOT NOT SING
- mr. brightside
- absolutely (story of a girl)
+drops of jupiter | <urn:uuid:b162fa32-763c-489e-8103-7861950d2dcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crediamo.tumblr.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932624 | 168 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Given the overwhelming groundswell of enthusiasm for social networks and consumers’ relentless quest for sharing -- and over-sharing -- with communities of like-minded peers (as well as vehement opponents), it makes sense that many new paradigms and capabilities are finding their way into traditional engineering tools, as well as into new interpretations of traditional tools.
Several of the leading CAD and PLM vendors, as well as startups, are enhancing the traditional design experience with social functionality, allowing engineers to better locate IP experts, collaborate on designs, foster brainstorming around innovation, and in some cases, actually create new innovations in an open, social forum.
Click the image below to see 15 examples of CAD going social:
Local Motors is a car company built around the concept of social product development and co-creation. This is the winning design for the FLYPMODE, the experimental crowd-derived Combat Support Vehicle Local Motors worked on in conjunction with DARPA. (Source: Local Motors)
JimT@F P I Jim you obviously get my point. And Yes I am seriously looking for NEW terms to describe focused interest PROFESSIONAL user groups to accomplish what you refer to in your response. The problem, however, is how to do it safely and build such groups on a public international network such as the internet. IF one could design an embedded transmission system for internet data streams a multiplicity of networks could exist without fear of misuse. My company is revisiting certain proprietay RF designs to see if adaptation is possible. PS new software is always a "B...."
@Ozark Sage, you certainly don't hold back, but I don't blame you.My first impression of this was, "are you KIDDING-?" While designing technical solutions takes a great amount of collaboration from peers and other disciplines, the LAST thing you'd want is an audience while you're working thru a complex layout.I think ChasChas put it well, stating, "I'll show it to you when I'm done".That's my style, too – leave me in peace after the group sessions are concluded.
However, just today, I experienced a scenario that might have me back peddling that stance:I've been a ProE user for 21 years but recently landed a contract requiring SolidWorks for the first time.I would have saved 2 hours today if the SolidWorks session had a live section where I might have asked an experienced user how to execute a (*&%$#%) Swept & Blended section! Maybe there is a place for an inter-active interface!
For some of us, who still respect privacy and professionalism, and try to avoid marketing types and others that use MOST social networks to build the worlds phone company financials upon frivous use terabytes of bandwidth for no useful purpose.... I say NO to everyone below that even dares to refer to a KNOWLEDGE based interchange of ideas such as DN affords us here as a "social" network. What ever you want to call a web bassed customer service PLSASE DON'T call it a SOCIAL network. I for one wish I was not even in Linked In at this point.
Most of the comments below are are just the beginning of LARGE CASH FLOWS for MARKETEERS and LAWYERS who care about $$$s ONLY. You need only to look at your TV to prove my point and I believe we should all decide juast where public SOCIAL interaction is and is not appropiate to use and exactly how we should codeify different types of use.
Yes, I can see your point, Beth. These tools are coalescing behavior that is already becoming common. Group communication over the Internet is something we've all becoming accustomed to over the past few years. These comments are an example. The tools you display seem designed to determine the focus of contributions and the specific population.
It's nice to see the range of participation and the range of those whose comments and suggestions are brought in.
Many valid comments about companies not divulging IP. In addition there's exposure in the opposite direction. Someone in the public "social circle" provides a great idea. Company implements the idea and it's a huge money-making "win". Person providing the idea sues the company. The Facebook lawsuit and appeals is an example of this. The lawsuits may be groundless but that doesn't prevent exposure.
I do not see this going far. I like the idea but how do you communicate outside your company without breaching company, state, and country policy? How can you insure that who you are talking with is not outside the country? A good majority of industries are still not suited for this environment. I personally don't see this benefiting any one that has proprietary information. The small stuff is what makes a design work so well. A clear understanding of the process, the details, and a good community are key factors. But a lot of the details have been gathered with years of legacy work. Your internal community knows these facts but do you really want to discuss them externally? Engineering businesses live and die on the basis of information control.
The area of social innovation, and particularly for PLM is indeed emerging. I am aware that the initial and primary concern of designers and companies is the protection of their IP and ideation. That is a concern to me also. One thing that those if us who have been engineers and designers for many years have to undertstand is that the notion of collaborative design, social design, and the resulting emergence of knowledge communities is indeed a generational phenomenon. Designers and engineers that have grown up totally immersed in the environment of social media are more apt to be comfortable in a social innovation environment. The idea is that the pool of ideation and creation is vastly larger outside the walls of the company design community. Of course there has to be point in the product development process where things go black. Each engineering/design organization and company has to decide at what point that is. Some will never allow their ideation process to go outside the walls of their company. The up side is simply that design collaboration and knowledge communities will offer an order of magnitude more in exposure to new innovation and ideation.
The Local Motors example highlighted opens up its design process to a broader crowd to develop and refine its IP, but it (meaning the car company) was predicated on the open source business model as one of its key differentiators in its approach to building automobiles.
Most companies won't leverage social capabilities in such a public and open manner. They won't open up designs on Facebook or use Twitter to microblog to each other about all of their design strategies. What I do see happening is Facebook-like and Twitter-like functionality being added to next-generation CAD and PLM platforms. In that way, the extended design groups working on a car or an aircraft can leverage social-type functions to better collaborate and brainstorm within the secure parameters of their traditional design environments.
I suppose a auto manufacturer might post designs for concept cars so consumers could voice their opinions and perhaps check-off "must have" features in new models. But companies that develop other types of products might not want to expose their designs until they have them ready for sale. As an entrepreneur, the last thing I'd want is to tip off competitors about the design work underway at my company. Even if I shared the information with a close group of colleagues I'd still worry the information would "get out."
The "social side" of CAD might seem like a good idea, but only for a few companies.
A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is | <urn:uuid:7d373541-a016-4703-8158-b283d3f94c9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&f_src=designnews_section_1394&doc_id=239096 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958943 | 1,683 | 1.65625 | 2 |
We've featured all sorts of IKEA hacks on Ohdeedoh, but when Swede Isabella Waldenmaier shared her daughter Ella's room with us, we were totally impressed and inspired by her unique IKEA furniture makeover. Full of bold colors and patterns, she has created a room for Ella that is nothing short of magical.
Isabella was kind enough to answer some of our questions, and doubly kind to answer them in English since it isn't her native language. Here's what she had to say.
Please share with us the function of this room:
This room is used for mostly play at the moment. It will become Ella's bedroom in the future when a sibling comes along. This room is slightly larger than her bedroom (an equally inspiring room with a castle built inside!) but common to both rooms is the lack of closets and storage areas. We solved this problem in this room by building the house cabinets. Each house has its own function.
In the white house, Ella's clothing is organized by color in cubbies originally meant for CDs. The bright pink house you can find everything from cuddly toys to piggy banks. The hot pink house is what Ella uses most. It houses such items as beads to create with and legos to play with.
I have started to restore my old dollhouse and the plan is that it will be a miniature of our home. So far Ella is too small to have taken interest in it, but she will probably appreciate it in the future. Barbie dolls, horses and babies, as Ella calls them, live in the red house. Along the window wall is a round table and two chairs for playing and crafting. The table is covered with graphic roads for imaginative car chases, and a self-built radiator cover makes room for favorite toys. In the corner stands a black forged lantern that doubles as a night light. The third and final wall acts as a resting area. On the floor are pillows and the wall shelves are filled with colorful books. Most of the toys and books are inherited from me when I was little, which makes Ella reading and playing with them even more meaningful.
I love how you have organized various items by color. Is it a challenge to keep things organized in this way? Does Ella help and enjoy sorting things by color?
We believe it is important that children have a room that encourages a growing imagination and creativity. Creative chaos, as I call it, creates curiosity, and it helps with child development in big and small ways.
Here at home, we place great emphasis on the word sort After hours of mischief-making, we help Ella sort her toys and put them back in the right place. Legos are organized by color and we see this as a playful learning. When Ella plays and then cleans up, she is learning colors at the same time.
The house cabinets are amazing! Can you share how you made them?
They were built from IKEA Billy shelves (40x200cm and 60x200cm sizes). For the doors we had the hardware store cut MDF panels in the correct width. In our case it was 6 pieces at 40cm wide and 230cm high. For the roof tops, the shape was designed in free-hand with a pen. My husband Martin then cut with a jigsaw.
For the color palette, we brought one of Ella's dresses to the hardware store and they matched the colors. The doors were painted twice using a roller.
For the windows, I made a template of cardboard which I then used to cut decorative plastic in white and black. After we adhered the windows, the doors were then hung by hinges. This was a bit tricky to get right, but Martin and his dad decided it relatively painless. Only a few grey hairs later. ; )
Are there any other DIY projects that you created for this room?
Along with the dollhouse that I mentioned, we also custom constructed the bed made from Ikea shelves. The ceiling lamp is a fruit bowl that is now acting as a shade.
I love the way you use bright colors and graphic elements. What is your background? Are you a designer?
I just have a great interest in color and design. Otherwise I work in a department store named Rusta.
I love the graphic table with the track extending up and over the shelf. Did you do it? If yes, how?
We used decorative masking tape from here.
What is your favorite piece or element?
Definitely the house cabinets!
If money were no object, what would you buy for this room?
I'd buy two new chairs by Charles Eames.
- Shelves: IKEA Billy Shelves
- Table and chairs: Mio
- Bookshelves: Mio
- Lantern: Rusta
- Pillows: Rusta
- Piggy Pank: Favoritsake
Thanks, Isabella! Be sure to follow Isabella's blog where she shares interior inspiration, adorable DIY's and more. And if you missed it, we shared Ella's amazing DIY backyard playground last week here.
(Images: Isabella Waldenmaier) | <urn:uuid:becd7f5f-a64a-414f-8ec8-fcb02ac5fc0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ellas-bright-bold-bedroom-room-149531 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972681 | 1,077 | 1.695313 | 2 |
£10,000 boost for Haining’s new teenage ranger service
A NEW countryside ranger service is to be set up in Selkirk after gaining grants from two trusts.
Thanks to £10,000 from the Kay Dickson Trust and £2,500 from the Vodafone World of Difference social enterprise, Borders Environmental Education Services (BEES) will offer the outdoors training to the town’s young people.
BEES will run a pilot project with Rowlands Youth Club and the Haining Trust at the Haining Estate from March to October.
Former BEES volunteer Jan Barr, who has gained the Vodafone cash to work with BEES, becomes the organisation’s part-time young rangers development officer.
She undergoes a day’s training at the end of this month before starting four months of research into setting the service up.
She said: “We worked in the summer with Selkirk young people for two weeks and just seeing the difference it made to these kids, from the first day to when they finished, people couldn’t believe they were the same kids, they were smiling and open.
“I just love to make a difference in that way.”
Jan is one of 500 winners of the Vodafone World of Difference grant across the UK.
She said: “It’ll make a real difference to those members of the community who don’t get many opportunities to succeed and in the long term will provide employment opportunities and revive rural skills.”
And of the £10,000 boost from the Kay Dickson Trust – which approached BEES with the offer – she said: “It was really great of them.”
Meanwhile, there are 10 places left for the summer pilot for young people aged between 13 and 17 when the teenagers will take part in conservation work and develop leadership skills so they can help run activity weeks for younger children in the summer.
She also hopes more adults will volunteer to help with BEES projects and full training is given to anyone interested in the outdoors and natural history with an aptitude for working with teenagers.
For more information about the project and how to volunteer, contact Jan Barr on 01835 870606 or email firstname.lastname@example.org
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Weather for Selkirk
Tuesday 18 June 2013
Temperature: 10 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: South east
Temperature: 8 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: West | <urn:uuid:7fcd793e-1779-4f8d-acc9-f5783399a0bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.selkirkweekendadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-headlines/10-000-boost-for-haining-s-new-teenage-ranger-service-1-2779400 | 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 | 0.941178 | 544 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Originally designed in Israel to tract missiles, now being adapted for professional soccer and basketball, I wonder if this will make it to the NCAA? One knock is that it generated HUGE amounts of data... I tend to prefer as much data as possible.
Re: SportVu... does College Sports need more data...
Originally Posted by HiltonMagic
The problem isn't that it creates too much data. It's that it creates more than what anyone knows what to do with at this point. Give it a few years, and it'll be huge.
But that is a perfect problem to have! Even if you have too much data, over time someone will develop algorithms and other criteria that deals with the data and then you will already have years' worth to analyze!!
All content owned by CycloneFanatic.com - All rights reserved 2005-09. By viewing this website you agree to the Terms of Service, Site Rules and Legal Disclaimer. The words, views, images and opinions expressed or provided by users do not reflect the opinions or views of CycloneFanatic.com or Iowa State University. The names, words, symbols, and graphics representing Iowa State University are trademarks and copyrights of the University protected by the trademark and copyright laws of the United States of America and other countries and are used on this web site under license from the University. Original site design, premise & construction by Jeremy Lind. | <urn:uuid:3b6107c7-285b-4508-8843-d26209faaa81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cyclonefanatic.com/forum/general-college-sports/150405-sportvu-does-college-sports-need-more-data.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949231 | 286 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The conference took place on 19-20 September 2011 and was attended by 141 delegates from 30 countries from Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Australia. The keynote address by Patrick Hayes kick-started a two-day programme consisting of 21 talks and two poster presentations.
Following the opening talk, speakers from different domains expanded on their particular view of what ontologies and knowledge structures may mean in their specialised areas of work and what aspects of ontological analysis or formal ontology modelling are relevant in the world of knowledge classifications. A number of talks stressed the urgency for knowledge classification schemes to be published as linked data and the limitations of the existing web ontology standards in expressing semantics were also explained. Presentations about particular schemes illustrated that classifications may indeed require more thought with regards to modelling. | <urn:uuid:3977e765-abb0-4baa-8991-05b6117364ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seminar.udcc.org/2011/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944439 | 161 | 1.601563 | 2 |
i have been in south korea working on silbatone stuff and i wanted to post a little something about a cool circuit i’ve been playing around with for phono. i’m going to do a mic pre front end for ribbon mics with it soon. but it’s very very quiet (just under 1nV per root Hz) and sounds lovely. this is not for beginners or probably those who have a moral problem with hybrid circuits… but it is interesting anyway.
cascode circuits offer a way to build your own pentode out of two triodes, JFETS or BJTs, and have some advantages over standard pentodes… lower noise and no screen current. many have tried JFET/triode cascodes in an attempt to get even lower noise but still hang on to a “tube character”. i would have included myself into that group some time ago but now i believe this has it’s own sound and i prefer it for phono and mic pres… blasphemy! but i have still had some reservations about the harmonic spectrum of the typical cascode. tube or N type JFET (i love the 2SK146 and 147) with high Gm type triode (WE417 or 437, etc.) on top. it is ok for blues, jazz and rock and roll… but i haven’t been totally happy about the classical music thing, or the dense noise thing yet. cecil taylor records or cop shoot cop just doesn’t doesn’t sound it’s best… it’s just a touch too hifi, and that is a four letter word in my book! i think pentode operation has a better timbre even if the distortion is higher. Gm operation of a pentode or cascode can simplify the distortion spectrum over standard operation. i have mentioned this before. but cascode, even single ended, has a slightly forward exciting sound typical of circuits with a touch more odd than even harmonic content… even more so balanced. the distortion is very very low! but the timbre isn’t perfect.
but i have found my new toy! hybrid folded cascode.
as far as i know, folded cascode was done first in audio by john curl (?) with JFETS. he does folded complimentary balanced circuits that are a study in symmetry and beauty. they also work as good as it gets. i think he is still the master of it, but the technique has expanded into chip design for memory and many many other jobs too. a folded cascode is a complementary amplifier in cascode which requires an added resistor to leverage the I/V conversion between the two halves. because the two amplifiers can be independently biased and loaded, it is possible to “tune” the response with more finesse than with a more standard cascode. using a P type JFET folded into the cathode of a triode is a way to have a complimentary amplifier with a pentode like transfer charateristic. the gain can be modest or high, depending on the configuration, and it can also be arranged as a Gm amplifier. i know of no one who has made anything commercial with this other than us… but now you can make something with it! have fun!
here is the basic idea as i have been using it. this is a Gm amplifier (loaded with a constant current source) and a resistor to ground. in this case, i am using a very large valued resistor (1 meg) and getting 60dB of gain… (the sim says 68dB). that is mainly due to the JFETs… solid state varies 1000 times more than tubes in it’s characteristics.
and here are some pix of the circuit in the flesh… the other tube you see is a bendix 6900 used only as a buffer for the folded cascode. the empty tube socket eventually gets a WE437 for make up gain after the RIAA filter. that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. today we are only looking at the first stage, which is a hybrid folded cascode circuit using 4 each 2SJ74 PJFETs and one D3a wired in triode. what you see is the transfer characteristic at 10KHz with 3mV input. the scale is expanded for detail (uncalibrated).
badass. i know it’s not good to brag but this is really very good. actually, it performs very nicely, but most importantly, it sounds just lovely! pix to follow of the entire phono preamp… | <urn:uuid:a97b7bdf-f49d-477b-80e8-dfb8d5f2a2ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.labjc.com/?p=1179 | 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 | 0.954774 | 952 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Budgets are still tight and resources are stretched thin.
I know - duh. In spite of the recent spate of seemingly
"better" news, these are the realities of the current market place.
We are all being forced to do much more with much less. As a
result, much of your company's performance depends on the effort
and innovation of those team members you currently have. So
how do you motivate those workers? How do you get the most
out of them?
Last week Alan Murray of the Wall
Street Journal chimed in with "The Secret to Motivating Your Team". If
you've attended the People Report Best Practices Conference in the
last several years, his secret should come as no surprise
People Report proposes that the answer to motivating today's
worker is in creating an "Employee Value Proposition" that is
aligned with your company values. (Click here for more on the Employee Value Proposition and motivation). It is based on the famous
"Hierarchy of Needs" developed by social
scientist Abraham Maslow, which states that basic needs must be met
in each of our lives, and once these needs have been met, it frees
individuals to increase their engagement and continue their
Employees progress up the hierarchy with the end goal being that
of meaningful work. At this point it's not about a paycheck,
it's about a purpose. (Please note - this is about motivating
employees who actually HAVE a job, and are being paid fairly - it
is very difficult to worry about purpose when you can't pay your
rent.) This is exactly the same conclusion the Wall Street
Journal came to:
"…work must give meaning. As a manager, you are the maker of
meanings. You need to make sure your team is personally committed
to the goals of the organization, that they feel those goals are
worth achieving, and that they feel they are playing a significant
role in achieving those goals….The manager's job is to get his team
to make a commitment - to each other, to the goals of the group, to
a cause that is greater than themselves. That commitment, it turns
out, is worth more than gold."
We couldn't agree more.
For more on motivation and the Employee Value Proposition, check
out "This Revolution is not just about Talent" and
"The Voice of Motivation 2.0--Dan Pink." | <urn:uuid:17e509fb-1298-42e1-8aee-8eedc97235a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peoplereport.com/2010/3/15/the-secret-of-motivation.aspx?filterby=Employment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965503 | 506 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Nursing Research QuestionRegister Today!
- by Northern nephron Sep 10, '02Hi, I am presently taking an Intro to Nursing Research course. I have to write a paper on Is Qualitative research methodolgy better for the advancement of nursing as a profession. Can anyone give me their thoughts, any suggestions on good references for this topic.
I would appreciate any feedback.
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- 34,407 Views
- Sep 10, '02 by adrienurseI am taking the same course. I will get back to you.
- Sep 10, '02 by WashYaHandsI cant say that I think qualitative is better than quantitative. I think they complement each other. Each methodology provides differend kinds of knowledge that are useful in nursing.
Qualitative research provides an understanding of human experiences, which cannot be objectively measured. We know that there are many things about people that we cannot measure, yet they effect health (mind/body/spirit). Nurses are involved with patients whose life experiences with a particular situation are unknown to us. We've never experienced their circumstance. For example, I've never had breast cancer, but by reading qualitative studies that describe the lived experience as told by breast cancer survivors, we can gain understanding of some of the common fears, hopes, thoughts, and experiences that are common to breast cancer survivors, which I believe enhances quality of care. I use this topic as an example, but there are many more such as, the lived experience of having a child with a chronic illness, or the lived experience of being a victim of domestic violence. It provides nurses insight into these most personal life experiences of others.
Anyway, hope this helps. Research is a passion of mine.
- Nov 28, '02 by LarryLinda, many thanks for your comment putting this into perspective
- Mar 1, '03 by lookingforhelp
- May 16, '03 by HowyaluvdatI much like yourself will be taking a research course this summer. I am in a nursing administration role. Anyone know any good research topics dealing with cost ?
- Jun 22, '03 by 2bPhDUrsala, you can do a cost effectiveness analysis on any intervention. It is not my bag and has always been challenging to me. If you are in administration, why not look at a topic that directly relates to what you do every day? You could look at training new staff or enhancing job satisfaction. I'm sure if you searched pubmed you would find something interesting. Try nurses and burnout. That seems to be a hot topic.
- Sep 14, '03 by fatsoi am pursuing a diploma in health visiting i am required to do nursing research. i am confused with formulating a problem statement. please help!
- Sep 22, '03 by ChrishendieI am a nursing student at RGU in aberdeen im on my final essay which i have failed. Its all to do with research and reflection on comforting recently bereaved relatives can anyone help please?
- Jan 9, '08 by saik18hi i am a nursing student at USJR..i just want to ask for some help regarding on my research problem..i really dont have an idea of what topic to choose..can anyone help me formulate a problem statement??...thank you so much in advance!... | <urn:uuid:b729a1b6-3073-4b35-ab66-9aedd413c7ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allnurses.com/research-nursing/nursing-research-question-22365.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962043 | 734 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Drivers are being encouraged to take time out on their journey home this weekend.
There have already been six deaths on the roads, with another 20 hours to go in the official road toll period.
State's Driver Reviver spokeswoman Terri van Schooten says fatigue is a significant contributor to road accidents.
Last year 32 people died in crashes where fatigue was a factor, 141 had serious injuries, and 619 received minor injuries.
"The social cost to New Zealand is currently around about $250 million."
Terri van Schooten says there'll be Driver Reviver stops at Ohakea, Ruakaka and Ealing.
The death toll so far this weekend is seven, including a suspected hit and run in New Plymouth.
Photo: NZ Herald | <urn:uuid:efbf861c-e971-4824-9955-d726c9f3359c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/news/nbnat/523510906-drivers-encouraged-to-take-time-getting-home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961826 | 158 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Out of hours press enquiries, call 07918 195 238.
A BETRAYAL OF PEOPLE AS WELL AS ANIMALS
Posted 21 November 2003
Statement by Animal Aid Director, Andrew Tyler:
John Prescott's decision to approve the proposed Cambridge primate centre is grotesque and astounding given that the government official who presided over the public inquiry at the end of last year was clear that permission should not be granted.
Despite having been given permission, Cambridge would be foolhardy to go ahead, given its massive annual financial deficit and the growing opposition to the project both within and outside the university.
Before the public inquiry even began, Tony Blair declared in a May 2002 speech to the Royal Society that the centre had to go ahead. This is despite clear public opposition to experiments on monkeys (see Editors' Notes). Even more ardent in his public support was Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury, a man with a sizeable financial stake in the biotech industry, a multi-million pound donor to the Labour party and a Cambridge University graduate. So much for an impartial process! No amount of Labour spin can conceal the fact that the Deputy Prime Minster's mind had already been made up for him by his boss and by his Party's principal sugar daddy.
Proponents of the monkey labs have sought to characterise opposition as being rooted in mere sentiment and/or extremism. In reality, the arguments advanced by opponents at the Public Inquiry were almost entirely based on scientific evidence. This pointed to the serious problems arising from using primates as 'models' for human neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's. Gratifyingly, the government inspector ruled that the university failed, at the inquiry, to make the scientific case for the new centre.
Detailed written and oral evidence was provided on behalf of Animal Aid and the National Anti-Vivisection Society by physician and former animal experimenter, Dr Ray Greek. Further evidence was given by other expert scientists and by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.
Dr Greek demonstrated that primate brain experiments actually hinder research into human neurological disorders. For example, countless treatments for stroke have been developed in monkeys and other animals - yet all of them have failed or even harmed patients in clinical trials. Equally, it is palpable nonsense to argue that a disease such as Alzheimer's - characterised by loss of intellectual powers including those of speech and cogent thought - can be 'modelled' by damaging the brains of marmosets.
Meanwhile, excellent research on human brains, both living and post-mortem - such as that conducted at the Cambridge Brain Bank Laboratory and Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre - goes unrecognised and underfunded.
The decision to approve the monkey research centre - the biggest in Europe - has nothing to do with medical necessity and everything to do with enlarging Cambridge's already over-stretched 'biotech cluster', so favoured by Lord Sainsbury. In other words, the decision was driven by business considerations.
Biotech clusters will generate financial and intellectual support for spin-off companies with links to the University. Experience demonstrates that new drugs for neurological disorders will be developed and tested in monkeys in the new centre, only to fail in human trials. The centre will eventually be recognised for the enormous white elephant that it is - a foolish and expensive monument to the past.
A parliamentary Early Day Motion (No. 1307) tabled in June, calling for the government to ban all primate research because of the suffering involved and because of 'important biological differences between people and primates', has been signed by 131 MPs.
Notes to Editors
The UK is the largest user of primates in experiments in the European Union. In 2002, 3977 experiments using 3173 monkeys were conducted in the UK alone.
52% of respondents to an Animal Aid-commissioned NOP poll said experiments on primates are morally unacceptable. Only 40% said they are acceptable - the remainder fell into the 'don't know' or 'refused' category. When asked whether they believe that results from primate experiments can be reliably applied to people, 43% said they can not, whilst 44% said they can. Amongst the younger age groups, a clear majority regards such tests as scientifically unreliable. The polls were conducted in April.
Opponents of primate research include Sir David Attenborough, Dr Jane Goodall and Dr Charlotte Uhlenbroek.
For more information contact Andrew Tyler or Claudia Tarry on 01732 364546.
We have an ISDN line for broadcast-quality interviews.
For background information see our Cambridge campaign index. | <urn:uuid:976256d0-265c-44c4-ab8a-c8a37d9f08bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/archive/ALL/151/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95138 | 940 | 1.507813 | 2 |
"The principle of universal jurisdiction is based on the notion that certain crimes are so harmful to internal interests that states are entitled--and even obliged--to bring proceedings against the perpetrator, regardless of the location of the crimeor the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim."
Rumsfeld, other US officials facing war crimes charges in Germany Bernard Hibbitts at 10:19 AM[JURIST] The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and four Iraqi citizens will file a criminal complaint in Germany Tuesday against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and seven other high-ranking US officials, seeking to hold the officials accountable for acts of torture allegedly carried out at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. German courts recognize the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, allowing prosecution of suspected criminals no matter where they are located, for crimes defined in the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute [PDF], including war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The four Iraqis say they were victims of severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse. CCR has background on the case and Reuters has more. Der Spiegel has local coverage (in German). More details are expected later Tuesday.
Page created in 0.226 seconds with 17 queries. | <urn:uuid:e6abb154-facf-49bc-a800-10558ebdff64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3001110.msg3068403 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934076 | 250 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Via Sullivan, here's a map by Goodreads in which they map out reviews of the book "Twilight" by state. Bluer states have more negative reviews of the book; redder states have more positive reviews:
- Why does this map seem to mirror voting patterns so sharply? That is, why do Republicans like "Twilight" while Democrats hate it?
- Why has Utah generated such a disproportionately high number of reviews?
The second one is easy: the author, Stephenie Meyer, is Mormon, and a graduate of BYU. I can only assume that there's been a disproportionate share of buzz about her in Salt Lake City. Still, it's curious that Utah departs from the partisan trend; she has so many readers, but most of them dislike the book.
The first one is trickier. What can account for Republicans liking the book so much more than Democrats do, other than, as Erik Loomis says, "Republicans having horrendous taste in literature"?
Actually, we don't know that. This is a classic case of ecological inference fallacy. It is certainly possible that Republicans like the book more than Democrats do, but the map can be deceiving. The people in these states who vote in presidential elections may not be the ones who register opinions on Goodreads. Indeed, a goodly number of "Twilight" readers are probably under 18.
The only way we can really test the partisan connection is to examine individual level data, and Goodreads (regrettably) does not collect data on party ID. Still, there might be a way to infer party ID from Goodreads profiles, perhaps by looking for hints of political preferences in the "about me" section. If Gary King or some other enterprising individual would like to work on this, have at it. | <urn:uuid:c3397ea0-b7ee-4b75-ac19-15c26b1413bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://enikrising.blogspot.com/2011/11/ecological-inference-and-vampires.html?showComment=1321841693867 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95967 | 367 | 1.515625 | 2 |
BHOPAL: Commissioner, MP National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Dr Ravindra Pastor said that farmers and other people in rural areas suffer across the country due to the presence of middlemen who eat up their profit's share.
Pastor was addressing a gathering during entrepreneurship summit, 'Daksh-12', at Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) on Sunday. "It is ironic that farmers get minimum support price for their produce and have to pay maximum retail price to buy the same. The farmers get no more than Rs 35 for their produce which is retailed in the market for Rs 100," he said. Executives of World Bank, IIM alumni and others participated in the summit organized by Entrepreneurship and Development Cell (EDC) of IIFM.
Noted author and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus Rashmi Bansal said, "Social entrepreneurship requires a lot of commitment and devotion. Until one thinks helping others as a mission, one can't be a social entrepreneur."
Rural development specialist, World Bank (South Asian region), Parmesh Shah, who was the chief guest, said, "It is unfortunate that after 'Amul', we couldn't replicate similar model in social cooperatives." He said that sanitation and nutrition are the biggest problems in the society.
Vice-president, BASIX, consulting and training services, Rajiv Gupta, also spoke on the occassion. A social business-plan competition was held. Various teams from management institutes across the country participated. The prize was Rs 40,000 cash. IIFM Bhopal won.
Daksh is a national entrepreneurship symposium conducted every year since 2009. The theme this year is 'meeting ends; bridging gaps' which revolves around livelihood solutions especially for the rural populace. | <urn:uuid:8b1d3a4d-0343-48b3-b3eb-a504bfd0425b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-10-22/bhopal/34652587_1_social-entrepreneurship-entrepreneurship-summit-daksh | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965535 | 368 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Nine bodies -- eight of them burned -- have been pulled from vehicles crushed in a tunnel collapse about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Tokyo, highway police said Monday.
The disaster has prompted Japanese authorities to order emergency checks on dozens of other tunnels across the country that have a similar design, as questions were raised about whether aging parts may have contributed to the collapse.
Five of the bodies were recovered in one charred station wagon, and three others were in another burned vehicle, according to a police spokesperson. The other fatality was in a truck.
The Sasago tunnel on the Chuo Expressway remained closed Monday morning, one day after the cave-in occurred on the highway's Tokyo-bound lanes, police from the nearby city of Otsuki said.
Japanese highway police said Monday that the section of concrete that fell was 110 meters (360 feet) long, Earlier, officials from the East Yamanashi Fire Department said it was about 50 to 60 meters (160 to 200 feet) long and about 20 centimeters (8 inches) thick.
"Cars in front of us were crushed. It was terrifying," a man who witnessed the collapse told CNN affiliate TV Asahi.
"I don't think I could ever drive through the tunnel again," he said.
Soon after the collapse, Japanese public broadcaster NHK aired images showing smoke rising, a blue car with its side smashed in, and emergency vehicles on the scene.
Crews worked through the night as snow fell outside, trying to get to victims. All the while they were wary that the tunnel might collapse further.
The Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said it had ordered emergency inspections of about 49 tunnels nationwide that have a ceiling structure similar to that of the Sasago tunnel. | <urn:uuid:04e31a6c-bbec-44e8-996e-0d3e1e338f52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.4029tv.com/news/national/9-bodies-found-in-Japan-tunnel-collapse/-/8897558/17630938/-/mo7yclz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982999 | 360 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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|Home > Life in Japan > Features|
Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013
THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Fixing the much-admired, reviled Constitution — by breaking it
With Shinzo Abe having called Japan's current Constitution "pathetic" (mittomonai) just a few days before taking charge of a government established under it, constitutional amendment seems likely to be on the agenda of his second go as prime minister. This should not surprise anyone, since "fixing" the charter tainted with America and defeat has been a goal of conservatives since Japan regained its independence in 1952.
Despite controlling the levers of power for most of the period since, however, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that Abe now heads has never been able to achieve the high threshold for initiating the amendment process: the approval of two-thirds of the members of both Diet houses. But now, having just obtained such a majority in the December House of Representatives elections, and with half the seats of the House of Councillors up for grabs this summer, constitutional change may finally be in reach of the LDP and its allies.
The LDP issued a comprehensive amendment proposal in April of last year, but Abe says he first wants to just tweak Article 96, which sets forth the amendment process. According to Abe, unless the threshold for amendment is lowered to a simple majority of both houses, even just "debating" change is impossible.
By "debate," Abe presumably means the national referendum the Constitution also requires for amendments to take effect. But perhaps he needn't worry: Considering he became prime minister through an election with one of the lowest voter turnouts in at least a generation, constitutional change in turn could well come about thanks to voter apathy rather than ideology or vision.
In fact, this could be what the LDP is counting on, though it may also help that the law establishing the referendum process seems designed to minimize actual public debate on amendments once they have cleared the Diet. Under the law (passed in 2007, the last time Abe was PM), the referendum can be held as soon as 60 days after the Diet approves the amendment, and must be held within 180 days (by contrast, the government typically gives itself at least six months — and sometimes a year or more — to implement legislation after it has been passed).
In addition, a wide range of people, including public servants and educators (including, apparently, university professors such as myself) are prohibited from engaging in activities that might affect the outcome of the referendum. Furthermore, in the two weeks immediately before the referendum, the law prohibits most broadcast advertising about the proposed amendments other than those prepared under a protocol controlled by two politicians: the speakers of the two Diet houses, which would have just approved the amendments.
Since one of the purposes of a constitution is to protect minorities from the "tyranny of the majority," Abe — by proposing to first make it subject to change by a series of simple majority votes — is essentially proposing to turn the charter into a "nonconstitution." And if the real barrier to amendment is pesky minority parties in the Diet rather than disinterested voters, then the multistep approach might have some appeal. After all, the full LDP amendment package contains some things that might be hard to get through any Diet.
Needless to say, the LDP would change the famous "no war" provisions to recognize a "national defense army" while giving the government the emergency powers needed to wield it in the event of wars or "internal unrest." Freedom of expression and association would not be sacrosanct if they harmed the public welfare or the precious Japanese "social order." Oh, and no more bothersome quibbling over the flag and the national anthem, since respecting both would become a constitutional obligation of all Japanese subjects — sorry, citizens.
In fairness, some of the proposed changes would simply remedy defects in the current charter or reflect what is already happening anyway. For example, making it clear that the Emperor is head of state (technically he is not) seems reasonable, as does the proposed change that would allow for multiyear national budgets and perhaps eliminate some of the frenzied, wasteful expenditures that seem to pop up near the end of every fiscal year.
Since the Constitution is likely to be in the news in the days to come and more people in Japan and abroad are likely to actually spend some time reading it, I would like to make my own humble proposal to the government for a much-needed constitutional change, which should come before anything else: Fix the English version of the current charter.
The first draft of the Constitution was prepared in about a week in February 1946 by the staff of U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the occupying allied forces. This draft was presented in English "for consideration" to the Japanese government, which was tasked with preparing a Japanese version. Both sides were working under tremendous time pressure, since MacArthur wanted to announce a "Japanese" constitutional initiative before other allied powers (some of whom wanted to hang Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal) could start to muck up the process. The end result of this process, which was both coercive and collaborative, was made public in April 1946.
The end result, the full text of which was then submitted to the Imperial Diet for deliberation and approval, was thus hardly created under ideal conditions. The foreign providence of the new Constitution was painfully obvious, despite the efforts of the Japanese drafters to hide it (including the revolutionary innovation of rendering the text in colloquial language rather than the classical Japanese then used to draft laws, some of which remain on the books in that form even today). And because the starting point for the Japanese had been an English draft containing provisions that the Japanese side either found objectionable or didn't fully understand, a certain amount of what historian John Dower calls "language games" went on, with the Japanese side trying to render the Japanese version closer to something they could live with. Sometimes the Americans caught them, sometimes they didn't.
As a result, the English version is not a translation of the Japanese version. Rather, there is the English version, which MacArthur signed off on, and the Japanese version approved by the Diet. Of course the latter is the only one that matters for legal purposes, but the fact remains that there are numerous subtle but sometimes important differences between the two. By replacing the current English version with a technically accurate translation, people who cannot read Japanese would be better able to understand some of the interpretive issues underlying it. It would probably also make it easier for the Japanese government to explain any amendments that are made to the rest of the world.
What are some of the differences? There are many, so a few examples will have to suffice.
Let's start with something trivial but annoying: The English version lacks the paragraph numbers of its Japanese counterpart. Others are trivial but lead to subtle differences (Article 34 is three clauses separated by semicolons in English, but two sentences separated by a full stop in Japanese).
Some discrepancies are quite significant. In English, the Constitution uses "people" and "person," terms that only seem to imply a difference between singular or plural. In Japanese, however, the terms are kokumin and nanpito. Kokumin clearly contains a nuance of Japanese nationality, while nanpito does not. Thus, wherever the English version appears to frame the constitutional rights of the "people" in universal terms, in actuality many of them are only clearly vested in Japanese people.
Other inconsistencies are just plain confusing. In English, Article 65 states that the Cabinet is vested with the "executive power," but the Japanese term actually means "administrative power." More confusingly, in Article 73 the English says that the Cabinet must "administer" the law, while the Japanese uses a term that means "execute"! Also in Article 73, the English says that the Cabinet must administer the "civil service" but the term used here (kanri) is actually an archaic one that had imperial connotations giving it a much narrower scope than the "public officials" (kōmuin) referenced in Article 15.
In some places, the reason for some very important interpretive debates is not apparent from the English version. For example, although the majority of legislation passed by the Diet is initiated by the Cabinet, the Constitution does not clearly accord the executive branch any role in the legislative process. You would never know this from the English version, in which Article 72 says that the prime minister, representing the Cabinet, submits "bills" to the Diet. In Japanese, however, the term used is not "bill" (hōritsuan — literally "proposed law") as is used in the Article 59 provisions on the legislative process, but gian, which means "matter proposed for deliberation."
Since "gian" is quite broad in scope, most scholars have accepted that it can be assumed to include proposed laws. Yet this is an odd assumption for a Constitution that clearly denotes the Diet as the sole law-making organ of the state (Article 41). This is another area where the LDP's proposed amendments would essentially make the Constitution reflect existing practice by clearly stating that the Cabinet can propose legislation to the Diet.
The meaning of "gian" is not just a matter of theory: It remains unclear whether this could include proposed constitutional amendments, which brings us back to Mr. Abe and his characterization of the Japanese Constitution as "pathetic."
Back in the 1950s, when Japan's conservatives took some of the first steps towards constitutional amendment — by establishing under the Cabinet a "Committee for Investigating the Constitution" — some scholars pointed out that the role of the Cabinet was to respect and protect the Constitution, not to criticize it or propose amendments. This was not mere conjecture, either, since Article 99 clearly imposes such a duty on Cabinet members and other public officials (including Diet members, but at least they are also clearly vested with the power to initiate proposed amendments).
Perhaps Abe will tone down his rhetoric now that he is PM and subject to this duty, but don't be surprised if he doesn't.
In fact, one of the creepiest amendments proposed by the LDP is the one that will probably get very little attention: a change that would subject Japanese people to a duty to respect the Constitution. And how will they know when they are violating this duty? Presumably government officials will tell them.
This would certainly be consistent with a process that already seems to be well under way: the conversion of the Constitution into an anti-constitution, a charter that the government uses to command the governed rather than vice versa. The Ministry of Justice already characterizes human rights violations almost entirely in terms of discrimination by private individuals, rather than anything to do with the criminal justice, prison, the death penalty and immigration detention systems under its jurisdiction.
A few months ago in a public restroom in Kyoto Station I saw a sign posted by the local human rights commission (adorned with the Justice Ministry's official human rights cartoon mascots) warning that whoever had written offensive graffiti there was violating the Constitution. Under the LDP Constitution, hanging a flag or a picture of the Emperor in a public loo to deter graffiti might well amount to a constitutional offense, but nobody seems to have any qualms about debasing the current Constitution in a similar fashion.
So perhaps few Japanese people will even notice if Japan's problematic yet nonetheless admirable Constitution is allowed to fade into the night. Even if they do, it will almost certainly be too late.
Colin P. A. Jones is a professor at Doshisha Law School in Kyoto. Send comments and ideas to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:b561a433-68cf-4d1a-a69e-f9119552067f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://info.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20130122zg.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971624 | 2,458 | 1.78125 | 2 |
As part of the Binge Eating Disorder Association’s build-up to Weight Stigma Awareness Week, we offer this second post on weight stigma. It’s part of a blog carnival; check it out to find other what other folks have to say about weight stigma. You can also check out our first post on how weight stigma hurts. Here are my thoughts for today’s topic of how weight stigma increases body dissatisfaction.
Body dissatisfaction permeates our culture and psyches. “If only this part wasn’t so….” Or, “If only if I looked like her….”
The focus on our bodies takes us away from the connect with the Self. The Self is that part of us that breathes deeply in the moment, experiences of pleasures of a light wind on our face or the crackly of the fire on a crisp fall night. It is a part of us that is not tuned into the critical voice, the judging and frequently damning assessment of our weight or size.
I was reading a poem the other day which speaks to this issue of weight stigma, body dissatisfaction and self worth.
I am untrained in the teachings of how to love me.
Another wounded soul, I can love so easily.
But the soul that whispers inside me, bones deep
Is too tortured and skeletal, too dusty to sweep.
It cries in the sunshine, it cries in the dark,
I ignore its sounds and reflection, its images too sharp.
I don’t want to know its pain, so I suffocate and strangle.
Once so full of potential, now it can barely dangle.
If I keep you inside me, can you help let me see
What a few others have seen, who have bothered with me?
If I acknowledge you’re real and really alive
Will you uncloak the truth, if I take that dive?
Can you answer my questions, can I trust your word
Will I lie to myself with all I’ve said yet not heard?
When we are dissatisfied with our selves, be it our body, weight or being, we are only half alive. It is through satisfaction and enjoyment that hope is born for the possibility to embrace the moment and the Self. | <urn:uuid:69a2d19d-47c0-4060-bb27-a04d8c2ac1b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fitwoman.com/blog/2011/09/08/how-weight-stigma-hurts-hating-our-bodies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938362 | 471 | 1.765625 | 2 |
In this exclusive opinion piece, actor Gabrielle Union issues an impassioned and very personal plea to spare the Affordable Care Act, now under attack by politicians.
I am going to do something that most people in my position don’t do often – tell you my age. I am 39 years old. I am at an age where I realize that life isn’t always fair and that unlike fairy tales, life doesn’t always have a happy ending.
Nearly two years ago, I lost a close girlfriend to cancer. Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at 32 years old, I remember thinking this wasn’t part of the plan. We were too young to worry about getting sick. In fact, we were supposed to be invincible.
Unfortunately, when Kristen was diagnosed she was on a health care plan that would not provide the care she needed for treatment. Just for a second, try to put yourself in her shoes. You are a few years removed from your 30th birthday, you have cancer, and while working towards accepting your diagnosis, you also have to try and figure out who is going to help you in the fight of your life.
Every year millions of women just like Kristen face choices between treatment and paying their bills. The costs associated with healthy living cause many to put off screenings and other preventive care let alone the treatments that may follow a cancer diagnosis.
Now, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, women in Kristen’s position can be assured that their insurance plans will cover preventive care – including breast and cervical cancer screenings – without expensive co-pays or deductibles.
Too many Americans don’t get the preventive health care they need to stay healthy because of cost. President Obama’s health insurance reform law expands access to important cancer prevention tools, saving and adding years to women’s lives, and eliminating difficult choices that women like Kristen face every year.
Meanwhile Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidates for president have committed to repealing the health care law if elected. In an effort to appeal to the extreme right wing of their party, they want to take a major step backwards on women’s health. Rather than letting women make their own health care decisions, they would rather let employers make those decisions for you.
They do not think about the countless women who are forced to decide between rent and a mammogram. They are content with the medical discrimination in our insurance system and the fact that insurance companies charge women more than men for health care.
In Kristen’s name, I am asking politicians to stop playing politics with our health. Kristen knew that women just like her are saved because of these screenings and prevention tools – it’s that simple. This isn’t about politics, it’s about saving lives and protecting women’s health. | <urn:uuid:30d89eda-ac70-4e7a-98cf-fe3a38f25e3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebuzzcincy.com/1191404/gabrielle-union-cancer-took-my-friend-dont-play-with-healthcare/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970733 | 577 | 1.773438 | 2 |
According to Sylow's theorem, every finite group with order divisible by $p^k$ for some prime $p$ has a subgroup of order $p^k$. Is this the best possible result in this direction? That is, if $n$ is not a power of a prime, does there always exist a group with order divisible by $n$ that does not have a subgroup of order $n$?
EDIT: Just to clarify, I am aware that groups like this exist. The standard example seems to be $A_4$, which has order divisible by $6$ but no subgroup of order $6$. What I am looking for is a proof that a counterexample exists for any $n$ that is not a power of a prime. | <urn:uuid:724a910c-aa68-4c05-b7a5-f1f11de8da70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/114378/when-does-every-group-with-order-divisible-by-n-have-a-subgroup-of-order-n/114396 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955511 | 163 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Cover Artist: William Henry Price
Story by Paul M. Howey
Always drawn to the outdoors, William Henry Price grew up exploring the creeks and fields surrounding his home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “I think my whole childhood was spent secretly planning to run away and live in the wilderness,” he says.
And when he wasn’t out on an adventure, he could usually be found drawing pictures. “I thought this was the main thing in life, but I discovered that other kids didn’t draw all the time. This was a disappointment.”
Although his father wasn’t an artist (rather, he was an optician and enjoyed playing the flute), he obviously saw something special in his son’s artwork. When William was just seven years old, his father put together a big stack of his drawings and showed them to Will Behler, an artist in Bethlehem, who agreed to take the child on as a student. “I was this skinny kid in an adult evening painting class, painting in oils!” exclaims William. “I learned so much from him just through osmosis. I studied with him for eight years.”
He cites another important mentor in his life—composer Nevett Bartow, with whom he studied music while in boarding school. “He was lively and cultured,” says William. “With Nevett, I had a glimpse of an artist’s life—you know, composing at the grand piano in a country house, good wine, good books, cigarettes, parties… I was painting and playing guitar and piano, and trying to compose a sonata. It might as well have been 19th century France.”
William earned his bachelors degree in painting from Boston University and his masters from Rutgers University. He describes his collegiate career as “wall-to-wall drawing, painting, art history, and aesthetics.”
Two widely respected artists made an impact on William: Philip Guston at BU and Leon Golub at Rutgers. “Not unlike Guston, Leon questioned the possibility of ‘beauty’ in a world full of atrocities, oppression, and loss of meaning. (Leon) and I conducted a respectful argument for two years, and I learned a lot about critical discourse.”
Art and music education, both as a lifelong student and as a teacher, have been central to his life, and the things he’s studied would make for some fascinating scenes in his biographical movie.
He studied sacred geometry, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and related medieval manuscripts. He’s studied and performed frame drums with Glen Velez, is a graduate of Don Campbell’s Therapeutic Sound School, and became a certified Music for People teacher after a four-year training program. And he’s been a violist with the Brevard Philharmonic, Blue Ridge Orchestra, and various other orchestras and ensembles.
He began teaching art right out of college, and putting on music-making workshops. “There were periods … when I did very little painting. But you’re always in the work even when you can’t get near it. You learn so much from interacting with students, too.” He continues to give occasional lectures, and does a lot of writing about how art functions in indigenous and ancient cultures.
“Teaching needs to be structured and, at the same time, directed to the innate qualities of the students,” he explains. “Above all, we have got to relearn that art is essential to life, as vital and critical as writing, math, and science.”
William says for him the creative process most often begins “with an impulse to paint some aspect of wildness… It might come from the sound of the brook, or the late sunlight catching a thousand branches.”
Next, he’ll start making what he describes as “patterns, smudges, and traceries,” letting the subject matter speak to him throughout the painting process. Occasionally, he says, images will suggest themselves, and he thinks, “Oh, I can’t put that in.” But he acquiesces and “they all somehow emerge without my conscious intent, yet I find they have real symbolic significance.”
He adds, “I just want to paint the aliveness of things. I think everything we see in this world around us is awake, a kind of speaking presence of itself.” William remembers being outside with his mother when he was about four years old.
She directed his attention to a crocus poking through the dark soil, and he was fascinated. “The whole world focused on those thin, livid shoots,” he says.
His paintings continue to embody that delightful, unabashed childhood sense of wonder and awe.
To see more of his work, visit williamhenryprice.com. His studio is located in Pink Dog Creative, 342 Depot Street in Asheville’s River Arts District. (Photo of artist by Paul M. Howey; all others courtesy of the artist.)
More in Arts
Also in This Issue | <urn:uuid:3254aaac-3554-44ef-acc8-d32d8125fd65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thelaurelofasheville.com/cover-artist-william-henry-price.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983227 | 1,094 | 1.625 | 2 |
Ok, peeps, I am putting my foot down. Ouch.
Now, I know that you understand the importance of a family memory. After all, you saved that picture of your little one’s Nativity play, right? And the holiday pictures that you printed and framed from your best travels are up in the hallway as a reminder of sweet times, yes?
So why is it that you haven’t yet put aside an hour to get to grips with the task of preserving your family’s most precious possessions in a way that will act as a legacy for future generations? Click on the link immediately (bossy, eh?) to get started, for free.
Let me tell you a little story – I hope to spur you on.
This is a letter I wrote to Santa when I was about 6 years old. My Mum must have saved it, whether it was for her benefit or mine I will never know. She passed away 5 years ago and I found it in a box of ‘stuff’ that she had been keeping for me since my childhood. I am now 44 years old. To be honest, this discovery would have been a precious one at any age for me as an adult, but it holds a special poignancy for me now that she is no longer here. It is a bit of paper that connects me with her, and the love she must have felt for me on that day, almost 40 years ago, when I brought it proudly home from school.
The moral of this short story is as follows:-
Your family need your memories. You are the only one who can pass them on. Do it.
If you’re already registered to SaveEveryStep, I’m guessing that you already intend to preserve some of those family memories from times past or present. Am I right? It can be a little baffling, the thought of saving the memories of a whole life already lived, but it’s easy and, more importantly, vital, that we do it for our children’s sake.
So I am guessing that some of you could use a little boost to get started, therefore I ask you – “what did you do this week?”
Just start there. The memories are clear, the photos are probably still in the camera/phone, and you can knock out a quick ‘event’ on your Lifeline in nano-seconds!
And for those of you already in the swing, Come on, show us your face! Let your friends and family know you’re out there and get them engaged in this too – after all, it’s a family obligation. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to add a photo to your profile.
Pass us on please!!! To tell Friends & Family about us, you can either:-
1. Press the little ‘share’ button below
2. Use the ‘share’ button on the front page of the SaveEveryStep site
3. Go to our Facebook page - get those likes up to 1000 so that I can give away a lifetime’s membership!
4. If Twitter’s your thing, then give us a mention – @saveeverystep
Oh, and one last thing…..take this quick poll if you have a second, thanks!! | <urn:uuid:e28b6495-1cdc-4881-9545-3aca335f1b10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saveeverystep.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/what-did-you-do-this-week/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=8ef4095fcf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954894 | 690 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The U.S. Federal Government, working in a private-public partnership has developed a new national/international registry for Next Of Kin notification, that is already supported by most states, and countless local agencies. Finally, there is one place where authorities can go to notify loved ones and family when something happens.
The injury or passing of a loved one is a difficult time for families and friends. This sad time is compounded when you’re not informed when a loved one is injured or passes on, and this happens all to often. This happens when Local and State Agencies are unable to locate a family member or Next Of Kin. This would happen for numerous reasons: a lack of information about family or contacts; or a lack of resources available to search for family members, emergency contacts or “Next Of Kin”.
The Next Of Kin Registry (NOKR) was established as a FREE tool for daily emergencies and national disasters, such as what happen with Hurricane Katrina. NOKR is an emergency contact system to help if you or a family member is missing, injured or deceased. Not the most pleasant thing to think about, but an incredibly vital service when there is a need!
NOKR provides the public a free proactive service to store emergency contacts, next of kin and vital medical information that would be critical to emergency response agencies. Stored information is only accessible via a secure area that is only accessible by emergency public trust agencies that have registered with NOKR, such as local, state, and federal authorities, and hospitals.
The emergency contact registration process is simple and secure. Just complete the information form on their website. There are some required fields and there are optional items that would be helpful to officials. Especially if your family member has a common last and first name, such as Mary Smith. Once you’ve completed this their form, you may add as many emergency contacts as needed. If you have any additional questions you can visit their Frequently Asked Questions page.
With the Next Of Kin Registry safe guarding your personal emergency contacts worldwide, you can feel confident that your information is secure. NOKR says they do not own the information they store, this information belongs to the registrants and is only held in trust on their behalf, and is only made available securely to registered emergency agencies during times of urgent need. NOKR is the protector of this vital bridging resource to reconnect individuals and families after urgent events.
NOKR is a non-partisan; non-profit 501(c)(3) dedicated to bridging rapid emergency contact information. NOKR was established in January 2004, for daily emergency situations.
Why should you register yourself or your family with NOKR? NOKR is the ONLY organization globally, that provides a free emergency contact resource of this kind, to both citizens and to emergency agencies. We hope there is never a need but we do know that events in life and disasters will happen. It’s entirely your choice to decide how you will prepare yourself and your family.
NOKR says that many people think that if they are carrying a driver’s license, identification card or credit cards, authorities will know who their emergency contact is. These forms of identity only indicate who you are not who should be contacted in the event of urgent need. To add to this problem, often times your current identification is not updated or readily available and it becomes very difficult and complex to locate emergency contacts. Who will speak for you or your family member when they can’t?
NOKR looks like the solution to this problem. A few of the reasons to use it are: Missing or injured child, adult or senior; Lost child; Those suffering from Dementia or Alzheimer’s; Accidents while traveling Nationally or Internationally; Unconscious person unable to communicate; Natural Disasters (Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tornados, Floods, Tsunamis, Fires); Terrorist Acts Nationally or Internationally; Deceased person used to locate a next of kin or point of contact.
“A man or woman cannot leave a better legacy to the world than a well-educated and prepared family.” – Harry S. Truman
By Dr. Tim McGuinness firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:5a51f9f3-92f5-4cb5-859c-796c9ef78ea9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.tigerdirect.com/2008/01/25/the-new-next-of-kin-registry/ | 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 | 0.955136 | 872 | 1.84375 | 2 |
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Bulldozer crews were on the clock on Independence Day, trying to break down mountains of snow, which still tower over some parts of Anchorage, Alaska after a winter of record snowfall.
At American Landscaping crews "roll" the surface of their pile every day or so, scraping off a top layer of gravel, which can insulate the snow, slowing its melt.
"I don't know how high it is now, looks like about 80 feet," said Glenn Ball, owner of American Landscaping, as he looked up at what he estimated to be about 280,000 cubic yards of leftovers.
Ball made good money off the snow dump after Anchorage broke its annual snowfall record of 132.6 inches.
Now that it's summer, he could use some extra space on his property for the soil and landscaping side of his business.
Cloudy skies and temperatures in the 50s mean it could be at least a few more months before the pile disappears.
"We'll be lucky if it's gone by October or November," he said.
Ball is paying three bulldozer operators to work on his snow pile.
He's also assigned crews to pick up all the trash that's left behind.
Chip bags, car parts, liquor bottles, batteries, all kinds of garbage gets mixed in with the snow that plows clear from roads and driveways each winter.
"Even though we knew that it was going to be disastrous for us in the summertime, we still wanted to see the record," he said. | <urn:uuid:14c40e2e-ee0c-45d0-8239-d90ff3bfba4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlbz2.com/news/watercooler/article/206273/109/Christmas-in-July-for-Alaska | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981794 | 327 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Yiyun Li’s powerful new novel "The Vagrants"
The Vagrants, the first novel by Chinese-American author Yiyun Li — who lives in Oakland and teaches at UC-Davis, and whose 2005 debut story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, garnered much critical praise — is set in 1979 in a provincial Chinese town, where a former Red Guard is being executed as a counter-revolutionary. The novel looks at how this event affects a wide range of people in the town, from poor ragpickers to a powerful, popular radio announcer who knew the condemned as a girl.
As the townspeople witness the condemnation of Gu Shan and its aftermath, each reacts differently. Those who knew her suffer breakdowns or plot to overturn her condemnation; others scheme to take advantage of the situation; still others are preoccupied with the barest details of survival. Li’s large cast of characters are drawn with great precision and insight, and she employs a sweeping, omniscient point of view to illuminate their fears, desires, and crushed hopes. Along the way, the lives of all the characters are touched by the brutality of poverty or of the Chinese police state.
The Vagrants is the best literary novel I’ve read in a long time, and I was excited to be able to interview the author, after the jump.
Li will be appearing around the Bay Area in February to promote the book. See her listing of tour events.
I think one of the first questions people will have about your novel is, how true to history is it? I assumed the town of Muddy River is a fictional pastiche of provincial towns. Is the character of the counter-reveolutionary, who is executed at the beginning of the novel, based on a particular person?
The novel is very loosely based on a real case in the late 1970s, when two women were executed in a provincial town, but that is about it. Muddy River is a fictional creation, and so are all the characters. The Democratic Wall movement in Beijing was a true event in history, though that functions more as a background for the big picture.
Could you describe how you decided to write the story of that time, in a place like Muddy River?
As a writer I am fascinated by small people in community, who are not always in the center of actions, yet who in the end, as onlookers, contribute perhaps as much to history as those who hold key roles. In other words, Hitler did not start his war by himself, nor did Chairman Mao start Cultural Revolution by himself. Those who participate are what I am interested in writing. And Muddy River, as a provincial town, seems a perfect place to investigate the people far from the center of the actions (Beijing, for instance).
Yes, I was interested in that choice — showing the action in the provinces rather than in the capital, where events around the Democracy Wall must also have been very dramatic.
When you choose to write the center of the action — say, the movement in Beijing — it tends to become more political and historical, while my interest always stays with the people — the characters, how they live through certain events; how much their action (or inaction) define not only their own fates but other people’s fates too.
It would seem that your choice of perspective is related to that. You use an omniscient third-person narrative voice which is, at times, very intimate with the characters, and at other times, seems to see characters only from afar. The narrator dips into the lives and thoughts of not only the ten or so main characters in the book, but also of characters who appear only for moments, as if glimpsed in passing. It’s a very rich, flexible technique. How did you develop this enormously flexible narrative voice for the novel?
I always love [works with an] omniscient narrator, and for a novel like this one, where each character experiences a small part of history, it seems one has to have the freedom to move from one character to the next to give a whole picture of the community. And a novelist has that freedom… It’s the narrative voice some of the masters of literature use (Tolstoy, for instance).
Did you experiment a lot in developing this perspective?
In the very beginning, I had each sections told in very close third-person narrative, though I realized quickly that even by going from one character to the next, I still couldn’t achieve what I really wanted, so I began to read some of my favorite authors — Graham Greene and William Trevor in particular — throughout working on the manuscript, to learn how to write in that voice.
There are ten or so main characters, and yet the person who might be termed the central character, the counter-revolutionary Gu Shan, is only seen through the eyes of other characters. How did you make that decision?
That was a decision I made right away when I began the novel. I think her absence from the narrative is important for the novel, because she becomes less of a real person than a legend when she becomes a cause for the town’s people. In that sense, she can only be real if I can have different characters reflect on who she really is, and when the different pieces of puzzles are pieced together, Gu Shan becomes real — neither a martyr nor a villain.
In terms of the many characters, was it difficult to keep track of them all, and their interactions?
Yes, for the first draft, as I sometimes forgot a character’s name or profession (especially minor characters associated with the ten main characters), so I kept a list of how old they were, what they did for a living–their superficial resumes.
According to your biography, you were born and grew up in Beijing. How were you able to understand in such detail the daily lives of people in a provincial town — for example, your very detailed descriptions of their diet, their clothes, and so on?
Beijing was a huge provincial town when I grew up in the late 1970s — a metropolis of villages. People’s lives in Beijing were not much different from those from a provincial town. My husband grew up in a provincial town, and I have traveled outside Beijing, and these all helped.
I see. So much of that detail is what you observed first-hand.
Yes. And I also looked at photos from around the time.
Were there things you didn’t know that you had to research?
I did some research on execution; organ transplant and its history, but the most important research to me is to make up that town. And I based Muddy River on my husband’s hometown (which was called Muddy River until they changed the name into a more beautiful one: White Mountain), so he made a map for me, with detailed, block to block, street to street details. And I placed all the characters’ houses on the maps so I could get a sense of how they could run into each other. I also researched on hedgehogs and turtles, etc.
Ah, the poor hedgehog!
Frankly that was the one part of the book where I skipped a page or two.
About the hedgehog?
Yes… I wanted to turn away.
For me, at least, it seems easier to watch violence done to a human, but animals seem so defenseless that I recoil from witnessing violence done to animals. Maybe that’s just my reaction.
I see. And I know there is a lot of violence done to the animals in that book. And I can’t turn away (as its creator, sadly) as that is part of the cruelty.
That brings me to a question which I think will concern many readers. The book contains a lot of brutality and cruelty. At one point, a character expresses the sentiment that life is mainly a matter of people trying to step on the neck of someone else, and thereby get ahead. And judging from the actions of many of the characters in the book, that seems to describe many of them, from the most depraved characters to even the more innocent ones, like the child Tong, whose action in writing down his father’s name on the petition leads to suffering for his father but promotion for himself. This seems to me to be one of the main themes of the book — the way people exploit each other, sometimes without meaning to.
Yes. If you look at it, there are apparent things/characters you could call evil — the system, the old janitor –but in real life, it is very hard to define someone as purely evil, as it is hard to call someone a hero. And much of the violence and brutality is intertwined with goodwill, or at least good intention. And I think that is how I view the world, and I write to reflect that view. Also just to explore how complex the situation is.
That complexity is what makes your description of that society a humane one. Still, I think people will wonder at the amount of brutality and cruelty you depict, and ask whether you feel it’s a realistic depiction of the time, or of Chinese society, or whether you feel that this is actually a depiction of our own society in general. Just to take one example — Nini’s parents don’t even bother to give names to their younger girl children. That seems particularly heartless. Is it realistic?
It might seem cruel by Western standards, but their nicknames were their names, and it was not considered outrageous at the time.
So would people be wrong to read your novel as an indictment of Chinese society — or, again, do you feel it’s an unfortunate description of our own society too?
I don’t have any intention for the novel to be an indictment of anything. That is a big NO. The situation may seem Chinese and specific to this era, but if you look at history, horrible things happen all the time. Brutality and violence happen all the time. On all scales. I can’t shy away from that if I am writing a book. However, that is not my interest.
I ask partly because I know that many Chinese people feel Western people have an unfair view of China. And some might say a picture like the one you’ve painted will only encourage that negative view.
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And to be honest, I think that is a very narrow way of looking at literature. My story happens to be set in China, and the characters happen to be Chinese. But if you read, say, Toni Morrison’s novels, would you say she is depicting an unfairly negative picture of America?
Certainly negative, but I would not say unfairly so.
Yes. I agree. I think there is unease about how China is “represented,” but that is a very Soviet, socialist view of how literature should represent certain things. I feel that, as a writer, the only people I feel responsible to are my characters. And I would need to treat them very fairly.
As a teacher of writing, is this an issue you work with, with your students? Do you have to fight to get them to be honest about the whole range of human behavior?
Never give a character a tag, I would tell my students. They would say, this character is an alcoholic, and I would say no, you can’t start writing a story about an alcoholic because then that one thing takes over the character. I think that a writer should at first acknowledge that any character is complex and sometimes mysterious.
Li will be appearing around the Bay Area in February to promote the book. See her listing of tour events. | <urn:uuid:dbc866fb-a67a-4803-8c46-9aaaeae271cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sf.metblogs.com/2009/01/23/yiyun-lis-powerful-new-novel-the-vagrants/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979594 | 2,441 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Why an enclave for the rich is a bad move for San Francisco's waterfront
Golden Gateway, which was built in a redevelopment area as middle-class housing, is now renting out apartments as short-term tourist or corporate rentals. There are dozens of examples right now on Craigslist. City law bars the owners of rental housing from converting it to hotel rooms, but a loophole in that law makes what Foo's outfit is doing technically legal. But he's clearly violating the spirit of the city ordinance that seeks to protect rental housing from hotel conversions.
One of the main aesthetic complaints about the area — something Snellgrove's lobbyists have tried to use to support the project — is the ugly fence that now surrounds the Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club. But who do you suppose put that fence there?
Do we as a city want to be giving special zoning benefits to companies that try to circumvent tax and housing laws?
3. It's an environmental disaster. Snellgrove and his architects, Skidmore Owning and Merrill, are seeking LEED platinum certification for the project, saying that its energy-efficiency, water use, and green building materials will make it one of the most sustainable structures in San Francisco. It is, the project website notes, close to all types of public transit.
But LEED doesn't take into account what the building is used for (see "Is LEED really green," 7/5/11) — and in this case, the use makes a huge amount of difference.
People who buy multi-million-dollar condos don't tend to take Muni or BART when they go places. That's not conjecture, it's a proven fact. A 2008 study by the American Public Transportation Association notes, bluntly, that wealthier people are more likely to drive cars. When you move into the stratospheric regions of the ultra-rich, that's even more true. A 2011 report on the Charting Transport website notes: "The very rich tend to shun public transport."
The current zoning in the area allows for one parking space for every four residential units. Snellgrove is asking for one space per unit — in other words, he figures every single buyer will have a car.
Many of the people who buy these condos won't be working or even living most of the time in San Francisco. These are condos for world travelers, second and third homes for people who want to spend a few weeks a year in San Francisco. "They aren't going to be living here all year," Christina Olague, a former Planning Commission member who is now the District 5 supervisor, told us last July.
If five of the 165 residents of 8 Washington fly in a private or corporate jet from, say, New York to their SF pad once a month, the project will cause the use of jet fuel equivalent to what a normal family would use driving a car for 330 years, Paul noted.
"How many solar panels are needed compensate for burning 396,000 gallons of jet fuel a year?" he asked.
Then there's the construction issue. If the developer's projections are correct, as many as 20,000 dump truck runs will be trundling along the Embarcadero for several months, one every two minutes — and it could be happening right as the traffic nightmare called the America's Cup is hitting the waterfront.
It also goes against some 40 years of waterfront planning policy, all of which as focused on downzoning and creating open space. This would be the first upzoning of San Francisco waterfront property in decades.
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- Means Testing would be fair, - May 22, 2013 | <urn:uuid:ef310e2e-d3f1-4fca-90ab-1904800eaeb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfbg.com/2012/03/06/case-against-8-washington?page=0,1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961373 | 877 | 1.617188 | 2 |
This is National Consumer Protection Week--a campaign to inform and encourage consumers to take advantage of their rights.
Target 2 is highlighting one of the biggest scams around--foreign lottery mailings. Federal law enforcement authorities are intercepting and destroying millions of the mailings, but it continues to cost victims millions of their hard earned money.
The victims, who never entered their names in a lottery, receive mail containing fake checks or a letter saying they had hit the jackpot.
To collect their winnings, they were told they had to pay a fee, tax or other expense. In each case, it was a scam.
"We're taking inspectors, and some cases teams of inspectors, to ports of entry to keep the mail from entering the mail stream," said Pamela Durkee, U.S. Postal Inspector.
Despite this effort, the solicitations that get through cost victims $120 million in losses in just a year.
"Look at the post mark. If it is from a foreign country I would be suspect," Durkee said. "Foreign postage is a huge red flag."
Con artists also use the phone. Telemarketers "guarantee" you have won valuable prizes like vacations, cars or cash.
But again, they ask for a bogus fee up front. Sadly, they also prey on the elderly.
"These fraud operators will call them and befriend them and tell them what they want to hear and make them feel like they made a new friend," Durkee said.
Anything suspicious you get in the mail, turn it into your post office.
Investigators stress it's important to file complaint. It's how the ball gets rolling to enforce the law against dishonest people.
If you have any questions, concerns or information, check out the following consumer protection links:
Appleton police are in an apparent standoff with a man on Walden Avenue. Police can be heard on a bullhorn saying they have a felony arrest warrant for the man, and asking the man to come out of the home. PoliceMore >>
A SWAT team and K9 unit entered the house on Appleton's Walden Avenue late Friday night to arrest a 62-year-old man and execute a search warrant at his home. More >>
The American Red Cross of Northeast Wisconsin has now closed the shelter at Langlade School. Five people slept there Thursday night while the other one hundred plus residents stayed with family or friends.More >>
Nearly all those who lost their home in Thursday's apartment fire attended a Red Cross disaster relief meeting Friday. They received money and guidance for what they can do next. More >>
Before putting a fresh slogan on his fence along Lombardi Avenue, Packer fence painter Christopher Handler has another big project to complete this off-season.Handler began work refurbishing the "Receiver"More >>
A Packers fence painter began work refurbishing the "Receiver" statue in downtown Green Bay to honor Donald Driver.More >>
A pesky insect is likely to crash a few holiday parties on Lake Winnebago this weekend. The late spring weather has pushed back the lake fly hatch. They're covering everything from houses to park benches.More >>
A pesky insect is likely to crash a few holiday parties on Lake Winnebago this weekend. The late spring weather has pushed back the lake fly hatch. More >>
Investigators are still looking into what caused a block-long apartment complex in Allouez to go up in flames yesterday.All that remains of the 74-unit Hilltop Place apartments are charred rubble, gapingMore >>
All that remains of the 74-unit Hilltop Place apartments are charred rubble, gaping holes in the living and bedrooms, and personal belongings that either received fire or smoke damage.More >>
After burning all day and all night, this forty year old Allouez apartment building is a mere shell of what it once was. "Seeing the tragedy right now makes me so sick," says Dawn Cisler, a former resident.More >>
While fire crews have declared the building a total loss, people who lived there are hoping they can get back some of their personal items.More >>
A Fond du Lac high school student hopes to make history this weekend by organizing the largest food drive in 24 hours at a single location.An average Friday at Fond du Lac High School is going to turnMore >>
This weekend, organizers hope people donate more than 560,000 pounds of food at Fond du Lac High School to set a record and help pantries throughout Northeast Wisconsin. Updated with detailed information from the organizers. More >>
Oshkosh West FFA students finished filling a semi-trailer with supplies for Oklahoma tornado victims.For the last four days, they've been taking bags and boxes full of donations for "Operation: Oklahoma."They'veMore >>
Oshkosh West FFA students finished their four-day "Operation: Oklahoma," filling a semi-trailer with supplies for this week's tornado victims. More >> | <urn:uuid:0eb18065-1bd3-4afc-9baf-6b7e60ae89e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbay.com/story/21523496/2013/03/05/the-ongoing-problem-of-foreign-lottery-scams | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958714 | 1,020 | 1.546875 | 2 |
If that picture’s got you grinding your teeth, welcome to the club. This little tag is, I guess, hanging on every towel rail in every Travelodge in the country. I see it each week (my day job involves working away from home for three days most weeks) and it annoys the hell out of me. It’s probably worth pointing out that I have nothing against the Travelodge itself – the one I stay in is very pleasant indeed. But still, they’ve given me a great example of clumsy grammar to blog about.
Grammar’s one of those subjects that can turn a perfectly convivial discussion about writing instantly frosty. I wasn’t taught grammar in any significant sense when I was at school, but I’ve always had a fascination with the way sentences are constructed, and I suppose I’ve picked up a lot through just keeping my eyes open, and asking questions when there’s something I don’t understand.
However, some people seem to regard it as a kind of puzzle, as difficult to crack as the Enigma Code. They get annoyed by the jargon involved – Oxford commas, semicolons, run-on sentences, clauses and sub clauses, verb agreement, passive and active voices (even when nobody’s talking!). There's resentment at what they appear to regard as an in-joke for the self-appointed elite.
It’s a common spectacle on writing websites for a beginner to post a piece and then lash out at anybody who highlights grammatical lapses in their work. Accusations of snobbishness fly about; the well-meaning reviewers get told that it’s obvious what the writer meant, and that by concentrating on the way they said it, the people giving the feedback are just showing off and being picky, deliberately ignoring the story. The writing’s the important thing, the beginner will protest, not how it’s written.
Thing is, the two are inseparable. It doesn’t matter how great your story is if the reader is lagging behind thinking, “Now, when he said, ‘We went to the zoo and saw a monkey eating a banana and a penguin,’ did he mean the monkey actually ate the penguin, or were those two separate things – the monkey eating the banana, and the penguin, happily minding its own business?”
Mister Sleep, the Travelodge bear, has a different problem. It’s clear what the sign means, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s badly written. Trying something and doing something are different. They might have the same outcome – the thing gets done – or they might not. The ‘right’ way of phrasing it depends on the intent, and which aspect is more important. Trying to do something is different again. It’s an attempt, an aim, a target. We always try to do our bit for the planet. We may not get it right all the time, but we give it our best shot.
If you try and do something, you’ve done it, end of story – the trying part is redundant. We always do our bit for the planet. That’s a much bolder claim, isn’t it?
Another way to check, if you’re not sure of a phrase, is to experiment with changing the tense. Shifted to past tense, “try and do” becomes “tried and did”: I tried and did my tax return last weekend. See what I mean?
Of course, no rule is unbendable. “Try and do” is a common if lazy turn of phrase in spoken English, and that may be the effect the Travelodge people were going for. Mister Sleep is, of course, a no-nonsense cockney bear with an inappropriate fondness for spending all day in his dressing gown. “Try and do” is probably just the kind of thing he’d say. | <urn:uuid:1d55a077-1055-464e-98c7-74ede24e9985> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lies-ink.blogspot.jp/2011/11/embracing-your-inner-pedant.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957213 | 856 | 1.835938 | 2 |
On this the week of the semi-annual General Conference of the LDS church I would like to give an invitation to actually live without an archy over you. If you attend or participate in the LDS church you have two external powers over you. LDSA took pains early on in this blog to explain that anarchy as a societal structure was not the condition of confusion and chaos people have been taught to believe it is. Anarchy simply means that rather than humans having a ruling authority over them they ruled themselves from the light within.
Even now as you read this most people have doubts about the usefulness of living without an external ruling body over them. So they remain where they are. They might be pretty sure the government is not to be trusted. They might feel like they know the church has slid downhill spiritually. But hey the government is still letting me live. And the church is not preventing me from living the gospel. I can still draw closer to God in the church especially because I know what is up.
I saw this Youtube video and it got me to thinking about the reality of being a member of the LDS church. Please watch it then we will talk about it.
Now you may say what you just saw and heard is an extreme example, that he is a real nut case. I beg to differ. He is simply being open to the actual state of his mind. He is in fact being a perfect Mormon in his political beliefs. Yes you heard me correctly. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you are commanded to have the exact same view as the man in the video.
Do we know world history? Do you know what was done under the laws of the nation of Germany in the 1930′s and 40′s. If you were told to by the government you were by law to get on a train taking you to a death camp. And once there you were, by law, to do whatever they told you to do. It was all legal. And if you were not one of those put on the trains you were by law commanded to help in making sure the individuals who were supposed to get on it were on it and did not escape. If you helped in hiding or protecting any such person you were breaking the law. And as a member of the LDS religion at that time in Germany you were breaking the commandments of the church if you didn’t follow these unconscionable laws of the Third Reich.
The church has not backed away from that stance. President Hinckley said we were commanded by the 12th article of faith to be that way. There is in fact a strengthening the church committee. The church is spying on you in behalf of the government. The IRS receives a report on how much tithing you pay every year if they ask for it. There is not one thing in all the facets or benefits you have as a church member that is not under the authority of the government. The work of all the priesthood quorums, Relief Society, Youth groups, home and visiting teaching, fast offerings, temple work , all your covenants and ordinances before God through the LDS church are 100% subject to review and approval by the government you live under. At any time if the government said to stop baptizing, stop sealing, stop meeting the whole church would obey under the direction of the 15 prophets, seers and revelators.
In the fight for liberty many people have become aware that the biggest threat to your liberty is from the government itself. Ezra Taft Benson said many people say they will wait till the church comes up with a program or the prophet gives specific instructions. Then he said, “Maybe the Lord will never set up a specific church program for the purpose of saving the Constitution.” The reality is the LDS church since at least 1890 will never set up a specific church program for the purpose of saving the Constitution. And how can I say that? Because the LDS church is completely under the control of the US government and those controlling the government have no intention of saving the principles of the US constitution.
Obama did sign into law the act which gives any US president the power to take anyone’s life. But there are those who say I am going to keep on supporting the church which agrees with obeying such a government. Yes the church which does not speak out against such things but indoctrinates me and my children in obeying the will of the government no matter what that will is. Do we think that supporting even with just our attendance does not have an effect upon our spirit? Karma is real. The law of the harvest is real. It is operative even now.
Why on earth does the LDS church ever need to have people bow down to worship a graven image? Is Satan “the great deceiver” really that stupid to ruin the good thing he has got going now. He can extend his control over people and they think it is the inspired will of God from the mouth of a prophet. I do not think Satan wants anyone to stop attending the LDS church. I think he wants as many people as possible to be in that group. | <urn:uuid:4b010800-27ee-4485-b236-cab73b41298c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ldsanarchy.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986532 | 1,047 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A few months ago a friend, who had been a Baptist and then became a Presbyterian, asked me for a short answer as to why and how I had changed my view of baptism (which had been the view that baptism was by immersion of believers only). The answer I gave him was “short” and thus will not satisfy those who want a full-blown explanation. But maybe the very shortness of my response will be useful to friends as well as casual readers of this site.
1. Ephesians 4 presented serious problems for my view of adult baptism only. If there is "one baptism" then how could I continue to insist that the immersion of adults was the only true Christian baptism? In effect, who was I to reject the baptism of other Christians who were convinced on the basis of good reason and sound judgment? This question deeply troubled me based upon my understanding of the church and the sacraments. I began to see the adult baptism only view as inherently sectarian, though I would not accuse all Baptists of being sectarians in practice.
2. The fact is that so long as I was a Baptist minister I had no "real" theology of children except to say that they were lost souls until some point when they came to confess faith in Christ. I now believe regeneration is not so obvious in real life experience and that faith can grow from a seed that the Spirit grants and then brings to life. This spiritual operation is a sovereign work of God and thus a work of true grace, not of free will or human effort. Luther, for example, argued that this in itself was a strong argument for infant baptism, namely that the child could do nothing but receive what was given to them by their parents and the church.
3. By not including children in the visible covenantal family we regard the Old Testament arrangement as merely preparatory and thus make the New Covenant less inclusive than the Old since children were no longer included in the family. But the New Covenant is better, greater, and more inclusive in scope. The New Covenant is truly new and it is an international missional fulfillment of the old. How could children be included in the lesser (older) arrangement and then be excluded from the better and newer one? This just didn't make sense to me when I asked the question this way. The famous Catholic philosopher Pascal rightly said, "Jesus Christ, whom both Testaments regard, the Old as its hope, the New
as its model, and both as their center." If this is true then the New Covenant must include all the promises of the old, with the focus clearly on Christ who is the center of both. God made promises to Abraham and his seed. I believe those promises are to me, in Christ, and to my seed. I am a spiritual heir of Abraham and we are all joint-heirs of God's promises in Christ, which are all yes and amen!
4. Finally, many texts began to appear to make new sense to me once I began to reject the polemics that I had always embraced. New exegesis resulted from asking the questions of this new theology, a theology which grew out of pastoral practice and love.
I never insist, of course, that anyone has to agree with my change of view regarding baptism. My own son remains an adult immersionist in his ministry as a church planter. My own granddaughter was baptized on profession of faith at age 10 and I rejoiced in the occasion. I obviously have not yet convinced my son on this matter even though you can see on "The ACT 3 Story" (the video on our site: www.act3online.com) that he has my spiritual DNA in most every way. Life and its ambiguities and differences make for real diversity which should make the pursuit of unity a great blessing, which for me this issue is all about in the end. | <urn:uuid:0485e6ca-5132-46e2-93fa-50275ccd9577> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://johnharmstrong.com/?p=652 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986627 | 788 | 1.507813 | 2 |
My daughter is 16 has been diagnosed with OCD and for the last year she has been pulling her hair out causing hair thinning and a small bald spot. this is affecting her emotional health alot. Do you have any suggestions on how I can help her? Thank You
Here are some tips from my skin Deep site (grossbart.com) See also trich.org.
How To Stop Compulsive Skin Picking, Scratching, and Hair Pulling
Everyone pulls off the odd bit of skin or squeezes a random pimple. But for some people the squeezing, scratching, or picking becomes an absolutely monstrous compulsive behavior that threatens to take over their lives. Concealing what they are doing and its impact, can trigger desperate attempts at camouflage and the avoidance of activities and relationships. As a practicing skin psychologist for 30 years, I have seen a huge recent increase in people coming in with skin picking and scratching problems. Some have an underlying skin disease, but the behavior itself may be the whole story. Feeling great shame, people become isolated, rarely talking to friends and neighbors about their problem. This makes it hard for them to connect with others for support. The Internet may become their key source of support and information. Pickers and scratchers range from very emotionally troubled, to otherwise quite healthy and successful people. Picking problems that look the same from the outside can be very different on the inside. Treatment needs to be carefully individualized--simple formulas and stock programs are often not enough. The treatment approach MUST be matched to both what is fueling the picking and the individual’s personal psychology. Many different paths can lead to a picking problem. Any area may be the target, some people use tweezers or nail files and produce deep permanent scars. Many people describe looking for self-soothing, and go into a trance-like daze when they pick. Some people do most of their picking when they are bored, reading, or watching a movie, and little is going on. For others as the stress ratchets up, so does their picking. For yet another group, what starts as a well-intentioned attempt to smooth out or improve an area of skin may quickly turn destructive when it combines with a relentless perfectionism. Deep guilt and shame can easily compound the problem. Sarah G. told me, "Over the years I have gradually shared all my secrets with my husband except one. Ever since college I have been disappearing into the bathroom to tear at my skin. I don't know if he suspects or not. I feel like a freak, I know I should tell him, but..." For her, ‘coming out’ was a critical step. Probably no treatment approach would have worked without it. Not seeing their problem as a serious "real" disorder, some deny themselves serious treatment. Picking can become a major focus of life and can seriously erode relationships, work, and leisure and really make people feel crazy and out of control. People who are hard on their skin are typically also hard on themselves about it. Fiona O. put it sharply, "I'm doing it to myself, so I deserve what I get." When Julia B. got out her magnifying mirror and bright light she knew trouble was coming. Deep scaring, recurrent skin infections and and an overwhelming sense of shame were no match for her compulsion to keep digging deeply at the skin on her arms. At first picking would bring her a blissful, trancelike sense of peace, and then as the blood flowed this would change into revulsion and self-reproach. Intriguingly, a high percentage of pickers I’ve work with were picked on by others when they were growing up. They may have been scapegoated at school or the the victim of critical, perfectionistic parents. Being picked on then becomes a pattern that people loyally continue by internalizing the problem and picking on themselves. Emma L. described her erratic parents and chaotic childhood, "Picking was the one stable thing I could depend on." As she was able to build a more solid identity and sense of herself in therapy, she was able to let go of the picking. Natalie M.’s focus on her picking as part of a lifelong pattern of obsessions and compulsions let her use medication and behavior therapy very effectively. The very specific prescriptive style worked very well for her. In contrast Brent L. came to think of his picking as an “addiction without a substance” and adapted parts of the AA 12-step approach. He found he could stop picking if he was able to focus on, and sit with, the emotional pain that it was masking. For others really pushing to get at the emotions that are lurking when picking starts is key. Picking can be an angry act, as I suggested to Brad K., if he did to someone in the street what he did to himself, they would put him in jail. Anne R. usually picked only in private, but when she got a cell phone call in a crowded car telling her that her boy friend was also dating someone else, the picking started and her blood started to flow. Her skin took the beating she wished she could have delivered to him. People like Anne and Brad need help to feel their feelings in their hearts instead of in their skins.
Treatment: What Works
I have been most impressed with the effectiveness of three treatment tools:
1.) MEDICATION: Antidepressants (SSRI’s) and mood stabilizers have been very helpful for some of my patients, and a disappointment for others. If you want to go this route it is important to be persistent and expect to experiment with different drugs and dosages.
2.) PSYCHOTHERAPY: With literally hundreds of different approaches, it is hard to be an educated consumer. Look for good personal chemistry: someone you feel ‘gets’ you. Look for a depth of experience working with picking and scratching. Someone can be a great therapist for people with other problems, yet ignorant and ineffective in this area. Ideally a therapist should be competent to address behavior change, cognitive (thinking) issues, and also the emotional side of the problem. A therapist who is too strictly committed to one approach or technique may have major blind spots.
3.) HYPNOSIS and SELF-HYPNOSIS: These adjunctive techniques are best taught by a qualified psychotherapist. With an impressive record of success for habit control, these approaches are especially useful for people who go into a spacey trance state when they pick. You can learn to turn this “inadvertent negative hypnosis” into an effective treatment technique
For more information see the Skin Deep chapter: Breaking The Itch/Scratch Cycle
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I am so excited that the redesigned Today Moms site launched. It was the last project I worked on when I was still at nbcnews.com. With a small team of super talented people we came up with this responsive design concept.
The site is built on the new platform that we built in early 2012. There are a few great ideas behind this concept, and I want to highlight a couple that makes me smile .
Click on image to view the page. You may need a more up-to-date browser to view this.
Alex Girón of nclud created this visualization of our solar system by using only HTML and CSS3. In his words:
These past few months I’ve been exploring CSS3, trying to learn some of it’s new feaÂtures and getting a feel for which browsers support it. A few weeks back I put out my first experiment exploring @font-face and transforms. This time, I set out to experiment with border-radius, and what I thought was going to be a boring little project turned out to be quite interesting.
via Veerle Pieters
Click image to play the game
Last time we learned how to create a dynamic bar chart with data that we had to type in manually. That data entry part was tedious and unnecessary. Today we will solve that problem by creating a model that can load and parse data from an external file. Although in this example we only use the model to parse comma delimited file (CSV), we will build it in a way that allow us to parse tab delimited file as well. CSV is a very popular and compact format for storing data. It is also very easy to parse.
If you didn’t follow the previous tutorial, you can download the project from here.
Click on image to view the site
This visualization is compact and pretty. I like the idea behind it, but it is not necessarily the best way to present this kind of information. You can’t quickly scan the information since you have to mouse over each bar to see what feature it represents. The color coded bars are stacking toward the center instead of remaining in their own circle, which makes it harder to follow. I think a regular matrix table would be nicer. | <urn:uuid:90acc746-d522-409a-b47e-5d283fd71c51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biofusiondesign.com/category/programming/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958738 | 471 | 1.625 | 2 |
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A shot glass, or “shooter,” is produced in many small sizes and range from 1-2 fluid ounces. Measurements for the shot glass vary by country with the United States having one of the larger sizes of shot glass and Germany having one of the smaller shot glass sizes. Two-ounce shot glasses are sometimes called a “double shot.” A single ounce shot glass can also be referred to as a “Pony.”
A shot glass comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, all typically falling in the same fluid ounce range. Many shot glasses have heavy glass bottoms so they can be “slammed” onto the bar.
Ordering a “shot” in Germany may result in a drink that's 20mL (0.67 oz.), while a United States shot would yield 28mL of liquid. | <urn:uuid:b7fd646e-0914-47c4-9d13-938f5e6aeb96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mixdrinkipedia.com/glassware/shot_glass | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96222 | 214 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.
SOURCE Feeding America
Partnership achieves a major milestone in the fight against hunger in America
CHICAGO, Feb. 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As leading organizations in helping to fight hunger, Feeding America and Walmart have achieved an important milestone in their partnership this week-more than one billion meals in food and products have been distributed to people in need since 2005.
This achievement marks the first time a Feeding America corporate partner has exceeded the one billion meals mark through product donations to the nationwide network of food banks.
"By reaching the one billion meals mark, Walmart has shown that they are deeply committed to helping fight hunger in the United States," said Bob Aiken, president and CEO of Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief charity. "On behalf of the 37 million clients of Feeding America and our national network of food banks, I would like to say 'thank you' to Walmart and its associates for helping us fight hunger together."
"The one billion meals that Walmart has donated to our network have helped us bring nutritious food to families across the country, and it is something we would not have been able to do on our own," Aiken continued.
Food and products are critical to the 200 food banks and 61,000 agencies across the country that make up the Feeding America network. Merchandise from local Walmart stores goes directly to help feed the 1 in 6 Americans facing hunger. Programs such as the BackPack Program for kids and soup kitchens catering to seniors and vets are all recipients of Walmart donations.
The donation comes at a critical time in the fight to end hunger. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 50 million people in the United States are struggling with hunger. Of that number, nearly 17 million are children.
"Hunger is an issue in the United States, and as the largest grocer in the country we have a responsibility to help by leveraging our size and scale to produce impact," said Julie Gehrki, senior director of the Walmart Foundation. "Through the work that Feeding America is doing, we can extend our reach and help to solve this challenge in the communities we serve. As with anything we do at Walmart, we tackle challenges as a team, and we are proud to partner with Feeding America to achieve this milestone."
Walmart's partnership extends throughout Feeding America's network of food banks with virtually every member getting critically-needed perishable foods such as meat, dairy and produce directly from a local Walmart store or Sam's Club through the retail donation program.
In 2010, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation made a historic $2 billion commitment to help end hunger in America. This includes providing more than one billion pounds of food from Walmart facilities and giving $250 million to hunger-relief organizations through 2015. Walmart also committed to raising awareness about the issue of hunger in America to its millions of customers and associates and to collaborate with business, government, food manufacturers and other corporations to help fight hunger.
About Feeding America
Feeding America provides low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity, our network members supply food to more than 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks support 61,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms. For more information on how you can fight hunger in your community and across the country, visit www.feedingamerica.org. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/FeedingAmerica or follow our news on Twitter at twitter.com/FeedingAmerica.
About Philanthropy at Walmart
Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are committed to helping people live better through philanthropic efforts. By operating globally and giving back locally, Walmart is uniquely positioned to address the needs of the communities it serves and make a significant social impact within its core areas of giving: Hunger Relief and Nutrition, Sustainability, Career Opportunity and Women's Economic Empowerment. Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are leading the fight against hunger in the United States with a $2 billion commitment through 2015. Walmart has donated more than one billion meals to those in need across the country. To learn more about Walmart's giving, visit foundation.walmart.com.
©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:0b0139db-f25b-43b1-81f1-23f47492cc92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keyc.tv/story/21346129/feeding-america-receives-one-billion-meals-through-contributions-from-walmart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945431 | 953 | 1.664063 | 2 |
how to open a word document ??
Please go through the following link:
The above link will provide an example that will read the document file using POI library in java. It will be helpful for you to read data from word document.
If you are facing any programming issue, such as compilation errors or not able to find the code you are looking for.
Ask your questions, our development team will try to give answers to your questions. | <urn:uuid:f251db31-faf1-4a21-aa17-4e60caf616a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roseindia.net/answers/viewqa/JSP-Servlet/26163-open-word-document.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935746 | 91 | 1.648438 | 2 |
One of my kidlets’ favorite part of the day is when they get to create. Art projects are a great way for kids to not only express themselves but have some fun! Plus, if you are “crafty” about it, it’s a cheap way to keep them entertained and give us parents a much-needed moment of quiet or an opportunity to finish folding the laundry, make dinner or answer the phone. Who knows, maybe the next budding Picasso or Andy Warhol is in your very home with a Crayola in his or her hand right this second!
From the moment my kids could hold a crayon, marker or paintbrush, use a glue stick or safety scissors at preschool/daycare, they started coming home with “masterpieces.” At first, I only got one or two pieces a week. Now it seems that each of my kidlets are coming home with four to five pieces EVERYDAY. Both of my kids have been in nursery school/daycare since they were each three months old (my son is almost five, my daughter is 2 ½), so even if I conservatively totaled up one piece of artwork coming home from daycare, I must have close to 1500 pieces of children’s art. The Louvre has nothing on my house! | <urn:uuid:70234189-c4aa-46ed-b4d9-45d0c0e3ab78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theharriedmom.com/tag/pre-school/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967828 | 270 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Here at Parish of the Messiah, we take seriously the guidance found in the Catechism (Book of Common Prayer , page 855):
“The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.” from Book of Common Prayer.
We believe that a strong part of formulating ministry as members of the Episcopal Church lies in continuing Christian education as part of a lifetime process. We will continue in the future to organize and participate in programs tailored to studying the Bible and cultivating our knowledge of our Episcopal faith.
During the course of the four Sundays in Advent 2012, the Parish of the Messiah organized an Inquirer’s Class for anyone interested in confirmation and reception. The classes were part of Messiah’s Adult Christian Formation, our education and outreach program, and were open to the public and the Messiah congregation, especially anyone curious about the Episcopal Church’s history, theology, and liturgy. In addition, this class serves as preparation for baptism, confirmation or reception into the Episcopal church for any adult member. This year the book, What is Anglicanism? by Urban T. Holmes, was read and discussed. As of result of last year’s Inquirer’s Class, seven members of the congregation were confirmed or received at the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts’s Rite of Confirmation service held in May 2012 at Trinity Church, Copley Square.
For the four Sundays in Advent 2011, those members of Messiah who were interested in confirmation and reception participated in an Inquirer’s Class. We read various sources, including the Book of Common Prayer, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and items from the Parish of the Messiah archives.
In Lent 2012, we offered an adult study group, A Journey Through Lent. The group studied the Book of Common Prayer and Show Me the Way: Readings for Each Day of Lent by Henri Nouwen.
In Lent 2011, we participated in a Mediation series sponsored by the Charles River Deanery. Parishioners within the deanery drafted meditations that we studied during a course of Wednesday evenings. We began with evening prayer that followed with conversation over a light supper. We will continue this tradition this Lent. Click for details.
To use the Charles River Deanery Lenten Meditations 2012 for your personal devotions, please click here.
To use the Charles River Deanery Lenten Meditations 2013 for your personal devotions, please click www.trinitynewton.org/LentenMeditations.html. Both parts 1 and 2 are now available.
Those interested in participating in any of the Parish of the Messiah's adult education should contact contact Bernie Jones, Coordinator of Adult Christian Formation, at 617/527-8505.
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Join us for these coming events
Everyone is invited to join us at
10:30 AM for our regular Sunday
service. We would welcome the
opportunity to meet you and share
our worship with you.
and be sure to check out
our monthly Messiah Calendar below. | <urn:uuid:a99297a1-3483-45a6-9bb0-5f03939d1c6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parishofthemessiah.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=50 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946185 | 680 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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Israeli-Hamas Strikes; Egypt to Work to Curb Violence
Aired November 15, 2012 - 15:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HALA GORANI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Hello, everyone, welcome to the program. I'm Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI (voice-over): Tonight, sirens spark terror across Israel as hundreds of rockets fly ever closer to the center of Israeli power in Tel Aviv. This, as Israeli planes pound Gaza, just within the last few minutes. Our people on the ground have been hearing explosions.
Fears are growing that this conflict could be turning into an all-out war.
The first victim was buried today, the first victim of this round of violence. Hundreds of mourners followed the body of Hamas military chief Ahmed al-Jabari through the streets of Gaza City. Some chanting "God is great; revenge is coming."
Since Jabari was assassinated with a precision missile 24 hours ago, 14 others have been killed in Gaza, three in Israel. There is growing rage against Israel across the region, with angry demonstrations in Egypt and Lebanon. And signs that perhaps the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty is in real jeopardy. The prime minister of Egypt is heading to Gaza to show solidarity with Hamas on Friday.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI: The American president, Barack Obama, is trying to keep the alliance from falling apart completely. He called both sides with a plea for peace.
In a moment, a live report from Gaza. And our first chance to hear from Egypt. I'll talk with a key adviser to the president there, the new president, Mohammed Morsi. But first a look at the other angles of this story we're covering tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI (voice-over): The violence threatens to come between Egypt and Israel. We'll ask the man who speaks for Israel: is it willing to risk decades of peace?
And while Israelis and Palestinians say their prayers, the rest of the world tweets "amen" and "amen."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GORANI: We'll get to that in a bit, but first, CNN's Sara Sidner is in Gaza City, where she's been hearing rocket fire.
First off, Sara, what's the latest from your vantage point? What are you hearing? What are you seeing?
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (Inaudible). And those blasts sounding like airstrikes. We are seeing the big, black smoke, even in the darkness you can see the smoke rising from several spots here in Gaza.
Now we've also been seeing rocket fire from Gaza, fired towards Israel, quite a few rockets, actually, in the past hour and a half, and then a response again from Israel and more airstrikes. It is a situation where people are saying is this going to be an all-out war?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER (voice-over): But if you're a civilian, leave it living here in Gaza, it feels like war to you.
And if you look on the streets, in this highly, highly populated and densely populated city, you are seeing a very strange sight. You are seeing all of the businesses close. You aren't seeing anyone on the streets, milling about and walking around as per (sic) normal.
And you're certainly not seeing much traffic. In fact, any time we see a car on the main drag here that's usually packed, it is speeding through the streets, trying to get where it's going. So there's certainly fear here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: There's certainly a sense that this is war, that there is a war going on here. Then on the other side, of course, a similar feeling. We're seeing people, this morning, as we came in, we saw people hunkering down, as you heard the sirens go off, and suddenly you would see blasts coming from Gaza, over southern Israel, people hunkering down, trying to protect themselves.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER (voice-over): And the same thing has been done there, where shops are closed and children are being told not to go to school, parents being told to stay inside and keep safe, Hala.
GORANI (voice-over): So people in Gaza where you are, that you've been speaking to, are telling you, essentially, Sara, they're preparing themselves for a ground invasion by Israel? Is that their expectation?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: They're not sure. And that's because Israel has also said, look, we are preparing for the possibility, perhaps the eventuality, but the possibility of a ground war, but they have not going forward with that. But they are preparing, bringing in reservists. What's happening here is, I think people are just frightened.
You know, when you're standing here and you listen to the sound of these airstrikes, believe me, you want to get inside. I mean, we've been wearing all of our gear, our flak jackets. Just moments ago, I had my helmet on because the blasts were so loud, you just weren't quite sure exactly where those strikes were going to land.
So certainly fear in the hearts of the civilians here, but of course, both sides are promising retaliation for every time there's an airstrike and every time there's a rocket that goes either way, retaliation from the leaders of both sides. Very scary for the civilians (inaudible).
GORANI: Right. And for those who haven't experienced this type of attack, who haven't been in a situation similar to the one you're in now and you're able to report from, talk us through what it's like when you hear an explosion, what it does to a building and how frightening it is.
SIDNER: Well, usually what you hear first, actually, are the planes. You hear them flying above. Now everyone knows the sound of the planes. People here, even some children, know the sound of drones compared to airstrikes -- that are compared to -- excuse me -- planes.
But what you hear is, first the planes, then this rumbling sound that almost sounds like thunder, but much more severe and then, of course, you hear the blast and see the black smoke rising. It is a situation when they're close enough, where you actually feel it in your belly.
It is a very, very scary situation for anyone who's ever been in this kind of environment, an environment that is highly, densely populated, nowhere really to go. And people that can't easily leave. So certainly the civilians very concerned about this, ratcheting up yet again, Hala.
GORANI: All right. Civilians on both sides there, frightened. Thanks very much.
Sara Sidner is live in Gaza City for us this evening with our crew, reporting on this developing story.
Relations between Egypt and Israel are critical to security for the entire region. It's really the most important ally, Arab alliance that Israel had.
And tonight, are these treaties, these agreements that were signed, are they truly in danger? The Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, condemned the attacks on Gaza today, saying simply, quote, "The Israelis must realize that this aggression is unacceptable," unquote.
Morsi recalled his country's ambassador to Israel yesterday and announced that his prime minister is traveling to the Gaza Strip to show solidarity tomorrow. The world is watching now to see how this new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president will handle the first crisis that he faces.
Dr. Refa'a Tahtawi joins me now on the phone. He's head of Mohammed Morsi's presidential advising committee. He was also Egypt's ambassador to Iran and Libya. He is traveling to Gaza tomorrow with Prime Minister Kandil of Egypt.
So this is a question that people have, first of all, thanks for joining us, Dr. Tahtawi. Are these treaties that Egypt signed with Israel, these -- all these decades ago, are they in jeopardy today?
MOHAMED REFA'A AL-TAHTAWI, CHIEF OF THE EGYPTIAN PRESIDENTIAL CABINET: No, not at all. Not at all, because we have declared several times and repeatedly that we abide by our international commitments (ph). But respecting the peace treaty does not mean they're idle or indifferent to what is going on along our borders and what is touching our brothers.
And we cannot be indifferent to human sufferings. So we are abiding by our legal obligations, but we are active to help establishing real peace in the area.
GORANI: Now, did you have any understanding with Israel, because I know that Egypt brokered a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel before the assassination of Jabari. Did this all take you by surprise, what happened, this killing?
TAHTAWI: In fact, yes. My surprise and disappointing, but anyway, we are not speaking about the past. Egypt now is concentrating its efforts to try to contain the situation, to prevent escalation and hopefully reaching a kind of an agreed understanding that would prevent the recurrence of violence.
GORANI: So are Egyptians, is the government of your president, Mohammed Morsi, currently in any kind of communication with the Israelis regarding the crisis? And if so, at what level?
TAHTAWI: We have channels, practical and effective channels, which are necessary if we want to contain the situation. This means we have to contact the two sides of the conflict. And I am sure we are contacting the two sides. They are separate (ph) and reliable channels (ph).
GORANI: So you're saying there are ongoing conversations right now?
TAHTAWI: I'm not saying right now, but (inaudible) if we are trying to contain the situation, how can we contain the situation without talking to the interested parties?
GORANI: So right now there are no conversations, but you're hoping that to contain the situation --
TAHTAWI: There are -- I don't say now or an hour ago or the future, but the idea is if you have a conflict on your borders, then you cannot be indifferent and we are working to contain this by having the right contacts with the right parties (ph).
GORANI: So are you saying that there's hope on your part that, in a matter of days, in a matter of hours, perhaps, that Egypt, as a peace broker, will be able to contain the situation in Gaza? Do you have a level of hope here?
TAHTAWI: I have it. I definitely have developed a level of hope.
TAHTAWI: Because I think after all, what Israel really did was a miscalculation and I'm sure that our brothers in Gaza are also keen to restore peace and to continue their life normally.
GORANI: Now I understand President Morsi, your president, and President Barack Obama had a conversation. We know the United States, through the State Department spokesperson Mark Toner, is calling on your country, Egypt, to use your influence to deescalate the violence.
What conversation did President Morsi and President Obama have today?
TAHTAWI: The only thing I know about this conversation that those parties agreed to work jointly, to try to defuse this situation and to contain it, and to try to, I would say, reestablish peace and tranquility.
GORANI: And how would that be done?
TAHTAWI: It's usually through Egyptian (inaudible) and through also American influence, which is considerable.
GORANI: What would you like President Obama or the United States to do in this situation? What would you expect from President Obama?
TAHTAWI: Of course, we cannot tell President Obama and the administration is free to do whatever they deem appropriate. But we hope that the United States would exert some influence on Israel to restrain from escalation, because you start a war; you never know how to end it.
And our area is very volatile and even explosive. And I warn (inaudible) that if you will continue along the path of escalation and violence, this would backfire and they will be the first losers. It is not a question of short term, where you have to (inaudible) to look at the conflict in the Middle East, and the long and strategic term.
And it is in the interest of everybody to establish trust, peace and restore this sense of justice (inaudible), because no matter how strong you are, you cannot impose your will by sheer force.
GORANI: So we're going to be speaking to an Israeli official. But you're going, I understand, to Gaza tomorrow with the Egyptian prime minister, is that correct? What do you hope to achieve --
GORANI: -- yes. What do you hope to achieve with this -- with this visit?
TAHTAWI: In fact, first, we hope that this visit may help at least stop the escalation of violence, at least for some time, hopefully. And this will be at -- in itself a good -- a good objective.
Secondly, conveying a message of solidarity with our brothers, humanitarian solidarity and political solidarity with our brothers in Gaza.
GORANI: We appreciate your time, Dr. Refa'a al-Tahtawi, head of the presidential advising committee --
TAHTAWI: That is not the advising committee; presidential cabinet.
GORANI: -- of the presidential cabinet, Dr. Refa'a al-Tahtawi.
TAHTAWI: Yes. Equal to chief of staff in (inaudible).
GORANI: All right. Chief of staff there, thank you very much, Dr. Refa'a Tahtawi, joining us live from Egypt there. He's going to be alongside his prime minister, headed as part of a delegation to the Gaza Strip to meet some of the Hamas officials, including Ismail Haniyeh.
Thank you for your time.
Just quickly recapping, are the treaties with Israel in jeopardy? Dr. Tahtawi replying, no, also saying that he remains hopeful that there are channels of communication that exist between Egypt and both sides of this conflict, and also saying that they hope the government of Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, that the United States will use its influence with Israel, just as the U.S. has expressed its desire to see Egypt use its influence with the leaders in the Gaza Strip.
All right. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, Israel said it fired into Gaza in hopes of bringing peace. But with Hamas rockets killing three Israelis in retaliation and more aimed at Tel Aviv, I'll ask Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, is peace even more far away?
But before we take a break, another glimpse of the Gaza conflict, this time from inside a big concrete pipe. These Israelis are seeking shelter in Kiryat Malachi, the same town where those three people were killed today by rockets fired from Gaza. One of the images of our big story today -- we'll be right back.
GORANI: Welcome back to the program. I'm Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
Now more on the escalating conflict in Gaza. Since the assault on Gaza began with the targeted killing of Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari, three Israelis were killed by Hamas rockets. Tel Aviv has become a target.
Ambassador Ron Prosor is Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations. As director general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Prosor oversaw Israel's exit from Gaza in 2005, and he joins me now live in the studio.
Thanks for being with us.
RON PROSOR, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: Thank you for having me.
GORANI: I'd like you to respond to, first off, to what Dr. Tahtawi, who's the head of the cabinet of President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt said, essentially, you know, since Israel mounted this offensive, this military offensive, since the assassination of Jabari, three Israelis were killed.
But this military escalation only hurts Israel in the end, that there has to be a non-military solution. And it's not serving anyone on any side of the conflict.
PROSOR: My response is just as you said. I oversaw Israel's leaving Gaza 2005, not to look back at Gaza. So what we have, a decade afterwards, 1 million Israeli people, sitting in shelters today. That's one-fifth of Israel's population. That's the equivalent of the West Coast now in shelters.
So 1 million people don't go to work. Their children don't go to schools. They have 15 seconds to reach shelters. At the end of the day, the biggest winners are going to be those who are going to make sure that - - not the extremists, not the radicals (inaudible) --
GORANI: But that's not the question. I mean, everyone agrees that it's a very tense, difficult and, in some cases, tragic situation for Israelis who live in that part of the country within reach of rockets coming from Gaza.
The question is, is this military campaign counterproductive in the end? Are Israelis themselves not being served by their own leaders if the military option is the only one on the table?
PROSOR: At the end of the day now you are the prime minister of the state of Israel. (Inaudible) the United States or the United Kingdom. This is unbearable. A, every prime minister, every nation, every people, every government has a responsibility, first and foremost, to protect the citizens.
And Hamas, since it took over Gaza -- and I remind you, in 2005 -- has used Gaza, instead of changing Gaza into a prosperous place and an entity that people could live in freedom, basically use Gaza as a haven for terrorists, a launching pad for rockets flying into Israel day in and day out, and an ammunition dump to weapons coming in from Libya, from Iran, from Syria.
And this has to end, because really, peace on both sides, we won't be able to achieve that --
GORANI: So there are no alternatives to a military solution that, in the end, haven't lessened the threat to southern Israel? Haven't bettered the lives of ordinary Palestinians who have, in many cases, no way of leaving that Gaza Strip that is impoverished and overly populated? So I mean, in the end, in the end, is there no other solution coming from your government?
PROSOR: Of course there is. The solution that the Israeli government made was, A, when we had a peace with Egypt, it was negotiated we have peace with Egypt. We have peace with Jordan. And when we went out of Gaza, we wanted to have peace in Gaza. That's why we went out.
But we -- and people have to remind themselves about exactly that, that at the end of the day, you won't be able to achieve peace if you have terrorists like Hamas ruling the game. And Israel's main objective and the only objective, we have no interest in escalating this. Israeli targeting Hamas infrastructure --
GORANI: Well, let me tell you, because you say you have no --
PROSOR: (Inaudible) both sides will be able to live with (inaudible) --
GORANI: Some of your own citizens, Gershon Baskin -- I know you're familiar with him --"The assassination of Jabari was a preemptive strike against the possibility of a long-term cease-fire and Netanyahu has acted with extremism irresponsibility," these aren't Palestinians saying this about your government. These are Israeli observers.
PROSOR: Well, Gershon Baskin, you know, Israel is a diverse political system, not less than the United States (inaudible) to any ideas. But first and foremost, every prime minister has a responsibility to protect its citizens. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist --
GORANI: I don't think anyone's arguing that the prime minister of Israel's responsibility is not to protect its citizens.
PROSOR: True. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that if rockets fall on your head, you're allowed to defend yourself. So this is what Israel is doing --
GORANI: -- of what result comes out of that. But let me tell you what (inaudible) --
PROSOR: And hopefully --
PROSOR: And hopefully the result out of that would be that Hamas terrorist infrastructure is out. Ahmed al-Jabari, who you're talking about, is a mass murderer with blood on his hands --
GORANI: But there were reports --
PROSOR: -- a better and a safer place without him running around and we will be able to achieve better understanding between people when these people are out of the way and simple and good people on both sides can move forward to a real comprehensive --
GORANI: You talk about Ahmed Jabari, there were reports -- there were actually conversations going on between the Israelis and Ahmed Jabari that he had a draft cease-fire agreement on him hours before he was killed. Is that true or not?
PROSOR: Look, I -- you know, all those stories, Ahmed Jabari is a mass murderer. What he -- the amount of children and women and innocent civilians --
GORANI: So it's not true?
PROSOR: -- they suffered from Ahmed Jabari. The world is a much better place and a safer place without this person running around.
GORANI: Is it true or not that there were talks between him and others in Gaza and Israeli -- on the Israeli --
PROSOR: I do not know if there were talks, if there were not talks. But as you said, I oversaw Israel going out of Gaza. We went out and I want to remind everyone, we didn't go out in order to look back into Gaza.
And look what they've done into Gaza. They've changed it into a terrorist hub. Now Israel -- and not just Israel. No sensible government, no nation, no people can live under these circumstances. And the point that I want to make is --
GORANI: So this will continue, then?
PROSOR: -- no interest to escalate this. But it's important to know that the first and foremost priority for us and to every prime minister is to protect its citizens. And that's what we're going to do. And hopefully when we do that, people will understand that the only way forward is through dialogue and not through rockets flying onto Israeli cities and major cities day in and day out.
GORANI: Got to leave it there. Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor, thanks for joining us live in the studio.
PROSOR: Thank you.
GORANI: On CNN. We'll be right back.
GORANI: A final thought tonight, the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas isn't just happening on the ground and in the air. Imagine a world where a war is breaking out on Twitter. To win the battle of hearts and minds, the Israeli military has set up a war room, complete with computers and what it called new media fighters, in other words, soldiers whose job is to send out pro-Israel images and messages on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.
Hamas has countered with ongoing tweets of its own to denounce the Israelis and warn of reprisals. This Twitter war is taking on the tone of an online holy war as Israel's backers voice their support using the hashtag -- if you're not familiar with Twitter, that's a conversation topic -- #prayforisrael, while supporters of Hamas are using the term #prayforgaza.
And so far they're winning the Twitter war with more than double the tweets. There is no shortage of prayers on both sides, but any hope for peace lies in the hands of leaders, who so far, at least, have not found a way to end the violence for their citizens.
That's it for tonight's program. Thank you for watching. Goodbye from New York. | <urn:uuid:cb2339b3-f008-4c1e-a584-de8c88f95ee1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1211/15/ampr.01.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964243 | 5,157 | 1.648438 | 2 |
by Kate Childs Graham | December 14, 2011
By any measure, a government is good only if it is accountable, transparent and fair. Last week, the New York City Council affirmed this sentiment, despite opposition from Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
On Wednesday, the mayor vetoed Intro 624-A, a bill that safeguards taxpayer dollars, public services and public workers. In an effort to repair a procurement system previously wrought with corruption, now the city must notify unions when a contract threatens to displace city workers.
In a word, this bill would assure that New York City’s government is good. And Mayor Bloomberg vetoed it. This after a number of reports surfaced that his administration paid millions to crooked consultants.
However, the city council stepped in, voting unanimously to override the veto. Members of the city council understand the vital role public service workers play in the Big Apple. They know that when public workers are displaced because of city contracts, it is New York taxpayers who suffer.
The city council members know this because AFSCME’s own District Council 37 has been telling them. For eight years, the union has been alerting the city to the broken procurement system and the resulting multi-billion dollar waste.
DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, also an AFSCME International vice president, applauded the vote: “This vote puts in place the necessary checks and balances protecting taxpayers’ dollars, public services and the dedicated public employees who provide them.” | <urn:uuid:c1fcee8e-0ba1-43c4-9e44-6f8bb159aa60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.afscme.org/blog/a-win-for-nyc-and-good-government | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940782 | 302 | 1.664063 | 2 |
GRCCAC: Growing With Technology
- Organization Name:
- Greenville Rape Crisis & Child Abuse Center
- City & State:
- South Carolina
- Organization Website:
- Organization's Mission Statement
GRCCAC's mission is to end sexual violence and child abuse and the impact of these crimes through prevention, investigation, collaboration, treatment and advocacy.
- Impact Essay
In 2001, three unique, non-profits merged: Greenville Sexual Trauma Center (founded 1974), Prevent Child Abuse Greenville (PCAG, founded 1981) and the Greenville Children’s Advocacy Center (GCAC, founded 1998). This was not an easy feat considering the existence of three different missions managed and operated by three separate staffs.
Greenville Rape Crisis has a 35-year history of providing advocacy, support, therapy and more to survivors of sexual assault and rape. They operate a 24/7 emergency hotline staffed by GRCCAC personnel and volunteers who offer telephone support and accompaniment to the ER. PCAG offers parent education and support groups and primary prevention programs in schools, daycare centers, nursing homes, civic groups, churches, community centers and more. GCAC facilitates forensic interviews, medical exams and multidisciplinary team case reviews in investigations involving allegations of child abuse or where there are child witnesses of violent crime. GCAC also offers therapy and support groups for children who have been sexually abused and their non-offending caregivers.
Initially housed in two different buildings, the three programs re-located and created a common mission. One of the biggest challenges of this newly formed agency was a conglomeration of outdated computer equipment and programs. No two computers set-ups were the same, although many were using Windows 95. As a result, the staff struggled with compatibility issues, an inability to share files, and security issues that left confidential client and agency information vulnerable. Equally frustrating was the challenge of corresponding and collaborating with community partners who were using more modern systems.
Microsoft donations made available through Tech Soup enabled GRCCAC to acquire new technology and software. Today the staff operates through equipment loaded with Windows XP, Office 2003, and a Windows Small Business Server 2003. The agency also utilizes Exchange Server 2003 to share calendars, schedule meetings and communicate quickly and effectively. The impact of this transition on GRCCAC, our clients and partner service providers is evident in the following ways:
Prevent Child Abuse Greenville: In the “old” days, overall attendance at parent education and support groups was recorded with check marks on a poster board and sign-in sheets. Many participants in the 8-week classes were court ordered to attend. When the courts required verification of attendance, a staff member would pour through binders to find the original application and sign in sheets for each session. As participants could attend classes at multiple locations and were given no time limit to complete the series, this could quickly become a monumental task. Compiling data for funders involved even more paper and many hash marks. As these are frequent requests by the courts, funders and the community, valuable staff time was consumed in hours of research to compile and report the data.
Today, PCAG has expanded the program from two support groups and five 8-week parenting classes at six locations to thirteen 12-week groups (mandated and voluntary) meeting in multiple locations throughout the county. More than 600 parents and caregivers participated in these weekly sessions last year. It is anticipated these numbers will grow, as PCAG has added two fatherhood groups, in addition to the existing groups that include two specifically for Latino families.
Through the computer upgrades (including Access, Excel, Word and Publisher), PCAG has transitioned from an archaic, storage prohibitive binder system to an electronically managed system of tracking attendance, graduation rates, outcome measures, ethnicity, gender, size of family and more. This has accelerated PCAG’s ability to accurately report attendance, graduation records and demographics to the courts, funders and the community.
Volunteerism: GRCCAC’s volunteer program has expanded significantly through the use of Office, Internet Explorer and more. GRCCAC recruits volunteers through an online application process, maintains weekly correspondence with volunteers, and electronically manages the sign-up process for on-call volunteers. Furthermore, as volunteer hours are required as a match for many of our grants, the system is used to record, maintain and report volunteer hours more accurately and efficiently.
Outcomes Reporting: Although one agency, the three programs and their respective activities requires that GRCCAC track, record and report very different outcomes for each program. Programs like Access and Excel have enabled GRCCAC to establish the appropriate tools to track and evaluate the programs, each of which is easily managed and maintained by personnel with varied levels of computer experience and skill.
While GRCCAC has been fortunate enough to employ a few accidental techies, the agency has lacked the resources to hire trained IT staff. Outside of hiring consultants to set up the server, agency staff has been able to manage the system while still meeting their primary programmatic responsibilities. The simplicity of maintaining and utilizing the network, operating systems, and Office has created a self-sufficiency within the agency, saving the agency both money and time.
General Notes: Since GRCCAC’s technological upgrades, there have been other benefits, such as:
- Greater ability to track and report on finances and funding sources
- Facilitate frequent correspondence with local media, donors, clients and service providers
- Creation of electronic newsletters, statistical reports, annual reports, e-mail appeals, promotional materials, publications, brochures, and other awareness and fundraising tools.
- Development of standardized agency forms and applications
- Provision of enhanced security around confidential records and the ability to share those records confidentially
- Ability to back up and share files internally and between employees, clients and/or service providers
Seven years ago, agency employees spent a bulk of their time fumbling through paper, thumbing through binders of information, establishing filing systems, and tracking down paperwork. As a result of GRCCAC’s upgrade to a uniform system housed on a network, GRCCAC personnel now spend their days assisting clients. Last year, the agency provided 1,124 therapy hours to adults and children, parent education and support to 600+ parents and caregivers, support and advocacy to 553 rape crisis clients and 539 child advocacy center clients, 475 education programs for 13,611 participants including 10,200 students, and facilitated 220 forensic medical exams and 288 forensic interviews for children involved in child abuse investigations.
The resources made available from Microsoft and TechSoup have enabled GRCCAC employees to focus on the agency’s mission to stop sexual violence and child abuse and the impact of those crimes through prevention, investigation, collaboration, treatment and advocacy.
- Submission Category
- Optimize Mission Delivery | <urn:uuid:12d7b813-258d-474e-afbf-bdf549cc2089> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.showyourimpact.org/microsoft/2009/submissions/grccac-growing-technology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9467 | 1,405 | 1.75 | 2 |
As the Royal Mail hikes the price of stamps it might not surprise you that they are doing that in part to get the business ready for sell off. It might not surprise you that the government hopes to make that privatisation happens as early as next year.
But it might surprise you to know that there are already private posties delivering to a quarter of a million letterboxes.
TNT, who so far have only been competing in delivering parcels are now sending orange uniformed post men and women onto the streets in London to deliver millions of items of business mail, whether utility bills or credit card statements.
And it's made the Royal Mail furious. They believe it is simply not fair that TNT have been allowed to start this service, as a trial, although few expect it to be temporary.
Their complaint? They are obliged to deliver everywhere for the same price, six days a week whether Cornwall, Orkney or well heeled, densely populated West London. TNT however can ignore the routes that would be massively costly, like far flung Cornwall or Orkney, and just deliver lucrative mail in densely populated areas from healthy corporate clients.
The Royal Mail told me today this absolutely threatens to undermine their business model, if TNT skims off only the profitable parts. They say that in turn undermines their ability to meet their legal obligation of delivering everywhere. With the amount of mail that actually gets sent shrinking all the time, they can't afford to lose the money making services that help pay for the others. For their part TNT accuse the Royal Mail of being 'cowardly' and afraid of competition.
Ofcom, the regulator do have the powers to intervene, but so far they have not. This battle is only going to intensify as the Royal Mail inches nearer to sell off. | <urn:uuid:1924e618-d6f8-474f-a4bd-7ad8e8bf4519> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itv.com/news/2012-04-30/private-posties-coming-to-a-street-near-you/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964723 | 362 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Syria's opposition resumed talks on Saturday aimed at closing their fractious ranks, crucial to launching an international peace conference, and government forces pressed an onslaught on a rebel-held town to try to gain the upper hand in civil war. Full Article
Cardinal's departure darkens mood as pope allows early conclave
VATICAN CITY |
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A senior cleric resigned under duress on Monday and Pope Benedict took the rare step of changing Vatican law to allow his successor to be elected early, adding to a sense of crisis within the Roman Catholic Church.
With just three days left before Benedict becomes the first pope in some six centuries to step down, he accepted the resignation of Britain's only cardinal elector, Archbishop Keith O'Brien, who was to have voted for the next pope.
O'Brien, who retains the title of cardinal, has denied allegations that he behaved inappropriately with priests over a period of 30 years, but said he was quitting the job of archbishop of Edinburgh.
He could have attended the conclave despite his resignation, but said he would stay away because he did not want media attention to be focused on himself instead of the process of choosing the next leader of the 1.2 billion-member Church.
O'Brien's dramatic self-exclusion came as the Vatican continued to resist calls by some Catholics to stop other cardinals tainted by sex scandals, such as U.S. Cardinal Roger Mahony, from taking part.
Catholic activists have petitioned Mahony to exclude himself from the conclave so as not to insult survivors of sexual abuse by priests committed while he was archbishop of Los Angeles.
In that post from 1985 until 2011, Mahony worked to send priests known to be abusers out of state to shield them from law enforcement scrutiny in the 1980s, according to church files unsealed under a U.S. court order last month.
"O'Brien's recusal is also important as a precedent," said Terence McKiernan, of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based documentation centre on child abuse by priests.
"Many cardinals scheduled to join the conclave have been involved as bishops in handling cases of clergy sexual abuse, and some of them have done such a bad job that they too should recuse themselves from the conclave," he said.
Benedict changed parts of a 1996 constitution issued by his predecessor John Paul so that cardinals could begin a secret conclave to choose a successor earlier than the 15 days after the papacy becomes vacant, as prescribed by the previous law.
The change means that in pre-conclave meetings starting on March 1, a day after Benedict leaves on Thursday, they can themselves decide when to start.
Some cardinals believe a conclave, held in secret in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, should start sooner than March 15 in order to reduce the time in which the Church will be without a leader at a time of crisis.
But some in the Church believe that an early conclave would give an advantage to cardinals already in Rome and working in the Curia, the Vatican's central administration and the focus of accusations of ineptitude and alleged sexual scandals that some Italian newspapers speculate in unsourced reports led Benedict to step down. The Vatican says the reports are false.
The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new pope elected by mid-March and installed before Palm Sunday on March 24 so he can preside at Holy Week services leading to Easter.
Cardinals have begun informal consultations by phone and email in the past two weeks since Benedict said he was quitting.
Benedict's papacy was rocked by scandals over the sexual abuse of children by priests, most of which preceded his time in office but came to light during it and which, as head of the Church, he was responsible for handling.
His reign also saw Muslim anger after he linked Islam to violence. Jews were upset over his rehabilitation of a Holocaust denier. And, during a scandal over the Church's business affairs, his butler was convicted of leaking his private papers. With the Italian media speculating about conspiracies and alleged sexual scandals inside the Vatican that they say may have influenced his decision to resign, the pope's spokesman said an internal report into leaked papal documents would remain confidential and only be shown to the next pontiff.
The Vatican has accused the Italian media, some of which have called for the "Vatileaks" report to be made public, of spreading "false and damaging" rumours in an attempt to influence the cardinals as they head to Rome for the conclave.
The three cardinals who prepared the report for the Vatican met the pope on Monday.
Compiled after the arrest of Benedict's butler, who leaked sensitive documents to the media, the report has been seen only by the pope and the three cardinals and would be seen only by the next pope, the Vatican said.
The butler's leaked documents told of corruption in the Vatican, infighting over the running of its scandal-mired bank, and painted a picture of an administration where some clerics were more interested in their careers than serving the pope.
On Sunday, the pope, in his last appearance from his window overlooking St Peter's Square, said his abdication was God's will and insisted he was not "abandoning" the Church but stepping down for health reasons.
His last public appearances include a general audience in St. Peter's Square on Wednesday and a meeting with cardinals on Thursday before he flies to the papal summer retreat near Rome.
The papacy will become vacant at 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Thursday, February 28.
(Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Michael Roddy)
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Old-fashioned cordials, medicinal teas and skin-softening cremes are just a few ways the fragrant flowers of elder (Sambucus nigra; Sambucus canadensis) have been used over the centuries. Elderflowers also make delicious fritters, which I've always wanted to try even though I don't typically like fried foods.
So, I did a little research and read recipes from The London Times and Good Food Channel. Here's my adaptation of those recipes, based on ingredients that were available in my kitchen at the time. We ate ours right before the June full moon, lunar eclipse, and can't wait to make another batch.
Elderflower Fritters Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 cup organic milk
5 huge heads of elderflower
3 tablespoon of ultrafine baker's sugar
1 tablespoon of Cointreau (optional)
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
Directions: Pick elderflowers from Sambucus nigra or Sambucus canadensis, which have not been sprayed with pesticides. These flowers came from my backyard tree, which was started from another native tree found an hour from here.
Many recipes recommend you don't wash the flowers, because you'll wash off the pollen that gives the fritters their flavor. So, pick carefully, watch for little critters, shake well and then store in the fridge until you're ready to use. If you can't bear the thought of not washing the flowers, do it gently and then drain in a strainer.
Whisk together ingredients (except the cinnamon and 2 tablespoons of sugar) into a bowl. Let batter sit for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, clip flowers into smaller florets but leave some of the stems.
Fry elderflowers like pancakes, using a spatula. Push flower gently down into the oil until it is golden brown and then flip. Drain cooked flowers on paper towels.
Combine remaining sugar and cinnamon. Dust tops of the cooked fritters with the cinnamon-sugar. Then sprinkle with some flowers and serve warm with frozen yogurt, fruit or vanilla ice cream. Enjoy the pleasures of summer, and tell yourself you can always visit the gym tomorrow...
More about elder folklore, health benefits and recipes. | <urn:uuid:fc02fc2e-d047-4b72-9e91-b886cb8ba428> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teresaoconnor.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94469 | 468 | 1.75 | 2 |
On the DO list:
* Focus on doing something nice for yourself. Schedule a massage or facial. Go shopping with a friend to take advantage of some after-Christmas bargains. It's okay to do something that makes you feel better and to be a little selfish.
* Plan a small, quiet dinner with friends. Make it fun and different. For example, have everyone bring or make foods from various cultures. On this one night, don't worry about calories.
* Invite some friends or family over to watch upbeat movies. Pick three or four, and run them consecutively until midnight has passed. Another option would be to go to the theatre or symphony.
* Schedule a game night with all of the old favorites: charades, Monopoly, Scrabble—or even some kids' games. This is great for getting the children involved, too.
* It's not necessary to totally avoid the subject of the person whom you have lost. Don't spend all night discussing them, but you may want to take some time to talk about previous New Year's memories and even drink a toast to those who are gone but not far from your thoughts.
On the DO NOT list:
* Stay away from crowded, loud parties or bars. This is one year during which too much frivolity can be a downer.
* It's okay to have a few glasses of wine, but keep drinking in general to a minimum. Don't set out to get sloshed. Alcohol is a depressant, and feeling bad on the first day of the New Year won't help you face it with more enthusiasm.
* Avoid making any New Year's resolutions. Nobody sticks to them anyway! Why put yourself through the possibility of enduring future disappointment?
* Don't stay home all by yourself and have a "pity party." You may be entitled to one, but take a break from the negative.
* You don't have to watch the "ball drop" in Times Square unless you really feel like it. | <urn:uuid:1e82b7a1-bde2-4b07-8d24-c5a23dc6301b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.syracuse.com/healthfitness/2009/12/things_to_do_and_not_to_do_if.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962139 | 415 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Whether you chop your tree down on BLM land or pick it up from your neighborhood tree lot this year, there are several things you can do to preserve the life of your tree and make it both festive and safe for the whole family.
For those with little ones running around, or who may have young visitors this holiday season, it might be a good idea to be sure to decorate your tree with them in mind.
Local shop owner and mom Natasha Watts said she is able to maintain an elegant decor while keeping her treed kid friendly.
"You know glass ornaments you can put up higher but the acrylics work really well down low and then you can mix them and they all work," said Watts.
And Boy Scout Troop Master Tom Foot said his main concern is fire.
"If they are getting old and frayed or if they are cracked then you just want to replace them, lights are just not very expensive and so the major thing is you don't want to put anything on there that will catch on fire," said Foot.
Watt said when you do decide to deck the halls it may help to get the kids involved to prevent curiosity that could lead to future safety hazards.
"You know some of these plush animals like the sock monkeys something that would interest the kids, you know get them focused on that one thing that might help and distract them from the rest of the tree because you know hanging little things like that is cute," said Watts.
Designed by Gray Digital Media | <urn:uuid:4e49b878-2910-47fd-a194-a4cb79b792e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbc11news.com/news/headlines/Decorate-your-tree-both-festive-and-safe-180711811.html?site=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979544 | 308 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Islamist rising casts shadow on Tunisian Jews
Exclusive: Worries over the direction of the country in the aftermath of the Arab Spring persist among Jewish community.
LA GOULETTE, Tunisia – Over a dozen men meet on a Saturday evening at a house of worship tucked away in a quiet alley in this seaside suburb of Tunis. They pray and sing songs and break bread together in a building that most locals do not even know exists.
And while the entrance to the sanctuary is diminutive and the service respectful of the Muslim- majority surroundings, they do so freely, merrily and without fear.
This is Beit Mordechai Synagogue and its congregants are members of the country’s 1,500 Jews, the second-largest such community in the Arab world after Morocco. They are what remains of a group that numbered over 100,000 people at its peak in the 1940s and dates back to antiquity. They live good lives, working in commerce and development or providing religious services, but their prosperity, not to mention their continued existence as a community, has been called into serious question over the past year and a half.
Since the uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, most Jews in Tunisia have been vacillating between hope and fear. Hope because the demise of a corrupt dictatorship – even if it protected them from physical harm – and the advent of democracy might help create a better, more just society. Fear because the subsequent rise in popularity of Islamists and of Salafists, who adhere to an even more radical form of Islam, might create an atmosphere hostile to Jews.
The sweeping victory in the country’s first-ever democratic elections last October by Ennahda, an Islamist party formerly banned by the regime, had people talking at the synagogue in La Goulette.
“I still feel safer here right now than I do in Paris where I often feel threatened by French Arabs,” says Maxime Journo, a Tunisian-born concert promoter who divides his time between Tunis and Paris.
“Perhaps, but there’s no denying the situation is less certain for us than it was under Ben Ali even though he was what he was,” responds another congregant. “We must wait for further developments and see.”
A big test of the Islamist-led government’s attitude toward religious minorities took place several days earlier in Djerba, the picturesque Mediterranean island where the majority – 900 – of the country’s Jews live. Last year the annual Lag Ba’omer pilgrimage to El Ghriba, the island’s ancient synagogue, was canceled due to security fears. The question this year is whether the new government will be willing or able to ensure the rite continues.
“Celebrated for hundreds of years, this religious rite is an achievement that should not change, because it illustrates the openness of Tunisia to the world,” AP quoted Tourism Minister Elyes Fakhfakh as saying last month. “It is an achievement of the revolution, which established freedom of worship.”
Still, an overbooking almost ruined the government’s painstaking efforts to prove they would protect the Jewish community.
Youssef Qaradawi, a Qatari-based Egyptian radical preacher barred from the US, the UK and France, planned to hold a gathering in Djerba on May 5, just four days before the Jewish event.
“We had to do something,” Roger Bismuth, a leader of the Jewish community in Tunis, says after the fact. “If [Qaradawi] had said anything wrong it would have gone badly for the pilgrimage, and they listened to us.”
The cleric’s gathering was relocated to the mainland, the crisis was narrowly averted and the pilgrimage went ahead as planned.
AT THE El Ghriba synagogue on Lag Ba’omer, a set of unique Tunisian traditions and superstitions are on display. Women who want to bear children write prayers on boiled eggs that are then placed in a small cavern in the center of the sanctuary. Men sprinkle boukha, a fig-based alcohol, on their faces, hands and inside their pockets.
“It brings good luck,” says one.
A few hundred worshipers dance with the Torah outside the ancient synagogue during the day and pray and feast within its sacred confines at night.
“To me, there is something magical about Jews and Arabs living together like they do here,” says Guy Tzinmann, a French Jew who has come from Paris to participate.” If you don’t come with an Israeli passport they don’t give you any trouble and, unlike Algeria, where my mother is from, I can come here to visit.”
The police presence, aimed at preventing attacks like the one carried out here by al-Qaida in 2002 that left 21 dead, is considerable. There are probably more security officers than there are worshipers.
Like most religious pilgrimages, there is a strong commercial aspect here. For the Trabelsi family, which runs the synagogue and organizes the gathering, it is an important source of income.
“We would have liked many more to come,” says Renee Trabelsi. “In the past thousands did, but we’re happy with the turnout.”
It is telling that the most important guest this year is not Jewish. When the tourism minister, Fakhfakh, shows up on the second day, he is greeted by participants singing the national anthem.
JACOB LELLOUCHE, the Jewish owner of the popular restaurant Mami Lily in La Goulette, looks like a musketeer. Porthos, the fat one, to be precise. And it’s not just because of his thick mane of hair, his carefully trimmed French beard or his big – not overweight – build, but because of the joviality, affability and joie de vivre he radiates. When he laughs the earth shakes a little, and when he does the rounds, speaking to almost every client who sits down for dinner at the old Italian villa he made into a restaurant, he moves with surprising agility for a man of his size.
“When I opened this restaurant 15 years ago, I wanted to remind people of what was once here when many Jews lived in Tunisia,” he says, sinking down deep into his chair. “Almost everyone here has his own memory of living with Jews.”
Lellouche specializes in the distinctive cuisine of Jewish Tunisians. Appetizers include homemade matbouha, piquant carrot salad and, of course, the ubiquitous baguette, part of the enduring French influence on this country. Main dishes include thin, spicy merguez sausages, whole grilled fish freshly plucked from the nearby sea and a thick, green stew whose name I do not catch.
Rim Temimi sits at a table in the back of the restaurant, typing away furiously on her laptop. The co-founder of Dar el- Dekhra, a society documenting the Jewish heritage of Tunisia, has had a busy week.
Its first-ever exhibition opened at an arts venue in the medina, Tunis’s old quarter, earlier in the week.
“So far between 300 and 400 people came, and tomorrow is the last day,” she says. “Yesterday a black woman, someone from the lower class, came to the exhibition and cried. I asked her why and she said her parents used to listen to a song we were playing sung by a Jewish singer.”
Starting a group documenting Jewish heritage in Arab-Muslim Tunisia is no simple matter. Tamimi’s project might be likened to Zochrot, the organization in Israel that commemorates Arab villages whose inhabitants fled in 1948. One may well wonder why a Muslim photographer would invest herself in such an endeavor, but to Tamimi the answer is as clear as a cup of boukha.
“If you do not know your past, you know nothing about your present or future,” she explains. “My great-greatgreat- grandfather was Jewish, but I have been Muslim for seven generations.
Knowledge of history and particularly Jewish history in Tunisia helps all Tunisian, regardless of their religion.”
Tamimi’s sister-in-arms is Sonia Fellous, a Tunisian-born Jew living in Paris who researches religions. She is one of four Jewish core members of the society. The other 11 are Muslim.
“This is the only organization promoting Jewish history that has more Muslim members than Jews,” she says proudly.
Indeed, a short conversation with the two women reveals the extent of contributions by Jews to the country. The first filmmaker in Tunisia was Jewish. He also happened to introduce the bicycle to the country. Several important singers, such as the Semama sisters and Habiba Masika, were Jews. Members of the community were part of the country’s social and business elite.
“It was easier for them to go between the East and the West,” Fellous explains.
The Jewish community of Tunisia has a fabled past, but what of its future? Fellous sighs. It is clear she thinks that sooner or later her co-religionists will follow the path that led her out of the country, but it is Tamimi who gives a resolute and surprising answer to the question.
“Yes, certainly there is a future,” she says. “Otherwise, what am I fighting for?”
THE THORN in the side of Jewish-Arab relations in Tunisia is the same as it is throughout the Arab world: Israel.
Conversations with Tunisians, rich and poor, religious and secular, educated and uneducated, seem to point toward a pretty uniform opinion: The Jewish state has no right to exist.
At an upscale fish restaurant in La Marsa, a well-heeled coastal town near the capital, I meet a group of four friendly, educated and worldly Tunisians for dinner where they explain why Israel as we know it will sooner or later disappear.
“Israel is a theocracy like Saudi Arabia and Iran,” explains Youssef, a former Fulbright scholar with an Ivy League education.
“There will eventually be a one-state solution the same way it happened in South Africa. It is inevitable.”
The group, consisting of human rights activists and policy wonks, is curious to learn about public opinion in Israel. They ask what will happen with Iran and what Israelis think about the possibility of the creation of a binational Jewish-Arab state.
But they seem bitterly disappointed, even hurt, to hear that that kind of discourse takes place only on the fringe of Jewish society and is considered by the vast majority to be both impractical and undesirable.
Nadia, one of the dinner guests, who has lived in Jerusalem where she worked with an international aid agency, has Israeli friends. “Many of them would support such a solution,” she says.
It is hard to reconcile just how differently things are seen in the East and the West.
Western military intervention in Libya against the tyrant Muammar Gaddafi, for instance, was harmful and unnecessary, they say. They reject the notion that Gaddafi would have crushed the insurgency had France and the US not launched strikes against his forces. Such action did more harm than good, as it did in Iraq and almost everywhere else the West has intervened in the Middle East, they argue. For those reasons they oppose any kind of military intervention in Syria’s civil war.
While the group feels animosity toward Israel, they say their attitudes toward Jews in general are warm.
“I would love all the Jews who left Tunisia to return,” declared Nadia.
I ask her why she feels that way about Tunisian Jews whereas the roughly two million non-Jewish emigres leave her indifferent. She says it is because Jews contributed to a prosperous, vibrant and progressive society. Their return would help make the country a better place.
The dinner ends somewhat sourly. Not even a shot of boukha manages to get rid of the bitter taste that the tense debate leaves.
Half an hour later we are at a party at a bar by the beach where a band is playing the timeless hit, “La Bamba.” The partygoers are a good mix of young men and woman, straight and gay, locals and expats. It is an integral part of Tunisia, but at the same time it has nothing to do with the narrow alleys in the old medina of Tunis where veiled women shop for halal meat and bearded men leisurely walk to the mosque. The scene is yet another reminder that the Middle East has no problem containing countless paradoxes, and it makes me think of another country in the region that I know is similar in this sense.
THE JEWISH community in Tunisia is roughly divided into three groups: Rich and secular Jews in Tunis, religious Jews of modest means in Djerba and a group of old people who remain here by virtue of having nowhere else to go. The Jewish oldage home is located in a stately residence around the corner from the synagogue in La Goulette.
Roger Krief, 87, is one of the 40 or so residents at the home. The former jeweler says he has family in many places, including in France and Israel, but does not elaborate on his life story. The past can be a sore subject.
Like most institutions for the sick and elderly it is not a happy place to visit, but it provides a very vital service to the community that could not exist without the help of their brethren overseas.
“Our cooperation with the Tunis community is good,” says Yechiel Bar Chaim, an official with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. “We don’t work independently there, but we work with them to help provide them with means.”
Just around the corner at the tiny synagogue in La Goulette, the sounds of Hebrew echo loudly between the walls.
The congregants sing: Shabechi Yerushalaim et adonai Haleli elohaich tzion Rabbi Daniel Cohen opens the synagogue’s door, letting the Mosaic melody spill into the empty alley outside, but cantor Eliyahu Sa’adon closes it instinctively.
“Let them hear a little,” the young rabbi politely asks Sa’adon, his elder.
They reach a Talmudic compromise without exchanging a word. The door is left half open – or half closed, depending on your point of view.
The dilemma of the door at the synagogue is a good metaphor for the state of Tunisian Jewry. How openly can its members live in the country and how sure can they be that someone or something might not come through the door tomorrow, bringing their singing to an end The singing reaches a crescendo and then comes to an abrupt stop.
“Everyone is talking about Islamists and Salafists all the time,” one of the congregants declares in French. “But let the world know that in Tunisia, the Jews are singing.” | <urn:uuid:f1c7badb-6ed1-4ba1-b7d4-a9f5939dfc8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jpost.com/Features/Front-Lines/Islamist-rising-casts-shadow-on-Tunisian-Jews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966164 | 3,200 | 1.578125 | 2 |
File photoAs grower-shippers head into peak volume months in Nogales, Ariz., most expect supplies of Mexican vegetables and fruits to rebound quickly from mid-January freezes. But politics and market forces are casting a shadow over the biggest crop crossing the border there — tomatoes.
A few commodities, such as watermelons, may see shortages deep into March. The uncertainty over tomatoes will linger past spring, though.
For one, increases in floor prices of 10 to 20 cents per pound would become typical under draft revisions to the U.S. suspension agreement with Mexico.
The agreement, to be finalized by March 4, is widely opposed in Nogales.
About $1 billion worth of tomatoes crosses the border in Nogales annually.
“If you saw even a 10% or 20% decline, that’s a lot of money,” said Lance Jungmeyer, president of Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.
Less than a year ago, Arizona’s fresh produce industry was swimming in tomatoes. Oversupply seems unlikely to return soon — and politics is not the only reason.
Demand in Mexico has shown signs of strengthening, and export licensing requirements there have toughened. Some importers also see a temporary dip in U.S. demand.
“Movement at retail seems slow,” Jim Cathey, general manager and sales manager at Nogales-based Del Campo Supreme, said Feb. 1.
“To keep profits in the produce department, it’s my opinion they’re taking the tomatoes, peppers and things we have in good supply and applying the markup there. It’s a 100% to 200% return on investment to make up for what they’re not making on high-priced leafy items, it would appear.”
He referred to a rise in lettuce costs following shortages in Arizona and California.
Bulk of crops still to come
Chris Ciruli, partner in Nogales-based Ciruli Bros. LLC, said the freezes that hit northern Mexico in the second week of January will just bring volume on later.
“People think we’ve already had a winter crop, but around 75% of our crop is still to come off in February, March and April,” Ciruli said Jan. 28.
“There’s a tremendous amount of vegetable volume. We’re running in peak season on tomatoes, green and red peppers, eggplant and cucumbers now,” he said.
Ciruli Bros. expects to start harvesting its ataulfo mangoes under the Champagne label starting soon after Presidents’ Day, Feb. 18, in Chiapas. | <urn:uuid:b4108f76-6770-447d-a8e7-2eb36636188b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thepacker.com/fruit-vegetable-news/marketing-profiles/Vegetables-peak-in-Nogales--191272331.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935681 | 566 | 1.601563 | 2 |
One Down, Three to Go!
In this 1935 photograph of Mt. Rushmore, Washington has been completed and Jefferson is just getting started. Work began on the monument in 1927 and the faces of the four presidents were completed by 1939, with work ending in 1941.
[South Dakota Projects, 1917-1949]: Washington completed, Jefferson in progress, 09/1935 | <urn:uuid:2746af6f-ed2c-4506-92b6-3a80df903e55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ourpresidents.tumblr.com/tagged/South-Dakota | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963927 | 76 | 1.554688 | 2 |
This article was originally distributed via PRWeb. PRWeb, WorldNow and this Site make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.
SOURCE: The Community Music School
Community Music School is now offering programs for children and adults with special needs.
Buffalo, NY (PRWEB) February 22, 2013
Community Music School is now offering new programs for children and adults with special needs. Costs and other details are in the school’s winter catalog, which can be found at http://www.communitymusicbuffalo.org or requested by phone at (716) 884-4887.
In January, the school began offering adaptive lessons in piano, guitar, voice, flute and recorder. These one-on-one sessions are for people of all ages who have special needs. Jamie Rowitsch, a board-certified music therapist, will provide the lessons.
Individual music therapy sessions are also available for people with various diagnoses, including dementia, medical conditions and developmental disabilities. In the half-hour sessions, Rowitsch will use music as a form of therapy to help participants reach their individual treatment goals.
Currently through March, Rowitsch will also teach a group class called “Music Therapy for Social Skill Success” for children ages 6 to 12. The classes will use instruments, singing and movement to promote friendship and social skills in children with special needs. The class will be held at the school’s main location, 415 Elmwood Ave. in Buffalo.
About the company:
Community Music School is a nonprofit organization with locations in Buffalo, Amherst, Clarence Center, East Aurora, Lancaster and Lockport. The school offers individual lessons in piano, voice, strings, winds and brass, guitar and bass, percussion, theory and composition. Community Music School also offers various musical classes for children and adults.
For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebEducation/Music/prweb10457067.htm | <urn:uuid:cf6a5d6b-97c3-4f2a-9e7e-cfbe467a3293> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kndu.com/story/21305650/community-music-school-launches-special-needs-music-programs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934788 | 413 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Put Your Ad Here! Only $99/week or $350/month
Yahoo Voice hack leaks 450,000 passwords
Usernames and unencrypted passwords posted online after hack attack on Yahoo Voice network
More than 450,000 usernames and unencrypted passwords appear to have been stolen from Yahoo Voice, a user-contribution services on Yahoo's network, and posted online.
Similar attacks have been reported separately against other online services, including Android Forums and Formspring, where users are being encouraged to change their passwords immediately, and to check whether they used the same password on other services.
It is not known whether the attacks are linked. Both Formspring and Android Forums encrypted the passwords that they stored, although that is not a guarantee that they cannot be cracked.
However the Yahoo attack is potentially the most serious. Yahoo bought Associated Content for $100m (£64.5m) in May 2010, and then set it up as Yahoo Voices, allowing user-generated content to be posted online.
Nothing is really safe in the modern era when it comes to privacy and your personal information. Keep all your passwords different (use RoboForm to keep track) and you at least have a small layer of security. | <urn:uuid:16498d56-43bb-4e16-a102-7a78e6550884> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehyipforum.com/showthread.php?35880-Yahoo-Voice-hack-leaks-450-000-passwords&p=114480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935825 | 249 | 1.523438 | 2 |
An RV dealership and rental company based in Arizona is making some predictions on vacation trends for the year ahead. Beaudry RV says that the slowly recovering economy will lead to an increase in environmentally friendly vacations, otherwise known as ecocations.
Many people have become more conscious of their carbon footprints and the company says that traveling in an RV is an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint, compared to other methods of travel like taking a plane.
There are other ways of being environmentally conscious while traveling in an RV as well. According to the company, as many as 20 percent of RV owners currently have solar panels installed on their vehicles. Eating local and organic foods is also easy when RVing, since you can take advantage of what's in season wherever you go.
Many RVers are active and enjoy the great outdoors too. The National Park Service reports that visits increased by 33 percent last year.
"Despite the longevity of the RV travel tradition, RVing is a sophisticated means of traveling with high-tech equipment, room for the entire family and ways to be as green as you like," says Thom Sylvester of Beaudry RV Company. | <urn:uuid:cfc2bf6b-58f6-4c27-af8b-1914e8ae9dfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campingworld.com/rvexpertcenter/article.cfm?articleID=547 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979541 | 232 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Chip process evolution is a usual thing in a console’s lifecycle, but rarely has it been as important as in the case of the Xbox 360.
Known for its relatively hardware fragility, the original design of the Xbox 360 would frequently fall to the “Red Ring of Death” failure, which Microsoft terms as the three flashing red lights. While improvements in cooling and a CPU die shrink to 65nm in the Falcon revision have surely improved the situation, the problematic GPU still sits with its 90nm process.
The 65nm drop for the GPU in the Xbox 360 revision codenamed Jasper isn’t expected until August, a time frame backed up by a report from CENS. Microsoft has contracted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE) and Nanya PCB Corp. to build the chips that will ship with the Jasper consoles later this summer.
TSMC will produce the 65nm chips, ASE will package and test them, and Nanya will supply the flip-chip packaging substrates. Microsoft has supposedly booked a production capacity at TSMC estimated to be at around 10,000 300mm wafers.
Inventory of the existing Falcon chips are reportedly depleted, paving the way for the transition to Jasper. The next step for the Xbox 360 console is dubbed “Valhalla,” which will integrate both the GPU and CPU in a single package as a cost-cutting measure, isn’t expected until a year after Jasper.
quote: I'm curiose to see what the official sales #'s for GTA4 are... Despite not being that into the game if MS has their claimed 2:1 sales advantage I think that says one whole hell of a lot about the current state of the console wars.
quote: I was actually going to buy the PS3 version, as it was originally thought that because they are compressing the textures on the 360, that the ps3 version would look better. All the reviews seem to think that they look almost identical, so I changed my mind in favor of the extra content and the fact that online play seems to be better on the 360.(in my opinion)
quote: Exactly another misconception by the PS3 crowd that gets under my skin. The idea that because it has more graphical power than the 360 and has Blu-Ray, it automatically translates into a better experience for the end user. This is simply not the case. Games are not just going to magically " look better " on the PS3 over the 360 because of hardware.
quote: This is simply not the case. Games are not just going to magically " look better " on the PS3 over the 360 because of hardware.
quote: Hats off to rockstar on this, this only shows that DVD9 still has some life it it.
quote: Sure it does, but Microsoft got the 360 into the market first, thus it now has a larger userbase and more people to buy games. | <urn:uuid:9f29e92e-873e-4463-b982-44249144464f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11735&commentid=292005&threshhold=1&red=5841 | 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 | 0.954585 | 614 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Contact Improv As A Way Of Moving
I love a kind of exquisite cooperation that can happen in Contact Improvisation. Becoming adept in any partner dance form involves learning to find and foster that kind of cooperation. CI presents an unusual version of this challenge. Exploring what makes CI different reveals keys to finding that cooperation, and has helped me to find my CI bearings, develop my dancing, and organize my teaching in crucial ways.
Coordination is our guide - and it can be ambiguous
Cooperatively moving together is challenging - it's about mutually coordinating (or else it's a mess). Contact Improv organizes its framing of that cooperation differently than most other partner dance forms.
Most partner dance forms use patterns as guiding pathways within which partners coordinate with one another: step sequences, pacing, rhythms, postures, roles like leader and follower, etc. In navigating those patterns, dancers learn to move in ways that are distinct to each form - you can recognize a Salsa-ish way of moving distinct from the way of moving that works in Contradance, or Tango, or Waltzing, etc. The "way of moving" in each patterned form is the set of characteristic movement traits that partners discover work well when coordinating with each other to follow and elaborate on the form's patterns.
Contact Improv is not framed using patterns, but it also has distinct ways of moving.
Instead of patterns, partners explore the practice by mutually following shared points of contact. Dances may fall into recognizable patterns, but in this practice, patterns are not the guide. In CI, the question "How do I respond to what's happening?" is increasingly more useful than "Where are we in a particular pattern?".
Without patterns to guide them, how do CI partners coordinate with each other and with themselves? How do we, as CI partners, arrive at a shared dance?
It is in answering that question, by exploring mutual following of the contact point, that one becomes acquainted with what does and doesn't fit. While there are whole universes of different ways to do it, there are some ways to participate which make the cooperation easier and more fun. Those ways gradually emerge, and stick, and become familiar. Those ways tend to share some underlying, common qualities. Together, they constitute CI's way of moving [way]. More about those qualities, below.
Identifying what works and what doesn't is inherently not simple, because the results are a product of your partner's actions as well as your own.
You can feel how well things are or aren't clicking in a dance. It can be hard to tell, though, exactly what it is that's working (or not) - because, if you're at all on track, what's going on is not determined by just you, or just your partner! Real success in collaboration is as much about each partner's ability to participate as any other skill.
In CI, in particular, there is not much else besides the quality of the cooperation to steer by, and cooperation is inherently about the combination, hence a guide complicated by ambiguity.
It can fundamentally help to recognize this inherent ambiguity:
- Since the fundamental material is in the combination of you and your partner, it inherently takes time to sort out what does and doesn't work. You don't have to resort to patterns, and other shortcuts, out of impatience. Instead, what is to be learned is found in focusing on following the basic task - following the contact point, and gradually discovering what you can do to do that well. (That focusing almost is the answer.)
- It suggests not placing too much stock in conclusions about how your actions cause things to work or not work, because you aren't in control of the whole thing. Every dance is a mixed situation, some more clear and some less, some more thrilling and some less, some more focused and some less, etc. - often because of the combination of things.
Accordingly, it suggests instead looking for what you can do that allows things to work well, a balance between active and receptive.
The emphasis is on sensing and responding to your situation, including what is going on within yourself as well as how you are being influenced by your partners.
Development and balancing of these two modes - responding to your own situation without excluding what's happening with your partner, and vice versa - seems to be an (the?) essential collaborative improvisation skill, a focus that is worthwhile in far-reaching ways. (See Ensemble Improvisation's Essential Ingredients for a brief, direct statement of this principle.)
It's often tempting to reduce the cooperative uncertainty by resorting to patterns, like going through lift and falling sequences, or practicing one of the five rhythms, or taking or giving away control, or whatever. Resorting to patterns can be useful to engage what you expect, but it foregoes an extraordinary opportunity offered in collaborative improvisation, like CI: learning to mutually discover qualities within each dance, and its overall shape, that best suits your partnership in each moment.
Ultimately, being willing to do without set patterns opens the opportunity to discover unique patterns, custom tailored to the dancers in each moment.
That's not to say that established patterns have no place in Contact Improv. Some similar actions are useful for similar situations, and everything is part of some kind of pattern. What's extraordinary is that any patterns, if you're game, are subject to shift, change, and sometimes complete disappearance as your states and the situations change. (It's the complete shifts and changes that sets CI apart from pattern-based forms.) It's not unusual for the movement qualities to vary drastically through the course of a single dance, and even from moment to moment, when things are clicking.
Given this inherent ambiguity, how do you even begin to organize your attention when exploring CI? Ultimately, partner dance, and CI in particular, is fundamentally similar to another kind of cooperation with which every one of us is acquainted, from birth. Recognizing this similarity can help guide you in practicing CI - and vice versa.
Individual coordination illuminates collaborative coordination and vice versa
There are analogies which are useful in learning CI. (I find it quite useful to think of CI being like surfing, even though I've never been on a surfboard...) There is a central, analogous experience which is fundamentally familiar to everybody, from birth - that of coordinating one's own body parts to cooperate with each other.
Coordination within your own body usually depends on integrating the movement of different parts through your center. This kind of integration is also key to coordinating with a partner in a dance. It's crucial in any sort of collaborative dance, and more comprehensively so in CI. (See CI Sharing Balance for more about this principle.) Some other improvisational skills are similarly essential in both situations, like being receptive and responsive to conditions in the current moment, and recognizing the value of release - yeilding - rather than resorting to increasing control.
The direct access we have to our own, individual movement experience doesn't mean it's something about which we're completely clear. Sometimes, far from it! Instead, the usefulness of this analogue is a reciprocal one: individual coordination and partner cooperation serve as great models for one another. Development of solo moving is informed by development of partnering, and vice versa.
Here are some examples which show ways solo and partner moving can clarify each other.
When among other people, many every-day movement choices are for the purpose of keeping out each other's way - avoiding getting entangled. These normally useful choices can be impeding habits when the aim is to get involved.
A classic example that often arises while people are learning CI is the tendency to try to avoid getting too entangled with your partner by keeping your partner at "arms length". Specifically: using your arms to maintain some distance. It's actually more of an avoidance than an involvement, and that's an obstacle to learning. A fundamental challenge is to be involved - engage your center with that of your partner - in a way that allows coordination without unnecessary constriction. (The ability to do this, which develops with experience and guidance, informs CI's way of moving.)
There's an analogous situation in personal moving.
Isolating movements can be useful in particular situations, like writing or chewing or mime. For whole-body activities, though, you typically want to integrate movement throughout your body. (Modern healthy-movement techniques, like Alexander and Feldenkrais, might suggest that lack of whole-body integration in many activities is at the root of many structural health problems.) The key is to let each movement affect and be affected by - involve - your overall balance. This is another way of saying, allow each movement to influence your center, and through that your entire body.
Translating that back to collaborative moving, this means involving your balance / your center in the connection with your partners. Learning to do that includes organizing yourself around your own center, and extending that to the center shared with your partner. The weight shared in the connection - a lot or a little or none at all - depends on what fits the situation in the moment, and changes as the situation changes.
(Getting a feel for coordinating through your center may be the single most important key to effective whole-body movement, in general.)
When an individual is moving, their body parts incrementally take and give rides to each other. It's typically a gradual, continuous process. Dance partners can similarly follow their own trajectories, and depend on one another in gradually changing amounts as fits their changing confluence from moment to moment.
Maintaining your integrity in order to share it in this evolving correspondence depends on getting a feel "going where you are going" - acting in accordance with your own momentum while steering it for cooperation.
In effective solo movement, each body part influences the others but doesn't control them. Effective CI cooperation works similarly - nobody forcing the actions of others, so each can fully participate [steering].
The way of moving in CI is that which you together discover works best when everybody is following - not controlling - the contact point [curiosity]. By exploring, you gravitate towards that which best supports connection with the least unnecessary restriction.
You can use pre-determined patterns, as one does in patterned dance forms, to make cooperation easy. However, that precludes the opportunity to discover what better suits each of you in the moment - to collaboratively discover the shape of the dance. So, what can you use, without patterns to guide you?
Any time an individual is moving, their body is continuously integrating sensory feedback and making myriad adjustments along the way - progressively attending to and adjusting course. Careful attention to the current moment, and to the effects of your responses, can reveal a world of things to discover and explore in each moment.
In CI, instead of focusing on ways to shape the dance according to familiar patterns, you focus on noticing and responding to the current conditions, as they change - "listening" and responding to the opportunities and demands in the moment, rather than controlling. This is akin to the adjustments that are continuously happening in an individual's movement, amplified by the inter-responsiveness with a partner and unfolding in a new dance.
There are some common paths that occur in CI - lifts, supports, and falls, etc. They're fun, and it's tempting, once you're acquainted with them, to jump to them when you find yourself in their vicinity. They may fit just right, but they can also be limiting if you jump to them at the cost of attending to what's happening in the moment.
It's not wrong to use patterns, but it is always useful to remember that there are whole worlds to explore between the patterns, and you can find them just by noticing what's actually happening rather than skipping over it.
Organizing around center
Following momentum - gliding
Non-coercive / "inter-responsive" cooperation
Explore the gaps
There are many such examples, because the coordination between parts of an individual's body is like CI cooperation in substantial ways. They're not completely the same, but they're fundamentally similar so that to illuminate each other.
What do these principles mean in practice?
As in most things, contact improv involvement comes with committing your center. That doesn't mean piling on weight, but rather committing your center to your own movement, and exploring how you can combine this full involvement with the actions of your partner. When fully involved, each partner's balance depends to some degree on their partner, and together they navigate changing balance.
We discover our dances by following one another and ourselves.
By participating in mutual following of the point of contact you can cooperate without sacrificing a sense of your own path. In this way of moving, following and leading blend into something that is both and neither.
Differences and freedom.
There are some fundamental differences between coordination within an individual's body and coordination between CI partners. These differences are, themselves, revealing.
Of course, communication between individuals is less immediate than communication within an individual. The partners brains just aren't directly connected. Given that, it's pleasantly surprising how much partners are able to simultaneously arrive at harmonious choices. They are, after all, basing their individual reads on a shared situation. (This can be a joy of any kind of good collaboration, but it's particularly the subject of CI.)
On the other hand, dancers can rearrange with respect to one another more than a body can rearrange its parts. Where the partners are "attached" changes, and they can separate and reconnect. That greater freedom can make it easier to reconcile more complicated choices in action. And the additional freedom can confuse matters.
Until you have a solid feel for the way of moving, maintaining a followed point of contact constrains things in informative ways. Similar to how patterns guide movers in patterned forms, the followed contact point leads you to contact improv's way of moving.
Once you have a feel for the way of moving, you can use it to engage with a partner whether or not you're in direct physical contact, and so collaborate at a distance as well as in-contact.
Also, once you've internalized the way of moving, you can use it in solo dancing. This is actually an essential part of strong CI dancing, in partnering as well as in solo.
More about "organizing around your center"
It's common to hear people describe CI weight-sharing to characterize center sharing. I believe it is more illuminating to think about balance sharing, because weight is mostly about gravity, which pulls in just one direction, while balance is about all the pragmatics of organizing your body, dynamically, in space - the play of momentum and weight and structural kinematics and so on. It is about sharing your center.
Consider what happens when you're walking.
When one of your legs takes your weight, you organize yourself so your center is supported through that leg directly into the ground. Your whole body coordinates in response to it. You can do other things meanwhile, like carrying on a conversation (your body, including parts of your nervous system, are specifically organized to make walking flow easily), but all your movements are generally influenced by and influence this whole-body activity. Shifting your weight onto one leg and then back onto the other is a gradual thing. One leg doesn't heave the rest of the body into the air and then give it to the other leg. Instead, your legs - and the rest of your body - gradually cooperate.
As with walking, connecting with your center means movement that involves your overall balance. It involves your entire body, and is a compelling commitment - coordination of your body is organized around it. And it is a continuous thing - not all-or-nothing, but all the gradients in between.
Connecting with your center doesn't necessarily mean big movements or leading with your center of mass. The measure of your physical involvement in the dance is not the amount of weight your sharing, but the degree to which you're involving your balance - and so, your whole body - in the connection.
Sharing the moment
By engaging with both my own center and that of my partner, I combine my dance with theirs. When fully involved, neither of us sacrifices our individual situations for the partnership, but rather, we connect our situations in ways that work.
Such a connection tends to continuously change. At any moment our weights are increasingly or decreasingly shared and shifting. Our paths increasingly or decreasingly coincide. At any moment, we have to be ready to operate in-tandem to a greater or lesser degree than the moment before. The changes in dynamics are, themselves, essential elements of our engagement.
Navigating all these dynamics with your partner can lead to a vital inter-responsiveness which approaches the immediacy and depth of connection that happens within an individual's coordinating body [inter-responsiveness].
Contact Improvisation is an unusual partner dance practice, in that it uses a task rather than patterns to delineate the form. This presents particular challenges, and understanding those challenges can help in finding your bearings and navigating the form well.
The quality of coordination - with your partner and with yourself - is the main way in CI to gauge what's working and what's not. That's got some inherent ambiguity because quality of coordination is determined by your actions together with those of your partner, not by your actions, alone.
Because of that ambiguity it is easy to doubt that you can learn CI just by sticking with the score - following the point of contact. It's tempting to resort to imposing patterns even though they often don't closely fit in the moment, and they can get in the way of discovering what does fit. Understanding this can help support sticking with the score, noticing and responding to the current conditions.
An analogous situation, which doesn't have the ambiguity of cooperative feedback, is useful to weigh questions and principles you encounter in CI: the coordination that happens between the parts of your body when you are moving.
This coordination involves and sheds light on many of the principles that help you cooperate well in CI practice, including organizing around center, following momentum, non-coercive and inter-responsive cooperation, exploring the gaps, and more.
The usefulness of this analogy is no accident. When doing CI well, the cooperation approaches the immediacy and depth of connection that happens within an individual's coordinating body.
I hope that this perspective might be useful to others as it has been for me.
|[way]||The "way of moving" is as much an approach as it is any particular movements. You can see the way of moving in dances that are clicking, and in experienced dancers when they're moving solo - not because they necessarily want to look like CI dancers, but because they've found an engaging, useful way to move.|
|[steering]||You could say the brain is controlling the other parts, but in general, people continue to be surprised by how much movement is parallel orchestration of various peripheral and central nervous system elements. While the mind may steer overall activity, implementation of the details is often through a bunch of fine-grained parallel processes.|
|[curiosity]||Courting surprise, releasing rather than controlling, and the like are nicely hinted at by some pithy contact improv mottos, including Nancy Stark Smith's "replace ambition with curiosity" and Steve Paxton's "tension masks sensation".|
|[inter-responsiveness]||There's a sweet spot in the balance of responding to one's inner activity and responding to one's partners - responding to external without excluding internal and vice versa. When partners are zeroing in on that sweet spot, the dynamics of the mutual responsiveness becomes a vital part of the dance. This is how dances - any partner dances - come to feel alive, with the dancers having a sense of participating in a coherent organism.| | <urn:uuid:977c2eca-07d6-49b5-8e04-a7d9e465c448> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myriadicity.net/contact-improvisation/contact-improv-as-a-way-of-moving | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954726 | 4,102 | 1.53125 | 2 |
(a draft introduction of my new book — feedback of all sorts welcomed and encouraged.)
Unlike the others, who set off in teams to look for the twigs, branches, and leaves they would weave together to capture the essence of their school, Laura Graber searched the ground around her, alone.
It was unlike her – the person most responsible for bringing this group together in the first place to launch the Green Earth Bilingual Public Charter School from scratch, and the person most committed to doing so democratically. But now it was June, and the inaugural year was over, and the staff of twenty-one women and two men was completing its last shared activity before the start of the summer, when the size of their team would double, when they would pack up all the records and wires and playthings and poster boards and move to a new building across town, and when the glow of what had just been accomplished would start to fade in exchange for a renewed anxiety of all the new challenges to be overcome.
Laura leaned down and grabbed a branch, thin and moldable. The spot of Rock Creek Park she was in was right next to the spot she’d gone running all year to maintain her sense of balance – the only time of the week when no one could demand anything of her, and there was no problem to solve.
Teams of teachers returned to the main clearing by the creek. Cassie Hurst came back speaking with her usual energy and excitement about what she’d found and what the group should do. Jessica Rodriguez and Beth LaPenn chatted away in Spanish, their minds on their summer adventure in Madrid, just days away. And Dora Benitez was already steeling herself to be one of the ones to get in the water, because that’s what her dad would have expected of his Dolly.
Before walking to the park from the school, which would soon become just another floor in a downtown office building, Hallie Schmidt showed everyone picture books of the artwork of Andy Goldsworthy. Each page held images of evanescent sculptures Goldsworthy had made with only the materials nature provided: Circles of reconstituted icicles. Potholes along a stream filled with bright yellow dandelions. Lines of white wool along a dark stone fence.
The group decided their own sculpture would be a circle of branches, to reflect the spirit of the Oglala Lakota poem Dora had shared with them:
In the Circle, we are all equal. When in the circle,
No one is in front of you. No one is behind you.
No one is above you. No one is below you.
Some bent stacks of sticks into shape, while others wove together the many gradients of green – grass, leaves, brush – into a long, crooked line that would, they decided, form a path to lay across the center of the circle. It was always the same, Hallie thought as she watched these young people work, remembering the first cabin she and her husband had built, and then lost to a fire the night they moved in: you gather your materials, you consult your plans, you make your final decisions, and then you build the house.
* * *
The Sutpen Elementary School parade began in a small park at the confluence of five city streets and three city neighborhoods. For months the weather had been cooler than usual, but by a mid-morning in June it was still hot enough to keep most of the adults huddled under the shade of the park’s aging oak trees, each group chatting casually in a different mother tongue: Vietnamese, Spanish, Amharic, English. A police car idled at the base of the street that bore the name of the neighborhood it served – Mount Pleasant – and waited for the parade to begin.
As teachers orchestrated the final arrangements – cheerleaders up front, drum and bugle corps to follow, and flag bearers representing every nation in the community picking up the rear – nine-year-old Lourdes adjusted the yellow “Nuestra Escuela” t-shirt across her sleight shoulders and grabbed hold of the large, wide Sutpen banner with three other students. As they walked to the front of the line, past a sea of family members holding cameras and camcorders, Lourdes knew not to look for a familiar face. She wouldn’t see her dad until she boarded the plane to spend the summer with him in Texas, and she had learned long ago it was best not to think about where Mami might be at any given moment. She watched the spinning lights at the top of the police car and imagined the parade was already over so she could be back on the soccer field blazing down the sideline, past all the boys, to score another goal and remind everyone how strong she really was.
The police car started crawling up the street, and the cheerleaders began their rhythmic chant: SUT-PEN! The last remaining students and adults emerged from the shade of the trees to fall in line, while a phalanx of mothers with younger children formed an impromptu stroller brigade at the back.
Lourdes watched the people gathering in interest as the parade progressed down the street. Three heads poked out of a window above the 24-hour Laundromat. A man with a lathered face got out of his chair to stand on the top step of the Pan American barbershop. An elderly woman sipped coffee from a mug on the porch of her aging Victorian, while younger children – future Bancroft students – weaved their tricycles in between the foot traffic of the sidewalk.
As they reached the midway point of the street, Lourdes could see the white canopies of the neighborhood farmer’s market – just past the Best World supermarket on one side of the street, and the blackened facade of the burned-out apartment building on the other. Like everyone else, Lourdes had friends that had lived there and been displaced, the letters of the sign they hung in the first weeks after the tragedy starting to fade in the summer sun: HELP ME RETURN TO OUR HOME.
Two blocks away, Sutpen’s principal, Kim Ortiz, was preparing the back of the school for the parade’s arrival. Parent volunteers set up the barbeque pit and sorted the hamburgers, hot dogs, and churros for quick cooking. Another group set up the moon bounce just beyond the dunking booth – her students always loved the chance to drop their principal into a tank of cold water.
Ms. Ortiz listened for the sound of the drums.
The year had not gone the way she had hoped – far from it, really. She’d endured two different parent insurrections. She’d struggled to gain support from her staff for a new style of classroom teaching. And she had just learned that two of her best in that new style, “the Two Sarahs,” would not be returning. Yet there were days like this that always seemed to come along at just the right time to remind her why she became an educator – days when a neighborhood’s children and families would come together and remind each other that they were participating in the same dream: to unite all the children of a single community under a single roof in order to give them all an equal shot at success.
* * *
Imagine a year in the life of two different communities – a public charter school that was opening its doors for the very first time, and a neighborhood public school that first opened its doors in 1924.
In the fall of 2011, I embarked on a yearlong observation of these two schools, and of the city they exist to serve: Washington, DC.
Like other major American cities, the nation’s capital is experimenting with a new concept that is dramatically reshaping public education – school choice. In the past, choosing whether to “pay or stay” was something only the wealthy could do; the rest of us merely sent our kids to the local school and hoped for the best. Now, however, in cities like DC, lower- and middle-class parents are also considering a wider set of options – and confronting a wider array of obstacles. Although less than 3% of America’s schoolchildren attend charter schools – public institutions with greater freedom to pilot different approaches to teaching, learning and governance – 41% of DC’s students are enrolled in such schools, including brand-new ones like Green Earth. At the same time, many of the city’s most promising traditional public schools are receiving an increasing number of applications from families that live outside its neighborhood boundaries. In the 2011-2012 school year, for example, nearly half of Sutpen’s students lived outside the school’s attendance zone.
Consequently, although the majority of children in rural and suburban America still attend their neighborhood school, fewer and fewer urban families are doing so, opting instead to enter the chaotic and nascent marketplace of school choice, and participating in a great intra-city migration of families, each in search of a school and a community they can claim as their own.
This move toward greater school choice is particularly vital – and potentially dangerous – when one considers that public education is the only institution in American society that is guaranteed to reach 90% of every new generation, that is governed by public authority, and that was founded with the explicit mission of preparing young people to be thoughtful and active participants in a democratic society.
In this new frontier, will the wider array of school options help parents and educators identify better strategies for helping all children learn – strategies that can then be shared for the benefit of all schools? Or will the high stakes of the marketplace lead us to guard our best practices, undermine our colleagues, and privatize this most public of institutions?
I have written Our School because I believe that before we can answer these questions, we must first understand what good teaching and learning really looks like – and requires. And we must become familiar with the state of the field as it is – and as it ought to be. The specific landscape of school choice may be new, but the general challenge is as old as the country itself: E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one. | <urn:uuid:6ee695ab-09b0-4a38-a939-91de02ed218c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.samchaltain.com/our-school-searching-for-community-in-the-era-of-choice | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972235 | 2,123 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Published in AIDS Weekly, January 10th, 2005
According to published research from the United States, "We examined the interrater reliability (IRR) of clinical ratings of neuropsychological (NP) impairment and neurocognitive diagnoses in HIV.
"Thirty participants with advanced HIV-infection who were enrolled in a multicenter HIV brain banking research project underwent comprehensive NP and neuromedical evaluations."
"Using a standardized system of guidelines," wrote S.P. Woods and coworkers, "neuropsychologists from six participating sites independently assigned clinical ratings of NP...
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NewsRx also is available at LexisNexis, Gale, ProQuest, Factiva, Dialog, Thomson Reuters, NewsEdge, and Dow Jones. | <urn:uuid:081e77b9-1ab1-4c12-9011-5f20b525647d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsrx.com/newsletters/AIDS-Weekly/2005-01-10/0110200533325AW.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931392 | 182 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Philadelphia Luxury City Guide: Founded in 1682 by William Penn, the city of Philadelphia has grown to become the fifth largest city in the nation, chock full of American history, from the Liberty Bell to Independence Hall. Philadelphia's important position in history even made it the nation's capital from 1791 to 1800.
Since the writing of the Constitution in its hallowed city streets, Philadelphia has become one of the nation's cultural epicenters and a recent revitalization has allowed the city to earn the titles of "number one restaurant city," "America's friendliest city," and "the safest large city."
As the birthplace of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Philadelphia offers a stunning array of things to do, from historical architectural adventures to chowing down on one of the city's eponymous sandwiches.
As one of the oldest cities in America, Philadelphia has also become one of the most diverse, with neighborhoods attracting denizens from all parts of the world and all walks of life.
Rittenhouse Square District offers the best of Philadelphia. Stroll along Rittenhouse Row for some of the world's most famous retailers, high-end boutiques, and lively outdoor cafes. In this neighborhood, you can find all the best luxury indulgences, from European spa treatments to shopping at the unique boutiques found in The Shops at Liberty Place. At night, the area provides some great entertainment, especially along the Avenue of the Arts, home to the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Ballet as well as Mutter Museum and City Hall.
Just north of City Center is Manayunk, derived from the Native term meaning "where we go to drink." Manayunk has blossomed as an area where the young, hip crowd goes to unwind at the galleries, boutiques, eateries and bars that fill the area. The area is so crowded, that valet parking is practically a requirement, so taking a chauffeured limo is a great idea.
Must Sees & Do's:
A city with so much history is filled with things to do and places to go.
Channel your inner Rocky by running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum is one of the largest in the country and features art from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The current exhibit is Cezanne and Beyond, featuring Cezanne and the artists that he inspired.
Historic buildings are among the cities best-known attractions, including Betsey Ross House, City Hall, Congress Hall, Declaration House, as well as a host of others.
For something more modern, head out to Valley Forge and the King of Prussia Mall or Adventure Aquarium.
Wining and Dining:
In a city with so many restaurants, it's hard to pick a place. If you don't check out Geno's and Pat's, the city's most famous Philly cheesesteak stands, head to the city's decadent Barclay Prime steakhouse for a $100 version of the ooey gooey sandwich. The steakhouse's take on the sandwich uses Kobe beef, butter poached lobster and shaved French black truffles, topped with imported Italian cheese on a homemade brioche bun and accompanied by a small bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne.
Le Bec-Fin is another Philadelphia institution, serving elegant French cuisine since the 1970s. Chef and owner Georges Perrier has changed the restaurant's look, but not the fine cuisine that has made the place an international destination.
In the Rittenhouse area, get velvet rope service at places like Denim a fashionable lounge or enjoy the elegant martinis at Continental Midtown.
For the VIP:
In a city as luxurious as Philadelphia, it's easy to get spoiled in some of the most luxurious indulgences around.
Philadelphia Limo Services can get you anywhere you want to go in the city, as well as some idyllic spots outside the city gates in style. From special events to special tours, Philadelphia Limo Services can get you there.
Gotham Dream Cars allows you to drive your dream car, delivering and picking you up as well as providing bonus services in any one of their exotic luxury cars, including Lambo and Ferrari.
The JustLuxe City Guides have been created for you, our discerning readers, to highlight the most sophisticated, the most popular and the most elegant locations in every destination.
Our local concierge continuously strives to ensure we feature the best of the best in luxury services, dining, hotels and more. Every city offers new things to enjoy, cultures to immerse yourself in and sights to see. We have sought out the best places to see, be seen or just be. | <urn:uuid:3fe37bde-5caa-43b5-bbf7-f95c74eed418> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justluxe.com/travel/199__philadelphia-city-guide-overview.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942401 | 970 | 1.554688 | 2 |
SANAA, Yemen — In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, Yemen home to al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has come close to eclipsing Pakistan as a key focus of American counter-terrorism efforts.
In 2011, then-CIA director David Petraeus characterized the group as the most dangerous node in the global jihad and the American governments action has appeared to echo the rhetoric. Notably, the number of American airstrikes in Yemen, largely carried out by unmanned drones, has surged over the past year, as much as tripling in frequency in comparison with 2011.
The airstrikes are just one element of a multifaceted engagement in Yemen. A small number of U.S. forces are stationed there to provide strategic assistance to the Yemeni military, while Washington has provided more than $300 million, split among military, humanitarian and development aid.
Even as the drone strikes have increased in frequency, they remain a center of debate, overshadowing most other facets of the American and Yemeni governments efforts against al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
In contrast to those in Pakistan, drone strikes in Yemen take place with the governments permission. Yemens president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who took power last February in the wake of an Arab Spring-inspired uprising against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has gone as far as publically endorsing the strikes. Thats a marked shift from the official silence of his predecessor.
In remarks made during a September visit to the United States, Hadi echoed Obama administration officials and cast the strikes as a key tool in the battle against al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He explicitly contrasted the drones capabilities with those of the aging fleet of the Yemeni air force, which is largely unable to operate at night.
While Saleh was once controversially characterized as a key American counter-terrorism ally, officials on both sides have spoken of a sharp improvement in cooperation since Hadis inauguration. They said the strengthened relations already had begun to yield results, pointing to last springs offensive in the southern Abyan province, when Yemeni troops and local fighters, backed by American air and intelligence support, dislodged militants affiliated with al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula from territory theyd held for more than a year.
Regardless, the al Qaida group and affiliated fighters have shown little sign of giving up the fight. Militants have continued to launch attacks in Abyan and elsewhere, appearing to push back against suggestions that theyve been contained, while bombings and assassinations by alleged al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula operatives in urban areas have underscored the groups ability to strike within Yemens cities.
A key stated goal of American airstrikes in Yemen is targeting specific high-ranking militants in the al Qaida group. But despite the surge in drone strikes, the groups core leadership has survived the year nearly intact, while its rank and file is estimated to have more than tripled since 2009. The groups resilience, analysts say, strongly suggests that the strategy being used to combat it is deeply flawed.
Essentially what the U.S. is doing is bombing suspected AQAP targets in Yemen in the hopes that AQAP doesnt bomb the U.S., said Gregory Johnsen, the author of The Last Refuge, a recently released book on Yemen and al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. In my view, this is neither sustainable nor wise. We have seen AQAP grow incredibly fast in a remarkably short amount of time, expanding from 200-300 fighters in 2009, when the U.S. bombing campaign began, to more than 1,000 fighters today. That is more exacerbating and expanding the threat than it is disrupting, dismantling and defeating it.
Even if Yemens new president has backed them, American drone strikes remain deeply controversial here.
Many see targeted killings as a violation of the nations sovereignty and a sign of disrespect for the rule of law. Critics point to cases of civilian casualties in expressing their misgivings.
A botched drone strike in the central town of Rada left 12 civilians dead this fall, inflaming widespread apprehensions about the strikes.
Theyre having a huge effect in how people see the U.S., said Intisar al Qadhi, a political activist whos the daughter of a prominent tribal leader from the province of Mareb, the site of numerous drone strikes. When we think about America, we see an image of a plane, dropping bombs on our people.
But while emotions often are charged, some Yemenis have offered qualified support for the strikes, casting them as the best of a slate of bad options. Owing to its technological superiority, they say, the American government is able to play a positive role in the battle against al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula assuming airstrikes are used judiciously, and deaths of innocents are avoided.
Were all aware of the state of the Yemeni military, said Jamal Saleh, who bears scars from injuries he suffered while fighting militants as part of an anti-al Qaida militia in his hometown in Abyan. American strikes that kill al Qaida are one thing. But strikes that kill civilians are another. | <urn:uuid:e1bb8565-e8af-45a1-b4d0-a763affb4567> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/12/27/2415785/us-drone-strikes-in-yemen-increase.html?storylink=mrc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961855 | 1,046 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Even if you're not a big football fan, you'll likely get caught up in the Super Bowl and all its junk food temptations. It's fun to indulge, but then there's the morning after: No matter who won, your body feels like a loser. To keep the menu abundant, eye-catching and satisfying, I like to serve three healthy dips for the big game.
Most of us know avocados are good for us in the way that olive oil is. Compared with other fats, such as butter, shortening and lard, they're a healthy choice. But you still have to account for their fat. For this reason I'm always looking for ways to lighten one of my favorite dips: guacamole.
Because of their great color and relatively neutral flavor, frozen green peas have been my go-to guacamole stretcher in the past, but as frozen edamame (boiled green soybeans) become more widely available, I prefer their savory yet neutral flavor and chunky texture. And there's good news on the nutritional front: Per cup, edamame contain only 8 fat grams, just one of which is saturated, compared with an avocado's 22 fat grams (3 of which are saturated).
How to lighten and freshen classic French onion dip? With nonfat Greek yogurt prominently displayed in every well-stocked dairy case, it's easy. Sporting only 80 calories and no fat calories per cup, this thick yet substantial strained yogurt offers a similar texture and flavor to sour cream, which comes with a whopping 492 calories and 48 grams of fat for the same amount. To reduce the extremely high sodium that comes from the dehydrated onion soup mix, caramelize your own onions — it takes only a few minutes, and the health and flavor benefits are worth the effort.
No nibble fest is complete without a crudités and dip tray, but the dressing can be a problem. The typical ratio of oil to acid is at least two (if not three or four) to one, which translates to 1 cup of oil for every 1/4 to 1/2 cup of acidic ingredients. By using mild, sweet balsamic vinegar and a very generous dose of Dijon mustard, you can make vinaigrette that is not only lower in fat but also thick enough to seriously adhere to the vegetables.
I love crisp, crunchy raw vegetables, though this time of year I prefer them roasted. Turns out the extra cooking step isn't that hard. In fact, I've discovered you can pan-roast vegetables in a skillet on top of the stove in under 10 minutes, compared with oven roasting, which takes 30 to 40 minutes.
Start by steaming the vegetables. Place them cut side down in a more or less single layer in a large skillet, in a small amount of water seasoned with a little oil and salt. Cooking the vegetables in a covered pan over high heat, in small amount of water, means the vegetables steam fast. Once the water evaporates, the oil kicks in and the vegetables start to sauté. When you turn the heat to low, the cut sides of the vegetables start to color beautifully. As they brown, remove them to a serving platter to serve with that vinaigrette that's thick enough to really cling.
Starting with these healthy dips, I'm vowing to eat well at this year's game. And the morning after, I'm going to wake up a winner.
Next page: Edamame-avocado guacamole. » | <urn:uuid:7207a2e7-0077-4559-9ce3-55a85f8d2971> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aarp.org/food/recipes/info-01-2013/healthy-dips-for-superbowl-anderson.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946212 | 734 | 1.585938 | 2 |
UTICA — It's just one bus in the city's fleet of 33, but the city-wide route was exactly what Shahid Farooqi was seeking.
Everyone sees the bus, and that means everyone sees the New Hartford resident's advertisement — a large poster on the back of the bus, urging the pious, the seeking and the just plain curious to go to www.WhyIslam.org or call (877) WHY-ISLAM.
There, according to the Web site, "Associates are standing by …" to answer any and all queries about one of the world's fastest-growing faiths.
Drivers stuck behind the bus as it slowly rolls along slush-covered roads have little left to do but stare at the star-spangled sign that advises, "Misled about Islam? Get the facts."
"Some ask whether Islam promotes terrorism and violence, and some ask about women's rights," said Tariq Zamir, one of the hot line's New Jersey-based volunteers. Others ask where they can find a mosque or request copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book. Still others ask to be led in a profession of faith in Allah.
Then, Farooqi said, there are those who call just to let off a little steam. Filled with anger against Muslims, they swear and use profane names toward whoever answers the phone. "We get all kinds," he said.
The hotline is part of a national "WhyIslam?" campaign led by the Islamic Circle of North America, a Kingston-based nonprofit organization. Farooqi is ICNA's northeast regional coordinator.
Calls go first to the hotline's New Jersey headquarters. If the full-time volunteers are unavailable, the call is transferred to a volunteer in the area from which the call is placed. Farooqi answers calls for the Central New York region.
Since 2000, Muslims have collected funds to have an ad for the hotline appear in their own towns. Farooqi brought the ad to Utica a little more than a year ago. "When I see ads on the buses, I thought, 'I can put ads on the bus, too,'" said Farooqi, who moved from Brooklyn to New Hartford three years ago.
It took two weeks to raise the $1,500 needed for a year-long spot on bus No. 590, which chugs along a different city route each day. When it came time to renew the ad, local Muslims were more than willing to reach into their pockets a second time. "Of course, this is for an Islamic cause, so I never feel reluctant to ask anybody," Farooqi said.
The hotline averages about 500 calls each month, Farooqi said. Calls from Central New York have jumped since the ad was placed.
Most calls come from those who are simply curious, but Farooqi hopes more will come from people such as Roger Perry, 21, of Oneida. Perry converted to Islam in October after reading articles on the WhyIslam? Web site. "I thought I would look just to learn something new, but as I read, I realized that it really fit my beliefs," Perry said.
He called the hotline and converted by telephone, he said. Now, Perry prays five times daily and worships alongside refugees from eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East at the Muslim Community Association on Kemble Street, where Friday prayer services usually draw between 150 and 200 people. Utica's Muslim population numbers up to 6,000, said Sabur Abdul-Salaam, the mosque's board president. Most, like the mosque's imam, are Bosnian Muslims, resettled through the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. "WhyIslam?" brings the message to the general population, he said.
National campaigns, whether evangelical or informational, are uncommon, said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Muslim civil liberties group. "It's encouraging," he said. The campaign highlights commonalities between Christianity and Islam, said Zamir, the New Jersey-based volunteer. It works against the media, which highlights the differences, he said.
"The Muslim community is growing throughout the USA, as well as Canada and throughout the world," he said. "People are coming to accept Islam as a religion."
Article taken from: http://www.uticaod.com/archive/2005/02/24/news/20902.html
Press Contact: Naeem Baig
Vice President for Public Affairs
Islamic Circle of North America
Office: (718) 658-1199 Extension: 102
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An explosives-filled car slammed into a U.S. Consulate vehicle in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday, authorities said.
There was confusion about the extent and severity of injuries as a result of the blast.
Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said "two U.S. personnel and two Pakistani staff of the Consulate were injured and are receiving medical treatment." No U.S. consular employees were killed, she said.
She said U.S. authorities were "seeking further information about other victims of this heinous act."
Nuland's statement followed an assertion by local Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain that two Americans had died in the blast.
Pakistani police and health officials said two Pakistanis were killed and 25 people were wounded.
Umar Riaz, a senior Peshawar police official, said the U.S. consular security detail surrounded the vehicle, which was severely damaged, and took away the people who'd been traveling in it.
As a result, Riaz said, he had no information about the people who were in the consular vehicle.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the bomber was apparently targeting a U.S. Consulate van filled with both Americans and Pakistanis.
"Let me just very clearly condemn the attack on our consulate personnel in Peshawar, Pakistan. We pray for the safe recovery of both American and Pakistani victims and once again we deplore the cowardly act of suicide bombing and terrorism," she said.
Clinton praised the response of Pakistani authorities, saying some of the injured were airlifted to hospitals in Islamabad.
The attack took place in an area of the city where several international agencies have offices. In addition to the U.S. Consulate, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, is in the area.
Peshawar is about 190 kilometers (120 miles) from the country's capital, Islamabad.
In May 2011, a remote-controlled car bomb targeted a convoy of U.S. Consulate vehicles in Peshawar, killing one person and wounding 11. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
In April 2010, three explosions went off in rapid succession near the consulate.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, of which Peshawar is the capital, is rife with Islamic extremists and has been the site of recent clashes between Pakistani security forces and militants.
It was formerly known as North West Frontier province, a name assigned during British colonial rule. The ruling party changed the name to reflect the province's majority Pashtun population. | <urn:uuid:0f2daa2a-13aa-4ec9-81e8-029c35d37163> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.krdo.com/news/Pakistan-bomb-targets-U-S-Consulate-vehicle/-/417220/16463150/-/y2tfr4/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979569 | 537 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Last week, Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Dallas Willard died, just a couple of days after publicly confirming a stage 4 cancer diagnosis. He was 77, and leaves behind his wife of many years, Jane, two children, a grandchild, and legions of friends, students, colleagues, and readers who will forever be grateful for the life, example, thought, and work of this extraordinary and humble man.
Dallas served as a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California (USC) for the past 40 years, as well as a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum for the past decade. He was a best-selling and prolific author, an ordained minister, an extraordinary thinker, and a gifted translator of philosophy and theology to the curious and thoughtful layman.
But he may be best known for the manner in which he helped so many better know God. He was a passionate advocate for intentional spiritual formation and discipleship, and focused much of his thought and writing on helping the faithful realize “the kingdom of God” – or what he called “the with-God life.”
Dallas also sought to deepen (and as appropriate, correct) the public understanding of knowledge itself. His philosophical publications were concentrated in the areas of epistemology, and the philosophy of mind and logic, and he applied his scholarly insights to the assumptions and fashions of thought of our time. Against the widespread cultural presumption that the scientific or empirical is the only reliable,... | <urn:uuid:ced60160-1a3f-4171-8766-e525fc4497a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ttf.org/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=2%3Atrinity-forum-america&catid=59%3Astaff&Itemid=116 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973581 | 298 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Monday, 07 January 2013
...for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter!
So then, my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat, you should all eat together. Anyone who is hungry should eat something at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.
And when I come I will give further directions.
- 1 Corinthians 11: 21-22, 33-34
1. Make sure everyone is being responsible with their path with God. Some are actually going home and actually seeking God, while others are going home and doing nothing. They spiritually get drunk, seeking enjoyment and pleasurable feelings, but silently poisoning them. Closing yourself off to everyone when it comes down to seeking the word of God is not always a good thing. Yes, we need alone time with Christ, but spreading the word is much more rewarding to the kingdom of God. Spread it and make sure that people stay sober by helping them search for the word of God.
2. Those who do not seek God, but attend the church should not be humiliated. We are not all perfect, we to once attended the church before seeking God. Just because someone is starving, does not mean that we have the right to laugh at their lack of spiritual food. Instead of acting superior, you should give them a meal, and give them the means to feed themselves. If you don’t help them learn how to feed themselves, they will be back in the same place starving the next day. Help those who are not seeking God, do not boast that you are full while they are empty, for we too were once empty.
3. When you are finding the word of God, it is always good to find him in a group. In a group setting, we are able to share. We are able to give encouragement. We are able to teach. And we are also able to learn. In a group setting, we are able to do much more than if we are alone. There truly is power in numbers.
4. Eat at home. Coming to church is nothing but a snack of the word of God. the true meals come from finding his truth by yourself. The portions that a pastor may give you could either fill you up to no end, or they could barely give you any sustenance. Pastors only give you what they have learned from God, and sometimes what they have learned is not what you need. Do your own seeking. Eat you meals at home and expect to only be fed a snack at service. If they give you more, cool. Take it. But God will surly reward you more by seeking him out yourself.
5. If you don’t eat meals regularly, you will perish. The same goes for your spiritual life. if you do not feed on the word of God, you will die spiritually. It’s also easy just to take snacks from your pastors and feel that you are sufficient enough to last spiritually for all of your life, but really you are only starving yourself. Eat spiritually regularly, or be hungry.
When have you faced spiritual hunger? How do you satisfy your spiritual hunger? How can you apply the above lessons to your life today? | <urn:uuid:250a0732-5d3b-4f15-bb0d-a3cd3742c1ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.revelife.com/770946877/1-corinthians-11-lessons-on-spiritual-hunger/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977151 | 723 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Commissioners voted Tuesday to implement an excise tax that would recoup a state tax credit on energy sales to manufacturers.
The 2 percent tax, which will be phased in over four years, will recoup what the local governments would lose with the total 6 percent state tax is repealed at the beginning of 2013. The local share currently is about 2 percent.
The county will be responsible for collecting and distributing the tax money to the appropriate city. Officials estimated that without the tax that the county and cities would lose about $650,000.
For more on today’s County Commission meeting, see Wednesday’s edition of the LaGrange Daily News. | <urn:uuid:0b060cd8-ebea-48c5-8429-9b50feab47f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lagrangenews.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Commission+approves+excise+tax+for+manufacturer+energy+sales%20&id=20507822 | 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 | 0.964317 | 134 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Major metropolitan newspapers seldom turn their editorial page spotlights on matters to do with the arts—even more rarely when the issues concern jazz or jazz musicians. Over the weekend, The New York Times made an exception with an editorial about the fate of John Coltrane’s house in suburban New York. Some time ago, the house was officially made an Historic Place, but that designation did nothing to fix the building, which is falling apart. Here is some of the editorial:
While it will live on, the house is another story. It has been empty about seven years. The bricks are crumbling. The raccoons have been evicted, but not the termites. Lexan panels cover the windows; a fan blows futilely to keep down the mold. That’s about as far as the restoration goes.
In 2003, a local jazz lover, Steve Fulgoni, helped wrest the house away from developers who coveted its three and a half woodsy acres. Thanks to his efforts, the Town of Huntington preserved the land. A foundation owns the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, but the National Trust for Historic Preservation just put it on its most-endangered list
To read all of the editorial, which includes a slide show and a plea for practical help, go here.
As the Times points out, the house in Dix Hills is where Coltrane wrote A Love Supreme. That album celebrated his victory over the addictions that had controlled his life. It objectified his turn to spirituality and attracted to his music a generation or two—or three—of listeners. Here are Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones in “Psalm,” the final movement. | <urn:uuid:75850923-d789-4fa9-a877-8754418638fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2011/07/other-places-coltranes-house.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 | 0.963614 | 357 | 1.789063 | 2 |
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how particular. specific, clearly defined and intended, isolated. the halting of chance or choice, by the enactment of choice. to narrow down and make singular or to remove ambiguity… or is that possible?
By Nick URL on 03.02.2011
I specifically requested the specification which specified the specific gravity of the new liquid species. Spectacular!
By fats URL on 03.02.2011
You couldn’t really say that it was either one thing or another. It was sort of round/square/oblong. it was very hard to describe in any kind of way to be specific.
By Molly Golver URL on 03.02.2011
I like to be specific and share lots of detail in my writing. If I am not specific then my writing i can be drab and boring. Look carefully
By sandy on 03.02.2011
“Be specific for once in your life Rachel!” He yelled at her. “You can’t get out of this one. You have to pick. Are you in this relationship or not?”
Rachel sat on the edge of the tub crying, as her husband yelled at her from the bedroom. she didn’t want to lose him, but she had cheated on him. They had been married for 3 years, and she had thrown the relationship away for one night with an old friend. As she thought about everything, her husband walked into the bathroom and kneeled by her.
“Listen, Rach. I love you, and I’m willing to forgive you, but you have to promise me you’re in this for the long haul.” He said as he took her hand in his. With his other hand he wiped a tear from her cheek. She stared into his green eyes and said
By Vikki URL on 03.02.2011
Be specific. What is it that I am supposed to be writing about specifically. The bears from the honey pots dream or the monsters with whom I’ve grown to know well. Please be more specific.
By Curtis Andersen URL on 03.02.2011
“More specific, Mr Potter. What exact spell would you use to counter [insert spell here]?”
Harry blinked for a moment, unsure of what he should say. On the one hand, Moody was the best DADA professor they’d had since Lupin. On the other…he had no idea how to counter [spell] other than a general shield. Shields were shields. At least, that’s what the book said.
By Kolya URL on 03.02.2011
By Amy URL on 03.02.2011
this is a slightly odd word…it doesn’t seem to sound like the actual meaning of it which is to be very detailed about something…it seems more like a word related to some sort of water body.
By nano on 03.02.2011
She bows her head in prayer, with eyes closed and a pure heart. She wanted to put some people in her prayers, but she wasn’t very specific. After all, God knows, right? Or did He want her to confess the one she cared for the most?
By A Bananie URL on 03.02.2011
be specific when you talk man
i hate it when you talk about nonsensical things
why cant you just be specific
be real with me
and speak from the heart
there was never meaning in a meaningless conversation
By tim on 03.02.2011
“Be specific, damnit!” The warlock exclaimed, making Alec laugh out loud at his own antics.
“It’s somewhere, in a place, and I put it there at a time. I swear on my own life.” He replied, bursting into giggles again.
By A Kitten in the Stars URL on 03.02.2011
things that are specific exact correct detailed important i dont know what else to say really pressure omg okay so its specific it means thats what you want most people arent very specifc when they ask for something from me
By mel on 03.02.2011
To the point and precise. Not just any horse. A black Arabian. Not just any pickle. A crinkle cut dill. Not just any little sister. A perfect little angel of one. ^_^
By Leigha URL on 03.02.2011
it wasnt the usual thing it was what she wanted, the only thing she wanted and it wasn’t there. She looked and looked, turning over furniture and ripping up carpets, she needed it like it was blood, thickly and with desperation.
By Lolly on 03.02.2011
I never know the specifics of the crap that drama causes. I never know the specifics on if a boy likes me or not. Why does everything have to be specific? I can’t understand why life can’t just be simpler. If you like someone you tell them and if you don’t you tell them that too. We should stop focusing on the details and specifics and look at the bigger picture.
By Natalie T on 03.02.2011
Wow, specific is about as general a word as you can get. Specifics can be given about just about anything. There can be specific emotions or specifics that relate to math and science. Words like dirt are not specific, but if you say silicon that is a specific word. If you say that building is a block it’s not specific, but if you say it’s a cube, 15ft on each side then it’s specific.
By Casi URL on 03.02.2011
I think there a lot of subjects where it is very easy to talk about your “personal opinions” in broad language. To the casual listener it may seem as if you’re being personal, when really you hide your truth behind the hugeness of these large opinions, but when you force specificity, that’s often when you see people where they are, or hear well crafted lies.
By Rob URL on 03.02.2011
too much, who can be so specific? why not be broad and allow others to think creatively and speak creatively to one another? Why can’t we allow ourselves the freedom to think freely, and allow others to do the same? Things don’t need to be tied down, or set in one place. We should allow each other room for growth and discover the word as we please. There are no need for specifics, just go!
By Samantha URL on 03.02.2011
“Be specific!” she said. “I need more information than that!” She slammed her fists on the table and started to pace around the room. “If I want to solve this case I need more information!” I stood in astonishment by her sudden outburst.
By Madeline R on 03.02.2011
Knowing. Going into detail. you have to describe a word but in so much detail to the point where you go beyond the definition. you tell a story, but go into detail of that story. you see a word, but go into detail of the word. you keep goign until you realize that you have reached the end of your detail and you cannot go further.
By Ellie P on 03.02.2011
Wow, I have no idea what to write….specific, specific.
Don’t be vague, be specific.
It rhymes with Pacific, and prolific.
By AG Stewart URL on 03.02.2011
The instructions were clear and constricting. We had to use five pens for one essay in two hours. Now, that’s not so bad. There had to be 1205 words and a prime number of syllables.
By Andy King URL on 03.02.2011
something specific about your lips i am trying to sound poetic, it may or may not be working. where is suzie ritolo when you need her? where is the dylan like muse, waiting in the corners trying not to peep? where did the colors go that
By Anna on 03.02.2011
when you mean something exactly how it is, or one certin even with out any other information on the side. you want the main part of something. i guess.
By gray on 03.02.2011
specifically what exactly? specifically who should i trust and how shall i know?? specifially what is the problem and who caused it?? i can think of no specific time or place when things stopped making sense. but its also intriguingly difficult to place a time if they ever began to make such sense..
By Caitlin URL on 03.02.2011
Exactly one thing. To the point. Not rambling. Detailed. Absolute.
By Elizabeth on 03.02.2011
Every little thing in each place. Completely conformed to the standards she set for the object. I would spill my juice as a kid, she would explode.
She would scream for at least eleven minutes and tear at her hair a bit. She did not scare me though. I was glad, that I could appreciate books and pudding cups and sweaters scattered on a carpet floor. I didn’t sigh in frustration when abstract art wasn’t symmetrical.
I wasn’t like mom.
By Yaline on 03.02.2011
i have specific reasons to not want to write about anything. I can’t think because I have a brand new baby. I can’t write because I am a new house wife and have to keep the house clean before my boyfriend gets home from a twelve hour day. I can’t write because I have no idea what I want to write about anymore; i used to write all the time, i used to have ideas, now i am old and out of time.
By Jami on 03.02.2011
Specific is a very specific word, not to be punny or obnoxious. Well I guess that specific just means to be particular. Like I don’t want to talk to the whole group of boys sitting on that couch, I just want to talk to one specific one. It is a word that means one special thing, idea, person or place; not a whole group and not a couple or several, just one.
By Emery on 03.02.2011
Having trouble being specific on my stupid essay. Maybe it would help if I specifically made some food. Mac & cheese. MAC & CHEEEEEEESE!!! Om nom nom. Nope, still can’t write it. Oh well.
By Kitten on 03.02.2011
I felt the growl rumble in my throat as I thrust him against the wall. His brown eyes widened in fear, maybe because my dark eyes had turned ice blue… maybe because this is the first time I let him see my fangs. “So you want to get specific on what you want from me? Specific on what you were going to do to me?” I hissed as I tightened my grasp around his throat. He started to squirm, he didn’t like not being the one in control. I smiled, a dimple playing at my cheek.
By Cat URL on 03.02.2011
I cannot think of anything Specifically.
right now i cannot think of anything but the situation that i put myself in
why did i chose to do this.
since when have i been a person to need something.
since when have i wanted someting this badly apparently
By Facadeoftruth URL on 03.02.2011
College is the extremely “specific” study of one field. One could study several specific fields from art to science. This may cost a lot of money but in some circumstances government aid is given
By Michael on 03.02.2011
I specifically know everything in this world. From education to religion; people think I am a “know-it-all” I say I’m confident.
By Imajay URL on 03.02.2011
We could be like a couple in an indie film–I’ll wear the cute sundress with a pair of nuetral colored oxfords and you can wear a tweed jacket with dark skinny jeans and horn-rimmed glasses as we walk through a pretty park singing along to the Smiths . A little too specific, but that’s all I want.
By audrey URL on 03.02.2011
Specific is good. It pays attention to detail. Specific detail. Just don’t be too specific all the time.
By Owen URL on 03.02.2011
How can I specific? They never know the answer. They always look at me like they don’t care. I’m tired of this specific shit. I don’t care. Figure it out yourself. Specific my ass for all I fucking care. I don’t make enough money for specific.
By Andrew URL on 03.02.2011
i dont know what to write about that word so im just gonna type about how i dont know what to type (: haha see im typing and about the topic but im not actually typing about it cuz i dont know what it is or what to say about it
By jessica andrews URL on 03.02.2011
Specific. Exactly how I am, and exactly how I want it. Everything tidy; everything in order. But it’s not. I look around and I see it all falling apart. I see the things that used to be so perfect, so clear, losing their specificity. And I lose it.
By Maria on 03.02.2011 | <urn:uuid:fe97f4fd-5488-4dd8-bb8a-d207b7300e56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oneword.com/word/specific-2/comment-page-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948151 | 2,903 | 1.804688 | 2 |
If the endlessly self-analytical Hamlet had been a writer (aside from that "speech of some twelve or fifteen lines" he composes to insert in "The Murder of Gonzago," the play within the play), he would have written far more like Wallace than like Shakespeare.
And this is David Foster Wallace on how we can try and keep fiction relevant in our media-saturated time -- if you replace "fiction" with "classical music" and "reader" with "listener", it's a pretty good manifesto for classical music, too:
You worry about making it structurally and technically cutting edge: involuted in the right ways, making the appropriate intertextual references, making it look smart. Not really caring about whether you’re communicating with a reader who cares something about that feeling in the stomach which is why we read. Then, the other end of it is very crass, cynical, commercial pieces of fiction that are done in a formulaic way — essentially television on the page — that manipulate the reader, that set out grotesquely simplified stuff in a childishly riveting way. What’s weird is that I see these two sides fight with each other and really they both come out of the same thing, which is a contempt for the reader, an idea that literature’s current marginalization is the reader’s fault. The project that’s worth trying is to do stuff that has some of the richness and challenge and emotional and intellectual difficulty of avant-garde literary stuff, stuff that makes the reader confront things rather than ignore them, but to do that in such a way that it’s also pleasurable to read. The reader feels like someone is talking to him rather than striking a number of poses. Part of it has to do with living in an era when there’s so much entertainment available, genuine entertainment, and figuring out how fiction is going to stake out its territory in that sort of era.
"That feeling in the stomach which is why we read" -- or why we listen to music.
We're all dumber, now that you're gone. | <urn:uuid:f1ac6907-235f-4766-bcd2-475fd4da3615> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://operachic.typepad.com/opera_chic/david-foster-wallace/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962544 | 440 | 1.84375 | 2 |
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