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Issue 42 Forgetting Summer 2011
Historical Amnesias: An Interview with Paul Connerton
Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi and Paul Connerton
In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera wrote: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” This perspective—one that bears the marks of life under a totalitarian regime in which repression often took the form of enforced forgetting—assumes that remembering is always a virtue and that not doing so is necessarily a failing. But despite dominating much of the debate on cultural memory, this perspective elides the many differences between all the various acts that we cluster under the term “forgetting.” Are all acts of forgetting similar enough that we can think of them, always and necessarily, as a failure? Can forgetting in fact even be a virtue? And how do we understand the relationship between what needs to be forgotten in order for other things to be remembered?
Paul Connerton, a scholar in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, has addressed these issues in a number of books, including How Societies Remember (Cambridge University Press, 1989) and How Modernity Forgets (Cambridge University Press, 2009). In his 2008 essay “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Connerton offers a preliminary taxonomy of forgetting, and of its various functions, values, and agents: repressive erasure; prescriptive forgetting; forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity; structural amnesia; forgetting as annulment; forgetting as planned obsolescence; and forgetting as humiliated silence. Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi spoke to Connerton by phone.
We first discovered your work through your essay “Seven Types of Forgetting.” But you’re perhaps best known as one of the leading scholars in the field of memory studies. Tell us a bit about memory studies—what does it mean; where does it come from?
In some sense, memory studies is really a phenomenon of the last quarter century. One hundred years ago, there would have, of course, been studies of memory—by Freud, by Bergson, by Proust—but they would have been primarily interested in individual memory. What’s happened in the last quarter century has been a turn toward cultural memory. And because of this turn, the term memory studies has acquired currency.
The curious thing is this: although there has been an enormous proliferation of work on memory studies in the last quarter century—not only in English, but also in French, German, and Italian—it seems to me rather strange that no one has really set out to explain why exactly during this particular historical period, from 1980 or so on, there has been such an obsession with memory studies. I don’t think this can be understood via any single factor, but it could possibly be explained by the confluence of three powerful forces coming together. The first could be described as the long shadow of World War II, which continued to exert its impact even as late as the 1990s. Think for example of the celebrations in 1995 of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Another factor in the emergence of memory studies has been what I would call “transitional justice.” And by that I mean to say that in the 1980s and 1990s there were transformations in various countries—in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, South Africa, in the states of central eastern Europe—that had had a very difficult past, on the whole a totalitarian or authoritarian past, and had moved toward a more democratic form of government. Precisely because they had had a difficult past, they had to take up a position about it, they had to examine their memories. They had to think about what attitude they should take toward the previous perpetrators and victims of injustice. And the final significant factor has been the process of decolonization, which had very significant repercussions—not only for the previous colonizing powers, in particular Britain and France—but also for the previously colonized powers, in particular Africa and India, who have sought, so to speak, to re-appropriate their own memories, whereas for the previous colonizing powers, what has emerged is what might be described as a politics of nostalgia. In fact, the famous three-volume work edited by Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory, is an interesting case in this regard because although it is presented as a gigantic and cooperative academic exercise, it seems to me that there is a very powerful undercurrent of nostalgia in that volume.What is the difference between doing memory studies and doing history?
We need to distinguish cultural memory from historical reconstruction. Knowledge of all human activities in the past is possible only through knowledge of their traces. It might be the bones buried in Roman fortifications, or a pile of stones that is all that remains of a Norman tower, or a word in a Greek inscription whose use reveals a custom: in all these cases what the historian deals with are traces, that is to say, the marks which some phenomenon has left behind. Simply to apprehend these marks as traces of something is to have gone beyond the stage of making statements about the marks themselves; to consider something as evidence is to make a statement about something else, that is to say about that for which it is taken as evidence.
Historians, in other words, investigate evidence in much the same way as lawyers cross-question witnesses in a court; they extract from that evidence information which it does not explicitly contain or even information which was contrary to the overt assertions contained in it. Historians are able to reject something explicitly told to them in their evidence and to substitute their own interpretation of events in its place. And even if they do accept what a previous statement tells them, they do this not because that statement exists but because that statement is judged to satisfy the historian’s criteria of historical truth. Far from relying on authorities other than themselves, historians are their own authority; their thought is autonomous vis-à-vis their evidence, in the sense that they possess criteria by reference to which that evidence is criticized. Historical reconstruction is therefore not dependent on social memory. It is autonomous with regard to social memory. This, I would say, is the fundamental difference between doing history and doing memory studies.
Perhaps we can go back to the roots of the premise that you take up and critique in your work: namely, that remembering and commemorating are always understood to be virtues. Where does this idea come from? Is it a modern idea? Does it come with the rise of history as a discipline itself?
I believe it has come about as a result of the particular political history of the recent era. I think that coerced forgetting was one of the most malign features of the twentieth century. For example, think of Germany after Hitler, or Spain after Franco, or Greece after the colonels, or Argentina after the generals, or Chile after Pinochet: in all these cases, there had been a process of coerced forgetting during the dictatorships. And if, on the other hand, you think of some the distinguished writers of the second half of the twentieth century—Primo Levi or Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Nadezhda Mandelstam—the interesting thing about them is that they took up their pens in order to combat this process of coerced forgetting. As a result of this, I think that you could say that at the end of the twentieth century there was such a thing as an ethics of memory. Memory and remembrance had acquired the quality of an ethical value.
This ethics serves as an antidote to repressive erasure, which is in fact the first kind of type of forgetting that you address in your essay.
Yes. And you can say that there’s an ethics of memory at the end of the of twentieth century in a way that I don’t think is there at the end of nineteenth or eighteenth or seventeenth centuries, and that is precisely because totalitarian regimes engaged in such severe and punitive processes of repressive erasure in the twentieth century. And remembering in this sense thus has acquired the quality of a countermovement or retrieval.But this notion that everything must be remembered seems to have been in place already in some form in the nineteenth century, since Nietzsche is already critiquing it in “The Use and Abuse of History,” in which he addresses what you call the “excess of historical consciousness.” For him, “the repugnant spectacle of a blind lust for collecting, of a restless gathering up of everything that once was” creates a situation in which “man envelops himself in an odor of decay.”
I don’t think that Nietzsche thought about this in terms of an ethics. When I discuss him, I do it in the section that addresses what I call “forgetting as annulment.” And I think that the important thing here is that forgetting as annulment results from the problems arising from a surfeit of information. Of course, Nietzsche wasn’t the only one to have done this. Hundreds of years earlier, for instance, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Patagruel includes an extremely amusing passage in which he describes how his hero Gargantua has his brain completely clogged up with information coming from his scholastic learning. So his doctor gives him a particular kind of potion which causes him to sneeze, and when he does, all the superfluous scholastic knowledge that is blocking up his thinking comes tumbling out of his brain and, as a result of this, he’s able to think clearly. And of course the idea of forgetting as annulment can also be related to Thomas Kuhn’s notion of a scientific paradigm, which for him is in some sense about forgetting. Kuhn’s idea is, among other things, that people who have presented new ideas in the natural sciences have either been very young or they have been new to the area of science where they had presented these innovative ideas. In other words, their minds have not been too clogged up with scientific memory.Forgetting as annulment isn’t the only category in which you characterize forgetting in a positive context.
That’s right. Take prescriptive forgetting, for instance. At various time there have been, normally as the action of governments, edicts that have effectively stated that it is inadvisable to remember, and it is recommended that people forget. And this is because it was felt that national or international conflicts had created so much bad blood that the best thing to do was simply try to forget them. In contrast to the twentieth century, where the treaty of Versailles in 1919 left the Germans with a terrible memory of punitive sanctions against them, many earlier conflicts were characterized by a quite explicit attempt to forget the previous animosity. For example, the treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, contained as its second clause the requirement that the previous warring parties should not only forgive, but should also forget, all the damage that had been inflicted during those thirty years. And when Louis XVIII came to the throne in France in 1814, he wanted to bring to a conclusion all the civil unrest unleashed by the French revolution. And so he commanded that there be no investigation of events between 1789 and 1814, simply because he didn’t want the anger and the vendettas that might have been caused by continuing to think about this. And just to cite one final example of prescriptive forgetting, the ancient Greeks were particularly aware of this danger of remembering—of chains of vengeance just going on and on—and in fact they built, in their main temple on the Acropolis, an altar to Lethe, the goddess of forgetting, on the grounds that the life of the city-state was actually dependent on forgetting.This type of salutary forgetting also operates on the level of the individual in your scheme.
Yes, in what I call forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity. What I mean by that is if a person undergoes a transition to some new kind of identity—a new form of sexual identity, say, or political attachment—it would often be deleterious for them to think too seriously or too long about their previous attachments. So the best thing might be to discard these memories that wouldn’t serve any practical purpose in the ongoing life of the present. To think too closely about their previous attachment would bring about too much cognitive dissonance in terms of how their memories of the past related to their ongoing practices in the present. Just think of Saint Augustine—think about the amount of cognitive dissonance that that poor fellow would have had to endure if he had thought too long about his earlier life.
When you were talking about prescriptive forgetting, you mentioned the Greeks and that early moment where forgetting and forgiving were explicitly connected—in that context, it’s interesting to think about the etymological relationship between the words amnesia and amnesty. But you also write about the evolution of other words related to memory and forgetting, and in particular how long-term cultural forgetting as a process of discarding is shown in the appearance of some new words in modernity and the suppression or loss of some others. These new words include revolution, liberalism, and socialism, as well as history and modernity themselves, while we’ve lost words like memorous (memorable), memorious (having a good memory), memorist (one who prompts the return of memories), and mnemonize (to memorize). Perhaps this goes back to the question we posed earlier about the relationship between history and memory studies—the notion that perhaps we have not lost this sense of memory but instead have actually expanded it, refined it, and understood it differently. And now we have a different word for memory: namely, history.
Well, the period when these terms come into use is roughly speaking between 1780 and 1830, and it’s right that the term history came into use in the current sense in that same period. But it’s important to make a distinction between two uses of the word history. One use of it refers to a formal inquiry, the activity that historians do, history in the plural—the history of Charles V; the history of Caesar; the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. But in the period between 1780 and 1830, what emerged was the idea of history as a collective singular, in other words the idea of history as a meta-narrative, a notion which simply didn’t exist before 1780. So this idea that there is some kind of story common to all of us belongs together with these other terms like revolution and liberalism and socialism and modernity, and probably nation and nationhood, as well.
It might be that an important factor in the emergence of all this was the period of Napoleon’s rule in France and the Napoleonic wars. The sweep of his military campaigns throughout central Europe and even as far as Russia brought many soldiers into a hugely widespread area of activity and left a deep impact upon people’s sense that we might all be sharing in something together.And what about these memory-related words that declined? Why were they no longer adequate for structures of feeling that we had at the time?
I think that with the development of printing, the nature of memory undergoes a huge change. Let me take a few steps back, actually quite a few, to try to explain what I mean by this. There was a Greek musician and poet, Simonides, who attended a dinner party—the roof collapsed when he was out of the room, and everyone was crushed, making it impossible to identify them. When Simonides returned, he discovered that if he focused his attention on certain parts of the room, like the corners or the columns or the ends of tables, he was able to remember who had been where at the party. And this of course became the (probably apocryphal) beginning of a particular art of memory—the “memory palace”—which lasted for about 1,800 years, roughly speaking from Cicero right through to Leibniz, until the middle of the eighteenth century. This process of remembering was used not by the majority of people, but by politicians, lawyers, and ecclesiastics—basically people who needed to remember long sequences of thought. And they needed therefore to mentally place the items in the sequence in certain parts of their memory building. This whole process was crucial for the functioning of memory for many, many years. But by the end of the eighteenth century, because of the proliferation of printing, the exercise of this particular skill of memory—visualized memory—was no longer necessary, because you could look things up. And because of this fact, these words ceased to be as important. I think they were all really clustered around this particular skill in memory. And, by the way, I do think there are certain activities in which people who have never heard of this tradition actually use this technique, even now. Two groups that come to mind immediately are taxi drivers and waiters and waitresses, both of whom have to have quite sophisticated ways of thinking about information spatially. So it’s not necessarily an elite capacity; it can be a quite everyday one.Food is also one of your primary examples when you discuss “structural amnesia.” This was originally a term from anthropology indicating that a person tends to remember only those links in his or her pedigree that are socially important; for example, in strongly patrilineal societies, matrilineal ancestors are forgotten. In the case of cuisine, you argue that the rise of printing has had a profound impact on the way individuals remember and forget recipes handed down across generations.
Well, when you have cookbooks you can have an infinite variety of cuisines, whereas without them you are entirely dependent on remembering what grandmother or mother did. The availability of printing systematically affects which recipes can be transmitted and which are forgotten.And the rise of printing is not the only technological phenomenon that you implicate in the process of forgetting—you also discuss the notion of planned obsolescence, shifts in industrial culture, and the relationship of these to modes of forgetting and discarding.
Yes, this is brought about by the particular stage we’ve reached in modern capitalism. I think that it can be summarized quite simply by saying that there has been a movement from the production of goods to the production of services, in other words instead of consumer durables like cars and refrigerators, what you get is the production of services. One of the effects of this shift in the focus of production is the speeding up of the turnover time of capital, which helps the process of the production of profit. But of course a side effect of this is to speed up the experience of time, and by speeding up time to bring about situations where forgetting is enhanced. Forgetting is absolutely crucial to the operation of this kind of obsolescence and absolutely basic to the functioning of the market.
If I may, though, I’d like to return to food briefly, which is very interestingly related to both remembering and forgetting. You would think that there is a very powerful connection between food and remembering—you get this in the New Testament, in the Christian liturgy, where eating is explicitly enjoined on believers as a way of remembering. And the Trobriand islanders, for instance, believe that memory is located in the stomach. And then there are fascinating works by Heinrich Böll, temporally located during World War II or in the immediate aftermath, that are about memories of hunger—his novel The Bread of Those Early Years and the short story “That Time We Were in Odessa,” for example—that evoke very powerfully the connection between hunger and memory.
But in fact whereas you would naturally think that food is connected with remembering rather than forgetting, it ain’t necessarily so—there are some interesting connections between food and forgetting. For example, if you think of people who lose contact with family or community, this often takes the form of forgetting a particular set of tastes. And anthropologists have worked on what they call “mortuary feasting,” that’s to say a form of ritual eating after death that’s intended to bring about what’s called “phased closure,” an ending to a relationship via a form of ceremonial forgetting. So the relationship between food, remembering, and forgetting can be an extremely complex one.You mention Heinrich Böll, whose account of Germany’s wartime destruction might be understood as a rare exception to another of your categories, namely forgetting as humiliated silence.
Humiliated silence as a form of forgetting seems paradoxical, since I think you could argue that it’s more difficult to forget a humiliation than it is to forget physical pain. The German economic miracle after World War II is an important example for this type of humiliated forgetting. I think the devastation that the German people found themselves surrounded by was a constant reminder of the question of whether they were not, in fact, guilty of bringing all this on themselves, and of course a reminder of the colossal devastation to people, to personal relationships, and so on. People have talked about the economic miracle of the rebuilding of Germany as an astonishing phenomenon, and it certainly was, but one thing that has been less discussed is the fact that the frantic and, you might even say, manic effort that went into this economic restructuring was probably driven, whether consciously or unconsciously, by a desire to forget the immediate past. The devastation was a constant reminder of their humiliation and therefore the faster that could eliminate it, the faster they might hope to forget their humiliation.It seems like the question is how to calibrate forgetting so that it in fact has value for proceeding to the next phase of history. It’s almost like mourning—if it’s done too quickly, in the wrong way, it might come back to haunt you. For example in the case of Germany’s relationship to the past, attempts to forget the past occured in ways that did not really allow the Germans to process the events of the war properly and so, in the last few decades, a number of books have come out that detail some of the after-effects of what you call “manic” forgetting. So there seems to be forgetting that has value because it’s done in the right way, at the right pace, in the right context. And then there seems to be ways of trying to forget the past that come back to cause real problems for the nation in question.
Germany is a very interesting case of forgetting, because the 1968 student revolutions there were quite different, in my opinion, from the student revolutions in other European counties. In France and Italy you did have rebellions, but this didn’t bring about the kind of generational break that it did in Germany, where the students who were involved in rebellions often spoke with indifference or contempt toward their parents. I think this arose out of the fact that their parents never spoke to them about the past, so it was an unshared past, a set of unshared memories. In fact there was a whole genre of books that came out in the 1970s in Germany called “the literature of fathers,” which was all about the mourning for the lack of relationship with the father. They’re a strange combination of a precocious autobiography of the young person and a very extensive obituary of the father—these two features are pulled together to produce what might be called a historical report.
Paul Connerton is a research associate in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. His books include How Societies Remember (Cambridge University Press, 1989), How Modernity Forgets (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Jeffrey Kastner is senior editor of Cabinet.
Sina Najafi is editor-in-chief of Cabinet.
Cabinet is a non-profit organization supported by the Lambent Foundation, the Orphiflamme Foundation, the New York Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Katchadourian Family Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, the Danielson Foundation, and many generous individuals. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation by visiting here.
© 2011 Cabinet Magazine | <urn:uuid:453de93e-5c09-47ad-9e1f-08c3725c9b32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/42/kastner_najafi_connerton.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973598 | 5,083 | 1.765625 | 2 |
For individuals who have already completed a bachelor’s degree
In order to obtain renewable teacher certification in the state of Georgia, one must complete an approved teacher education program. In most cases, this usually means becoming enrolled as a degree-seeking student at an accredited educational institution. Colleges and universities vary in the programs they offer, the courses required, and the length of time to complete.
Georgia State University offers several options for basic preparation that will result in initial certification in Georgia. Since you have already earned a bachelor’s degree, you may be interested in graduate work at this time. Graduate programs that include basic preparation and result in initial certification in Georgia are:
A. Urban Accelerated Certification and Master’s Program
Georgia State University’s Urban Accelerated Certification and Master’s program is a two-year alternative certification program at the Master's degree level for individuals who have an undergraduate degree in an area other than education and are interested in teaching in urban elementary schools.
Candidates in our program spend the first year as full-time students taking courses and completing field experiences in schools in the metro Atlanta area. At the end of the first year, if the candidate has successfully met all requirements, she or he is recommended to the state for certification in Early Childhood Education (Pre-K through 5th grade) with an English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Endorsement.
During the second year of the program, candidates have full-time paid teaching positions in urban elementary schools in the Atlanta Metro area and take classes at night to complete their Master's in Education degree.
For more information about the Urban Accelerated Certification & Master’s (UACM) Program, contact the Department of Early Childhood Education at 404-413-8020 and visit the program website.
B. Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.; also referred to as TEEMS) in English, mathematics, science or social studies (grades 6 - 12), ESOL /Reading (Grades K-12 ) or middle level education (grade 4 -8). The secondary education programs lead to initial certification and are designed for future English, math, science, or social studies educators who have completed a bachelor’s degree with a major in the content field of the intended program. The ESOL/Reading program is also offered for individuals with a bachelor degree in any area who are interested in teaching English as a second language. The Middle Level Education programs are designed for future educators with a background in math/science or language arts/social studies. Further information can be obtained from the Department of Middle - Secondary and Instructional Technology or at the M.A.T./TEEMS information site (includes information session dates).
C. Master of Education (M.Ed.) in special education. Students may select from a variety of special education fields for certification in pre-school through grade 12, through either a M.E.D. program or non-degree initial teacher certification program. These programs are described in depth here. Part-time participation is allowed; program completion time on average is three years.
D. Master of Education (M.Ed.) in school counseling. This program offers preparation for school counselors in pre-school through grade eight or grades nine through 12. Program completion leads to a service certificate in school counseling rather than a teaching certificate. The program begins each summer, and is described in depth at the School Counseling program page. The school counseling program is offered through the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services (CPS). The department conducts several information sessions each semester -- click here for dates and registration information. -8010 to register, to learn the session location, and to obtain dates of sessions. | <urn:uuid:c3b0bebe-53f2-4eff-a18b-691b75d62dcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://education.gsu.edu/oaa/4268.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944826 | 763 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Examples abound and are everywhere visible even if few citizens appear able to connect the dots that create a single picture. The state government is increasingly held together with baling wire and chewing gum even as some parts and services and functions and facilities have completely fallen off.
The billions the lottery brings in are suddenly insufficient to fully fund the HOPE scholarship as promised because the state constantly reduces support levels given to higher education, thus forcing colleges to raise tuition to plug the gap. The $4 billion Georgia is getting in tobacco settlement money that was supposed to go to anti-smoking education and cancer research is now instead used to defray Medicaid expenses. And so forth.
Against that background it is hardly a surprise that cities and counties, being comparatively nickeled and dimed to death by this diversion trick, have formed a united front to try to stop some of this from continuing. They are going to push for a constitutional amendment to block fees being assessed for specific purposes and then dumped into the state’s general fund instead.
The result has been that supposed improvements to be paid for in this manner — teen-driver education, hazardous and solid-waste cleanups, police training and indigent defense — either never are done or city/county taxpayers have to figure out how to accomplish such mandates from existing local taxes or by figuring out how to squeeze more revenue drops out of stony-faced hometown constituents.
AND THAT doesn’t even count the unknown impact of coming shifting state sands such at next year’s whopping increases in car-title fees that will go to the state, to replace the smaller fees plus sales-tax share that local governments receive. The state promises it will return sufficient money to make counties whole. If that’s anything like the theory that our motor-fuel taxes will come back ... ouch!
Citizens should wish the Georgia Municipal Association and the Association County Commissioners of Georgia good luck in this effort — and also start worrying about getting more than they might wish for if the effort is successful. Such an amendment almost passed the General Assembly in the last session, so there is sentiment in support of it. However, there’s no way the state would give up any penny it is now using for purposes different than intended without at the same time replacing it.
While a massive and fundamental state tax restructuring has long obviously been needed — remember the big task force of a few years back that came up with a general plan now nowhere to be seen? — legislative leaders have already expressed reluctance to tinker with taxes this coming year. With much yet unknown regarding the same issue on the federal level this is understandable. When politics trumps sound governance the idea is to be positioned to blame others for anything viewed as negative rather than be blamed.
Oh sure, the General Assembly may again try to pick up loose change from isolated victims without much political clout or organization, such as smokers and the long-pushed $1 a pack cigarette increase.
AT THE SAME time, the ACCG suggested — quite properly — that the state should review its current 110 exemptions in the state tax codes to see if any of the current $2 billion a year in revenue being foregone can be retrieved. The chance of that is fat, meaning slim. Those exemptions largely go to organized special interests with political clout and loyal voting blocs.
As for the group’s other suggestion — a sales tax on services to expand the revenue base and help relieve the load on property taxes — ACCG is plainly thinking of the LOST, or local-option penny ride-on to the four-cent state levy on goods and products. If the LOST could be doubled to two cents, with property taxes strongly impacted downward, that might be worth considering. However, the state does not rely on property taxes. In exchange for this it would demand “its share” or four cents on the dollar upon services rendered.
As a fix for local revenue source limitations (the state has made it largely impossible for communities to have an income tax) such a shift might be worth a look. As a state-level bonanza that is four times what cities/counties would receive that is quite another … even before bringing up the issue of what the legislators would “exempt.” For example, given how many lawyers there are down there such a surcharge on lawyer fees seems dubious.
More worrisome still, if this approach is considered how’s about being honest about it? That’s not a tax on a “sale” but rather on a labor performed or a skill applied. Even if the provider doesn’t pay the new levy, it is still a skim off his/her income-generating ability with the certain outcome of raising the price of the service and perhaps lowering the demand for it. Unlike goods, skills largely have no manufacturing/wholesale/retail structure — no factory outlet price, or warehouse price, or store price for something like having a cancer removed or oil changed or tax-return prepared.
THAT MEANS this would be an entirely new type of taxation, a new foot in the door of the taxpayer’s wallet. Such should always be approached with immense caution.
Nonetheless, if Georgia’s cities and counties don’t soon gain some relief from the state’s revenue highwaymen the cumulative impact on either or both of local taxes or service losses will soon become unbearable.
Additionally, it is important to recognize that what cities/counties are enduring is actually only a portion — and a relatively small one — of an overall state pattern of much less than straight-forward bookkeeping that makes it almost impossible for citizen/auditors to figure out what is going on.
It is also a very sad commentary upon the state government’s competence, attitudes and disposition to note the obvious: No constitutional amendment should be necessary to make state legislators/bureaucrats do what they promised to do in approving legislation or setting policy or spending tax revenues.
If they were true to their word, nothing like this would even have to be contemplated. | <urn:uuid:83c11d22-845c-4fc6-a80f-5ef797735344> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.romenews-tribune.com/view/full_story/20979931/article-EDITORIAL--A-bottomed-out-line-?instance=secondary_stories_left_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957089 | 1,248 | 1.71875 | 2 |
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- Clarkson Athletics
- Open Skate
- Explore the Adirondacks | <urn:uuid:234e8129-442e-4cd5-a0b5-d5eba5b065d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clarkson.edu/tcs/student_life/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944524 | 361 | 1.546875 | 2 |
WILLIAMSTOWN -- Despite the frigid cold and light snow Monday night, over 40 people participated in a candlelight vigil at Williams College, in honor of students who died in the Jan. 15 bombing of a Syrian university. The vigil was organized by freshman Sumaya Awad.
"Students were taking their first round of final exams," she told the crowd, arranged in a circle in front of Chapin Hall. "It was a government school, and yet, it was the government that bombed the school that day."
Two rounds of bombs fell on Allepo University, killing 82 students and injuring over 200. In light of this, she said, there was a candle vigil at York University a few days after the attack. No Williams students were involved in the strike.
"In response, all across North America, there have been candle vigils at colleges and universities," she said.
According to the Associated Press, opposition forces and the Syrian government have blamed each other for the explosions. Anti-regime activists fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's government said his forces carried out the attacks, while Syrian state media blamed rebels fighting the government. The United Nations said if the attack was launched by Assad's government, it would be guilty of war crimes against civilians.
Sumaya read a poem in Arabic that was written by a Syrian mother who lost her family in the war. The poem was about the children whose lives were affected through this
Sumaya said the students were taking exams at a place they should feel safe.
"[Universities] are often regarded as a sanctuary. It's a place that brings out the future," she said. "These students died in pursuit of an education."
Sumaya said her connection to this is personal -- her mother is Syrian.
"This came out as the best response in such short notice," she said, adding that she was happy with the turnout.
Sumaya's brother, Abdullah Awad, a Williams College senior, also addressed the crowd.
"We have certain comforts, so the cold we feel now is later alleviated when we enter our dorms," he said.
For many other people around the world, he said, this isn't the case. He pointed to Syrian refugees living in Jordan, who migrated there to escape the war.
"They live in tents in the middle of the winter, with no electricity and no water," he said. "Their suffering is so much more visceral and life-affecting, that it may be difficult for us to understand it."
He urged them to remember those who didn't have the privilege to retreat back to their dorm rooms.
"With privilege comes a certain kind of responsibility," he said. "This responsibility doesn't stop with Williams College or even the with the U.S. It extends to the rest of the world."
To reach Edward Damon, email | <urn:uuid:c2dce934-52ad-4538-a072-321a7b86acc9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetranscript.com/news/ci_22430191/student-vigil-is-held-remember-victims | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988505 | 592 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Today, let me explain how to optimize your image SEO. First, you need to consider your alt text. An alt text it is the bit of information that allows the search engine to identify what is on your images, otherwise the search engine wouldn’t have a clue what you want to show and it wouldn’t be able to process the information. The second consideration is the image name, as in most cases the name that is left by your camera doesn’t say anything about the content of the picture.
For instance, the image name “nk0012.jpg” is definitely not going to help the search engine to find your hotel. You should rather use something like “hotel-mirador-lobby.jpg”. Just by updating this data you can improve your position in Google, which will bring you more customers and at the end of the day more revenues.
Here is a video of Matt Cutts that will help you understand.
And if you thought that this was not important, see what Google has just released: latest search tool Google Image that searches by images. | <urn:uuid:e348d737-005b-4495-9464-c809d311e455> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marcoscadena.com/tag/alt/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930038 | 230 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Cyber crimes that are grave in nature will now attract detention under the Goondas Act.
Winding up a conference of senior IAS/IPS officers here on Wednesday, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa announced that suitable amendments would be made to include cyber crime under the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Forest Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Sand Offenders, Slum Grabbers and Video Pirates Act, 1982.
Departing from the principle that the preventive detention law is invoked only against habitual offenders, Ms. Jayalalithaa also announced that a single offence “which has the propensity to disturb public order” was enough for detention under the provisions of the Act.
Though the nature of cyber crimes that will warrant detention under the Act has not yet been defined, a senior police official said any offence or offences targeting a larger segment of innocent people with intent to commit fraud or endanger their safety would be considered serious enough for detention under the Goondas Act.
“Any repeated cyber crime that involves harassment, intimidation or cheating of innocent people in large scale” could be considered as a serious offence, according to the police officer.
“It does not matter whether the crime is committed through an email account or social network medium. Suitable amendments would be made to the existing Act,” he said.
Tamil Nadu has been witness to major cyber frauds such as the ‘Nigerian Scam’ where a group of foreign nationals, mainly from Nigeria, colluded with some local people and relieved many innocent people of their hard-earned money after luring them through false email/SMS messages. “We also had a case of major data theft. Credit or debit card data of at least 700 people was stolen using skimmer machines in 2011. The data was shared with people, including some living abroad, for online/merchandise transactions,” the official said.
Goondas Act detentions are for one year. | <urn:uuid:2f3634c2-8c44-470d-b667-b348e98cc218> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/tn-will-use-goondas-act-to-curb-cyber-crime/article4218006.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96455 | 422 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Parody must have:
~Conceptual link to character that explains why its use is vital to your image.
~Personal imaginative spark that makes the final product something you can viably call your own
~Execution of a level that proves you neither flat-out copied nor didn't care about the quality of your final product. Like all art, good parody should have respect for craft involved.
It would behoove wooters to look at this piece and try to understand what the artist has done, because this is really a perfect example of how to do it right. Pinocchio is made of wood, which comes from trees, which grow and blossom in spring. The concept takes that flora idea and turns the boy made of wood, who is nevertheless alive, into a blossoming garden. And it's clearly done by hand (or tablet-hand) with a respect for both the original piece and the artist's sense of self-respect.
In an ideal world, woot would be a lot stricter on this sort of stuff. The site is absolutely flooded any given week with horrible parody to the point where all parody feels tired. But if you people insist on trying to go for the money instead of improving your art, do try to take the lead of this design and do it well, intelligently, and correctly. | <urn:uuid:5de66396-6176-42b5-9e8b-936597964641> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shirt.woot.com/Forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=3924689&pageindex=8&replycount=1694 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962356 | 273 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Rescuing children from the streets of India
It would seem to be a great challenge to rescue a child from the streets of a big Indian city and change the course of that child's life for the better. And it would seem to be an overwhelming challenge to do that for over 50 orphaned or abandoned children with difficult and painful histories. At Vatsalya, Jaimala Gupta, her husband Hitesh, and a dedicated crew of teachers and staff meet these challenges…and succeed. While Vatsalya comprises many programs that work closely with India's urban street children, their most intensive work happens at the rural Udayan campus outside of Jaipur, India. At Udayan, Vatsalya rehabilitates former street children by providing academic and cultural education, vocational training, counseling, and health care. Much of their inspiring work involves reversing the attitudes and bad habits learned by children from life on the streets, helping the children to become healthy adults with the skills they need to live productive, self-sustaining lives and build families and communities.
Vatsalya is working toward financial self-sufficiency through goods and services produced on-site. It currently receives support from international sponsors and volunteers. If you'd like to help, click here.
I visited Udayan in September 2007 during a trip though Rajasthan, India. After you view the photo gallery below, please see the other galleries of photographs from the visit. My photographs of Udayan have been included in Jaimala Gupta’s book, Eighteen Million Question Marks, in which she tells stories about the children and her work. Many thanks to Jaimala and her hard-working staff for their warm welcome and guidance during our visit, and thanks also to Salaam Garage for organizing our Rajasthan trip. | <urn:uuid:89c8c6a2-5944-41c0-83c7-13804a8d75bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.conradchavez.com/World/Vatsalya/Udayan-Introduction/5605508_J3p43n/1/344052539_qgP3x5J | 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 | 0.969564 | 373 | 1.828125 | 2 |
News - Getting ready for HFO-1234yf - the new air conditioning refrigerant
The introduction of HFO-1234yf is a very significant development in automotive air conditioning. However, it is important to appreciate that the new refrigerant will only have limited impact during 2012 and well into 2013. By the end of 2012, it is estimated that fewer than 30 vehicle model types will have HFO-1234yf and to begin with, its availability will be restricted to vehicle manufacturers – hence its impact outside the franchise sector is most likely to be minimal. Given the company’s unique position in the UK A/C servicing market, Autoclimate is maintaining close contact with the vehicle manufacturers in order to exchange information about the latest position and will confirm the specification of its fully approved HFO-1234yf refrigerant management station in Q3 2011.
The story so far
Vehicles (categories M1 and N1*) receiving type approval** from January 1st 2011 must use a refrigerant with a GWP (Global Warming Potential) of less than 150. The current refrigerant HFC R-134a does not meet this requirement.
HFO-1234yf is the vehicle manufacturers’current refrigerant of choice - it meets legislative standards and requires minimal vehicle re-engineering.
All vehicles (M1 and N1 categories) which received type approval before 31st December 2010, can be produced with HFC R-134a refrigerant until 1st January 2017.
All new vehicles (all categories) produced from January 1st 2017 must use a refrigerant with a GWP of less than 150.
Given the time delay from type approval only a very small number of vehicles launched in 2011 will be equipped with HFO-1234yf.
The initial global production of HFO-1234yf will only be sufficient to supply vehicle manufacturers’ production requirements.
Further production is scheduled to come on stream during 2015.
There is currently no legislation or proposal for vehicles produced with HFC R-134a based A/C systems to be switched over to HFO-1234yf.
Autoclimate is committed to providing customers with accurate, up to date information and technical guidance.
*Category M1: Vehicles used for the carriage of passengers and comprising no more than eight seats in addition to the driver’s seat. Category N1: Vehicles used for the carriage of goods and having a maximum mass not exceeding 3.5 tonnes
**Type approval is the confirmation that production samples of a design will meet specified performance standards. The specification of the product is recorded and only that specification is approved.www.vca.gov.uk
Advice and guidance
There will be only minimum requirement for any servicing or repair involving HFO-1234yf during 2011. With only a limited number of 2011 vehicle launches affected, volumes will begin to grow slowly from 2012 and increase steadily from 2013 to 2015, before becoming more commonplace.
The number of vehicles on the road with HFC R-134a will continue to grow, as will the servicing opportunity. The serviceability of existing HFC R-134a RMSs should be maintained and if necessary replaced with new HFC R-134a dedicated equipment.
Continue to train staff in the handling of HFC R-134a and using the appropriate RMS. Autoclimate can provide refresher training if required.
If you are a franchised dealer plan to invest in an RMS to handle HFO-1234yf during 2012 or 2013, depending on expected workloads and vehicle profile. The cost of an HFO-1234yf RMS is likely to be higher than the current HFC R-134a machines – advise a budget of around £5,000. New leak detection equipment will also be required for HFO-1234yf A/C systems.
Due to limited availability of HFO-1234yf – which is likely to extend well into 2012 or later, the repair of any accident-damaged vehicles equipped with the refrigerant is likely to require vehicle manufacturer support for supplies.
Further information about RMS requirements, availability and pricing, will be provided as soon as it becomes available.
Autoclimate expects to make a customer announcement about RMS provision in Q3 2011. Franchised dealers should contact their manufacturer for the latest position regarding recommended equipment and any specific purchasing arrangements.
There are many elements relating to the introduction of HFO-1234yf and inaccuracies are inevitable. Beware of any misinformation. If you are unclear about anything – contact us. You may be able to avoid making an early and unnecessary purchasing decision.
It is illegal to re-gas a vehicle previously equipped with HFO-1234yf with HFC R-134a.
Autoclimate is working pro-actively with both equipment and refrigerant suppliers to plan the introduction and support for HFO-1234yf. The company is the sole UK distributor for Robinair and one of the UK’s largest automotive distributors of HFC R-134a refrigerant.
The company is fully engaged with the vehicle manufacturers regarding the needs of their dealer network and advising customers who have specific requirements with the latest information about equipment and specifications.
Autoclimate is now working with HFO-1234yf servicing equipment and refrigerant. This is enabling technical staff to put the final details in place to support HFO-1234yf, and define the use of the equipment and customer training requirements.
Frequently asked questions
Q. We are a franchise dealer. If a vehicle with HFO-1234yf experiences an A/C fault, what should we do if we have yet to purchase a suitable A/C machine?
A. Please ask the vehicle manufacturer for their advice and also contact us for the latest technical information. With more vehicle manufacturer relationships and approvals than any other UK-based RMS supplier, Autoclimate is actively supporting the introduction of HFO-1234yf.
Q. How soon will Autoclimate be able to supply an HFO-1234yf A/C machine?
A. Although our final specifications are not confirmed, we are confident of having equipment ready in time for the arrival of the first HFO-1234yf equipped vehicles.
Q. If I am unable to source HFO-1234yf, may I use HFC R-134a instead?
A. No, it is illegal to re-gas a vehicle previously filled with HFO-1234yf with HFC R-134a
Q. I am an accident repairer. What if I have to repair a vehicle with HFO-1234yf?
A. As things stand, we believe that the chances of you seeing such a vehicle during 2011 and 2012 are low, given the number of known model introductions. Our advice is, that given that both the gas and a compatible A/C machine will be required, such repairs should be managed in co-operation with the appropriate franchise dealer.
Q. I run an independent workshop and my existing HFC R-134a machine is coming to the end of economic life. What should I do?
A. If it’s no longer viable to repair or service your existing machine, it would be appropriate to replace it with a new HFC R-134a machine. You are unlikely to see an HFO-1234yf-equipped vehicle for quite some time. Far better to get the best value from a proven piece of equipment, and by the time the service park for HFO-1234yf vehicles kicks in, the market will have settled and you will be able to make a well-informed decision. We do not advise that you tie up a large investment in an HFO-1234yf machine to sit idle.
Q. Why is it taking a while for Autoclimate to introduce an HFO-1234yf machine?
A. This is a very significant change for vehicle A/C systems. Autoclimate has vehicle manufacturer commitments to maintain and responsibilities for supporting a large number of workshops and repairers with their A/C servicing. HFO-1234yf is quite a different refrigerant to handle than HFC R-134a and we do not want to make any announcements or commitments to our customers until we have a good depth of experience with the new refrigerant and the RMS. We must also be prepared to meet the vehicle manufacturers’ requirements and be satisfied that our solution meets the relevant TUV, CE and the demanding German vehicle manufacturers’ VDA standards. Although this may sound a little over-cautious, we have the rare luxury of time to carry out the necessary preparations without undue pressures.
Q. I am considering the purchase of my first A/C machine for servicing and repair work. Should I invest now or wait until the position is clearer?
A. Servicing HFC R-134a-based A/C systems will represent the largest volume of business for some years to come. We certainly advise the purchase of a dedicated HFC R-134a machine to carry out this work.
• Developed and manufactured jointly by DuPont and Honeywell
• Has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of just 4, the maximum is 150
• The performance characteristics are very similar to HFC R-134a
• Classed as a flammable refrigerant, albeit mildly. HFC R-134a is not flammable
• Lifespan if released to atmosphere is 11 days. HFC R-134a is 13 years
• The price will be higher than that of HFC R-134a, at least initially
If you have any further questions or concerns that are not covered in this communication, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will do our very best to keep you informed. | <urn:uuid:2ccd4d66-4498-42b1-bc5a-7d3c88022d4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autoclimate.com/news/getting-ready-for-hfo-1234yf-the-new-air-conditioning-refrigerant | 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 | 0.941303 | 2,062 | 1.710938 | 2 |
With much of the Middle East a cauldron, seemingly stable allies in the region can get free passes from Washington. Consider longtime U.S. ally Jordan.
The Hashemite Kingdom blocked access to perhaps as many as 300 "unregistered" media websites without any public comment from Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who has more pressing human rights issues: trying to prevent a "complete and total Syrian implosion."
To that end, the U.S. is weighing an extended stay for Patriot missile batteries and F-16 combat aircraft currently in Jordan for military exercises.
And that's not the only American assistance that the government of King Abdullah II is anticipating: there is a total $670 million in U.S. aid promised to Jordan this year, according to foreignassistance.gov. The greatest share, $310 million, goes to “peace and security” programs, most of which go to counter-terrorism efforts. | <urn:uuid:af5bd400-b9d7-4200-991b-2859c1f62efb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/?page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945122 | 192 | 1.804688 | 2 |
My piece on how tweaking category names could double your traffic published today on Search Engine Land, and it seems nearly too easy to be possible, doesn’t it? Yet, miscategorized and under-categorized businesses abound online.
I sometimes forget that there are also optimizations possible for print directory advertisers, and an article from about a week ago in the Chicago Sun-Times reminds me how bad categorization has also been a problem for businesses in phonebooks as well. Neil Steinberg has done a biannual review of yellow pages since the nineties, and in this installation, “Marshall Field’s open in Yellow Pages“, he documents how yellow pages books are shrinking, advertisers are reducing their spend, and how some business listings appear in the wrong category — often to amusing effect.
In the article, he recounts how a few businesses are listed in the wrong categories, some of them for years.
He further recounts anecdotal assessments from a few businesses that print phone book usage has decreased. I know that a lot of business owners have become dismissive of the value of yellow pages, but there is still some percentage of usage in the medium. So, just as I recounted for internet marketing purposes, fixing miscategorization/undercategorization in print directories could increase your business.
So, check your phone books to make sure you’re appearing where you should. Are there other categories where you could/should appear? Are you getting weird phone calls or visits from people seeking some other type of business? You should be listed within your most-popular business category, and if you get weird visits/calls — ask the people doing it where they saw your business listed so you can get it fixed.
There’s another compelling reason for fixing your categorization, aside from getting more referral business from YP books. The data from YP books is one of the sources of info that feeds into online directories and local search engines. So, fixing your print listing can improve your presence everywhere else. | <urn:uuid:2a750304-bb99-438a-942c-475d0aa74e93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nodalbits.com/tags/business-directories/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953595 | 414 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Jerusalem (CNN) -- The entrance door to a century-old monastery near Jerusalem was burned away and anti-Christian graffiti was sprayed on the walls Tuesday, in what Israeli police said appeared to be a nationalistic attack.
The phrase "Jesus is a monkey" was painted on the walls of Latrun Monastery in large orange letters, as well as the words "Migron" and "Maoz Esther," referring to two illegal Israeli settler outposts in the West Bank.
Families were evacuated from the outposts over the weekend by Israeli government forces.
The Rev. Louis Wahbeh, of the 19th century monastery, told CNN that he was shocked that anyone would plan and carry out such an attack.
"This is a direct insult to our belief," he said. "We can't understand how such people can get to this low level of not respecting others, have no ethical background and don't have any human values."
He described the incident as a "price tag" attack, a term used to describe acts of vandalism by radical Israeli settlers exacting a "price" against Palestinian targets or Israeli security forces in response to actions by the Israeli government.
Such attacks have often targeted Palestinian mosques and property.
While the majority of Palestinian Israelis are Muslim, there are also Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CNN the attack on Latrun Monastery was a "criminal incident with a nationalistic motives."
A special investigation team has been assigned to try to identify the suspects, who fled the scene, and forensic tests are being carried out, he said.
"We are obviously looking into the possibility that extremists were involved," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the vandalism.
"Those responsible for this reprehensible act need to be punished severely," he said. "Freedom of religion and freedom of worship are among the most basic foundations of the state of Israel."
Israeli extremists have previously retaliated against both Islamic and Christian sites when they were forcibly evacuated from illegal West Bank outposts or settlements.
In February, a Greek Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem was similarly targeted when Israeli extremists wrote "Death to the Christians" on the walls and slashed the tires of churchgoers' vehicles.
Many mosques in the West Bank have also been set on fire in recent years and racist graffiti sprayed on the walls, including the words "price tag" and "Mohammad is a pig."
The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, denounced Tuesday's incident and called on the Israeli government to bring those responsible to justice.
"The Israeli government must take responsibility for the continuous settler violence towards religious sites. Several mosques have been attacked in recent months, but little or no action taken," it said in a written statement. "Extremist Israeli government policies -- marred with bigotry -- encourage settler hate crimes against Palestinians and their places of worship."
The incident comes against a backdrop of concern over racism toward Arabs in Israel, in the wake of two violent attacks against Palestinians last month, one in Jerusalem and the other on the West Bank. Teenagers are suspected in both cases.
Latrun Monastery was built overlooking the Ayalon Valley by French Trappist monks. It is a destination for Christian pilgrims from overseas, as well as a place of worship for Palestinian Christians. | <urn:uuid:1c18e580-62da-449f-9b32-e0ee3ecbbd46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/04/world/meast/israel-monastery-attack/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976021 | 686 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Laws, Regulations & Annotations
Business Taxes Law Guide – Revision 2013
Sales and Use Tax Annotations
330.0000 LEASES OF TANGIBLE PERSONAL PROPERTY—IN GENERAL—Regulation 1660
(a) IN GENERAL
330.2886 Subleases—Tax on Rental Payments. A lessor leases property in substantially the same form as acquired. At the time the property was acquired, the lessor paid tax or tax reimbursement as measured by the purchase price. This constituted an irrevocable election not to pay tax on rentals payable. Thereafter the lessor may not change its election by reporting tax on the rentals payable and claiming a tax-paid purchases resold deduction.
The same rule is applicable to subleases. When a lessee contracts to lease property and pays use tax to the lessor measured by the rentals payable, the lessee has made an irrevocable election not to pay tax on the rentals payable that result from a subsequent sublease. That is, the lessee/sublessor may not change its election by reporting tax on the rentals it receives from the sublease by claiming a tax-paid purchases resold deduction on the rentals paid under the prime lease. Therefore, the lessee/sublessor must continue to pay tax on its rentals payable under the prime lease and the sublease is not taxable. 4/26/91. | <urn:uuid:db3729c3-7c03-47e2-915b-bf11a4eaf47a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boe.ca.gov/lawguides/business/current/btlg/vol2/suta/330-2886.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943837 | 283 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Spain’s unemployment rate hit a record high of 25%, a level not seen since its dictator days, and coming austerity cutbacks are expected to drive the rate even higher in the year to come.
Reuters reported Friday that according to the National Statistics Institute, unemployment reached 25% in the third quarter, up from 24.6% in Q2. The employment situation in the country hasn’t been that bad since at least 1976, when Gen. Francisco Franco died and the Spanish dictatorship came to an end. Still, as bad as it is, with 5.8 million workers idled, the 25% figure is a shade less than predicted by economists, who had pegged it at 25.1%.
However, that is no consolation to the unemployed. Labor unions in Spain have called for a general strike on Nov. 14, believing that austerity measures enforced so far have done nothing to better Spain’s plight but only harmed its people.
Economists believe that additional cutbacks still to be implemented will worsen the situation, since they will further hamper growth and likely throw even more people out of work.
Bloomberg reported that Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said that the recent improvement in yields on Spanish bonds, after a European Central Bank (ECB) offer to purchase unlimited debt and despite a forecast of continued contraction of the Spanish economy, indicates that investors are more concerned with the future of the euro than they are with Spain’s domestic issues.
He was quoted saying, “That is because the government is doing what it has to do and because we are all acting to dissipate doubts on the euro’s future.”
Still, all is not well in Spain, particularly for the unemployed. Ricardo Santos, an economist at BNP Paribas in London, said in the report, “The situation is serious. There is still room for a deterioration in unemployment. Activity is weak and the government will reduce jobs as there are strict targets to adjust the number of public-sector temporary workers, especially in health and education.”
Justin Knight, a European rate strategist at UBS in London, pointed out in the report that “Unemployment is one part of a multifaceted problem in Spain. The recession is looking very bad and it looks like it will be worse than forecast. This is a Spanish problem as much as it is a problem of the euro; Spain’s public- and private-sector net external debt is the same size as Greece’s.” | <urn:uuid:0ede80ba-4d6c-454c-a5e2-6ca359668ea2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advisorone.com/2012/10/26/spanish-unemployment-hits-record-25 | 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 | 0.973774 | 516 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Holly Hills residents are being flooded out
Holly Hills residents told council Tuesday night they are struggling to stay above water and pleaded with city officials to fix drainage problems in the area.
Katie Denne, a young farmer trying to save her family farm from flooding, appeared before council looking for answers as to why her property is the sponge for the entire Holly Hills neighbourhood.
“We’ve been witnessing acres upon acres of our family farm disappearing,” Denne said. “My question is ‘why?’ Why must Holly Hill Farm be a sponge?”
Denne’s 16.2 acre property, which she and husband Kyle purchased in November 2011, is situated near the base of hilly Park Road, on Ida Road.
The farm is bordered by Park Road on one side and Woodburn Road on the other. Water from the Holly Hills subdivision flows down through a culvert on Park Road and drains into a 10-foot wide creek on Denne’s farm which cuts through her property.
It’s supposed to flow through to the ditch on Woodburn Road, but the ditch is clogged and the water isn’t moving. Instead, it’s sitting on Denne’s property, and flooding her land.
“Holly Hill Farm is being washed away,” Denne said. “This inhibits the growth of our pasture grasses (and) our 50-year-old poplar trees have drowned and died.”
The farm has been in Denne’s family for three generations and was built by her grandfather in the 1950s.
Denne recalls the farm hosting barrel racing, and horseback rides for the neighbourhood kids. The gardens were plentiful and bright.
Denne dreams of restoring the farm to its former glory and would like to grow fresh meat and vegetables for the community, and run a general store right on the property.
She and her husband would also like to build a house on the property so they can live on site.
Up the hill from Denne lives Richard Paquette, on Spring Road.
Paquette, who has spoken to council numerous times about ditching, said when the city came to clean out the ditches along Spring Road in the summertime, they didn’t complete the work.
“They didn’t continue up Spring Road, they stopped where the two culverts are,” Paquette said.
“The whole part they cleaned they did a good job (but) they cleaned three-quarters of Spring Road; they should get three-quarters of my taxes. When they finish it they can get the rest of my taxes. They should come back and finish the job.”
Paquette said the water levels in the ditches are so high that he can’t even see the culverts.
He said last winter two people drowned in a ditch on Woodburn after their car flipped because the water was so high.
City staff told council that during budget planning next week it will be submitting a $150,000 capital project to widen and deepen the ditches on Woodburn Road, starting this summer if approved.
Coun. Claire Moglove asked if it would include a re-routing and installation of storm drains or if it would be mostly maintenance.
Ron Neufeld, the city’s general manager of operations, said it would be the bare minimum.
“Basically a maintenance exercise – the ditches cleaned and the culverts cleaned,” he said. | <urn:uuid:a503a0c1-2e2d-4b07-a09d-677fa9484778> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campbellrivermirror.com/news/188283631.html?c=y&curSection=/&curTitle=BC+News&bc09=true | 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 | 0.965798 | 744 | 1.664063 | 2 |
—(1) Section 2 of the Pensions Act (Cap. 225) is amended by inserting, immediately after the definition of “other public service”, the following definition:
“ “Pension Authority”, in relation to any officer or retired officer, means a Pension Authority appointed under section 2A for that officer or the class to which that officer belongs;”.
(2) The Pensions Act is amended by inserting, immediately after section 2, the following sections:
—(1) The President may, for the purposes of this Act, appoint by order in the Gazette one or more Pension Authorities comprising any public officer or group of public officers.
(2) The order under subsection (1) shall specify the class or classes of public officers in respect of which a Pension Authority may exercise its powers or perform its functions under this Act.
(3) A Pension Authority may depute any public officer to exercise or perform on its behalf any power or function conferred on the Pension Authority by this Act subject to such conditions as may be specified by the Pension Authority.
(4) A Pension Authority may exercise any powers or perform any functions conferred on it by this Act notwithstanding the delegation by it of those powers or functions under subsection (3).
—(1) Subject to subsection (2), the President may depute any Pension Authority to exercise or perform on his behalf any power or function conferred on the President by this Act subject to such conditions as may be specified by the President.
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) shall authorise the President to depute any Pension Authority to exercise on his behalf any of the following powers:
to make regulations under this Act;
to declare any office or class of office to be pensionable or non-pensionable, as the case may be, under section 2;
to determine any service to be public service for the purpose of any provision of this Act;
to vary the commutation factor or discount rate under section 16;
to designate schemes of service under section 18(3)(a).
(3) Where by virtue of subsection (1) any power or function of the President under this Act may be exercised or performed on his behalf by a Pension Authority, then, unless the President otherwise directs, the Pension Authority may arrange for the exercise or performance of that power or function by any other public officer.
(4) Any arrangements made by a Pension Authority under subsection (3) for the exercise or performance of any power or function by a public officer shall not prevent the Pension Authority by whom the arrangements were made from exercising or performing that power or function.
(5) The President may also exercise any power or perform any function conferred on him by this Act notwithstanding the delegation by him of that power or function under subsection (1).”.
(3) Section 5 of the Pensions Act is amended by deleting subsection (2) and substituting the following subsection:
“(2) Subject to Article 113 of the Constitution, where it is established to the satisfaction of a Pension Authority that an officer over which it has jurisdiction has been guilty of negligence, irregularity or misconduct, it shall be lawful for the Pension Authority to withhold the pension, gratuity or other allowance for which such officer would have become eligible but for this section.”.
(4) Section 7(2) of the Pensions Act is amended by deleting the words “acting on the advice of the Cabinet,” in paragraph (i).
(5) The Pensions Act is amended by deleting the word “President” wherever it appears in the following provisions and substituting in each case the words “relevant Pension Authority”:
Sections 8 (1) (seventh line), 10 (3) (fourth line), 13 (3) (fifth and sixteenth lines), 14 (1) (sixth line), 14 (2) (second line), 16 (1) (third line), 16 (2) (third line), 16 (2A) (eighth line) and 17 (1) (seventh line). | <urn:uuid:eeb2d662-8e72-4269-b11c-74d0c9ca9ac9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;ident=32d81b85-8fcb-4a19-91a1-4d45eb70a70b;page=0;query=Id%3A%2222c488c2-c30d-4efe-b65b-d9fad399ccbf%22%20Status%3Apublished;rec=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942655 | 849 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Author: Daniel Patrick Forrester
Book Site: Consider
Daniel Patrick Forrester has pulled together an intriguing read that is bound to make you feel better about taking the time to stand there and do nothing. Overall, this is a book about NOT rushing in, NOT multi-tasking and giving yourself the permission to stop the merry-go-round and get off for a while. In fact, the more critical the situation, the more imperative it is to take the time to think about what's actually going on, get clear on context, and develop a sense of understanding so that you can respond in the best possible manner.
While technology allows us to act and react more quickly than ever before, we are taking increasingly less time to consider our decisions before we make them. Reflection supplies an arsenal of ideas and solutions to the right problems. Including interviews with leaders such as General David Petraeus, attorney Brooksley Born and global investor Kyle Bass, Forrester shows us that taking time and giving ourselves the mental space for reflection can mean the difference between total success and total failure.
Twitter ID: @DPForrester | <urn:uuid:19330fe3-cfcc-4c6a-9fb4-82db0735f35f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookawards.smallbiztrends.com/management_2011/consider/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930946 | 228 | 1.65625 | 2 |
More than 1,500 New Yorkers gathered today in Manhattan to mourn the death of a 32 year-old gay man, who was shot down on Friday just blocks away from the historic Stonewall Inn in an apparent act of anti-gay bias.
Don't Forget: Making the Boys Screens Today!
Attention, New Yorkers: It's not too late to make plans for this afternoon to see a fantastic documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival! Making the Boys is a beautifully shot, poignant film -- don't miss it!
Making the Boys
Monday, April 27 at 4:30 pm
SVA Theater (333 West 23rd Street), Theater 2
This new documentary, directed by Crayton Robey, is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band and subsequent film release two years later. The Boys in the Band had a profound effect on the gay community in very different ways, both before and after Stonewall, but 40 years later, its legacy remains.
Following the screening, Tony Award-winning producer and documentary filmmaker Dori Berinstein will moderate a discussion with director Crayton Robey, The Boys in the Band playwright and screenwriter Mart Crowley, The Boys in the Band actor Laurence Luckinbill, Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, television personality Carson Kressley, GLAAD Senior Director of Media Programs Rashad Robinson, and others.
For tickets to this exciting event, please click here. | <urn:uuid:f2b943c8-5195-4c50-b38c-3c1871909ae5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glaad.org/2009/04/27/dont-forget-making-the-boys-screens-today | 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 | 0.932646 | 309 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Crosby Farm Regional Park
St. Paul Parks and Recreation
2595 Crosby Farm Road, Saint Paul, MN 55116
The farm continued to be farmed by a succession of other families until the early 1960s, when it was obtained by the Saint Paul Port Authority and leased to the City of Saint Paul as a park.
Crosby Farms Regional Park at 736 acres is the largest natural park in the Saint Paul system of parks and it is an important component in a string of parks that protects the biodiversity of the Mississippi River corridor through the Twin Cities. The park protects mostly floodplain forest and adjacent steep, wooded slopes cloaked mostly in oak forest, a scattering of wetlands and small lakes (Crosby Lake and Upper Lake), and the Mississippi River shoreline. When the Mississippi River floods fish and other aquatic animals gain access to these small lakes, which act as nurseries for their offspring.
The park contains 6.7 miles of paved trails, many of which run along the river’s shoreline through wooded bottomlands. Crosby Farm Regional Park is connected to Fort Snelling State Park and other parks in the vicinity by an extensive trail system.
The size of Crosby Farms Regional Park, its diversity of life, many recreational opportunities, and easy access makes this a popular park to escape the bustle of a frenzied city life.
Activities: Bicycling and walking trails, picnicking and picnic shelter, water fountains, grills, horseshoes, fire pit, boat launch, fishing, cross country ski trails. Birdwatching is very good, especially during the spring and fall migrations.
Hours: The southern unit is open from sunrise to 9:00 p.m. while the northern unit is open from sunrise to 10 p.m.
Contact Information: Check the website of the St. Paul Parks and Recreation or call 651-266-6400.
Did You Know?
At the headwaters of the Mississippi, the average surface speed of the water is 1.2 miles per hour. People typically walk 3 miles per hour. | <urn:uuid:1a7edc56-4ef4-446d-91b1-f4165b3c0c85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/miss/planyourvisit/crosfarm.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933406 | 430 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The Summer and Winter Schools are intensive programmes offering a wide variety of subjects, designed to meet the new needs for cultural and interdisciplinary learning.
The Summer and Winter Schools are international programmes lasting from one to four weeks, leading to between 2 to 6 university learning credits.
The curricula include classroom lessons and workshops, as well as opportunities for discovering the culture and traditions of Emilia Romagna. Most of the schools are delivered in English.
The University of Bologna runs two types of Summer/Winter School:
- leading to learning credits that can be recognised by universities(ECTS/ University educational credit); the procedures for the award of these are listed in each call for applications published on the dedicated web page of each programme. The web pages of each programme also provide all the useful information students need and the contact details of the student administration services.
- Without granting of learning credits (ECTS/ University educational credit); to enrol in these programmes visit the individual websites of the proposing Departments and click on the specific links.
Who can take part?
Programmes are open to students and young graduates from Italy and around the world, and in some cases, to specific professional figures.
Candidates must be at least 18 years old by the deadline for registration and possess at least a high school diploma.
Summer and Winter Schools with University educational credits
Summer and Winter Schools without University educational credits | <urn:uuid:230e3fbc-9400-4a63-9b58-adb2760861ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eng.unibo.it/PortaleEn/Academic+programmes/SummerWinterSchools/default.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935686 | 284 | 1.757813 | 2 |
A Daughter of Martha
By Ivy Williams Stone
Winter found the Kirkman family safely established in a one-room log house, with a lean-to where the four boys slept. The finding of the precious five hundred dollars had made the home possible. Who was there to comment on the width of the floor boards, or to cast disparaging remarks about the dirt roof? Who else could boast better than four pane windows! Gloria felt a pardonable pride in this new home; a board floor to keep spotlessly scrubbed; a step-stove to polish.
Margaret Kirkman had never seen snow. The first was attractive and fascinating, but as it gathered for months, piling against the lone window, drifting under the floor, clinging to the stove wood and chilling her to the marrow, she needed to remember how it packed in the mountains and made crops possible another year. Margaret Kirkman had never done a washing. The black Kafir women in Africa had been faithful, if slow, servants. Now came the necessity for home-made soaps, for carrying water and heating it, for boiling tree barks to make a blueing, for grating potatoes to make starch. The boys had to have heavy woolen socks to meet the severe cold, and this task fell to the nimble-fingered Gloria. She soon mastered the technique of needles and stitches and with the coming of spring she allotted herself a “sock a day.” As she herded the cows on the nearby hills, her fingers automatically guided the needles, while her thoughts wandered through kaleidoscopic glory. She wanted to learn, to study, to read — there were marvelous tales in books — doors that opened to new worlds. That famous Jenny Lind had been a little girl with a voice. Gloria tried her voice on church hymns, but a robin she had been watching fled in surprise, and the echo was unpleasant.
Grinding wheat in a coffee mill for flour, carding, spinning and dyeing wool for the weavers, dressing the game which her brothers caught, making candles from tallow, gathering and drying berries for winter — these constituted her tasks. She ate her coarse foods with a youthful zest, although she did not know that dandelion greens contained any essential vitamins. She filled her pockets with whole wheat when she went to herd, unmindful of the calories of energy which it contained. She only knew that she was young and joyous and happy, that life in the mountains was very busy and very sweet.
In May of sixty-five came the news of the close of the Civil War. Margaret Kirkman could not understand why negroes should be free men. Equal rights with the white race! She shuddered, remembering the black Kafirs and the atrocities they committed.
“I’m glad we’re far beyond them,” she rejoiced.
“I wonder what Confederate currency is worth now,” grinned Stephen, remembering the sharkster who had tried to make the trade.
Following quickly came the news of the death of President Lincoln. An actor had become a murderer. Gloria, who had been practicing elocution with secret ambitions as she herded the cows and knitted, felt a sudden shame. Did all actors turn into murderers? The hillside had been her stage; the cows her audience, the sego lilies her bouquets. It was weeks before she resumed rehearsals.
To Gloria the daily passage of the stage was an important event. The red and green coaches, the galloping horses, the debonair drivers, the armed guards waving their Colts, and the fashionably dressed passengers represented a life beyond the hills. She had been obliged to watch and admire this daily event from the hills as she guarded the flock. Occasionally some thoughtful person returned the waved greeting of the child. On her fourteenth birthday her brother George left his woodcutting and tended the herd while Gloria celebrated by “dressing up,” and visiting the stage station. She had a daring hope. If one of those marvelous ladies spoke to her, she would give her an arrowhead. Several perfect ones clinked in her pocket as she hurried along.
The four horse equipage rolled into the station at what seemed a terrific speed, the mail bags swinging, the horses frothing, the driver waving his whip. He was a magnificent person in a linen duster, with a broad-rimmed hat and yellow gloves. He tossed his reins to an admiring lackey, who hung greedily upon his faintest smile. The horses were flecked with foam. They had galloped ten miles. The guard laid down his shot-gun and two revolvers. Inside the coach, ladies with their hair confined in “water fall” nets, shook out their long bustled skirts and smoothed down their tight basques.
Such marvelous colors — blue and brown and plum! What wondrous ruffles and flounces. The men were all bearded and erect, with braid-decorated coats. Every passenger and every detail of the coach represented a life which was withheld from the eager Gloria, and which she yearned to experience.
What possible treasure might be hidden in those dusty mail bags? Gold, maybe, from San Francisco. How rich these people must be to pay two hundred dollars for the trip East. How like lightning they traveled, taking only sixteen days from ‘Frisco to St. Louis.
A kindly-faced woman smiled at Gloria. She did not see the homespun dress nor the coarse, heavy shoes. She saw only hair of gold above a beautiful, eager, childish face.
“What a glorious crown!” she cried. “Look, Edgar.”
Edgar was engrossed in a book. “A desert crown,” he smiled absently.
“Would you like an arrow head?” Gloria was surprised at her own courage, as she offered a choice, perfect flint.
The lady cried out with delight, while the other passengers exclaimed and admired. The gentleman called Edgar reached toward his pocket.
“I suppose you want money?” his voice carried the cynicism of the traveler. But Gloria created a sensation by shaking her head.
“What would you like, my dear, as a gift from us?” The lady was as nice as she was beautiful, as lovely as her clothes. Gloria could only point at the book which the man held, for speech had deserted her.
“Why, Edgar, the child wants your old book. Milton would be gratified to know a child of the desert wants his poems.”
The man called Edgar became serious. “We will send you books from St. Louis, little girl. Books you can read. Books for girls.” In her gratitude Gloria put her remaining arrow heads into their laps.
The hostlers came out with fresh horses. The driver climbed leisurely to his seat, and deigned to accept the reins which were held up to him. A red tassel gleamed on the tip of the long whip which he cracked dexterously over the heads of the impatient steeds. Just at that crucial moment Stephen Kirkman’s slow, lumbering oxen pulled in from the cross road, dragging some hardgotten fire logs.
Instantly the driver became angry that a native had dared to cross his path. He cracked the long, tasseled whip menacingly toward Stephen and cried raucously:
“Clear the road! Get out of my way with your bull team!”
A second time the whip came dangerously near Stephen, who could not increase the speed of his oxen. As the driver made ready to swing the whip a third time, it made a downward sweep, ‘ere he raised his arm. As though she had been trained for the part, Gloria displayed a marvelous agility. With a sudden upward leap she caught the whip in a viselike grip and instantly wrenched it from the hand of the surprised driver. The little pug nose dilated with anger, and deep red suffused her face and neck as she cried angrily:
“Don’t you dare strike my brother!”
“Give me that whip!” ordered the driver.
Gloria glanced quickly toward Stephen, who was now nearly over the street.
“Come and get it,” she called and tossed the disputed leather into the dust, as she darted to Stephen for protection.
A hostler picked up the whip, cleaned it on his own shirt, and handed it to the driver. The whip cracked, the stage jolted and they were off.
For days Gloria Kirkman was the talk of the little village. She had dared to thwart a stage driver! Why, they could dispense favors or punishment as they willed. They exerted a real power. Who else but the flame-haired Gloria would dare to cross a wearer of lemon colored gloves?
After what seemed ages to the eager child, packages bearing an enormous postage began to arrive. They were addressed merely to “The little girl who wears a golden crown.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, McGuffy’s Complete Readers, a book on natural science, Ray’s Arithmetic, Wilson’s Speller and Whittier’s Poems. Through the long winter Gloria knitted with fresh energy that she might have more time for the precious books. She taxed the family’s supply of candles as she studied and memorized. She spelled down her brothers and all the other children of the village. The days were too short for the things she wanted to learn.
Spring brought news of the Indian depredations in southern Utah. Margaret Kirkman became pale and ate even less than usual. When the call came for enlistments the four Kirkman boys, all tall and bronzed and skilled riflemen, marched away. Their mother did not try to stop them, but gave them a copy book for letter paper. She bit her lips to restrain emotion. Gloria trembled as she tried to fashion neat bundles of the socks she had knit for them. Black men — white men — red men; what difference did it make when the lust to kill filled their hearts?
“Indians are as wicked as the Kafirs,” whispered Margaret Kirkman. “Their scalping knives are as deadly as the assagais. Only a month ago they killed fifteen men in a stage station in Colorado.”
The necessity for labor gave Gloria no time to lament her brothers’ absence. She and her mother had to plow the field and seed the precious wheat. In a short time their supply of wood was exhausted, and Gloria had to gather oak brush for fuel. The early drought made irrigation necessary. While she guided the cold snow water over the fields and milked the one cow and guarded the sheep as they foraged, Gloria dreamed of better days to come. She felt all the emotions which had stirred Maud Muller when she raked her father’s field:
“A wish that she hardly dared to own
For something better than she had known.”
She wanted better things than her life offered. She wanted beauty in all her surroundings. Books were her crying passion. A chance to study, to learn, to experience all emotions. Her youth and vigor and health cried out for expression. The arithmetic was memorized; the copy of Whittier’s was worn from usage; the McGuffy readers had whetted her appetite for broader vistas. Even in her youth she had read and re-read the Book of Mormon.
The wheat was beginning to head before the boys came back from their ninety days’ enlistment. The letters from her father in far away Africa were few and irregular, and were always torn and opened upon arrival. He spoke of coming soon, but always something intervened. Every letter contained a reference to enclosed money, but it never reached its destination. Now, while his sons were away fighting Indians, John Kirkman wrote of wonderful news:
“A marvelous thing has happened to our Africa. A Boer’s child hunted pretty rocks on a river bank. One especially attractive proved to be a diamond. It stood the real test. The Boer named Jacobs sold his farm for fifty times its previous value. Another stone was found on the Vaal River. Twenty-two carats. Diamonds have been found where Gloria was born. I enclose a five pound note. I will see how quickly I can get rich and bring it all to my family in Utah.
There was no money in the letter. As they read this startling news, Gloria and her mother sat at a rough pine table, lighted by a flickering candle. The four chairs were home-made, their bed was a straw tick on rope slats. The fire in the stepstove was extinguished to save fuel. Outside, the lone cow mooed plaintively and a distant coyote howled his weird notes.
“O, Mother,” cried Gloria romantically, “why didn’t we stay? Diamonds, on the very spot where I was born!”
“Diamonds are not life, Gloria — nor religion. Here we can worship in freedom. Here we, at least are safe. What behooves riches when you are dead? Perhaps your father will bring you some diamonds when he comes. If our sons return safely, they will be all the riches I crave.”
A few days later when the entire settlement except Gloria had gone to watch “Drill Day,” she saw a band of Indians rounding the dugway which led into the village. They were an entire tribe — moving. Tent poles, pack horses, squaws, papooses, painted warriors, flies and dust. Gloria had been spinning and singing:
“Forty threads make a knot –
He spoke to the River Tiber that rolls on to the sea;
Ten knots make a skein –
How big was Alexander, Pa, was he so very high?”
She stopped abruptly, the height of King Alexander frozen upon her lips. The Indians were stopping. A squaw was coming toward the house, carrying a papoose. Finally a young Indian dismounted and overtook her. Gloria rushed to the one window and dropped the muslin curtain. She fastened the single door with the green drop pole. Then she waited and prayed, remembering the Indian who had sought to buy her on the plains. As the squaw came closer, Gloria heard a sickly, weak cry from the baby. The squaw tried the door, rattled the latch. The young Indian called loudly and pounded upon the door. Gloria stood petrified, knowing that a telltale streak of smoke from the chimney had showed the house was not deserted. The young Indian pointed to it and resumed his poundings. Finally the squaw called “Poor babe — seek.” An additional wail proved her assertion and Gloria mastered her fear. Here was not violence but distress. The little black-haired baby writhed with fever. Gloria learned they had fed him pine nuts and squirrel meat — fare for the gods!
Sweet oil, followed by baths of vinegar water soon brought relief, and the amazed parents stood by, while the white girl administered her magic. Late in the afternoon the baby slept tranquilly. Taking the bottle of oil as a future precaution, and all the bread in the house, the Indians departed. The whole train had stoically waited their return. As they left, the squaw petted Gloria’s riotous curls and muttered: “Purty — heap purty!”
The spinning was not finished, the cow had to be milked by candle light, but Gloria’s act of mercy proved to be bread upon the waters of life.
The next day Margaret Kirkman mixed all their remaining flour into bread, scraping the tin box for the last precious spoonful. Still the boys neither wrote nor returned. “No news is good news,” sang Gloria, vainly striving to chase the look of white despair from her mother’s face. What difference did it make, whether you were killed with a poisoned assaigai or a poisoned arrow?
Gloria developed a sudden, unexplainable antipathy for bread and milk and butter. She craved greens; dandelions, pig weed and even water cress, grown rank and stringy. Anything that could be flavored with candle grease was just to her taste. But she went outside while her mother ate the last slice of bread and whispered to the stars: “Diamonds by the chicken coop where I was born!” Later after prayers she muttered: “We believe in worshipping Almighty God according — ” “Maud Muller on a summer’s day — ” Fatigue and mountain water and water cress brought blessed sleep.
Morning brought her brothers who were unharmed and who had traveled all night. The whites had conquered the Indians, and the boys were laden with gifts from the grateful settlers. The Indians were subdued. The whites had returned to their homes. Margaret Kirkman made biscuits, bread and cake with white flour. Gloria produced many pairs of socks. The sons laughed at the crooked furrows their women folks had plowed, and at the scant supply of fuel. But their smiles held back tears, and presents furnished diversion from near emotion. There were shoes and two Dolly Varden hats, a pair of beautiful all woolen blankets. But they were as nothing compared to a book — a fifth reader which Gloria avidly consumed ere she slept. And when the cake was cold and the biscuits browned, Gloria’s appetite for flour returned, she lost that craving for greens.
“Captain Burton used your copy book for a log, Mother,” explained Stephen, “so we couldn’t write. ‘Twas the only paper in all our camp. It will go to the Governor.”
“O, Gloria,” Henry was bubbling with eagerness, “we saw your friend Jonas Whitman. That man you saved on the plains.” He grinned joyously at the sudden flame which covered Gloria’s face. “We stopped at his house. He’s a prosperous man. He’s got a farm and a store and a saw mill and two little children and a sickly wife. His house has a place what you grow flowers in. A conservatory, they call it. There’s a big piano and wax flowers, and a lily pond in his lawn and a room with nothing in it but books. He sent you that reader we brought.” Thanks to this new gift, “Horatio at the Bridge” was soon added to Gloria’s store of memorized poems.
The Kirkman boys were impressed with their father’s tales of diamonds. A twenty-two carat diamond where Gloria was born! Diamonds on the Orange River — diamonds at the junction of the Vaal and Orange, diamonds almost for the asking, if you were there.
“Well,” argued Thomas laconically, “diamonds ten thousand miles away aren’t worth any more to us than twinkling stars. The railroad’s coming soon — coming fast. Coming from ‘Frisco with Governor Stanford behind it. Coming from Omaha. They’re making history, and we can help make it too.”
“President Young has a contract for ninety miles of grading. We have horses now. We will make better wages than diamond diggers,” added George, who was usually noncommittal. His prediction was soon fulfilled. “On to Echo” became a popular slogan. Construction crews, Mongolian laborers, teamsters, scrapers, engineers and surveyors swarmed like ants about the two rival grades. Margaret Kirkman secured employment cooking for one crew, with Gloria as her helper. Gloria had never dreamed of such lavish supplies. All they needed to cook was theirs. Dried fruits, white flour, cured and fresh meats, butter in great wooden tubs. Margaret Kirkman was a good cook and very shortly men vied for places at her table. Gloria washed dishes, peeled potatoes, set tables, waited on the rough, voracious men. She, too, was helping to make history. She was turning her small cog in the wheel of the great Iron Horse. Every tie, every rail, every spike brought the vision closer. Rails would soon span the whole continent, linking the East and the West. Her dream of travel would be nearer. She smiled now to notice how the stage drivers became less arrogant. Some of them were even seeking employment on the railroad. The yellow dusters and the lemon colored gloves would pass into history along with the beautiful red and green stages. Postage would be cheaper. Perhaps the comfort of the railroad would spur her father’s coming. Maybe he would bring diamonds. He had said “await my coming.”
The first of May in sixty-nine found the two rival companies at fever heat. Parallel grades were being laid. The Union Pacific forged down Weber Canyon, while the Central Pacific rounded the Lake. A long stretch of grade was now useless. Ten miles of track were laid in one day. Twenty-five thousand men, ten thousand horses! They swarmed about like hills of disturbed ants. Abutments; blasting; scraping; gravel; ties; rails. Swearing men. Water boys. Wide-eyed Chinese rushing to cook for them all. Feverish haste, overtime. “Like two giants, hastening to meet on the shores of the Great Dead Sea.”
Knowing Gloria’s eagerness to go, and as an appreciation of Mrs. Kirkman’s many kindnesses, a construction engineer took them to Promontory on that eventful May 10th.
Although she later felt the whirl of mighty airplanes, Gloria never experienced another such thrill as that ride to Promontory on a glorious May morning. The swaying, creaking flatcar was like the wings of Perseus. She did not smell the smoke, nor see the cinders which floated backward. The Fort Douglas band played national airs. Governor Stanford was there, wearing a velvet coat. Ladies in wonderful, sweeping silk dresses, carrying fringed parasols; hilarity, speeches, whistles and cheers.
Chinamen laid the last two rails for the Central Pacific.
Europeans laid the last two rails for the Union Pacific.
A spike of gold. Twenty-three double eagles had gone into it! Almost as much as the fortune they thought they had lost on the plains. A silver spike from Nevada, a silver and gold one from Arizona. The last tie was polished laurel wood from California. Governor Stanford removed his velvet coat and drove that last spike. The crowd cheered; telegraph instruments clicked the news to the world; the two engines pushed together; the two engineers broke champagne bottles over the other’s headlight. A thousand miles from Missouri; seven hundred from ‘Frisco. A little Gloria Kirkman, with her red hair and pug nose was permitted to witness this!
When the speeches were over and the band had gone, Gloria felt a touch on her arm. There behind her stood Jonas Whitman — a little older, a little plumper, but the same courtesy in his voice, the same dreamy, visionary expression in his eyes.
“Crown of Glory,” he smiled, “how you have grown. You are a blossom now — no longer a bud. Are you going to marry one of these many surveyors or engineers?”
Gloria blushed, but answered modestly, “I await my father’s coming.”
“Ah, he may now come in peace and luxury. There will be no horses for the Indians to steal, and he will not need to lie in agony until a little girl finds him.”
“O, he is in danger now,” replied Gloria quickly. “The Kafirs kill white men whenever they dare.”
“Would that my wife could have health like yours!” Jonas Whitman looked long at the radiant and youthful beauty of Gloria Kirkman. “My wife gets weaker each day. Our tiny baby girl is not strong either. Every night I pray the Lord to spare the mother to rear the child.”
Gloria felt a surging wave of sympathy for this sick woman, who could not even care for her baby.
“If you lived closer to us, I could help,” she answered. But Jonas Whitman shook his head sadly.
“Only God can help,” he answered. “She is slipping away. I have prospered in worldly goods, but I am powerless to save her. But I must not spoil your wonderful day with my troubles. History and beauty have combined to make this day a memorable one.” He bowed gallantly, and soon he had again mingled in a group of men. Gloria noticed that they listened attentively whenever he spoke. Undoubtedly he was a leader. “Poor man!” she thought. “I guess he never stirred dandelion greens with a tallow candle. But soon he will have no wife, nor anyone to care for his little girl.”
The next spring Gloria’s brothers took her to conference. Margaret Kirkman felt her frail strength unequal to the long ride. She also was failing, so she voluntarily remained at home with a neighbor boy to milk.
The wheat stood four inches high when they left. Looking back at the little valley as they rounded a curve, Gloria noticed how like a beautiful green carpet the fields looked, smooth and slightly waving. A solid mass of green. When they returned four days later she could hardly believe her eyes. She rubbed them and looked again. The wheat fields were gone! Not beaten down by a violent rain; not scorched from a mountain wind; but every blade and shoot of green was as though it had never been. A scourge of grasshoppers had swept over the valley. They had clouded the sun. They had settled on each field, until no food remained, then rose, and passed on to another. The mill race was filled with their bodies. Margaret Kirkman had caught four sacks of them in the irrigation flume. Children, with rags tied to sticks, shooed them away from the potato plants. Only the pig weeds remained unscathed. No dandelions — no water cress; only pig weeds for humans and bunch grass for animals. A horde had settled on the railroad track and had stopped a train.
“It can’t be,” cried Gloria, “Our beautiful wheat.”
“’Tis lucky we have horses,” Stephen was always practical. “We can go south and burn charcoal, and send food home.”
Gloria thought of the plenteous table she had set before the railroad workers. Of the wife of Jonas Whitman, who no doubt, was too ill to eat the good things he provided; she thought of the diamonds discovered at her birthplace.
“God’s purpose is not yet revealed, but we will survive our affliction,” Margaret Kirkman’s voice held a quality more than earthly. As she spoke she did not glance at the diminishing sack of flour.
The following winter George went out with a shovel and cleaning some bare ground, dug up a panful of soil. This he thawed out slowly, behind the stove. Then he called the family together — unmistakable signs of grasshopper larvae were all through the soil.
“I guess,” he said in his slow methodical manner, “we boys had better go to burn charcoal again.”
The siege lasted four years. Gloria was fortunate to have shoes for Sundays and holidays. There were no berries or wild currants. No strawberries in the rank meadows. No blade of wheat was permitted to head or ripen. Even the sunflowers were eaten from the roof of their house; the few precious potatoes they were able to shield had to be hoarded for yeast. Fortunately, there was game and her brothers were able to keep the table fairly well supplied with meats and fish. Whenever Gloria felt rebellion surge, a glance at her mother’s peaceful countenance filled her with shame. She longed for the bully beef which they had all loathed when on board ship. Even dried and pressed vegetables would have been as nectar compared to the unchanging menu of pig weeds and bread, made from flour which her brothers hauled two hundred miles.
From one of their trips her brothers brought the news of the death of Jonas Whitman’s wife. The little baby girl was so weak she could not walk until she was three.
“Well, family,” Stephen assumed the role of parent in the absence of the father, “we are having a hard time. I don’t like our fare, and Mother weakens under it, I know. But in these past ten years history has been made. These United States have abolished slavery. They have passed a homestead law which makes it possible for the poor man to acquire land. They have laid the Atlantic Cable, so messages can go over the water. And now the railroad has come. It has been a marvelous ten years.”
Two years later when the fields were again full of promise, and the Kirkman boys felt they could afford to stay at home to cultivate their farms, Jonas Whitman came seeking the “Crown of Glory.”
Margaret Kirkman was failing rapidly. She wanted Gloria safely and wisely married while she was still with her. The two Whitman children needed a mother’s care. The tiny Anna, suffering from a physical weakness which threatened to be mental, needed hourly care from loving hands. Jonas Whitman had more than a dirt roof to his home and more than rough boards on his floors. He had a glass-roofed room where he experimented with moss roses, a library with books and books and more books. And his hair was no longer a rich brown, but thinning at the temples. His eyes held the dreamy, far-away expression which belongs to men of vision, but his coat lacked a button.
“I need you, Crown of Glory,” he pleaded. More than his words, Gloria noticed his collar had been scorched in the ironing. Here she could serve and render a real service to humanity. She would rear his children kindly — she would mother the weak Anna. So, after a week of whirlwind courtship and hasty preparations, Gloria Kirkman became Gloria Whitman. A gray flowered silk with a train, kid gloves that were more beautiful than the stage driver’s because they were a delicate gray, a hat with straw flowers to set upon the riotous, red curls! She would no longer be like Maud Muller who raked the hay. But with her change of fortunes she would:
“Feed the hungry and clothe the poor
And all should bless me who left my door.”
There need be no further scrapings of the flour can; no boiling of tagalder bark for dye, no need to use ravelings for thread.
The day of her marriage another infrequent letter came from John Kirkman in far away Africa:
“A diamond weighing 83 carats has been found on the Orange River. It is called “The Star of South Africa.” It sold for 25,000 pounds. They are beginning to dig into the earth. A certain blue soil contains diamonds, as well as river beds. I am joining a party going inland, in Boer trekking wagons. Do not expect me yet. When I come, I will be rich. I will no longer send money, just to be lost. I will bring a large diamond for my little Gloria.
“You are no longer his little Gloria, you are mine!” whispered Jonas Whitman. “Mine to keep, to love, to cherish. Mine, to change my desolate house into a home!” | <urn:uuid:38513649-e4e5-4d20-9c69-845e51a1dc0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2012/05/02/a-daughter-of-martha-chapter-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979639 | 6,748 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The British embassy in Tripoli has received reports of threats against it and has raised the issue with the Libyan government, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said last night.
It would not discuss the threats, but last week it urged all British citizens to immediately leave Benghazi, Libya’s second city, because of a “specific and imminent” threat against westerners. That threat was believed to come from Islamic extremists following the attack on the BP plant in Algeria and France’s intervention in Mali.
No British diplomats have been evacuated from Tripoli. During the 2011 revolution, the British Ambassador’s residence was burned | <urn:uuid:dd81339c-0a74-47e3-b215-2a271c130d6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article3671293.ece | 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 | 0.979064 | 125 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The Paideia® Experience Before Paideia®
While Southwestern launched its Paideia® Program only three years ago, the educational components defined as the essential strands of the programrigorous academics, intercultural experiences, leadership, service-learning, and collaborative/guided research and creative workshave long been part of the Southwestern experience. When constructing the Paideia® Program, University officials incorporated those transformational educational experiences that generations of Southwestern University alumni credited with accelerating their personal and professional development.
Read what some alumni say about the Paideia®-like experiences that complemented the rigorous academics of the Southwestern classroom and shaped who they are today.
During my sophomore year at Southwestern, I had the opportunity to participate in a week-long academic trip to the United Nations as a part of my political science studies. It was actually a 13-day trip and was marvelous. I remember quite well our visits to the Soviet, Japanese and Indonesian Missions to the United Nations, discussions with the Secretary of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN Secretariat, and private dinners in the homes of UN administrators discussing pressing global and bureaucratic issues facing that world body. I also remember walking out of the front of the Soviet Mission only to spot cameras in the window of the apartment building directly across from the entranceobviously part of the FBIs continual monitoring of visitors in and out of that center of Soviet espionage in New York. I also remember brisk, nighttime walking tours of Greenwich Village and Chinatown with our host, a professor from an eastern college. Upon my return to SU, working from extensive personal notes, I produced a lengthy paper highlighting three areas where the UN had been successful and three areas where it had been an abysmal failure. Those SU experiences, and my observation of the UN in the years since, continue to inform my view of this organizations critical role and potential for success in the decades to come.
Collaborative Research and Creative Works
Jay Richards thought that his political science and religion degrees would prepare him well for graduate school. I was interested in ideas that have public consequences and found an interest in the power of ideas I did a collaborative project with friend and fellow political science major Phil Christian 89.
In our senior capstone course, taught by a great professor,
Tim ONeill, we led a seminar on Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. Phil and I poured ourselves into the subject and even wore togas for the presentation. I remember the excitement I experienced in reading primary sources rather than textbooks, and have retained that enthusiasm into the present. Later in life, Richards, a vice president for research and senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, a public policy think-tank, rediscovered the power of collaborative research through a number of published works, including his latest book, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. Their book is the basis for the documentary The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe, currently showing on many PBS affiliate stations. Richards work on this project examined the concept of intelligent design, a theory holding that nature bears evidence best explained by an intelligent cause. His research at the Discovery Institute has enabled Richards to utilize the broad-based education he gained from Southwestern. My Southwestern education prepared me for the generalist approach of philosophy that I enjoy so much. I did what I intended to do. I really wanted to apply my studies of political science and religion to wider issues. Here I am, doing just that.
Jan. 20, 1961, I was walking across campus at Southwestern University, about to begin my last semester of undergraduate work. It was late morning. I went into the student union building to see what might be going on, and I saw a bunch of folks waiting to watch the presidential inauguration. Having nothing better to do, I decided to stay and watch. Then, John F. Kennedy began to speak. His intelligent speechnot just his elegant words and his inspired grasp of events, but also the compelling cadence and Irish tenor of his voiceseemed to somehow zap right into my emotional wiring and speak to parts of me I didnt even know existed. A transcendental charmer he was, asking us to ask not, calling us beyond ourselves, challenging us to relate to the work in ways that made life sound well worth living. Kennedy did not mention Peace Corps in his inaugural address, but it soon entered my expanded consciousness. Over spring break, the National Student Association held a workshop on Peace Corps in D.C., so I wrangled an authorization from the SU Student Council to go as a delegate. Along with three other interested classmates, I spent three to four days at American University, sorting through, evaluating and fleshing out different proposals with respect to Peace Corps. At the end of the conference, I picked up an application, sent it in and, in early June, I received a telegram from Sargent Shriver to report to Rutgers University for Peace Corps training for Columbia. I looked up Columbia on the map, responded in the affirmative, and that made all the difference in the world.
The variety of learning opportunities available to me during my four years at Southwestern has had a lasting impact on me not only personally, but professionally as well. As a sociology major, my classroom experiences consistently presented me with a framework for understanding issues related to poverty, discrimination and other forms of social inequality. My honors thesis, in which I focused on feminist social work practice, further enhanced my perspective on what role I can have within the nonprofit sector to bring about social justice and change for families and individuals in need. Throughout the process of developing my thesis, I had the wonderful privilege of talking with many professional social workers in the area. Many of those interactions are what eventually sold me on the idea of earning my masters degree in social work. I also became directly involved with several local nonprofit agencies through my participation in the Southwestern chapter of the service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega. It was great to have the support of other students with similar interests in serving the larger community. Though indirectly, the semester I studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain, also affected the career path I have chosen. I continue to seek out avenues for utilizing the language I acquired in Spain, and I have enjoyed being able to work more closely with Spanish-speaking clients and community members as a result. | <urn:uuid:7143c197-a5b9-4ee7-91ed-bc29a0ff7d52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southwestern.edu/magazine/back-issues/17_1/alumni-profiles.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964431 | 1,312 | 1.507813 | 2 |
By Yuki Hayashi
From the print edition, April 2012
This isn’t a teacher-bashing article, honest.
My partner has been a teacher for 12 years, and I see firsthand how hard he works—and the satisfaction he gets from educating grade-school-age kids. In addition to his formal teaching duties, he comes in early, often works through his lunch or stays after school to tutor students (whether they are his own or not) and coaches a sports team each semester.
He’s not one of those groundbreaking superstars who are going to win a teacher of the year award, but he’s one of the thousands of rank-and-file worker bees quietly chugging away, making his school a healthier, more engaging place. Our schools hum along thanks to the teachers who start school eco clubs, who lob youngsters their first volleyball, who take the older kids to city tournaments…and then boost their morale with well-phrased pep talks when the team doesn’t come home with a banner.
Our school boards are filled with unsung heroes like these. And then there are still more who put in what’s required by their collective agreement. Nothing more. You don’t really notice these ones because, well, they tend not to stand out. But they’re there. Heading out the door in droves (gotta beat traffic after all).
If teachers work off the same salary grid, enjoy the same benefits, job security and vacation time, regardless of whether or not they coach or run a club, what’s keeping them motivated? And what happens when today’s coaches get fed up and stop volunteering?
A modest proposal: Pay teachers to coach.
Frankly, coaching or leading other extracurricular activities should be considered part of all teachers’ job descriptions. “Teaching isn’t a regular job. When you’re a teacher, you are a role model. I don’t know many other jobs where you automatically become part of a community you may not live in, but teaching is one of them,” says one friend, an active parent-council member at her three sons’ school. She says teachers’ leadership role means they must be willing to log extra time, whether it’s coaching a team or helping pull together a holiday pageant.
She’d like to see it written into teachers future job descriptions. “That’ll never happen to the collective agreement,” pshawed my partner (who, for the record, thinks it should).
Fine, then. Principals should use other means to enlist a coaching-oriented roster of teachers as retirees get replaced in waves of new hiring. New graduates should understand that the new cultural expectation is that not only will they be qualified to teach but eager to coach too. Parents can help foster this environment by lobbying for teams at their kids’ school.
Let’s change the culture of teaching so it’s in line with similarly compensated private-sector careers, where a few extra hours per week is just considered part of the corporate culture.
But until then, let’s pay coaches cash bonuses. I’m not talking bankers’ bonuses, just a modest honorarium of a couple hundred dollars per coaching gig.
Here’s why. (Click to read part 2) | <urn:uuid:46cdc610-866b-41ab-b0ff-dac8540c5859> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.canadianfamily.ca/kids/baby/should-teachers-get-extra-pay-for-extracurriculars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958148 | 713 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Overlay Mode: Chapter Context
(<) (^)(>)Listen KJV
(<) (^)(>) Psalms Notes Audio Index Picture Index
kjv@Psalms:37:1 @ Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
kjv@Psalms:37:2 @ For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
kjv@Psalms:37:3 @ Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.
kjv@Psalms:37:4 @ Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
kjv@Psalms:37:5 @ Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
kjv@Psalms:37:6 @ And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
kjv@Psalms:37:7 @ Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
kjv@Psalms:37:8 @ Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.
kjv@Psalms:37:9 @ For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.
kjv@Psalms:37:10 @ For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.
kjv@Psalms:37:11 @ But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
kjv@Psalms:37:12 @ The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.
kjv@Psalms:37:13 @ The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.
kjv@Psalms:37:14 @ The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.
kjv@Psalms:37:15 @ Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.
kjv@Psalms:37:16 @ A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.
kjv@Psalms:37:17 @ For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.
kjv@Psalms:37:18 @ The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.
kjv@Psalms:37:19 @ They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied.
kjv@Psalms:37:20 @ But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.
kjv@Psalms:37:21 @ The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth.
kjv@Psalms:37:22 @ For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off.
kjv@Psalms:37:23 @ The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.
kjv@Psalms:37:24 @ Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.
kjv@Psalms:37:25 @ I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
kjv@Psalms:37:26 @ He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed.
kjv@Psalms:37:27 @ Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell for evermore.
kjv@Psalms:37:28 @ For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.
kjv@Psalms:37:29 @ The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.
kjv@Psalms:37:30 @ The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment.
kjv@Psalms:37:31 @ The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.
kjv@Psalms:37:32 @ The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.
kjv@Psalms:37:33 @ The LORD will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.
kjv@Psalms:37:34 @ Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.
kjv@Psalms:37:35 @ I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.
kjv@Psalms:37:36 @ Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.
kjv@Psalms:37:37 @ Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.
kjv@Psalms:37:38 @ But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off.
kjv@Psalms:37:39 @ But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble.
kjv@Psalms:37:40 @ And the LORD shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.
2012 - pBiblx2 Field Wise Bible System Version 2.0.9d - GPL3 | <urn:uuid:bf504653-e524-4ac3-b1b6-4978cf2b2036> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shepherdpuplinux.us/cgi-bin/pbiblx-basic.cgi?Mode=context&X=xt&Css=1h&Version=kjv&Book=VSEARCH&Chapter=Psalms:37:25 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951161 | 1,404 | 1.539063 | 2 |
On Wednesday – a 77-year-old retired pharmacist walked up to the Greek Parliament building and shot himself in the head to protest the crippling austerity measures that are ripping apart that nation. The man – whose name has not been released – left behind a note reading, “I have no other way to react apart from finding a dignified end before I start sifting through garbage for food.”
His suicide prompted thousands of Greeks to take to the streets in central Athens in fresh new protests against trickle-down austerity. Since trickle-down austerity began in Greece – suicide rates have jumped up 40%. Not only is trickle-down austerity bad economically – it’s bad morally as well. Yet it’s just the thing that the Republican budget written by multi-millionaire Congressman Paul Ryan would bring to the United States. | <urn:uuid:9da3138f-2299-489b-8280-bb418f263448> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2012/04/banksters-and-technocrats-pushing-austerity-greece-now-have-blood-their-hands | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958524 | 170 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Nelson Sunburst Clock by Vitra designed by George Nelson
With the diversity of materials used and their sculptural shapes, George Nelson's clocks embody the livelihood of the 1950s. Even today, his wall clocks remain a refreshing alternative to the usual timekeepers. The Vitra Design Museum presents a re-edition of the designs so cherished by collectors.
Valuable as collector's items
Available in multicolored, red, and walnut
Dimensions: 18.5" diameter
The Vitra Home Collection is not an interior design system or a homogeneous product line which promotes a uniform style. Rather, Vitra considers the furnishing of one's home as a process of collage - a gradual assemblage of products and objects. Not to be confused with coincidental accumulation of things, this process is a conscious arrangement that grows and changes with regard to both content and style, according to the owner's individual preferences and circumstances.
George Nelson George Nelson, born 1908 in Hartford, Connecticut, studied architecture at Yale University. A fellowship enabled him to study at the American Academy in Rome from 1932-34. In Europe he became acquainted with the protagonists and major architectural works of modernism. He joined the editorial staff of Architectural Forum in 1935, where he was employed until 1944. A programmatic article on residential building and furniture design, published in Architectural Forum by Nelson in 1944, attracted the attention of D.J. DePree, head of the furniture company Herman Miller. Shortly after this, George Nelson assumed the position of design director at Herman Miller. Remaining there until 1972, he became a key figure of American design, also convincing the likes of Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Girard to work for Herman Miller. His collaboration with Vitra began in 1957. From 1946 onwards Nelson also ran his own design office, creating numerous products that are now regarded as icons of mid-century modernism. Nelson's office also produced important architectural works and exhibition designs. George Nelson died in New York in 1986. His archive belongs to the holdings of the Vitra Design Museum.
Vitra has long been concerned about a healthy environment. It is a topic that exerts influence over all that the company undertakes. For Vitra, the primary focus has always been and continues to be the longevity of the products it produces.
Since 1997, Vitra has been certified according to the DIN EN ISO 9001 and DIN EN ISO 14001 standards for quality and environmental management. Always desiring to manage resources as responsibly as possible, Vitra strives to reconcile materials, packaging and recycling processes with dwindling resources, increasingly scarce energy supplies and the ever-greater impact on the environment.
Vitra has manufactured furniture designs by Charles & Ray Eames and George Nelson since 1957. Building on this foundation over the years, the company has developed a wide range of furnishings for the office, for the home and for public spaces in collaboration with progressive designers.
Founded in 1950 as a family-owned company, Vitra is known as more than just a design-oriented manufacturing company. The name also brings to mind the Vitra Design Museum, as well as a collection of modern furniture and its accompanying archive, workshops and publications on topics of design, and an architectural concept that unites buildings by Frank Gehry, Nicholas Grimshaw, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza, Herzog & de Meuron and SANAA at the Vitra Headquarters in Birsfelden (Switzerland) and on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein (Germany). | <urn:uuid:2a276115-4854-417e-8c52-79920a7efadc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smartfurniture.com/products/Nelson-Sunburst-Clock.html?att=33&cid=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957164 | 743 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Shine Bright -- Moving Prose
Dogs are like the brightest star, blazing through the darkness of night, and they are like a sun that outshines the day. They burn so intensely, so brightly. And for some, that blaze is for only a short time on this planet. Well, at least they get to spend more time in Heaven if their stay here is not as long as we'd like it to be. In nature there must always be a balance. Perhaps their stay is weighed with the goodness that fills them. It is said one cannot get enough of a good thing--dogs are that good thing to me.
I think our furry family members have the capacity for deep compassion, love, and concern for beings of all types, human and otherwise. I believe it goes beyond human understanding--because what they give comes from a heart that is pure, a spirit that is guileless, and a soul that operates on a level higher than anything close to human.
I am convinced dogs unfurl their wings when we are not looking. Have you ever noticed an expression they have, especially when they smile, that gives hint to something wondrous and grand? As if they have the most incredible gift they are hiding behind their back but you can tell they want so very much to show you what it is. Well, when I see that expression I could swear I feel the flutter of their wings in my heart.
Dogs can touch and mold our hearts, our spirits, and our minds. And in so doing they bring us a little bit closer to embracing, within ourselves, the goodness they are. Which is grander than any concept of humanity.
Copyright Kathy Pippig Harris | <urn:uuid:3ec03613-fe2c-4e1e-abd4-3406d00318da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dogster.com/the-scoop/shine-bright-moving-prose | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970197 | 347 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Last Friday morning, the second most powerful man in Mexico’s government, the cabinet member leading the war against the drug cartels, died in a helicopter crash. Mexicans were stunned: Francisco Blake Mora was President Felipe Calderón’s second interior secretary to die in an air crash in three years.
North of the border, Blake’s death did not make the TV networks’ evening newscasts. A stringer for one of them in Mexico told me that unless Calderón is gunned down by the cartels in broad daylight, the network bosses aren’t interested. Saturday’s Los Angeles Times carried the news on page A-5; The Washington Post did so on A-6. Only The New York Times, exercising sounder judgment, carried the news on the front page.
Initial indications point to an accident in the Blake case, but, for obvious reasons, the possibility of foul play is being investigated. The Mexican government has had a lot of recent success in hunting down the leaders of some of the most powerful criminal organizations on earth (a success that hasn’t translated into diminishing violence or a reduction in the flow of drugs across the border). That’s why few people, anywhere, had a longer list of resourceful enemies than Blake Mora did.
That said, even if Blake Mora had passed away in his sleep, the death of Mexico’s interior secretary would be big news. (The Spanish designation for the title, Gobernación, conveys its sweeping writ.) And I can’t help but think that the death of a similarly important Afghani or Iraqi security official would have registered more on the American media-scape.
The truth is, American media elites—not to mention the man on the street—aren’t invested, or even much interested, in the fate of Mexico. When I became the assistant editor of the New York Times editorial page, I was asked if I’d been to Israel. No, I answered, and soon found myself on a plane heading for Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, where I’d spend a fascinating week meeting with players from all sides in a long-running saga that I’d followed for years but never experienced up close. I wasn’t going to be the lead writer on Mideast editorials, mind you, nor did we lack for deep expertise on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No, the issue was that one couldn’t be part of the newspaper’s leadership without having a first-hand sense of a place deemed so strategically important.
Mexico, clearly, doesn’t have that status. I think it should, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why it doesn’t. Yes, I grew up in Mexico, but there’s a lot more to it than that. More than 40,000 people have died in Mexico since its government decided to take on drug cartels that are nourished by American consumers and armed by U.S. gun dealers. There is an almost direct causal link between Wall Street bankers doing blow or Occupy Wall Street protesters getting high and journalists and elected officials getting assassinated in Mexico. Not only is this violence undermining a democracy next door; we as Americans are responsible for much of it. At a time when the idea of socially responsible consumption has swept this country—think of the anti-sweatshop movement, the Darfur divestment campaigns, Fair Trade coffee, and so on—we take in the violence in Mexico with barely a nod.
For starters, then, the issue of our moral culpability alone should make Mexico matter to us. But, beyond that, the growing strength of these transnational criminal organizations is a threat to the rule of law north of the Rio Grande as well.
Intimidating and bribing officials might be easier in Mexico than in it is in the United States, but it would be foolish to pretend that these criminal behemoths, headquartered in Mexico but making tens of billions a year operating in our country, won’t succeed in corrupting the rule of law in any number of southwest jurisdictions.
There are also plenty of non-drug-war-related reasons why American media (and political) elites should pay more attention to Mexico. Did you know that, last year, the United States imported more oil from Mexico than it did from Saudi Arabia? Or that this safe, reliable source of oil (second only to Canada) may soon cease being a net exporter of oil, unless it embraces needed reforms that would allow for more investment in its production capacity? Given how much time we spend in this country fretting about our dependence on oil from the Middle East, maybe we should spend a little more thinking about the North American market and Mexico’s role as a counterweight to Middle East sources.
Our lack of appreciation for Mexico cuts both ways, because we ignore the good along with the bad. And there is plenty of good. Despite rising violence, Mexico is more democratic than it has ever been. Mexico is also the second-largest buyer of U.S. goods in the world, belying the idea of an impoverished country at the mercy of our generosity. Brazil, China, and India get a lot of buzz among U.S. elites for their rise out of poverty, but Mexico is further along in that transformation, with a higher standard of living than those nations, a thriving middle class, and more than a decade of sound economic and financial stewardship resulting in unparalleled stability. It’s a G-20 nation that offers a phenomenal market for U.S. goods, as the executives of any number of multinationals that rely on Mexico for a healthy share of their profits (such as Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, and Citicorp, to name a few) will tell you—or would tell you, if the political environment weren’t currently so hostile to the idea of businesses investing abroad.
Last week, I was shepherding a delegation from Zócalo Public Square, the New America Foundation, the Aspen Institute, and the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute through Mexico. We met with political and economic analysts, journalists, and five of the contenders vying to be elected Mexico’s next president. Reflecting Mexico’s traditional backwater status, a majority of our delegation—including such accomplished journalists as Steve Coll (former Washington Post managing editor), Susan Glasser (editor of Foreign Policy magazine), and Franklin Foer (editor-at-large of The New Republic)—had never been to Mexico City. I asked people on the trip for their gut, one-word reaction to the place. The most interesting (if two words) might have been “public art.” I also got “world-class,” “money,” “inequality,” “traffic,” and, perhaps most fittingly, “contradictions.”
A number of us did a TV show with respected Mexican journalist Sergio Sarmiento (whose network, TV Azteca, is part of the Salinas Group, our host in Mexico City and at the Ciudad de las Ideas conference in Puebla) on the question of whether Mexico matters to the United States. (We agreed that it should matter but doesn’t—an answer at odds with the notion many Mexicans have of U.S. elites eager to micromanage their nation’s destiny.) I insisted that this would change over time (for one thing, we have a least 15 million U.S. residents who were born in Mexico), but frankly I am not so sure.
There are many reasons Mexico punches below its weight in the collective mindshare of U.S. elites. One underappreciated reason is that, despite present anxieties over drugs and immigration, Mexico has been a fairly desirable neighbor. Even after the United States annexed half of its territory, Mexico has been a peaceful, sensible neighbor for most of our shared history. The United States has had the rare luxury, for a continental power, of not having to deploy large armies to secure its borders throughout history. Thanks to Canada and Mexico, we could behave like an island nation.
American elites, too, have had the luxury of ignoring Mexico, and proximity has bred contempt. Had our neighbor been more of a threat (imagine if Mexican terrorist suicide bombers made it a habit of crossing the border to reclaim California or Arizona), generations of our best and brightest would have been attracted to the study of Spanish and Mexico, the way they once were drawn to Russia and are now drawn to the Middle East. Meanwhile, for vast majorities of Americans, impressions of Mexico are formed by the flows of drugs and migrant workers—with maybe a stint at a Mexican beach resort. And, speaking of immigration, you may not have noticed the underreported story that the flow of immigrants has nearly ceased as the job market has constricted in this country (they really do come to work).
The story down south is decidedly mixed—one of many positive trends imperiled by rising violence and a lingering authoritarian political culture. Our delegation’s talks with leading politicians were disheartening on many topics, but heartening insofar as they seem less obsessed than ever with what the United States is or isn’t doing to Mexico.
Now we just need American elites to become a little more obsessed with what is happening south of the border. There is an imperative, and an opportunity, to start thinking more strategically about North American development and competitiveness. Mexico is an important, if underappreciated, partner for a number of positive reasons. And, if all hell breaks loose there, the United States, simply by having the power to have been a better (and less drug-ravenous) neighbor, will bear a large part of the blame. That’s another reason to start paying closer attention. | <urn:uuid:ab7c84fc-0ce3-4abe-b77d-a8d56b078c29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newamerica.net/publications/articles/2012/you_may_emwantem_to_ignore_mexico_62124 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965699 | 2,046 | 1.554688 | 2 |
In 2007 the first edition ofMDE Encuentros de Medellín (the International Contemporary Art Festival of Medellín, Colombia), was opened with a band performance. A well-blended group composed by visual artists, sound experimenters, rappers and activists, who just a few months before – in 2006 – had joined their forces to work together in self-production field. This band mixes digital sounds with Afro-Colombian music tradition.
After its first and successful performance at MDE, Systema Solar – the group’s name – specified its organizing structure and defined itself: collective of audio-visual artists. Today, 5 years after founding it, I can firmly state it has become one of the most appreciated and followed band countrywide.
Beside its musical success (Systema Solar was hosted by Womax Festival just at the end of last October), the group’s history and design are also an example of deeply-rooted experimentation in visual arts (as one of the most popular group, Calle 13 of Portorico), in network culture and in socio-political activism.
Its first public performance at MDE in 2007 symbolized the point of arrival of its research, started years before, and ended in the production (in the same year, 2006) of an independent documentary about Rap in Colombia: “FreKuensia Kolombiana” signed by Vanessa Gocksch and Walter Hernandez, a French-German visual artist settled in Latin America for almost two decades, and an activist and communication expert respectively.
This team work – created by each and every one of Systema Solar’s members – collected stories and accounts of nationwide musicians using words as medium of communication, digital technologies as production and independent tool of dissemination, and finally, recovery, of local music tradition (above all the African one in the northern coast of the country) and as key reference elements, to avoid becoming another cultural satellite of the US. “FreKuensia Kolombiana” is about the Hip Hop movement – whose origins must be traced back to street life and to underprivileged communities – , was distributed all over the country and used as means of self-representation and social revendication.
During the first decade of 2000 Colombia was a country in the midst of a civil war and of a forced and outward “normalization” process, wanted at any cost. On the one hand, there was a corrupted and conservative President: Alvaro Uribe, who in 2002 ascended to power by means of funds provided by his drug smuggler father (who had his backing of powerful people) and thanks to ruling classes’ support, who had all the media on the Colombian territory under their control. On the other hand, a 30-year long guerrilla war (FARC - Frente Armato Revolucionario de Colombia), whose modus operandi consisted, and still consists, of using forms – already seen – of political conflicts now obsolete and too outdated in order to get a true effect back on a urbanized and globalized civil society. In the period going from 2002 to 2010 a wave of repressive violence hit the entire country by annihilating every opposing party of the Uribe government; it was paradoxically (violence against violence) based on the need to eliminate the violence resorted by guerrillas , in order to build a modern and democratic nation.
Trade unions and professors were the target of paramilitary groups, i.e., the illegal army composed by mercenary soldiers funded by Uribe in order to support his political plans. Peasant farmers living in war areas were a target too, because accused of fomenting FARC or other armed organizations, and for this reason, they were obliged to flee in order not to be assassinated by paramilitary groups (I’ld like to remind you the “Bocas de ceniza” video by Colombian artist Juan Manuel Echavarría who depicts this foolish violence, reflected then on campesinos’ faces).
Even rappers became target of this wholesale war, aimed at eliminating anyone who independently provided counter-information. In fact, the Rap movement in Colombia, and in particularly the one in Medellín – known as one of the most violent city in the world, completely controlled by drug smugglers till the 90s – is very active and prolific, but since it gains support by addressing the subaltern classes, above all from the street culture, it’s still nowadays a target.
Taking into consideration the context I described, the production of an independent documentary like “FreKuensia Kolombiana” about Colombian Rap voices is a project with unarguably political repercussions.
The independence of the platform that produces it is by all means strongly political. I’m talking about a cultural NGO called Intermundo, which deals with education projects with a strong social impact. Among its projects are workshops on the creative use of basic technologies, video workshops, educational projects for children and teenagers living in villages in the Caribbean coast and workshops on DIY eco-friendly architecture, based on recycling for desplazados communities (that is, groups of people who had to leave their lands en masse to escape war, and now live in areas where violence does not exist at all). There is also VoKaribe, the fully independent radio that broadcasts from Barranquilla, which during these months has been training people who’ll give voice to it. A voice of independent and community information in a country where media are completely under the control of power, is no light matter.
Systema Solar belongs to Intermundo’s projects; in the light of this militant approach as socio-cultural project, the very upbeat and exhilarating Electrocumbe music and crowds of spectators running to its concerts, are nearly pushed into the background. Systema Solar’s members come from different areas: someone from the Caribbean coast (strongly influenced by African music, as for example Soukous), somebody from Bogotà and others from Europe, after traveling the Latin American Continent like Pata de Perro/Vanessa Gocksch. Everybody shares a fund of experience including self-productions, projects of independent communication, hacker ethic, and the use of technologies to create networks and provide education programmes. In 2007 the organization gave birth to Pixelazo – Laboratorio urbano de nuevos medios y redes creativas, the local version of Pixelache international festivals.
Every project created by Intermundo is designed in details to perfectly fit the Colombian socio-cultural context. The “Think global act local” refrain is actually embodied in the practice in any of its projects. “We live in one of the wealthiest countries of the world – it can be read in its organization manifesto. It is the second most biologically diverse worldwide after Brazil and is made up of a multiplicity of cultural enclaves […] the land is mostly virgin jungle and mountain; thriving with infinite natural resources and water […] With this in mind, as Intermundos we have always worked to highlight, acknowledge and strengthen local identity and the construction of autonomous projects and communities.”
Systema Solar is perfectly part of this view: its members have unanimously decided to take up residence in different towns in the Caribbean coast, from the cities of Santa Marta (a Caribbean and native town) and Cartagena de Las Indias, to Barranquilla (the most important maritime port of the country). This is an African, poor and chaotic region, where the social abyss between ruling classes and the poor is extremely horrifying: 5 percent of people with a Spanish surname own more than 90 percent of resources. The organization aims at being present in such a hybrid and different land influenced by imported cultures of passage.
The demographic situation mimic its music, the black and Africans in the Caribbean coast.Systema Solar is working on the tradition of this region, by drawing on the idea of pikò, street sound systems that organize parties inside neighbourhoods, and of berbena, the improvised parties of Barranquilla that gather hundreds of people in a outright Temporary Autonomous Zone. Colombian popular music tradition (Cumbia, Bullerengue, Porro, Champeta) is mixed with hip hop, techno, break beat and break-dance. Systema Solar’s public shows are more real audio-visual performances than simple concerts: two singers/performers, musicians and DJs perform during a live cinema session with materials shot around the entire country. Systema Solar’s concerts are planned in great detail, including costumes, which are designed and made by the group’s members themselves.
Systema Solar adds to the hip hop rebellion the strength of dancing in its liberating meaning and the idea that if revolutions have to take place, they must be the smiling ones, by finding in our origins the reason for changing the status of things, but also for loving ourselves and the context we’re living in. | <urn:uuid:341fec88-1eca-40e8-9e6e-e9600c103953> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digicult.it/digimag/issue-069/intermundo-systema-solar-militant-sounds-socio-cultural-projects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950548 | 1,843 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Skip to comments.MITT ROMNEY: GAY PEOPLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SERVE IN BOY SCOUTS
Posted on 04/26/2012 11:40:58 AM PDT by DesertRenegade
As support for gay mom and former Boy Scout troop leader Jennifer Tyrrell contines to pour in from across America, it's important to reflect on those who have been saying all along that moms like Jen should be allowed in the Boy Scouts. Including Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said in a 1994 debate:
I believe that the Boy Scouts of America does a wonderful service for this country. I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue. I feel that all people should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.
Romney was a member of Boy Scouts of America's National Executive Board at the time. Romney's belief that "all people should be able to participate in the Boy Scouts," echoes the opinion of over 146,000 People who have joined Jennifer's Change.org action calling on the Boy Scouts of America to end its long history of discrimination against LGBT people. Tyrrell was ousted as scout leader of her 7-year-old sons Boy Scouts troop simply because shes gay.
(Excerpt) Read more at glaad.org ...
Careful, you'll upset the "Anybody But Obama" crowd.
Of course, those are the same people who created the mentality in the RNC that it doesn't matter who the candidate is, when the election comes around, they'll all get in line.
On my honor, I will do my best To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
What is so wrong with playing both sides of an issue?
Uhm - sorry it didn’t work for you. I’m likely close to your age, and was a Scout for 5 years as a youth. I’m a Scout Leader now. I don’t find any real problem having ladies as leaders as long as they run the program correctly, i.e. don’t be a Mom - be a Mentor/Coach.
The fact is that Boy Scouts (not cubs) is a Boy lead organization if done correctly. Thus, it isn’t nearly that important whether the adult leaders are men or women.
Just to put all my cards on the table - I’ve been with my own son from Tiger cubs through him receiving his Eagle a year ago. I’m still the Scout Master and plan on staying such for a few more years.
... so he could be on the receiving end?
No WAY will I vote Romney. We will deal with Obama's SC nominees through the Senate.
Admittedly, in the past, I was among those who "got in line." Not this year, though.
/ “ But, even if he still holds the 1994 personal opinion, it is clear he is not going to mess with or try to force the Boy Scouts to change... “ /
Well THAT’S a relief!
I know you will be providing that quote from the Bishop Romneybama that backs up your statement that “it’s clear he is not going to mess with or try to force the Boy Scouts to change.....”
I don’t know how to attribute goodness to men who say ever so clearly that that they are “open” to queers serving with regularity and title among and OVER defenseless boys who are often away from direct parental oversight.
Apparently you’re able to sleep okay having heard your nominee say that regardless when he said it. What’s changed with him since he said it? YOU have NO clue who Bishop Romneybama is beholding or in exchange for what.
I heard he already hired on an open gay as his campaign advisor on military matters.
If that is true, what’s to keep his interest in check for having openly gay leaders for Boy Scouts?
/ “ Admittedly, in the past, I was among those who “got in line.” Not this year, though. “ /
We all were.
REBELLION IS HARD, but we’re gonna do it anyway, and trust God for the rest.
Private individuals and private organizations should be able to make those decisions without government interference. However, if I had any doubts, the simple fact that Romney made an announcement would push me in the other direction.
just like Kagan and Sotomayor, right???
then think postpartum abortions(infanticide), coming soon.
"I believe that the Boy Scouts of America does a wonderful service for this country. I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue."
And during his stint as Governor, as bad as it was, he never tried to force the Boy Scouts in Mass. to my knowledge (and please point me to references and cocumentation to the contray if I am wrong) to accept or change what it is the BSA as an organization has decided.
I diagree completely with his own perosnal feeling on ths issue...I would never support or personally feel that any gays should serve in any capacity with the scouts or any other youth group. People who are gay are sick...the lifestyle is sick...and that should be no surprise given God's word on the matter.
It is immoral, and every statistic shows how unhealthy it is (physically, mentally and emotionally) for the people so involved.
Romney has openly stated that he supports the right for the Boy Scouts to make their own choice and has never used his position to force anything different.
We cannot say the same is, or will be true for Obama.
And, as I stated, my support throughout these primaries has been for Sarah, Cain, Santorum, and then Newt, in that order.
Told ya a long time ago that Rumbutt was against the Boy Scouts.
Boy Scout Ping latter tonight.
You’re right, Rita. I’m going to just do what I know is right and trust God for the rest, as you say. He’ll take care of His own. Besides, He’s already pre-ordained the winner.
LOL, I’m getting a few of those Freepmails, as well.
Her 7 year old would be a cub scout not a boy scout!
Her 7 year old would be a cub scout not a boy scout!
This is misleading. Romney pretty much acknowleges being a social liberal in 1994.
The question is: what does he think today? Has anyone asked him? And can we believe him?
Coulter endorses Mutt.
Mutt owes Coulter.
To me, this could easily read as saying kids working their way up through Scouts shouldn't be excluded and he is right about that.
It would be good to get clarification from him, but I think it is a stretch at this point to imply that he wants the Scouts to change their policy about not having homosexual Scout Masters. He clearly says that "I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue."
“Courage?” Romney’s been trying to buy the presidency for how many years now? Sorry, it’s nothing to do with courage; it’s about power for this guy.
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When he saved the Olympics he banned the Boy Scouts, so this should not be a surprise.
I didn't see where Romney was saying anything about homosexual Scout leaders. If he supported that, I would definitely have and issue with him. I DO NOT want my kids in the woods with a homosexual. In particular, I especially don't want them in the woods with one who has leadership or authority over them. The girl scouts caved on this and have lesbian leaders. They are a real mess and I know a lot of families who do not put their daughters in girl scouts because of that.
Is he talking about the boys coming up through scouts, or is he talking about scout master positions? There is a significant difference.
Not sure but it may have affected Drudge Report.
It’s a great day for Scouting, SR. Thanks for all you do.
They just have to pay the price, remember the Olympics? Thought so.
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How is Romney actually better than 0bomba again? I still haven't been able to see that. He wants mentally ill sex perverts who are historically attracted to boys to be able to join the Boy Scouts. How is it the fates have ordained that no conservative voter can vote? How is this happening? Romney is a huge supporter of mentally ill sex perversion along with all his other leftist/liberal history. If Gingrich is really out (looks like it, I guess) I keep thinking - how can I vote for Robomney? And then I see an article like this. I just can't do it.
Question from a concerned Boy Scout parent in the heartland: Obama, do you support forcing the Boy Scouts of America to have homosexual Scout Masters? You do?
Mittens, do you ...
"I went to Massachusetts to make a difference. I didn't go there to begin a political career running time and time again. I made a difference.
I put in place the things I wanted to do"
~ Mitt Romney
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I feel your pain.
There are some good women leaders, but they’re outnumbered by the feminist types.
Also, the nannies.
Quick story, SM called and said a Scout had done severe enough to warrant intervention by the TC. Had put him on the list for nominees for OA election. Wanted to know what to do. I told him to use his judgement as a SM, if the boy was in that much trouble, he wasn’t upholding the Oath and Law.
Boy was removed from the list. Parents threw a complete conniption. The word got out. A female District Cmte member started this whispering campaign against the SM. Saying that what he had done was “wrong, you just don’t do that to a boy”. I told her to shut her yap, the boy broke the rules and was getting corrected.
Eventually the SM was forced to step down because of those cackling hens running around. And I was encouraged to quit the District Cmte.
The feminists got themselves a twofer on that one.
Forget it. The train is rollin, and there aint no stoppin it now.
The Great Alfred E. Brumley song By Merle Haggard.
The whole article at the link is a propaganda piece.
Unless it has changed, the woman couldn’t have been Scoutmaster of the her son’s “troop” for two reasons. First, Scoutmasters for Scout Troops is reserved for men and secondly, her son is Cub Scout age and he would have been in a Cub Scout “Pack.”
The quote from Mitt is 16 years old and appears to support Scouts in the controversy at that time but ends with wanting all parents to be able to participate — which they can. Scouting keeps acknowledged homosexuals, as well as certain others, outside of Leadership, it doesn’t say they can’t be parents participating under the supervision of Leaders. Scouting has long required “two deep” leadership structure keeping youth supervised by two or more adults to prevent isolation of kids by one adult. This is safer for adults as well.
I think that these people that get in fights with scouting love to drag in any crap from the political and national front to support their line — even an ambiguous 16 year old, out of context, quote.
I have a lot of problems with Mitt Romney, but this is a red herring.
Who is to say what kid is a homosexual, or just a little weird or confused?
If he supports the Scouts changing their policy, then that is a real problem.
The Boy Scouts are supposed to have a platform of tolerance, acceptance, and support -- values that drew my son Cruz to be a scout, and that drew me to want to be a den leader."
Here in my third decade as a Scouter (local, District, Council, Regional, and National), I've yet to see a BSA publication with a platform of 'tolerance, acceptance, and support." I know the Scout Law, the Scout Oath, the Scout Motto, the Cub Scout Oath, the Cub Scout Motto - and so on. Nothing about tolerance and acceptance of lifestyles that don't meet what the BSA considers to be "Morally Straight" or in accordance with the Eleventh Point of the Scout Law: A Scout is Clean (in Word and Deed).
"We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirements in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts. Because of these beliefs, the Boy Scouts of America does not accept homosexuals as members or as leaders, whether in volunteer or professional capacities."
Boy Scouts of America, Position Statement on Homosexuality, June 1991
I should point out that the Boy Scouts do not actively seek to determine the sexual orientation of the boys who participate in scouts. The organization precludes gays from being leaders, but also doesn’t specifically target gay parents to keep them from parental involvement in scouting activities.
It is the leadership that the BSA focuses on, now as in 1994. I think some people get confused between the words “participate” and “serve” (like this headline did).
I realize that some people here at this site would support the BSA inquiring about sexual orientation and denying gay-identified boys from joining. The scouts do “tend” to deny atheists, after all, if they are outspoken — because it violates part of the scout oath.
To bad you don't have the whole truth, maybe because you don't want to know.
Oops, sent it out before I saw you did!
Now I have to dip my mouse in bleach and shun my computer for a few hours - I went to glaad.org to grab this graphic.
If Romney has anything to say about it, wouldn’t the “scoutmaster positions” be “ ‘missionary’ positions”...?
In my experience, on Scout trips, I can't even let my son's friend sleep in our tent. A lot of safety procedures are in place to protect the kids and the adults. I am 100% good with that.
The thing is the older scouts influence the younger ones. So if a 17 or 18 year old scout decides he is “gay” but he is not a scout master, that could still cause horrendous problems.
Some of us are going to do it anyway.
You go girl! Seriously though Oklahoma will undoubtably go big for Romney, so who will you write in? I was always intending to write in Palin, but I am withholding that decision until I see how she approaches this election after the coronation ball.
By gawd there aint much difference.
When I vote for this silver spooned wannabee, I will do so with my nose held and angst in my heart for the Republican party.
Come on, Romney is pro-fag rights. Without him Massachusetts would not have “gay marriage”. Romney has been very outspoken regarding his support for the homo agenda.
The “D” word may be what she’s referencing, albeit, incorrectly.
I’ll bet she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut and her desire to agitate overcame any sense she may have had.
If she was truly sincere in putting her son’s interests first, she would have made every effort to suppress her own desires to ensure her son had a legitimate shot at enjoying the program.
But nooooooo...the love that shall not speak it’s name just can’t shut up!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. | <urn:uuid:91770ebf-e498-4a2c-bebb-c1aea35d53e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/2876839/posts?page=56 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968627 | 3,637 | 1.78125 | 2 |
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The province of Apayao is formerly part of the larger province of Kalinga Apayao until it was divided into 2 separate provinces on February 14, 1995 under Republic Act No. 7878. It is one "off-the-beaten" destination that most travelers hardly visit. That's why when I got the chance to travel to Northern Luzon some time last year, I see to it that I include this province in my itinerary. We traveled for 4 hours from Laoag, Ilocos Norte to the sleepy town of Pudtol in Apayao in search for the Spanish Church Ruins. | <urn:uuid:8deaeabd-6a89-47e1-a1f2-8d01faa386db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pinoyadventurista.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966256 | 133 | 1.765625 | 2 |
For those of us who serve children in foster care, we think on a daily basis about the thousands of children in the U.S. who need to find safe, secure homes. As of July 2012, around 104,000 children in the U.S. alone were waiting to be adopted, spending on average about a year in foster care, according to the U.S. Children’s Bureau.
Every year, leaders in foster in care remind others that no child is unadoptable. Here at Children’s Home Society of Washington, we are honored to celebrate National Adoption Day on Nov. 17, which brings national attention to children currently in foster care and encourages families to take the remarkable step toward being a permanent part of these children’s lives.
The day also focuses on building stronger partnerships between courts, organizations, policymakers and advocates around the U.S. to finalize adoptions for foster children. This year, about 4,500 children are expected to be adopted—helping build lasting families and loving homes.
Family recruiters based at Children’s Home Society of Washington took 10 foster kids and their families to Pierce County Juvenile Court in Tacoma today to complete the adoption process in honor of National Adoption Day.
I am grateful that I got to be a part of this amazing event again this year. It always has a special place in my heart as well as my colleagues at Children’s Home Society of Washington, which has created a lasting legacy to improve the lives of foster children since 1896.
The celebration included cake and gifts for the new parents and their adopted children. The accolades not only go to new parents and sisters and brothers who have made a significant commitment, but also the foster children who have shown great courage and dedication in waiting to find their forever families.
We thank them for letting us be a part of their lives. | <urn:uuid:d72df717-fb06-473f-a673-d2c2161aa0e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.seattlepi.com/sharonosborne/2012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962848 | 386 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Taking Care of Wild Places
It's a big loop from the mountains of Montana, to Indonesia, to Massachusetts, back to Montana, but that's the full—and still-spinning—circle of Ted Smith's life.
A true product of the Northern Rockies, Ted grew up wandering the mountains and valleys of western Montana. “Even when I was ten, twelve years old, our parents would drive us to the wilderness at the end of the road and say, okay, pick you up in a few days.”
As a young man he worked as a smokejumper for the U.S. Forest Service, fighting wildfires out of Missoula and Fairbanks before going on to get his PhD in political science from the University of California-Berkeley in the 1960s. Highlights of his ensuing international career include 12 years with the Ford Foundation which began and ended in Indonesia, six years as president of the Agricultural Development Council focused on Asia and Africa, 25 years on the Council on Foreign Relations, and trusteeships with the National Parks Conservation Association and Alaska Conservation Foundation, among others. And finally he served 15 years as Executive Director of the Kendall Foundation.
After three decades in far away domains, Ted returned to live in the mountains of Montana in 2009. As he says, “My roots put me in awe of Nature,” he says, “and that's Nature with a capital N.” Out of those early experiences grew a sense of appreciation and commitment for the natural world, in the Rocky Mountain West and beyond.
“There's only one landscape,” he says. “And the only way to take care of it is to treat it as a whole.” That outlook made Ted an easy target one day back in 1995 when a fellow from Calgary grabbed hold of him at meeting in Bozeman where people were talking about conserving the Yellowstone ecosystem. Ted recalls the moment with perfect clarity. “He said, this isn't big enough!” The fellow was Harvey Locke. “And I said, you're right.”
As a result of that encounter, the Kendall Foundation came to be the first philanthropic contributor to the seminal Y2Y organization. Under Ted's leadership, the Kendall Foundation was a great ally, supporter, and advisor to Y2Y as well as many other conservation organizations. Ted continues to guide Y2Y but this time in his role as a Board Member.
Reflecting on the concept of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, Ted muses that it's hard for people to visualize, let alone fully understand, a vastly diverse, fully integrated landscape reaching 2,000 miles from Yellowstone all the way up to the Yukon Territory. It's too big for the human mind to easily embrace, he says, reflecting that it's something more readily comprehended as myriad little stories.
“At the same time,” he says, “it seems to me we must embrace something larger than we can actually understand if in fact we are to serve the long-term needs of nature.” The very same needs, he offers, that serve our own human interests over the long run as well. | <urn:uuid:9f797a7b-2e5b-4901-83d1-3d920fa541f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://y2y.net/news-events/stories-from-the-land/taking-care-of-wild-places | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962902 | 655 | 1.75 | 2 |
first ground, viz., that neither an appeal nor a writ of error will lie to the circuit court from a judgment of a district court in cases brought under the statute of March 3, 1887. The appellant bases his claim to the right of or writ of error, as the case may be, on the following language of the act, (section 9:) "That the plaintiff or the United States, in anysuU brought under the provisions of this act shall have the same rights of appeal or writ Of error as are now rl'served in the statutes of the,"United States in that behalf made, and upon the conditions and limitlltions thf'rein contained. The modes of procedure in claiming and perfecting. an appeal or writ of error shall conform in all respects. and as near as may be, to the statutes and rules at' court governing appeals and writs of error' in likecaUlles·." 24 U. S. St. at Large, 507. The questiOn to be considered and determined is, what statutes are here referred to as reserving .the right of appeal to the plaintiff or to the United States? Are they the generally governing appeals arid writs of error, or are they those which specially govern writs of error and appeals in the court of claims? The expressly declared purpose of the act is to give to the United States district and circuit courts concurrent jurisdiction with the court of claims, not only as to the classes of caE'es already within its cognizance, but also as to the new classes of cases embraced within the enlarged jurisdiction conferred by the act under consideration. The fourth section of the act provides- . "That the jurisdiction of the respective courts of the United States pro.ceeding under this act. including the right of exception and appeal. shall be .. governed by the law now in force. in 110 far as the same is applicable and not inconsistent with the provisions oftbisact·; and the cour/Se of procedure shall be in accordance with the established rules of said respective courts. and of such additions and modifications tb,ereofas said courts may adopt." We think the general scope .andpurpose of the act negatives the contention that any larger right of appeal is allowed in the district or circuit courts than is by the then existing statutes allowed in the court of claim8. In other words, the peculiar nature of this enactment, and its special object, giving, as it does, a new field of jurisdiction to the United States , courts, making it the same as thejurisdiction of the court ofclaims, within a limited amount, and the indications of the intention ofcongress found in the context of the act, restrain the general words of section 9, relied upon by the attorney for appellant. The supreme court of the United States has already passed upon the question of the interpretation of this , section in U. S. v. Davis, and U. K v. Schofield, which were considered and determined together. The 'decisions in those cases were announced on the last day of the late term of the court, and will be found in 131 U. S. 36, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 657. Schofield and Davis each filed their respective petitions in the dilltrict court of the United States for the district of Maryland. under the act of 1887, and eachohtained judgment for 825. A motion was filed by the appeUeein each of those casell to dismiss the appeal upon the grounds that an appeal would not lie to the supreme court from a district court performi'ng the appropriate duty of the district court; that the supreme court had no jurisdiction to re-examine judgments of the circuit or district courts since the act of February
PELZER MANUF'a CO. tl. ST. PAUL FIRE & MARIlSE INS. CO.
16, 1875, in such actions, unless the matter in dispute should exceed the sum of $5,000, exclusive of costs; and that the United States are not entitled to a writ of error or appeal if the same remedy is afforded under simila.r circumstances to a private party. In passing upon this question, the court said, (page 39, 131 U. S., and page 658, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep.:)
"By the act under which these suits were brought the district court was with the court of claims as to matters of which given concurrent that court had jurisdiction, · where the amount of the claim does not exceed one thousand dollars, ' and thE! same right of appeal was given to the plaintiff or the United 8tates as · now reserved in the statutes of the United States in that behalf made.' Section 707 of the Revised Statutes reads: · An appeal to the supreme court shall be allowed, on behalf of the United States, from all jUdgments of the court of claims adverse to the United States, and on behalf of the plaintiff in any case where the amount in controversy exceeds three thousand dollars, or where his claim. is forfeited to the United States by the judgment of said court, as provided in section one thousand and eighty-nine.' By section 708, such appeals must be taken within ninety days after the jUdgment is rendered; but this period is enlarged to six months by section 10 01 the act in question. Inasmuch as the object of tbe latter act was to enable the district and circuit courts to exercise concurrent jurisdiction with the court of claims in respect to suits against the United States, as therein provided, in our jUdgment the right of appeal reserved to the government · in the statutes of the United states in that behalf made,' before the enactment of this act, was the right of appeal reserved in the statutes relating to the court of claims, and as that right could be exercised by the United States in the instance of any judgment of the court of claims adverse to the United States, it follows that the same right can be exercised by the United States in any case of the prosecution of a claim in the district Or circuit courts of the United States under said act."
The motions to dismiss in those cases were overruled; and, for the same reason given by the court, the motion in this case must be granted, and the appeal is dis!p.issed. A like order will be entered by the clerk upon the motion to dismiss the writ of error·
t1. ST. PAUL FIRE
SAME V. SAVANNAH ]!"'IRE
(Circuit Court, D. South CaroUna. November 2, 1889.,
FEDERAL COURTB-PRAOTICB-TIME TO ANsWER.
The period allowed the defendant to answer or demur by Code S. C. is Buspended by filing in the state court bond and petition for removal to the United States circuit court, and becomes current when the record is filed in that court; and, under the circuit court rules, (fourth circuit,) the defendant will be in time if heserve hla defense before the rule-day next thereafter.
Motion for leave to file answer. | <urn:uuid:2a6a5931-565a-417b-98a5-642b83119346> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://openjurist.org/40/f1d/187 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95358 | 1,480 | 1.757813 | 2 |
.. I might add a few brief notes. After Carl Zimmer’s Unicycle-bicycle transitional form, the detailed rebuttal by Keith Ken Miller (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), and Nick Matzke revealing that Behe wrote the Pandas’s clotting chapter that Luskin dismisses, there is not much left for me to add*.
I want to highlight two things though. One is a quote that keeps turning up in discussions of Behe’s concept of Irreducible Complexity.
Just as none of the parts of the Foghorn system is used for anything except controlling the fall of the telephone pole, so none of the cascade proteins are used for anything except controlling [he formation of a blood clot. Yet in the absence of any one of the components, blood does not clot, and the system fails. (Behe 1996, pp. 85-86)
Actually, the clotting cascade proteins do have functions other than clotting, indeed Casey’s so-called “Irreducible Core” proteins have other important functions. I go into greater detail in this post about how these functions may have pre-adapted the clotting proteins for their role in clotting. This exposes a major flaw in the concept of irreducible complexity (read the post for the full argument).
Casey also chides Miller for not doing any knock-out experiments on blood clotting systems. This is heavily ironic as no ID proponent, not even Behe, has done any experiments on the blood clotting system. As I point out in my post Behe vs Lampreys+, it’s the evolutionary biologists that have been doing all the heavy lifting in regard to understanding the clotting system. In fact I issued a challenge to the ID proponents, the Amphioxus genome had just been published at http://genome.jgi-psf.org/Brafl1/Brafl1.home.html. Amphioxus is a primitive chordate, more primitive than lampreys, that clot their haemolymph. I challenged the ID proponents to predict which coagulation factors are present in Amphioxus, search the Amphioxus genome database and report on whether the genes found match their predictions.
Since then, silence. I can tell you one thing for sure. The Amphioxus has no gene for fibrinogen, the final step in the modern clotting cascade, yet it still clots its haemolymph. So the very basis of the “Irreducible Core” that Casey goes on about is absent in these animals, and one of Behe’s iconic pathways is exposed as reducible.
UPDATE: Yeah, yeah: I can’t spell when writing at 1 am in the morning. But the most embarrassing bit was I got Ken Miller’s name wrong (sorry Ken). Still, the science is right.
* I could have contributed sooner, but I could be playing frisbee on the beach with my kids or surfing the internet. Guess which one I chose.
+This post also has a very nice diagram of the reducibly complex clotting system that Ken Miller discusses (section 4, “An Irreducible Core”). This diagram looks eerily similar to the diagram that Casey uses, as he copied the diagram that I provided for Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross for “Biochemistry by design,” Trends in Biochemical Sciences, Vol. 32(7):301-310 (2007). He’s made a few minor modifications (hint Casey, the correct citation method is “diagram redrawn from” not “information obtained from”), but if he asked nicely, I could have given him the original diagram. | <urn:uuid:1c4462fe-8530-409d-8997-bf25c7f12683> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01/while-we-are-pi.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930875 | 787 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Lions, Tigers and Cloud HTML5 .. oh my!
I've written about this from various points of view before, and I just love Larry Ellison's response to a question about "the cloud", but it bears repeating and looking at the core issues from different angles because people continue to find themselves confused on the matter. This time we'll look at it from the perspective of "form factors are not programming languages".
Reality is that well over 300 million new desktops and laptops are sold every year. That number is even growing, albeit slowly as one would expect from a mature market segment that is also seeing displacement pressure from new (or revived) form factors. So the "large screen, got a keyboard and a pointing device" form factor is really not going anywhere. It's a good form factor that works for a lot of real world use cases and it will be with us for a while.
HTML5 and the "cloud" do not change that one bit. That's because those technologies are not drivers of physical form factor. I could use those technologies equally well on a phone or a laptop or a T.V. or a fancy billboard at a sports stadium. That is why coming to the conclusion that "Our idea of the desktop is gone." is so wrongheaded.
Now, our way of writing applications for "the desktop" may change over the next decade, but the desktop will still be with us. People will still want a way to launch their apps, manage the shapes they appear in on the screen (aka "windows", since I assume that HTML5CloudAwesomeness doesn't mean "everything is fullscreen with one app at a time" for most people), will want to place these HTML5CloudAwesomenesses around their screen (aka "desktop widgets"), etc. That could, indeed, be written in HTML and Javsacript, but it will still exist.
So what appears inside of our windows may change in the form of where some or all of the data being manipulated is stored and/or what language is used to write them .. but it will still be a lot like a laptop computer.
Just like a tablet doesn't become a desktop just because you run a desktop application on it. If you don't get that one, try running one of the games that are available for the N900 that are just re-compiles of games made for a desktop. It's pretty evident that the language used doesn't magically change the form factor or render it useless.
Network centric computing is awesome and is changing the landscape. How it will change the landscape in the future is not how it is changing it now in terms of creating all these walled gardens that require you to pay with your attention (ads) or with your wallet (rental sites), and I think it is imperative that Free software does provide network storage solutions that work well in this new reality to prevent all the technology from aggregating behind those walled gardens, such as Google.
We will change how we write apps
On that note, I am fairly confident that we will radically change how we write applications with a graphical interface over the next few years. This will not just be on the desktop, but across all kinds of devices. The most exciting thing won't actually be the language used (e.g. HTML vs C++ vs $WHATEVER), but in the level of modularity and subsequent re-use that happens as a result.
Ryan Rix published a screen cast about the Plasma Dashboard KPart that he worked on, particular with regards its use in Kontact. The first comment on his blog asked why use Plasma there at all. The answer is wrapped up in a new way of thinking about application development. This is something I've also blogged about in the past, but that we're starting to actually see happen now.
Instead of writing applications as monolithic things, or at best as collections of components that work with each other only, we're starting to see the emergence of applications that are written as collections of self-contained components that are then collected together into a single interface.
In the specific case of Kontact and it's summary view, it needed to be rewritten for Akonadi anyways. So it was decided to do it in a way that (a) improved what is already there and (b) made new things possible at the same time.
The version shown in Ryan's screencast isn't finished, and the layout and graphic design still has tweaking left to do so it looks a bit nicer in certain places, but even in its current state it gives Kontact's summary dashboard some nice improvements.
I'm not sure how many people new that you could actually move items around in the summary. This is both more obvious now (which is mostly a factor of the graphic design), but also has the ability to provide multiple columns in addition to rows. Horizontal scrolling is there when needed, another improvement.
To extend the summary page requires a plugin system of some sort that everyone can use. Plasma provides just such a component model that fits that perfectly. So an existing widget that is related to email, contacts, events, etc. can now be used in Kontact without any additional work being required by the Kontact team. The email summary widget seen in Ryan's screencast, with all of its great features, is Lion Mail. This was developed for Plasma Desktop in mind originally by sebas, but can now be used in Kontact, saving the Kontact team a ton of work.
What about a weather widget? It was going to have to be re-written, too, to use the new weather data fetching in KDE Platform 4 (which happens to be driven by a Plasma DataEngine now). Well, with the dashboard it doesn't need to be re-written at all: the existing weather widgets can be used there.
Conversely, components written for the Kontact dashboard can also be used in Plasma Desktop, Netbook, other apps using Plasma Dashboard, etc. So the nifty "upcoming events" Plasmoid, written for Kontact is now also available wherever you want.
This is a remarkable, if seemingly subtle, change in how we are writing applications. It's a floating mix of components that we can re-arrange, mash-up and re-use .. at runtime.
We see this not only in Plasma derived work, but also in Akonadi itself as well as KDE Telepathy which renders the functions of Kopete into a similar raft of run-time components.
Not only does this save all of us developers time, it increases consistency between applications, raises the number of features that are easily available to integrate seamlessly into your application (or mash-up) and reduces the runtime overhead of doing so.
Componentizing the Chrome
Another sort of components (don't you love it when we use the same words for different things?) is the user interface chrome itself: the buttons, the knobs, the dials, the menus, the sliders, the web canvas, the print dialog ..
The status quo has been that everyone writes a set of such components for each project type: one for this phone, one for that phone, one for desktop apps, one for PIM apps, one for T.V.s, etc. These components have traditionally been a horrible mix of logic ("when the user presses on this area and then releases on that area, then ...") and display ("paint this gradient here when it is in a pressed state ...").
The display of these elements has been further compounded by the need and desire to make things look and work differently in different contexts. So we have the Oxygen style along with dozens of other Qt styles, each of which is a behemoth of complex C++ that can style all kinds of things in all kinds of situations. There are very real limits to this approach, mostly due to the complexity it introduces and the limitations one runs into quickly due to this.
We also have a different presentation style on a small screen than we do a large screen. Dialogs may look completely different, for instance.
What would be great, however, is if we could get the C++ guy out of the room as much as possible, break up the logic and the display into different pieces so that changing one doesn't impact the other (and removes so much need for subclassing!), make it easy to define new components that overlay just those components from the defaults (so I don't have to write a whole new style just to get a different kind of toggle button semantics, e.g. checkboxes in a mouse driven UI and a slider toggle on a finger driven UI).
If that was possible, app developers could write their UI quicker and easier than they do now (thanks to logic/display separation) and platform developers could mold those application UIs much more cleanly when run on their platform.
This is the future that QtComponents is attempting to bring us. There is a development hot-house happening next week in Oslo (that I hope to attend for a couple of days as I just happen to be nearby that week, as it turns out) that will be critical to the future shaping of this potentially ground breaking approach.
It should, done right, result in it being possible to write UIs which are as or more powerful than the desktop interfaces we have now that look better, work faster, cost less to make and without being bound to a web browser or the technologies they provide (or don't, as the case may be). All with write-once-run-anywhere-there-is-Qt, even without a native compile if done right.
The Device Spectrum
Something that has struck me about what the Linux kernel did that was groundbreaking for the time was to view all computing devices as a spectrum upon which the kernel, albeit in different configurations, should run well on. A wrist watch, a smartphone, a desktop, a super computer .. they are all just collections of CPUs and storage (volatile and non-volatile) coupled with form factor specific stuff, like graphical displays and networking, with processes running on them, right? Hey, it's all the same! Sort of. So why not one (sort of) kernel that runs on all of them? So came the Linux kernel which now is both running rampant in mobile and owns the super computing world, two opposite sides of the spectrum.
Why not our graphical applications?
With decomposable applications and componentized interface elements we begin to approach the age of the device spectrum with our graphical applications. Right now Marco and I are helping a company in Asia working on a tablet device running MeeGo with Plasma providing the UI. They are able to simply re-use work done for the desktop and the tablet we've already done, re-arrange it, put it on MeeGo and profit. (Well, ok, that last point is yet to be proven: the product is still in R&D. :)
We can now take pieces of Kontact, be it at the level of Akonadi data delivery or in Kontact widgets written with Plasma, and use them on a phone, in a Plasma Desktop panel or in Kontact where we'd traditionally expect them to be stuck. Today, we can even pull that widget live from Kontact's dashboard and show it on my smartphone with Plasma. Tomorrow, with QtComponents, we'll go even further with what we can do with the presentation on these devices.
In Summary: It's Doing Less For More Reward, Not Just Doing It Different
- In how many environments and form factors can I run it?
- Does it look good and work well wherever I run it?
- How much does it cost to write it?
- Does it provide me with all the facilities I want during usage?
(Before you lob security and privacy as additions to the above, realize that those are actually facets of the fourth point.)
It becomes apparent that HTML5 (to continue to pick on it :) is one attempt to fill the above four points with varying degrees of success. HTML5 itself isn't very interesting at all, viewed that way. It is of high interest to groups like Google who have run themselves down the narrow alley of "web browser", but not because HTML5 is, per se, that great but because it addresses more of the above in their delivery channel (a web browser) than HTML4 does. While it certainly doesn't hit 100% on all the above points, it moves the metrics closer in that direction.
Still, HTML5 doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for my delivery channels, and it won't for many others as well. QtComponents, QML, Plasma ... these things do a lot for my delivery channels and does so remarkably better than HTML5 on every metric save one: ease of deployment. This is solely because the web browser is ubiquitous these days, even if HTML5 isn't just yet. When "Qt Everywhere" is achieved (or close enough to it, and terrific progress is being made on that goal), even this will no longer be the case. On all the other metrics, we're already at or headed shortly to a much better solution that is more than just "hey, what language can we write applications in for easier deployment?" Of course, that better solution also works seamlessly with HTML5 content thanks to QtWebKit.
This set of technologies will provide (some pieces aren't done yet, e.g. QtComponents) convincing answers to the device spectrum challenges, the component re-use issues and cost factors while opening doors to deployment. Best of all: without sacrificing existing or impending capability. (Aka "we already have OpenGL, what's so exciting about that?")
This is a set of changes that is being seen reverberating across our UI stack even now. Plasma is built around these ideas today, and whether it's a tablet or a smartphone shell or Kontact, KDevelop and Skrooge using it for a summary dashboard or the good ol' laptop with Plasma Desktop on it, we're getting to see the early days of this shift in how applications are being made and delivered right here in KDE. | <urn:uuid:b0122c90-91ba-4388-b54a-b9eabdd45f56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-impending-future-of-ui-greatnesses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957036 | 2,931 | 1.601563 | 2 |
I'm particularly interested in diff-based visualizations. Code diffs are the most straightforward and easy as they're used for a long time and have a lot of examples of 1, 2, and 3 pane views. For example, this two-pane view showing an addition:
Another type of diff visualization is graph diff’ing, often used in graph views of assembly code. Here’s an example:
And finally, the least sophisticated is binary diff’ing (diff’ing arbitrary binary files to see changes in individual bytes). This is the area that gets the least love. Here are a couple of typical examples:
Both of these are pretty bad. I want to expand them, and make a somewhat usable diff of large binary files that are a couple gigabytes in size. To put this in perspective, I can fit about 1696 bytes on a screen. We're talking 633,102 screenfuls of data at a legible font size. So, just shrinking font-size isn’t practical.
I’m wondering what ideas people have for visualizing binary diffs in an easily navigable way. I figure it’s got to have some sort of zoom capability that may zoom into a standard binary diff that people are used to. I'd like to see other peoples' thoughts. | <urn:uuid:33327672-4ffd-4948-8d2f-cd08864367be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/16397/what-are-good-techniques-to-visualize-binary-differences | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959375 | 275 | 1.820313 | 2 |
I know my blog-sters love the giveaway. In fact, I'm fairly certain 90% of you only follow me for the loot... who am I kidding, it's probably 99%. Remember that review I did of CEP compression socks? No? Well, let me remind you.
A friend of mine, EW (center of the photo below), told me at every race that I really needed to look into compression socks. Specifically, he told me this because my calves would ache a lot after every run. In fact, of all areas on my body, they would be the most sore. Finally, I gave in and wanted to see what the fuss was all about.
I believe in them so much, that I just got in a shipment of more because one pair of stinky pink socks just wasn't working...
Definitely read up on my full review from last month HERE. It includes a video of how to put them on properly... and I will admit that after about 6 weeks of wearing them, the video is right! That is, by far, the easiest way to get these babies on.
For those of you whose right finger is feeling too lazy to click... I wanted to at least repost the important stuff...
You can find out all about CEP socks HERE.
Some key points from their FAQ:
- Graduated compression, moisture-wicking sock.
- Breathable synthetic fibers.
- Many athletes see relief from injuries, pain, and cramping - especially injuries such as Plantar Fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, Shin splints, and Calf cramping.
- Easy to wash and last around a year with continual use (every other day).
- CEP socks are "medically correct". They have more compression at the ankle and less at the calf. Many competitors do not, and this "slows blood flow and can create a venous insufficiency, which can lead to varicose veins and in the worst-case thrombosis."
- Compression socks are also good for travel!!!
"Before: The increased circulation aids in warming up the muscle by passively activating the muscles, getting them ready to perform. During: The increase in arterial flow brings more oxygen to the muscles. This increase power and in the study using CEP socks athlete had 5% faster running times! That’s 10 min in a marathon. After: The increased circulation helps to flush out the muscles and eliminate the lactate and Hydrogen ions that cause soreness. In addition to supplying the muscles with the nutrients to repair damage and de-hydration. "
Where can you buy CEP? Try SportsCompression.com. Not only has SportsCompression.com generously offered to host a giveaway for one pair of CEP compression socks, but you can also continue to use the discount code BLOG15 to receive 15% off your entire purchase (which I gladly used to get my recent shipment of socks/sleeves).
So how do you WIN yourself a pair of CEP Compression socks (or sleeves)?
Mandatory Entry - Be or become a follower of my BLOG and leave a comment
+1 Entry - Go to sportscompression.com and tell me what you'd pick if you won.
+1 Entry - "Like" Sports Compression on Facebook AND post on their wall that I sent you. Leave me a comment here letting me know you did.
+1 Entry - Share this giveaway on Facebook or Twitter. Tell me about it.
+1 Entry - Share this giveaway on your blog. Leave me a comment with a link!
Bonus Entry - Donate $5 or more to my fundraiser HERE (if you already donated, YES, it counts). Leave me a comment.
Winner will be announced on November 22nd! | <urn:uuid:b303938c-2151-4d6e-8d39-2f8bf561b724> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://racingitoff.blogspot.com/2010/11/cep-compression-socks-giveaway.html?showComment=1290442791566 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945439 | 786 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Archive - News Article
May 19th, 2011
In response to concerns from residents and potential Mule Days contestants regarding recent reports of EHV-1 virus, Mule Days officials released this statement.
âThe EHV-1 virus has the potential to be deadly to equines if it is left untreated or ignored.
According to the Department of Food and Agriculture, âThe EHV-1 organism spreads quickly from horse to horse and the neurologic form of the virus can reach high morbidity and mortality rates.â
A recent outbreak of Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy, or EHV-1, in at least six Western states, including California, is causing concern among Mule Days contestants and organizers.
There have been 10 reported cases of the virus in California, but no reports have come from Inyo or Mono counties.
Despite the widespread concern, officials at Mule Days have no plans to cancel the world-famous event, slated to enter its 42nd year May 24-29.
Fast food may be synonymous with drive-thru windows, first-time jobs and deep-fried foods, but locally, it has become a shining example of ethics, honesty and responsible business practices.
The Better Business Bureau of Central California has named the local McDonaldâs franchises serving Bishop, Lone Pine and Mammoth the winner of the 2011 Ethics Awards for Marketplace Excellence for the Southern Central Valley in the large business category.
Local officers with the California Highway Patrol welcomed a new member to their ranks this week.
Veterans with the Lone Pine CHP office will spend the next 45 days âbreaking inâ Officer Jeremy Patch, who graduated from the grueling 27-week CHP Boot Camp April 29 and reported for duty in Inyo County this past Monday.
Patch will be living in Lone Pine and working out of the Southern Inyo office.
As with all new officers, Patch had an opportunity to visit Inyo County prior to graduation from the academy to tour his duty station and conduct a ride-along with a local officer.
The airport in Bishop could be quiet this Fourth of July.
The rising cost of fireworks, the incredible amount of manpower required and dwindling donations are major factors in the Bishop Volunteer Fire Departmentâs decision of whether to have a show this year.
Fire Chief Ray Seguine said the volunteers will decide at their next meeting on Tuesday, May 17 if the sky will be full of the flowers of fire this Fourth.
Officials at the Tri-County Fair sought Tuesday to put an end to speculation about the 2011 headliner, announcing that none other than Blue Ăyster Cult will be taking the stage on Friday night, Sept. 2.
âTickets are not yet on sale for the fairtime concert, but many people have been asking who this yearâs band would be,â said Fairgrounds CEO Jim Tatum. âWe are so excited to bring back a classic rock concert and we hope everyone comes out to enjoy Blue Ăyster Cult.â
In 2001, a group of local Lone Pine residents got together to discuss how they could bring their community together. Rather than having a Cinco de Mayo celebration, they decided to expand the concept to hold it the week afterward to include everyone in the community, celebrate Motherâs Day as well, and call it Fiesta de Lone Pine.
Nearly four years after the 55,000-acre Complex Fire of July 2007 nearly burnt the structure down and three years after heavy rainfall on the burnt areas sent a flood of mud and debris through the historic grounds, the Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery is not only recovered but newly expanded.
Friends of Mt. Whitney Hatchery are inviting the public to celebrate the opening of the new Wildlife Interpretive Center at the hatchery this Saturday.
The fun starts at 6 p.m. with dinner, live music by Sandy and Clay Anderson and cowboy poetry by Duane Rossi.
The National Park Service is seeking public input in the development of a Wilderness Stewardship Plan and Environmental Impact Statement to guide existing and future wilderness use and management at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
The parksâ eastern boundary is the western boundary for much of the Inyo National Forest along the summit crest of the Sierra Nevada.
The fire department in Bishop is staffed fully by volunteers, except for the chief. Not only do these volunteers dedicate their spare time, and dedicate themselves to drop whatever theyâre doing to respond to a call at anytime of the day or night, but now theyâre putting their donations together to buy a new truck for the department and the community.
The department has also received an Indian Gaming grant totalling $26,900 that will go toward new pagers used to notify volunteers when their services are needed. | <urn:uuid:793ad830-b082-4540-99dd-81a6b76a86f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inyoregister.com/archive/article?page=87&quicktabs_2=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949416 | 983 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Is there any recommendation or best practice?
The context is that of a web application running on desktops. The number of items is variable ranging from 4 to around 10.
|show 1 more comment|
You added that the number of items ranges from 4 to 10. This can be OK, but we really can't tell without knowing the context and the size of each item.
I suggest that you make a mockup, either a drawing or something a little more realistic to give a idea of how it will look like. This way you will probably be able to judge yourself if you are still in the acceptable range for using a carousel.
Also I think your question is a bit 'reverse'. You should first look at what you want to display and then choose an appropriate way to display that information. Not the other way around. | <urn:uuid:f801207a-8486-49d2-8f9f-5a7575151bc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/9292/how-many-items-in-a-carousel-should-be-shown-to-the-user-at-a-glance/12913 | 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 | 0.936465 | 171 | 1.648438 | 2 |
PORTLAND - Leading local and national real estate experts met Wednesday morning for Portland State University's 3rd annual real estate conference at the Marriott Hotel downtown.
It's a check-up on how real estate here and across the country is doing.
"Demographics are our destiny," said Mary Ludgin, manager of research for Heitman real estate investments based in Chicago. "Understanding demographic trends helps to buy real estate, develop real estate, invest in real estate in the right locations."
Ludgin noted, while the nation is aging, it's also getting younger.
"Iimmigration is bringing people of all ages to the United States," explained Ludgin.
In the Portland Metro area, 15 percent of the population is 25-to-34 years old. They are typically renters. That's driving investments in more construction. There are reportedly 6,700 new units in the pipeline here, including in the Pearl District and central Portland.
Ludgin noted, home ownership across the country is now at just over 65 percent. In Portland, it's a bit higher, at 68 percent, but it is falling, she said.
"I think we're going to see prices bottom out during the year 2012," she said.
Ludgin has predicted that prices will stabilize by the first quarter of next year, then start to improve. Condo prices will be slower to recover, she said. | <urn:uuid:7015278b-c3c5-4a67-b5a7-9f165ef454b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kgw.com/news/business/PSU-Real-Estate-Report-Card-155844095.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961959 | 287 | 1.507813 | 2 |
A rich lady from California, who was a tree hugger and a vociferous anti-hunter, purchased a piece of timber land in Oregon.
There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted to get a good view of her land so she started to climb the big tree. As she neared the top, she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her.
In her haste to escape, the lady slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her private parts. In considerable pain, she hurried to the nearest country doctor.
Being a hunter himself, the doctor listened to her story with great patience and then told her to go into the examining room and he would see if he could help her.
She sat and waited for three hours before the doctor reappeared. The angry lady demanded, "What took you so long?"
He smiled and then told her, "Well, I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a recreational area and I'm sorry, they all turned me down". | <urn:uuid:90f2142f-0411-491a-84be-b4b342ace2d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fordforums.com/f126/tree-hugger-31868/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97816 | 234 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Take a journey through the historical, yet hysterical, Christmas time tunnel, courtesy of a ghostly Ebenezer Scrooge, where he will introduce you to a number of seasonal characters who have helped shape the face of Christmas over the centuries.
On your journey, you will have the chance to join the Roman winter feast of Saturnalia, where Christmas dinner is served with a twist! Visitors will get the chance to get up close and personal with the infamous ‘vomit collectors’ who were traditionally employed to clear up the vomit of diners who purge themselves to make space for the next course!
If that doesn’t put you off, we then transport you back to the medieval Viking Age where you will be invited to raise a glass or two with a Norwegian Viking storyteller. Interestingly, find out how the origin of the “modern” Father Christmas story being pulled in his sleigh, comes from the ancient Nordic God “Thor” and his sledge which was traditionally pulled by ferocious horned goats.
Another, urban legend is the Frost Fair which took place each winter on a frozen River Thames. Londoners in the 1600s were able to take advantage of these freezing conditions by ice-skating across the river. However, with this sparked the fear of frozen lakes & rivers, with the tragic story of John Smith, who fell through the ice where he met his bitter death. Visitors are then invited to experience the darker side of Christmas with the ghost of Charles Dickens, as he reflects on his experience of living among the destitute streets of London.
This special event runs from December 1 through January 2.
Well, the 2011 season is over, so it’s time to rank the best that we Stalked! Haunt experiences can be a highly individual and subjective experience; what may scare one person might not be frightening at all to another, and what scares you one night might fall flat on a return visit. For this reason, the Scare Zone writers will be providing separate rankings.
Also, while we did visit quite a few great haunts across the country throughout the year, please note that we’re only ranking the haunts we visited in California and Nevada during the “official” Haunt Season (September – October). For a list of all the places we visited and to read our full reviews, please click here.
Now, on to our2011 Top Haunts
*Maze also refers to an individual haunted house or walk-through attraction.
M. Leota’s Haunt Rankings
Best Maze Design (lighting, sound, FX):
1. Haunted Play Presents Delusion (Los Angeles, CA)
2. La Llorona (Halloween Horror Nights, Hollywood)
3. Curse of Sarah Winchester (Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, CA)
Best Maze Theme (consistent story/setting):
1. Haunted Play Presents Delusion
2. La Llorona (HHN Hollywood)
3. Castle Vampyre (Freakling Bros.)
Best Individual Scene in a Maze:
1. “Hallway/bathroom scene”: Haunted Play Presents Delusion
This is where we load up the buried skulls and drive them off to the crematory. Of course, being in the world of horror, we’re aptly aware that not everything will die immediately or forever, but we can hope.
1. Slaughter of the Swines and Maze of Mayhem at Bonnie Screams
2. Mental Maze at Pirates of Emerson
3. Terror Tram: Scream 4 Your Life at HHN Hollywood
This year we experienced new haunt environments along with new levels of scares. During the official haunt season (Sept. – Oct.), we ventured throughout California and out to Nevada to visit as many new haunts as possible. Along the way, we encountered one of the best haunts we’ve ever been to and one of the worst. We give credit to all the haunts out there who are challenging themselves to create new environments and stories to scare us with. While some of our reviews may seem harsh, we take haunting and our earned dollars seriously, so we don’t have tolerance for the so-called haunts who are more interested in taking people’s money than putting effort into a quality production.
Finally, we have to thank our fellow Haunt Stalkers from Theme Park Tourist for sharing their UK Haunt reviews and all our other fellow Haunt Stalkers who shared their experiences and ratings with us this season and throughout the year. We appreciate all your support and engagement with our site, and we look forward to sharing more scare-ventures together.
Sadly another season of Haunt Stalking is now over. During the last weekend, our final stop was at Reign of Terror (ROT) in Thousand Oaks, CA which ended up being a very good way to close out the season. Last year ROT ranked as one of our top haunts for Best Sets/Props/Atmosphereand this year they managed to sustain their rapport of high quality haunt design while offering an expanded maze with more rooms and new scares. With the return of the “The Haunted House” and “The Asylum” and the addition of a new segment called “Blood Manor”, ROT once again proved that it ‘reigns’ with high-quality set designs that make guests feel as if they’re inside a real haunted house.
We know that being repeat visitors to a haunt could diminish some of the scare factor as we have an idea of what to expect. So this year, we brought along a first time visitor to see how impressed and scared they were by ROT. As it would turn out, they were very much impressed and scared. Upon arriving to ROT we were greeted by the resident witch who welcomed us back and we also got to say hello to ROT’s creator, Bruce Stanton, who proudly welcomed guests as they entered the queue. ROT’s very elaborate pre-show line is still one of the best queues of any haunt we’ve been to; featuring weather effects, horrifying props, and roaming scareactors. The line is akin to something you’d see at Disneyland and it also has a wait time similar to a Disney-line. The long wait can be attributed to the fact that they only let small groups in at a time to avoid lines from forming inside the house. To bypass the long wait, we once again opted for the front-of-the-line pass which is an extra $7, but we found it to be worth it as the ticket proceeds benefit the local Teen Center and we’re deathly afraid of waiting in lines.
Given that haunt season has now passed we’ll describe in more detail some of the scares we encountered, or shall we say endured, while inside ROT. While it appears that no one is home, that will turn out just to be wishful thinking. The first scene places you inside the dimly lit and cobwebbed parlor entry of the house which features a fireplace, piano, and an old woman, looking like Mrs. Bates sister, sitting in a rocking chair slowly knitting. The fun and scares ramp up in the second room where a seemingly dead woman is laying on a couch. We expected at some point she would spring to life, but she quietly lay, that is right until the last guests was about the exit the room and she then came to life scaring us all to death. For those of us in the front it was extremely suspenseful to walk past her in anticipation of her pending attack. This is just one of many examples of how ROT has mastered the ability to build up tension and sustain the suspense throughout the house. The timing of the monsters is always key to a good scare and they were able to keep everyone in the group on their toes regardless if they were in the front or back. There are some rooms, like the dining room and dark hallways where there were no scareactors present but we still apprehensive walking through these foreboding rooms.
Another great scare occurs in the kitchen where all seemed calm until a monster comes lunging out out of the refrigerator. This was the scare that had half of the group nearly down to their knees and throughout the rest of the house there were scares with monsters popping out of windows and from underneath beds or other furniture. They really go out of their way to ensure that the scares are not predictable with just a monster hiding around the corner. We did find a few of the triggered animatronic scares to the be off cue or broken down, but of course it was the end of haunt season so some wear could be expected.
The thememing inside ROT stays consistent as we ventured through just about every kind of room you could possibly inside a haunted house including closets, dining rooms, and bathrooms. The one thing that was hard for us to distinguish was the transition between “The Haunted House” and the new “Blood Manor” scenes but this may of been on purpose. Towards the end of the house there were some scenes with a lot of blood splatters and stains on the walls and furniture so we assume these were apart of the blood manor segments.
The transition to the “Asylum” maze is more poignant with a creepy “outdoor” scene bridging the transition to the Asylum. While we’ve grown a little tired of Asylum themes being used at haunts, ROT manages to keep it mostly scary. However, what tends to happen, and what we experienced here, is the scareactors who are portraying the “crazy patients and doctors” loose their scariness when they overact and start speaking too much. There’s a thin line between dramatic and corny and in a few scenes some of the them were just corny. It can be seen as a way to break up the tension, but we just like hardcore scares all throughout.
All in all, this was another great year for ROT. We’re glad to see that they’re continuing to build on the foundation they established as family yard haunt. Next year is supposed to offer an even longer house with more scenes. Given it’s permanent location, we would love to see them open during other non-traditional haunt holidays such as Valentine’s day. We also would like to see them open on more nights during haunt season as it was a challenge to get out see them when they were only open 2 nights a week and that may also help with the long lines. It’s obvious that this a popular local haunt and it’s well worth the drive from L.A. to experience during the haunt season.
This December, Sinister Pointe is giving Southern California a delightfully frightening Christmas gift. They’re bringing us a “not so merry holiday haunt” to their new, permanent location in Brea called “Christmas Fear.”
The existing haunt will be given a holiday theme, and they promise “new surprises.” Although some interactivity will be present, the “choose left or right” will not be available, meaning that victims will follow a single path to their festive doom.
This event will take place for ONE WEEKEND ONLY (December 9, 10, and 11), so be sure to plan ahead. Tickets are limited, so we suggest buying in advance. Tickets are $15 for regular admission, or $23 with fast pass. Click here for tickets.
Now that Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood is over for the season (sadly along with most all of the other haunts) here’s all their 2011 “Behind The Screams” Videos. Along with revealing what it took to pull off the scares you also get a glimpse into what we believe to be one of their best Horror Nights yet. For those of you who couldn’t or didn’t go, here’s what you missed. | <urn:uuid:f46ef585-dbb4-4cee-802d-19aec952ce63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scare-zone.com/wordpress/archives/date/2011/11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965262 | 2,486 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Aardvarks are really good at one thing: eating bugs — sometimes 50,000 in one night! No other creature on the planet can match their appetites. Star performers in their own corner of the
jungle, when they tuck a napkin under their aardvark chins, they produce impressive results, just like your hardworking employees can in their jobs.
Too often, however, in an attempt to do the aardvark and the organization a favor, a decision maker will insist the aardvark fly like an eagle. There are no flying aardvarks. You can certainly
throw an aardvark out of an airplane midair, but you won’t end up with a flying aardvark. Being destroyed doesn’t motivate your employees, not the one who just failed or those who witnessed the crash.
So how do you know the difference between an aardvark and an eagle? How can you recognize those who can and will engage in the critical but difficult work of creating strategy? Whether making a hiring or promotion decision, based on the individual’s proven record of success, ask yourself the following:
- Does this person understand how to separate strategy from tactics, the “what” from the “how”?
- Can this person keep a global perspective? Or does she or he become mired in the details and tactics?
- Do obstacles stop this person?
- Can he or she create order during chaos?
- Does this person have the ability to see patterns, make logical connections, resolve contradictions and anticipate consequences?
- What success has this person had with multitasking?
- Can this person think on his or her feet?
- Can this person prioritize seemingly conflicting goals — to zero in on the critical few and put aside the trivial many when allocating time and resources?
- When facing a complicated or unfamiliar problem, can this individual get to the core of the issue and immediately begin to formulate possible solutions?
- Is this person future-oriented and able to paint credible pictures of possibilities and likelihoods?
- How do unexpected and unpleasant changes affect this person’s performance?
- When in a position of leadership, does this person serve as a source of advice and wisdom?
The core competencies that drive a particular organization may differ, but the ability to think analytically and dispassionately remains constant. The overarching question is this: “When
acting in a strategic role, has this person typically performed as needed?” If the answer is “yes,” the person probably has the innate talent to be a strategic thinker and will just need to improve requisite skills to support the talent. If the answer is “no,” don’t gamble by putting this person in a more demanding position. As valuable as the aardvarks of the organization can be, virtually all organizations need more eagles, strong critical thinkers who can learn from mistakes and make bold decisions. | <urn:uuid:43c3463f-a01c-464a-8151-8fd63f5f3e25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://anamcgary.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/how-to-spot-an-eagle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949557 | 623 | 1.835938 | 2 |
JERUSALEM (AP) — Seeking a fresh start to a strained relationship, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday demonstrated solidarity on the key issues that have stirred tensions between them. The U.S. president vowed he would do "what is necessary" to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while Netanyahu reaffirmed that his newly formed government seeks a two-state solution to Israel's decades-long dispute with the Palestinians.
Obama, in Israel for the first time in his presidency, also pledged to investigate reports that Syria had used chemical weapons for the first time in its two-year civil war. And he sternly warned Syrian leader Bashar Assad that use of such weapons would be a "game-changer," one that could potentially draw the U.S. military into the conflict for the first time.
"The Assad regime must understand that they will be held accountable for the use of chemical weapons or their transfer to terrorists," Obama said, standing alongside Netanyahu at a nighttime news conference.
Expectations were low for a breakthrough during Obama's visit on any of the major issues roiling the region. Instead, the president was focused on reassuring anxious Israelis that he is committed to their security, and on resetting his rocky relationship with Netanyahu. The two leaders have been at odds over Israeli settlements and Iran's disputed nuclear programs, and Netanyahu famously lectured Obama in front of the media in the Oval Office on Israel's right to defend himself.
Compared with past encounters, there was a noticeable lack of uneasiness Wednesday, the first time the two leaders have met publicly after both survived elections that will leave them stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. They traded jokes throughout a day of side-by-side appearances. And they repeatedly referred to each other by their first names, Obama calling his Israeli counterpart by his nickname, "Bibi."
On Iran in particular, the two leaders sought to show they were united in their desire to prevent the Islamic republic from developing what Obama called "the world's worst weapons."
Although preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is a priority of both countries, Netanyahu and Obama have differed on precisely how to achieve that goal. Israel repeatedly has threatened to take military action should Iran appear to be on the verge of obtaining a bomb, while the U.S. has pushed for more time to allow diplomacy and economic penalties to run their course.
Obama said he continues to prefer a diplomatic solution and sees time to achieve it. Whether that works, he said, will depend on whether Iran's leaders "seize that opportunity."
Although Obama did not promise that the United States would act militarily against Iran if Israel decided that must be done, he offered an explicit endorsement for Israel to take whatever unilateral measures it deems necessary to guard against the threat.
"Each country has to make its own decisions when it comes to the awesome decision to engage in any kind of military action, and Israel is differently situated than the United States," he said. "I would not expect that the prime minister would make a decision about his country's security and defer that to any another country any more than the United States would defer our decisions about what was important for our national security."
Netanyahu strongly backed Obama's efforts, saying he was "absolutely convinced" the U.S. is determined to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
"I appreciate the fact that the president has reaffirmed, more than any other president, Israel's right and duty to defend itself by itself against any threat," he said.
The Israeli leader also said that he and Obama agree that it would take Iran about a year to manufacture a nuclear weapon. Obama said there is "not a lot of light, a lot of daylight" between the two leaders in intelligence assessments about Iran.
The two leaders also spoke firmly about the need to pursue a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, an effort that was stymied during Obama's first term. The president, who arrived in Israel without a clear pathway for jumpstarting talks, acknowledged that in recent years, "we haven't gone forward, we haven't seen the kind of progress that we would like to see."
Netanyahu, for his part, said he was willing to set aside preconditions in future talks with the Palestinians, adding that it was time to "turn a page in our relations."
But they avoided tackling any of the intractable issues that have derailed the peace process, including Israeli settlement building and the status of Jerusalem. Obama promised to talk about peace efforts more expansively Thursday during a speech to Israeli youth.
He also was making a quick trip to the West Bank Thursday to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Obama planned to visit a youth center in Ramallah before heading back to Jerusalem to deliver a speech and attend a formal dinner with Peres.
He will also travel to Jordan later in the week, a stop aimed at shoring up government reforms by the important U.S. ally and pledging American support in dealing with the 450,000 Syrian refugees that have flooded over the border.
On another troubling issue in the Syria fighting, Obama said the U.S. is investigating whether chemical weapons have been used there. Both the Assad government and Syrian rebels have accused each other of using chemical weapons in an attack on Tuesday.
"Once you let that genie out of the bottle, then you are looking potentially at even more horrific scenes than we have already seen in Syria," Obama said. "And the international community has to act on that information."
Obama was greeted warmly upon his arrival in Israel Wednesday following an overnight flight from Washington. Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres met him at the steps of Air Force One as U.S. and Israeli flags waved on a breezy, sun-splashed afternoon.
During an elaborate welcome ceremony at Tel Aviv's airport, the Israeli leaders lavished praise on Obama, with Netanyahu calling the U.S. president his "cherished guest" and Peres saying he was a "historic friend of Israel." Obama responded in kind, saying he and his counterparts "share a vision of Israel at peace with its neighbors."
Seeking to underscore U.S. military cooperation with Israel, Obama viewed an Iron Dome battery that was transported to the airport for his arrival. The U.S. has invested more than $275 million into the missile defense system and plans to spend another $211 million on it this year. U.S. and Israeli officials credit the Iron Dome with preventing numerous rocket attacks from neighboring Palestinian territories.
Obama also announced Wednesday that the U.S. and Israel would start talks soon on a new, 10-year security cooperation package to replace one that expires in 2017.
While Israel warmly greeted Obama, Palestinians held several small protests. In Gaza, demonstrators burned Obama posters and U.S. flags, accusing the U.S. of being unfairly biased toward Israel. In the West Bank, about 200 activists erected tents in an area just outside Jerusalem to draw attention to Israel's policy of settlement building.
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC | <urn:uuid:2cd07c44-9d61-423c-b03b-a49437311634> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.azfamily.com/news/world/199099971.html?ref=next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974965 | 1,496 | 1.765625 | 2 |
As publisher of The Buffalo News, Stanford E. Lipsey – well, Stan – likes to know what’s going on in his newspaper. That includes the right to review the next day’s editorials before they are published. He didn’t see this one.
Lipsey – that is, Stan – has been the publisher of this newspaper since 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president. He is 85 years old, plays tennis, leads big public projects and cares passionately about Buffalo. But for the occasional mention of Omaha, Neb., where he met Warren E. Buffett, you would think he grew up on the shores of Lake Erie.
In an industry where publishers come and go, Lipsey’s run here has been remarkable. Not only did he prevail in a classic newspaper war with the old Courier-Express, but he kept The News profitable and relevant when, first the Internet, and then the Great Recession shook the foundations of an old and noble industry.
Other newspapers went out of business. Some are only publishing only on certain days of the week. The Buffalo News remains. It is, necessarily, a different newspaper than it was in the 20th century as it adapts to fast-changing habits and demographics, but in the end, it remains what it was: the go-to source for information in Western New York.
All of that is well and good, of course, but it is not just his joyful work as publisher that prompts us to write. Excellent business leaders call it a day every day, and they don’t all merit special attention.
What makes Lipsey worthy of notice is his influence on the entire newspaper industry at a critical moment in its existence – Buffett recently bought more newspapers because Lipsey showed how they can still be relevant – and, more important to the people of Western New York, his unshakable belief that Buffalo can be better than it is. And not just belief, but belief translated into action.
He is leading the charge to salvage the historically significant Richardson Towers complex, previously a crumbling part of Buffalo’s remarkable trove of architectural treasures. He played a key role in the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House. He had a backstage influence in the decision to build a new airport terminal in Buffalo, a consequence of which was the arrival of low-cost carriers like Southwest Airlines and JetBlue.
Lipsey pushed for other business leaders to be similarly engaged in the betterment of Buffalo and didn’t mind criticizing those who abandoned the city for the suburbs. He has been a champion for the city and, with his continuing roles on The News editorial page and the Richardson project, he will continue to be.
Lipsey remains the publisher of The News for another nine days, so there is neither need nor wisdom in commenting on the challenges of working for a man single-mindedly devoted to excellence, especially at a time when economic forces are battering the industry he loves. But that’s the job of a leader and he never shied away from it. Indeed, he reveled in it.
On the editorial board, we dealt more closely with Lipsey than most people in the newspaper or in the community, and what we knew was this: If he had an idea, a comment, a point of view, we would hear it. Clearly.
For those who don’t know, newspaper editorial boards are complete and unfettered democracies until the publisher says otherwise. Publishers, including Lipsey, hold responsibility for the entire newspaper, including its standards and ideals, and they retain the right to the final word. For all that, though, it was rare for him to pull rank. Like his boss, Buffett, Lipsey let people do what they do best.
For that reason, among many others, the board and, we suspect, much of Western New York will miss the influence that was brought to Buffalo and its newspaper by Lipsey.
That is to say, Stan. | <urn:uuid:5ff404c9-a54c-41d6-b857-23be6a131269> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121222/OPINION/121229814/1003 | 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 | 0.972069 | 820 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Training for Organizations
The Triple P System is supported by an evidence-based training program with a multi-disciplinary focus that assists professionals’ worldwide working with families across a range of service delivery modalities.
To date, over 20,000 practitioners from the fields of health, education, social services, childcare, general practice, telephone counseling, to name a few, have undertaken Triple P training in countries ranging from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, United States, England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Iran, Curacao, Republic of Ireland, Japan and Belgium.
Training and associated packages are offered across all levels of the intervention and aimed at individual practitioners as well as larger scale adoption of Triple P within organizations. The uniqueness of the Triple P System has enabled Government and non-government agencies internationally to implement Triple P which has assisted in the building of intersectorial and multi- agency linkages. At the same time, individual practitioners can also access training courses across the specific level/s of Triple P that best suits their needs.
Where do I start if I am an individual practitioner?
If you are an individual practitioner interested in becoming an Accredited Triple P Provider a range of training courses are available. These courses are aimed at assisting you to work with the majority of parents with children in the 0 to 16 years age range. Specialized courses have also been developed to meet the needs of different client groups (e.g., indigenous families; families with children with a disability) and treatment modalities (e.g., group, individual, and telephone delivery).
Training may be accessed by attending courses based at Triple P International’s Head Office in Australia or we may be able to put you in touch with other organizations arranging training within your area. Alternatively, you may be interested in approaching your own organization and canvassing for your colleagues to be trained in Triple P so that a consistent approach can be adopted within your organization in working with families.
Overview of Triple P Provider Training.
A series of accredited training courses for professionals interested in Triple P are available. The courses offer training in various levels of intervention for practitioners working in universal through to specialist services. Courses are skills-based and involve training in the theoretical and professional skills required to implement the program effectively with families.
A variety of instructional methods are used, including didactic presentations, video and live demonstrations of strategies, simulated practice of consultation skills in small groups, feedback, clinical problem solving exercises, and the provision of recommended readings and participant notes.
A competency-based accreditation process has been developed that requires practitioners to demonstrate their proficiency in program delivery and their knowledge and understanding of the principles upon which the program is based. The University of Queensland provides a certificate of accreditation to practitioners who have completed the training and accreditation requirements.
What is the most suitable course for me?
The first question to ask yourself is how do you typically work with families (i.e. individually, groups, brief consultations, intensively), or how do you intend delivering Triple P in the future? Secondly, who are the parents you intend to target (i.e. parents of children 0 to 12 years; parents of teenagers; parents of children with a disability; or parents at risk of maltreating their children). A variety of training courses are available. Perhaps a combination of courses best suit your professional needs.
As Triple P Provider Training courses are offered only to professional practitioners, post-secondary qualifications are required in Health, Education, or Social Services. Practitioners should have some knowledge of child/ adolescent development and have some experience working with families.
Please note: Some Triple P training courses have Triple P prerequisites. Please refer to the Triple P Provider Training Options table | <urn:uuid:1ffe2d72-1868-4502-bdae-8d14ddaa2349> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.triplep-america.com/pages/organizations/accreditation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946737 | 765 | 1.75 | 2 |
SEOUL — North Korea’s leader has warned of an “all-out” war against the South while denouncing its ongoing joint military drill with the United States, state media said Aug. 26.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries began a two-week exercise Aug. 20 aimed at testing defenses against the communist North, insisting it was defensive in nature but Pyongyang called it a drill for a pre-emptive nuclear attack. More than 30,000 U.S. troops, including most of those based in the South plus 3,000 from overseas, are taking part in the annual joint drill known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the drill a grave threat and said his army was ready to deal “deadly blows” if their territory was violated during the exercise.
“If the enemies fire even a single shell on our inviolable territory ... the whole army should turn out as one and lead the battle to an all-out counter-offensive,” said the leader, according to KCNA news agency.
“The courageous officers... are now waiting for a final order for charge for a life-and-death battle against the enemies,” Kim was quoted as saying in a speech to army officials Aug. 25. “There is a limit to our patience.”
Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, took over the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation after his late father and longtime ruler Kim Jong-Il died last December.
On the eve of the ongoing drill, the young leader visited a frontliner artillery unit that carried out a deadly 2010 bombardment of a South Korean island near the disputed western sea border. Kim praised its personnel as heroes and told them never to tolerate enemy aggression.
The two Koreas have remained technically at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, without a subsequent peace treaty.
Cross-border tensions have been high since the South accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships with the loss of 46 lives in March 2010. The North angrily denied involvement but went on to shell the Yeonpyeong Island in November of the same year, killing four South Koreans including two civilians. | <urn:uuid:fe2ab059-e1ed-470d-9133-96e8dab22d9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120826/DEFREG03/308260001 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978163 | 462 | 1.5625 | 2 |
In August 2006, the Conference of Chief Justices approved the Guidelines for State Trial Courts Regarding Discovery of Electronically-Stored Information as a reference tool for state trial court judges faced by a dispute over e-discovery.
These Guidelines are intended to help in identifying the issues and determining the decision- making factors to be applied in the circumstances presented in a specific case. They should not be treated as model rules or universally applicable standards. They have been crafted only to offer guidance to those faced with addressing the practical problems that the digital age has created. The Conference of Chief Justices recognizes that the Guidelines will become part of the continuing dialogue concerning how best to ensure the fair, efficient, and effective administration of justice as technology changes. They should be considered along with the other resources such as the newly revised provisions on discovery in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the most recent edition of the American Bar Association Standards Relating to Discovery. Although the Guidelines acknowledge the benefits of uniformity and are largely consistent with the revised Federal Rules, they also recognize that the final determination of what procedural and evidentiary rules should govern questions in state court proceedings (such as when inadvertent disclosures waive the attorney-client privilege) are the responsibility of each state, based upon its legal tradition, experience, and process. | <urn:uuid:4110c8e2-83d7-4201-ba89-a3d9107d3253> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ediscoverylaw.com/2007/08/articles/resources/guidelines-for-state-trial-courts-regarding-discovery-of-electronicallystored-information/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952811 | 260 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The Netherlands town of Brielle has a long and colorful history which is still apparent today. It is a fortified town with almost 400 monuments that attest to its importance and history. One of the sights that people most often like to see is the St. Catherine the Great church. Cheap hotels in Brielle can be found near many of the monuments that dot the landscape of the town. Recreational activities at Brielle Maas (Lake Brielle) are another way to pass the time while visiting the town.
The Den Briel Historical Museum is located in the same complex that the city hall is currently in. Originally built in the early 17th century as a prison, it now displays artifacts and information pertaining to the incredible past of the town. Budget hotels in Brielle are the perfect spot for historian buffs to retire to as they explore the historical archives. Documentation of churches, businesses and people that have been part of the town throughout the years can be found and viewed by the public. EasyToBook.com can assist you in finding the best Brielle hotels. | <urn:uuid:bd3e6137-2080-4161-b1a3-b3a16d51abe3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.easytobook.com/en/netherlands/south-holland/brielle-hotels/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9744 | 219 | 1.742188 | 2 |
- Oct 28, 2008 7:42 PM EST
- [num] Comments
Do you have time to vote on Election Day?
If you work for some of the top tech companies in the country, the answer should be yes. The CEOs of several tech giants like Google, eBay, and Intel have recorded videos urging their employees to take a "Vote Hour" on November 4.
The idea for VoteHour.org came from a Google employee who read a report from the U.S. Census Bureau that said the No. 1 reason people did not vote in the 2004 presidential election was because they were too busy or had conflicting work schedules.
"So this Googler sent an email to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc., who volunteered to record a message of support and encouraged some fellow CEOs to join him...and the Vote Hour was born," according to the group's Web site.
"It's really important that each and every one of you takes a vote hour; to go out, and on November 4, vote," Schmidt said in his video, shown above. "It's important to use Google to get information about how to make the best decision for our government, but the most important thing is, go out and vote."
Schmidt recently hit the road to stump for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, but he and other tech CEOs urged Americans of all political persuasions to vote on Election Day.
"We're about to vote for one of the most important presidential elections in my lifetime and certainly in yours and I think it's critical that we all turn out the vote one way or another," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini in his spot. "It's more important to do this than to take an extra hour at work, so I'm asking you to find some time on November 4--before work, after work, or even during work--to make sure that you get out and take a vote hour on that day."
Other CEOs who joined the cause include John Donahoe of eBay, John Chambers of Cisco, Intuit's Bill Campbell, Sprint's Dan Hesse, Symantec's John W. Thompson, and Time Warner's Jeff Bewkes.
Some of their clips after the jump.
John Donahoe, CEO of eBay
John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco
Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint
John W. Thompson, CEO of Symantec | <urn:uuid:2322f9bf-7cf1-4725-883a-26a63b157c12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://appscout.pcmag.com/news-events/274447-tech-ceos-push-election-day-vote-hour | 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 | 0.976814 | 491 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Click here to download a PDF version of this article.
Since September 11, 2001, U.S. counter-terror efforts to disrupt al Qaeda’s finances have been imprecise at best; at worst, they have had profound negative effects. The question of why hawala poses such a great threat and why there is a need for strict regulation or elimination of hawala has been the subject of great deliberation among policy makers and financial scholars since al Qaeda’s attack on New York and Washington, D.C. Regardless, strategic banter became policy with the publishing of Executive Order (EO) 13224 which greatly expanded the U.S.’s ability to freeze, block and disrupt the transfer and storage of terrorist funds. In the aftermath of 9/11, this executive order set the tone and direction for U.S. strategy to disrupt and infiltrate al Qaeda’s financial network. EO 13224 created the framework for further debate that continues today. The debate is driven by the underlying assumption of policy makers that hawala was a fundamental piece of al Qaeda’s financial repertoire, allowing al Qaeda to finance its global operations, particularly the 9/11 attack on America. The roots of this false assumption are in myth and post 9/11 histrionics.
A prevailing school of thought argues that regulation of hawala needs to be tempered with patience, regional collaboration, socio-economic and cultural sensitivity, and broader formal financial reform. Efforts to date by the U.S. government and international community have been too aggressive and have not achieved their stated objectives. Hastily made recommendations and regulation will not benefit the U.S. in its long-term efforts to defeat al Qaeda. This school of thought encompasses Maimbo, Thompson, Passas, and Sharma – all referenced throughout this paper.
By conducting a detailed analysis of hawala in Afghanistan from 2001-2006 this paper attempts to prove that hawala, as a component of the war on financial terror, is not a strategic threat. Furthermore, this paper attempts to show that most broad regulation has been ineffective, and in fact counter-productive, alienating scores of innocent Muslims and galvanizing regional support away from U.S. foreign policy while pushing Muslim sympathies toward al Qaeda. The incongruence of American foreign policy in the financial “war on terror” has been damaging. America has extended the olive branch to the Muslim world in rhetoric while wielding a deadly financial hammer.
Financial Terrorism in Afghanistan: Background Issues
Hawala in Afghanistan has always played an important role in the financial sector, but especially in recent decades. Samuel Maimbo, a noted hawala scholar for the World Bank explains that because of decades of conflict Afghanistan’s formal sector is practically non-existent. During this period of turmoil, hawala filled a necessary role left void because of the financial sector’s inability to meet basic financial service needs of the Afghan people.
Until the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the informal sector, namely hawala, was the only reliable service in play. While formal financial institutions were non-existent or incapacitated by sanctions and war, hawala provided a cheap, efficient, and cost-effective alternative that could be trusted by the Afghan people. In the absence of an internationally recognized and legitimate government, the informal hawala sector’s hawaladars, or money service providers, became “key economic agents” in Afghanistan. While the formal financial sector has seen growth and improvement since 2001, the hawala network still remains a central cog in the financial networks of Afghanistan.
Mapping Hawala: The Scope and Extent of Afghanistan’s Hawala System
The magnitude of hawala’s footprint in Afghanistan is colossal. The World Bank estimates that a whopping 80-90% of all economic activity in Afghanistan is in the informal sector. With hawala in many instances serving as the only viable financial medium in Afghanistan, it seems highly likely that some terror funds are in the hawala system alongside completely licit funds. The cultural precision required to pinpoint illicit activity though, seemed lost on policy makers in the U.S. government who settled on a more heavy-handed approach to hawala after 9/11. Al Qaeda used hawala for the same reasons that hundreds of NGOs and international aid organizations did - there was no dependable alternative.
Surprisingly, with 80-90% of the entire Afghan economy generated from one sector, there are only a few hundred hawaladars that operate the entire hawala network. There have been two significant studies that help us sketch the size and numbers of the hawaladars and hawala markets in Afghanistan. Maimbo’s seminal effort to hawala literature that focuses on the money dealers of Kabul estimates that there are 300 registered hawaladars in Kabul and 500-2000 total throughout Afghanistan. Edwina Thompson, in her cogent contribution to the study of the opium problem in Afghanistan, places the number of significant shops in the country at 900. Finally, based off 2004 interviews conducted in Afghanistan by the Treasury Department, the number of hawaladars is estimated to be slightly over 300 in the Kabul Money Exchange, and potentially 100-300 additional dealers scattered in each region to service each of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces. Whatever the exact number, it is clear that a relatively few hawaladars control a vast and powerful financial network.
The amount of money flowing through the hawala network is tremendous. Maimbo elaborates: By some accounts, NGOs alone have pushed hundreds of millions through Afghanistan’s hawala system. While typical international transactions are in the U.S. $100,000 - $200,000 range, single transactions between major financial centers such as Kabul and Peshawar in excess of U.S. $500,000, or even U.S. $1,000,000 transactions by international organizations are not unusual. However, internal transactions tend to be in the U.S. $10,000 – $20,000 range.
The overall volume of money in the hawala market in Afghanistan is difficult to determine with any certainty. Due to the informal nature and general secrecy of hawala, “any estimate of the overall size of the hawala market in Afghanistan should however be viewed with extreme caution.” Nonetheless, Thompson provides a healthy estimate of what Afghan hawala flows look like. By her accounts, 2004-05 aggregate hawala flows in and out of the hawala system were between 5.6 – 6.1 billion dollars. Hawala, while informal, finances and moves billions of dollars in and out of Afghanistan. It is an impressive feat considering the system relies solely on good business practices and self-regulation among its hawaladars.
One of the more populated myths in the barrage of post 9/11 hysteria and media scrutiny of hawala is the reported statement that hawala transactions are paperless, with hawaladars keeping little if any record of transactions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, hawaladars’ record-keeping and accounting activities appear amazingly robust and professional. Hawaladars are careful to record currencies traded, international pricing of currencies, deposit balances, debit and credit balances of partner dealers and all customers, all lending transactions, cash on hand, all foreign exchange positions, and customer receipts. Though only anecdotal, one investigator offered further evidence of the meticulous record-keeping when he noted that after striking a rapport with a hawaladar in the Kabul Exchange, the dealer opened his books to show detailed records of every transaction for the past 20 years. Maimbo’s research also affirmed the findings of the Treasury Department that most hawaladars could account for every transaction by a variety of means.
Due to the lack of formal financial institutions and the unreliability of those in place, hawala was the preferred method of funds delivery for international aid organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during the war-torn Taliban era; it continues to be so today. The formal sector provides little options, and aside from carrying small sums of cash for basic operating costs, international organizations are forced to use hawala to send substantial amounts of money. Consequently, it is the only viable option. Under the Taliban, international users had one or two designated hawaladars that they could deal with, but now there is considerable competition between many hawaladars offering more competitive, cheaper, and highly reliable financial services into and out of Afghanistan.
As of 2003, there were 127 international and 467 local NGOs operating in Afghanistan. It is estimated that in excess of U.S. $200 million was sent through the hawala system in the first year after the Taliban government collapsed. Furthermore, in the more rural areas where much of the aid money is desperately needed there is no formal alternative to hawala. There are some formal banks that solicit business from NGOs, but they tend to be “laboriously slow.” Ultimately, the advantage of hawala over any formal financial entity is its long-stretch (it can reach the most rural areas of Afghanistan) and that it “provides NGOs with liquidity they otherwise might not have.”
Mapping the Formal Financial Sector
Afghanistan’s formal financial sector reflects a weak history. During the Taliban’s rule, only six licensed banks existed; none providing commercial services or the ability to facilitate international remittances. Since the fall of the Taliban regime, more strict financial institutions are forming in Afghanistan, but are still lacking in services. “Like everything else in Afghanistan, the formal financial services are underdeveloped.” As of October 2005, there were 13 licensed banks open for business in Kabul. New banks such as National Bank of Pakistan, Habib Bank, and Punjab National Bank of India are all conducting business in Afghanistan now. Despite the slow emergence of major international and regional banks, the banking system “is best described as embryonic.” Years of conflict decimated the functionality of Afghanistan’s formal banking services.
Only Da Afghanistan Bank, the central bank of Afghanistan maintained some limited functional role during this time. Despite the slowly increasing number of services and banks available, the overall effect of the financial sector at the moment is limited. What little improvement in capacity or availability of service is restricted to Kabul. Regional and provincial access to formal financial services is not readily available. Even in Kabul, practical access for the layman is problematic:
To use an ATM at Afghanistan’s leading foreign bank requires you to run the gauntlet of a street known as Sniper Alley, then be patted down by a bristling security detail of Gurkhas before getting access to a cash machine that might or might not be functioning.
One of the chief reasons for the limited interaction with the formal sector is the physical location. Formal financial institutions are nowhere near the bazaars and markets where Afghan hawaladars operate; thus impractical for them to utilize formal banks.
The Dark Triangle: Hawala, Drugs, and Terror
Amit Sharma believes, “the presence of a burgeoning opium economy and terrorism in Afghanistan provides for considerable risk to the hawala system.” As the insurgency has grown in recent years alongside the booming opium crops, a nexus has emerged between drugs and terror. This nexus occurs in the informal hawala network that helps conceal the financial movements of both illicit industries. While Thompson provides a lengthy and superb analysis of every region in Afghanistan and its hawala connections with the drug economy, pursuant to the goals of this paper, this section will focus on her analysis of the provinces and regions in the heart of the Pashtun belt. It is the hypothesis of this author that there is a direct correlation between the intensity of terrorist/insurgent activities in certain areas and the intensity of hawala drug-related transactions in these same areas that are well-documented by Thompson.
Helmand and Kandahar are located in the heart of Pashtun country that stretches across the border into Pakistan. These provinces are “ideally placed to exploit the extensive Pashtun trading networks that reach many of the world’s key financial sites.” As one saraf, or hawaladar, described the nature of the relationship between Helmand (or Hilmand) and Kandahar, “you may as well see them as one and the same market.” The same holds true for the areas on the other side of the border. Just as Helmand and Kandahar are one Pashtun economy with tight interdependence, so are the cross-border economies and social ties with the Pashtuns in Pakistan. It is one network, one economy, and one kindred cultural perspective.
Because of Kandahar’s strategic location in Pashtun country it is “an important site to explore the links between the informal hawala networks and the trafficking of drugs.” If hawala is being exploited for the concealed movement of illicit drug funds, it seems reasonable to assume that it is being exploited in a similar fashion and with similar intensity by insurgents and terrorists. Helmand, too, boasts similar pre-conditions for abuse of its hawala network.
Thompson does not map out this area of the Afghanistan hawala network, but provides solid basis for further investigation. She does, however, highlight that there are 54 hawaladars in Kandahar and Helmand that specialize in drug transactions. Furthermore, her study estimates that in both Kandahar and Helmand drug funds account for 80-90% of all hawala funds. Sharma, a Treasury Department official who has spent time in Afghanistan investigating the hawala system and financial reform there, offers this conclusion:
The broad answer is, yes folks (hawaladars) agreed that they did ‘know’ their customers, and therefore did indeed know much of the time what the business they were facilitating included… that said, everyone I spoke with did admit that facilitating terror (and other illicit activity for that matter) was not a good thing, and that they did want to find solutions that they could shove out this business but do so in a way that still retained their access to the larger pool of funds and the market…. I do think there is a
distinction drawn between facilitating narcotics and terrorism – absolutely – and we need to remember that financially facilitating some of the drug trade is interpreted different ways… especially if some count their livelihood that way.
The nexus between drugs and hawala is palpable. The more difficult connection is the third leg of this triangle: terror. Accepting Thompson’s data is accurate, or as close to fact as one can get in the inherently recluse and informal hawala network of Afghanistan, one must next examine the interplay of terror in hawala. The UN data shows the richest poppy cultivation in the volatile southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, as well as a few eastern and north-eastern provinces. The connection between drugs and terror, and implicitly hawala, come into focus in U.S. Central Command’s data on 2006 coalition forces attacks during the months leading up to harvest in the aforementioned drug provinces. Insurgent and terrorist activities in Helmand, Kandahar and the eastern, northeastern provinces are highest during the peak drug months of early 2006. There seems an obvious direct connection between the two, and likewise, given the exposed abuse by drug-specialist hawaladars in these provinces and the researched data showing extremely high percentages of overall hawala drug-related activity in Helmand and Kandahar, an equally apparent connection of the two with hawala. It is unlikely that there are as many actors involved either as terror hawaladars or terrorist/insurgents actors in general due to the nature of terrorism and its high risk and low financial reward. Still, even if the number of hawaladars involved is fewer, there is a high probability of correlation to the intensity of hawala drug transactions in Afghanistan’s volatile southern provinces.
The drug and terror networks are more duplicitous than imagined. They appear to be one convergent network with tactical differences but complimentary strategic outlooks. In many cases, they may be exactly the same. Certainly, it appears probable that the hawaladars that service both the drug and terror industries are the same, though further field research is desired to verify this hypothesis. It is reasonable to assume that a hawaladar that bears the risk of dealing with drugs might also be tempted by the allure of terror financing. It is probably more certain that hawaladars that deal with terrorist transactions initially also deal with drugs if given the opportunity. The final point is the rich Pashtun interdependence that sweeps into Pakistan provides policymakers and regulators with a difficult context in which to begin deciphering the tightly woven nexus of Afghanistan’s black triangle.
Figure 1. OEF Attacks on Coalition Forces February 2006. (From: CENTCOM and Thomas Johnson)
Figure 2. OEF Attacks on Coalition Forces March 2006. (From: CENTCOM and Thomas Johnson)
Figure 3. OEF Coalition Attacks April 2006. (From: CENTCOM and Thomas Johnson)
Regulatory and Reform Models: The Way Forward
In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent international efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, abstaining from regulation or supervision of the informal financial system is no longer a tenable option.
Given the intense interest and focus on the hawala system of the Middle East and Islamic world post 9/11, some measure of oversight or regulation is required. One can make a strong case that no regulation is needed whatsoever, but given the political climate, such a position is politically unsustainable. Within this framework several regulatory models are on the table, several have been enacted at the behest of the U.S. government and international coalition, and others have suggested strategic guidelines that map out best practices to maximize the benefit of hawala while curbing the illicit components. The most critical aspect of any regulation, though, must consider the unique characteristics of Afghanistan’s financial system and people. Hawala in the U.A.E. is not hawala in Pakistan. Hawala in Pakistan is not hawala in Afghanistan. Hawala in Afghanistan is not hawala in the U.A.E.. Blunt regulatory tools and policy cannot be universally applied to the many people who utilize hawala. It is culturally naive to do so, and unrealistic to expect the people of Afghanistan to wrap their arms around a policy better suited for Pakistan or maybe Indonesia.
In Maimbo’s field research, many hawaladars did make passionate arguments against any regulation. Four main points emerged in this argument: First, hawaladars are difficult to identify for regulation. Some are only hawaladars, but others operate as hawaladars in addition to being a butcher, or running a market store. Second, there is no incentive to open themselves up as a business community to external regulation. Hawaladars fear the big stick approach shown by regulators in the al Barakaat debacle in Somalia. Third, hawala transactions are varied and would be difficult to develop a regulatory pattern. Lastly, even if sound regulations were feasible, DAB absolutely lacks the capacity to enforce anything. For the hawaladars, regulation appears wrought with danger and low in reward. From the government perspective, Afghanistan needs to focus its immediate attention elsewhere first. Hawala regulation seems less urgent by comparison to the scope of everything that needs to be overhauled financially in Afghanistan.
What does work in Afghanistan is self-regulation. The hawaladars of Kabul have been self-regulating without any oversight since 1930. There are over 300 self-regulating hawaladars in the Kabul Money Exchange. The Kabul hawaladars even serve under an executive committee “responsible for enforcing the tacit rules and business codes of the market; code violations bring serious consequences. The executive committee is also responsible for the amicable settlement of disputes.” Self-regulation is a viable option because the hawaladars are better able to identify the problems within hawala and deal with them more effectively than any external regulators ever could. Even hawaladar input was solicited in the right way, hawaladars might have a more vested interest in the rules and regulations imposed (since they created them) and this might narrow the gap between the formal financial world (and government) and the hawala system. Self-regulation allows for a more realistic approach to effective regulation than that from the FATF or central bank which is largely seen as meddling or external interference in legitimate business.
Another option on the table is a hybrid model aimed at creating transparency without sacrificing the allure of hawala’s inexpensiveness, efficiency, and reach. In an incremental process, carefully choreographed with the help of the hawaladars themselves, hawaladars would be asked to register (not license), identify customers carefully to include physical address, bear the responsibility of suspicious activity reports, and when necessary, facilitate investigations.
Challenges to Reform
Hawala is ingrained in the cultural and religious landscape of Afghanistan. It is part of daily life. “The market has such a long history of operational and regulatory independence that external oversight is unlikely to be easily welcomed - especially if it is overly burdensome.” Afghanistan, a state plagued by the great game and other imperial interferences does not want external or western policies forced on them. This is the first challenge. Afghans simply prefer hawala. It is a subtle but important point; this is what the people want. While not exclusive to Muslims, hawala is sanctioned by sharia law and is synonymous with Islamic banking. It is a cultural aspect of Islam that can be traced back to the Prophet Mohammed, himself a trader and user of the informal economy.
Literacy is another impediment to hawala reform or acceptance of regulation. Broad FATF regulations not adapted to Afghanistan miss the mark and alienate the population. 74% of Afghans and 91% of women are illiterate and most have no formal identification. This social condition is a disabling pre-text for the transfer of hawala informal economy to the formal sector. It is unrealistic and ignorant to expect Afghans to embrace rules better suited for a U.S. state. Western corporate procedures and business plans, formal accounting, and other reform ideas that are being incorporated by U.S.AID (United States Agency for International Development) and the World Bank are unlikely to succeed given the underlying illiteracy problem in Afghanistan. Delawari is pushing universities to offer courses on business, accounting, and financial literacy, but this is a long-term problem with a slow process toward improvement. In the meanwhile, it is a huge obstacle to reform.
Perhaps the most glaring error in policy and hindrance to hawala regulation or reform is the lack of input received from hawaladars, or rather the lack soliciting of hawaladars by policy makers. Every expert from Wilson to Thompson to Passas to Maimbo has suggested what is plain to see; the first step in any serious discussion of moving forward should be to co-opt the hawaladars of Afghanistan, namely the executive committee of Kabul’s market. Yet, six years after 9/11, this has not genuinely happened. While the U.S. Treasury Department and the DAB will almost certainly say that hawaladars have been engaged in the reform process, including the most recent round of laws concerning money-dealers and foreign exchange dealers, research shows this engagement to be merely transitory. Commenting on the Treasury Department’s own mission to Kabul in 2004, Sharma found that most hawaladars felt that even when DAB conducted open forums with the hawaladars, the sticky points of regulation were already decreed and the DAB was just there to tell them the new policy rather than ask their opinion.
Whether or not it is reality, the perception among hawaladars is certainly one of alienation and exclusion from the reform process by the government. Hawaladars have a preset suspicion of authority. “Collaboration with government regulators requires a profound social and psychological stretch for those who run the networks.” The mistrust of the formal sector and adversarial standing between hawaladars and government regulators creates an inherent problem. There is no strong inclination for hawaladars to emerge from the shadows, much less be dragged out by their feet.
Finally, hawaladars acknowledge that there are certainly illicit funds facilitated through their hawala system. However, as individual hawaladars, they would not stem the flow - there is too much at stake. In a business environment run on honor, interdependent peer relationships, and tacit rules, one cannot venture off the beaten path without consent. The risk of being black-listed or cut out of the business partnerships required to conduct transactions is too great. There is great fear among hawaladars that cooperation in driving out illicit funds would be disclosed (back to the issue of general mistrust of the central government) and financially ruin their own business due to the interdependent nature of hawala.
Afghanistan: Policy Missteps and the Cultural Fallout
The U.S. Treasury Department has totally failed to see social and cultural realities on the ground. Ironically, the Bush Administration found out the hard way that they had to rely on the same hawala network terrorists use to move money in Afghanistan to get anything done after the Taliban fell. A little historical perspective can go a long way. This sort of improper framing of the issue has plagued U.S. foreign policy and certainly its approach to hawala.
“During the decades of conflict, trust in the government was progressively eroded and transposed to kinship, ethnic, and other social connections.” The gravitational pull of these ties is forceful. These social and ethnic ties bind the Afghan people, not the central government. It is in these contexts that the Afghan people want to conduct their business, not under the perceived interference of Kabul or the U.S. Treasury Department’s regulations. “Afghanistan’s political economy is so deeply constituted through regional and international associations that it would be a mistake to view it in a purely national context.” Yet that is exactly what the U.S. is attempting to do through FATF regulations and DAB laws.
Afghanistan is not hopeless. The government of Afghanistan is doing many things right. Formal sector reforms are moving nicely. However, any reform or regulation of the hawala sector must be done slowly and cautiously. Centuries of social memory cannot be erased. Hawala works in Afghanistan. Hawala is embraced by Islam. These are facts that should not be ignored but rather adroitly leveraged in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan case study affirms the scholars’ school of thought on hawala. The crux of this school of thought rests in the core belief that regulation of hawala needs to be tempered with patience, regional collaboration, socio-economic and cultural sensitivity, and broader formal financial reform. Hastily implementing recommendations and regulation will not benefit the U.S. in its long-term efforts to defeat al Qaeda. If counter-terror efforts are to curb hawala usage by criminal elements without denying its sanctity to legitimate users, then reform must address Afghanistan’s rich culture. Another tenet of the scholars’ school of thought is that broader formal financial reform will have a more desired effect in reducing hawala misuse than direct external pressure and regulation on hawala through registration and licensing. This case study shows that Looney, Passas and Maimbo are correct. Regulation cannot achieve its desired effect without broad and gentle financial reform in all sectors of the Afghan economy. Lastly, as de Gourde emphatically states: you must account for the socio-economic and cultural effects of any hawala regulation. Al Barakaat is but one example of regulators not looking ahead and seriously considering the cultural second and third order effects of stamping out hawala. Heavy-handed regulation is disastrous. Afghanistan bears out the preeminence of socio-economic and cultural impact of poorly designed financial regulation.
Ultimately, the most important truth to glean from Afghanistan is the utter inefficacy of any reform that does not include the hawaladars themselves in the creative process. Due to the social constraints, business practices and history of self-regulation, it is imperative to have hawaladar support in any regulatory measures. Less than full endorsement and collaboration in regulatory legislation or enforcement will doom any such measures to failure. Trust must be earned. However, the government can reach out to hawaladars over time, heeding their advice, and slowly nudging them to the formal sector incrementally.
There seems to be a belief that universal regulation, blunt tools such as the PATRIOT ACT, EO 13224, or those offered in the FATF special recommendations are going to ubiquitously act as penicillin for the incongruities and faults of hawala networks throughout the world. This is false and a disastrous cognitive pretext for reform.
It is a mistake to over-regulate hawala, and to the extent that it must be regulated, the greatest cultural deftness must be employed. If the U.S. is to curb Islamic “extremism” and jihadism in the “war on terror” than it absolutely cannot afford to continue offering an olive branch to moderate Muslims even as it wields a blunt and deadly financial hammer in the other hand.
LT Hancock is Surface Warfare Officer in the US Navy. A native of Augusta, Georgia, LT Hancock is a 2002 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a 2008 graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School, receiving a Master of Arts in Security Studies (Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia). Upon graduation from NPS he was designated by the Navy as a political-military affairs specialist for the Middle East. Currently, LT Hancock is training as an Arabic linguist at the Defense Language Institute. He is married with two children and resides in Monterey, California.
Department of the Treasury, Contributions by the Department of Treasury to the Financial War on Terrorism Fact Sheet, (Washington, D.C: Treasury Department, 2002).
Samuel M. Maimbo, “The Money Exchange Dealers of Kabul: A Study of the Hawala System in Afghanistan”, World Bank Working Paper No. 13, 2003.
Maimbo (2003), 1.
Edwina A. Thompson, “The Nexus of Drug Trafficking and Hawala in Afghanistan,” in Afghanistan’s Drug Industry: Structure, Functioning, Dynamics and Implications for Counter Narcotics Policy, ed. Doris Buddenberg and William A. Byrd (Washington, D.C: World Bank, 2006), 155.
Ibid., 155.
This will be addressed specifically in a later section of this chapter.
Greenburg et al, 25.
Maimbo (2003), 3.
Thompson, 156.
These figures were based on conversations by Treasury officials with Afghans staffed in the Supervision Department of the Central Bank as well as with several Money Exchange Dealers in the Kabul Hawala market.
Maimbo, 4.
Ibid., 4.
Thompson, 160.
Ibid., 160.
Amit Sharma, Remarks given at the Naval Postgraduate School July 31, 2007. Sharma works for the Department of Treasury as the Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and has previously conducted analysis of hawala while working in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
Maimbo (2003), 7.
For a more detailed description and examples of typical NGO/international aid organization transactions through hawala, see Maimbo’s 2003 study full report.
Maimbo, 11.
Ibid., 13.
Samuel M. Maimbo, “The Challenges of Regulating and Supervising the Hawaladars of Kabul,” in Rural Finance in Afghanistan: The Challenge of the Opium Economy: Report on a Two-Day Workshop, Kabul, Afghanistan, December 13-14, 2004, (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2005), 54.
“Everything to Play For,” Foreign Direct Investment Magazine, June 07, 2005. http://www.fdimagazine.com/news/printpage/php/aid/1288/Everything_to_play_for.html (accessed April 3, 2007).
Thompson, 157.
Foreign Direct Investment, 2005.
Eric Ellis, “Afghanistan Gets Back to Business,” E-Ariana (September 6, 2006), http://www.e-ariana.com/ariana/eariana.nsf/ (Accessed April 2007).
Amit Sharma, Remarks made at the Naval Postgraduate School, July 31, 2007.
Thompson, 170.
Thompson, 176.
Thompson, 177.
Ibid, 156.
Amit Sharma, Email message to the author, November 1, 2007.
Maimbo (2003), 16.
Specifics of U.S. regulatory policy and the FATF special recommendations on terror financing are discussed in-depth in a separate chapter.
Al barakaat was a major hawala firm in Somalia handling hundreds of millions of dollars. It served as the only functioning financial medium between Somalia to the outside world. After 9/11 al barakaat was hammered by the US Treasury Department for alleged terrorist financing but the 9/11 commission ultimately concluded there was no connection. To date, no convictions have occurred in this case, but the company was completely destroyed by the process.
Maimbo (2003), 16.
Maimbo (2005), 57.
Maimbo (2003), 17.
Ibid., 17.
Maimbo (2005), 58.
Amit Sharma, Naval Postgraduate School, July 31, 2007.
Thomas A. Timberg, “Informal Remittance Systems and Afghanistan,” http://www.nathaninc.com/NATHAN/files/CCPAGECONTENT/DOCFILENAME/0000502422/Informal%20Remittance%20Systems%20and%20Afghanistan.pdf (accessed May 2007), 7.
Amit Sharma, Naval Postgraduate School, July 31, 2007.
Thompson, 157.
Ibid., 170. | <urn:uuid:5543a8f6-e51e-41b7-a7f7-19a32e81c2ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.edu/programs/ccs/WebJournal/Article.aspx?ArticleID=19&IssueID=17 | 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 | 0.941185 | 7,090 | 1.59375 | 2 |
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From: racheed salam <email@example.com>
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Subject: RESUEST FOR BUSINESS CO-OPERATION
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My name is Racheed Salam. I work with one of the leading private and offshore banks in the Isle of Man .The Proposition: On January 6, 1999, an Egyptian oil consultant/contractor, Mr. Youssef Genidy George, made a numbered time (fixed) deposit for 24 calendar months value US$38.5M in my bank. On maturity, we sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder but unfortunately we found out that he was amongst the victims of the Egypt Air Flight 990 that occurred September 1999, months after he made the deposit. Visit the site below for more news on the unfortunate tragedy.
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Architects: Ishimoto Architectural & Engineering Firm, Inc
Location: Yawata city, Kyoto, Japan
Architect In Charge: Kou Ohashi
Project Team: Tsutomu Kobayashi, Yoshihiko Taniguchi, Kou Ohashi, Hiroyuki Nagaoka, Hiroki Tanaka, Toshihiko Sawamura, Mitsuo Ichikawa
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Photographs: Daici Ano
Setsunan University Hirakata Campus is located near the border of Osaka and Kyoto. A new faculty for nursing was to be established in this campus. This architecture is for this new faculty. The main programs required were class rooms, training rooms, laboratories, and seminar rooms.
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The void takes in the changing elements around it such as the scenery, people, weather and so on. The void is also made as a passage for the students. So the moving and staying students do not only enjoy the changing environment of the void but become one of the changing elements as well. | <urn:uuid:bf21aa8c-ef04-4981-885b-1bdf0aaab023> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archdaily.com/265372/setsunan-university-hirakata-ishimoto-architectural/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961654 | 331 | 1.601563 | 2 |
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“These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease.” | <urn:uuid:4eb41181-a72c-4a33-aa85-192378ad7a24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://doterralife.wordpress.com/about/welcome-to-the-doterra-life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95844 | 494 | 1.84375 | 2 |
It's interesting that two of the animators most closely identified with Mickey, Les Clark and Fred Moore, have so little to do in this cartoon. I have to assume that they were busy on other films. It's likely that Moore was working on the version of Pinocchio that was scrapped.
As in Mr. Duck Steps Out and The Little Whirlwind, Clark gets the entrance of the main character. I'm sure that he earned those opportunities through the quality of his work. The scene of Mickey swatting the flies contains some lovely, subtle distortions of Mickey's head and hands when he first goes after the bugs.
Moore has a couple of scenes and scene 45 is the best, with some nice acting. Mickey has to put on a brave face for Minnie, but his real feelings come out as soon as he turns away from her. It's interesting to see how Moore's Mickey is shorter and squatter than Frank Thomas's.
Ollie Johnston gets the montage sequence after Mickey swats the flies. It's more action than acting, but it's vigorously animated and the drawings are solidly proportioned even when the characters are moving in perspective. Ollie also gets a couple of Mickey scenes. 73A looks like it was added as an afterthought to focus the audience on Mickey pulling out his needle. There's a continuity error on the width of the thread between this scene and the Roy Williams scenes that bookend it.
Riley Thomson's king has a wonderful fleshiness to his jowls and great follow through on his robes. While Frank Thomas takes over the king once Mickey arrives, I think that I like Riley Thomson's version better. It has a greater presence. Thomson also gets some scenes of Mickey; there's good acting in scene 48 and a great scramble exit in 49A.
Don Patterson seems to get the short end of the stick in this cartoon, getting stuck with crowd scenes and long shots. He went on to do great animation at MGM, but it looks like the Disney studio didn't trust him with big scenes at this point.
Roy Williams does the scenes of Mickey inside the giant's mouth. That's imagery worthy of the Fleischer cartoons of the early '30's and it's helped along by excellent effects animation by Cornett Wood.
This is the last Disney cartoon directed by Burt Gillet to be released. I want to talk about him in a future entry. | <urn:uuid:2a7b383f-08e9-4c6d-aac6-c6a608c95ea4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2006/07/brave-little-tailor-part-3.html?showComment=1152811980000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9818 | 493 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By Anne Neville
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
It was love at first sight for Suzanne Hoak, of Blasdell, when she saw Zipper the kitten on television.
But like most immediate attractions, there were a few hurdles.
Zipper, a light gray tabby with a white belly, was just 4 weeks old and had severe problems with both eyes. He wasn’t up for adoption due to the amount of medical care he needed. And even when his immediate crisis was past, he would most likely be blind.
None of this mattered to Hoak.
She first saw the kitten – underweight, with his fur shaved due to lice, both eyes injured somehow – on a morning news segment that highlights a special program of the SPCA Serving Erie County called “Yelp for Help.”
“People donate to the ‘Yelp for Help’ fund specifically for emergency care for animals who don’t have anybody to pay for their care,” says Gina Browning, public relations director for the SPCA. Every Thursday, Browning shows off an animal who has been helped by the program to the audience. When it came time to tape the segment that would air Sept. 27, she didn’t have to look far to find an animal that was in desperate need of medical attention.
The little kitten the staff named Zipper – probably because of a line of darker fur down his back – was found on Stone Street, near Broadway and Bailey Avenue, on Sept. 22. He weighed less than 2 pounds and was dehydrated and infested with fleas, lice and worms, but his real problem was his eyes. Both were either malformed or damaged and it was soon obvious that Zipper was or would be blind.
But the medical notes from Zipper’s second day at the SPCA noted his bright attitude. “Kitten seems happy,” they read. He was eager to eat as long as the food was warmed, making its aroma more apparent.
When Browning talked about Zipper on the segment, there was more uncertainty in her voice than hope. “I did not go on there saying, ‘This kitten needs a foster home,’ because he was only 4 weeks old, and we thought he would be with us for a while,” she says. “If I went on the air and said, ‘We really need someone to foster him!’ we didn’t think anybody would take that on, so we didn’t even ask for a foster home.”
As she prepared for work, Hoak glanced at the television. Her immediate reaction to Zipper’s adorable little face was, “I have to get him and bring him home.”
Hoak already had a 5-month-old cat, Jaxon, whom she had adopted from HEART in July to the delight of her 3-year-old granddaughter, Hayden, “a consummate animal lover” who cannot have a pet because of her father’s allergies.
At the HEART adoption center in Hamburg, Hoak had selected Jaxon “because of the way he looked at me when I looked into his cage. That was it.”
Strange, then, that Hoak was now head-over-heels in love with a blind cat.
Her reaction even puzzles Hoak herself. “I have seen that segment probably a thousand times, and I have gotten teary, I have wished I could help that poor animal, but I have never had the urge, ever, to pick up the phone and say ‘I want this animal,’ ” she says.
That morning, she couldn’t resist. She wrote down Browning’s number at the SPCA and waited until 8 a.m. to call. She left a message. Twenty minutes later, even though “I was afraid I was making a pest of myself,” she called again.
“She was crying the first time she called,” Browning said. “She said, ‘I’m in love with that kitten. Is there anything I can do to get that kitten sooner rather than later?’ ” As they spoke, Hoak reassured Browning that she was willing and able to continue Zipper’s medical treatment, including antibiotics, painkillers, ointment for his eyes and breathing treatments for an upper respiratory infection.
Browning went to see the staff in the shelter’s medical treatment area. “Our vet techs met with the veterinarian, and they decided that if [Hoak] was comfortable doing what we were doing, it’s always better for the animal to be out of the shelter, so we changed plans.”
Hoak got the news in a call from the SPCA. “They said that he could not be adopted yet, but that I could foster to adopt and they would still care for him and give me all his meds. I said that would be wonderful.”
When Hoak met Zipper, her only reaction was, “I have to take him home and make him better.” The SPCA provided all the instructions on how to administer his medications.
At home, Jaxon enthusiastically welcomed the newly renamed Maxx. “Jaxon absolutely loved him,” says Hoak. “I had to keep them separate for a while because of Maxx’s respiratory infection, but Jaxon wanted none of that. He would leap on him and start licking him, cleaning him and grooming him. I have pictures of them actually hugging each other.”
On Oct. 25, an SPCA vet did remove Maxx’s untreatable eyes, to keep them from becoming a source of pain and infection. Last week, the stitches came out; the only complication was one stitch that came untied, Hoak believes, because Jaxon groomed Maxx’s eye too enthusiastically.
Once Maxx is healed, Hoak will adopt him and make arrangements for him to see her own vet for further medical care.
The SPCA might not always allow an animal that needs so much medical care to go home in a foster-to-adopt arrangement, says Browning. “We tell people that every situation is different, and just because it happened with this kitten, it doesn’t mean it will always happen. … But Sue was willing to do all this work, and he’s doing beautifully. He’s already bonded with her and her cat.”
Some people tell Hoak that they find it sad to see Maxx. “I tell them, look at him. Put him in your lap and he’ll snuggle right down, or he’ll get feisty and try to play with your fingers. He’s such a happy cat.”
Around the house, Maxx functions well. “I feed him and Jaxon side by side, and he finds his food without any trouble,” says Hoak. “He can climb up my bed and up on the couch, but he has no perception of how high up he is, so he doesn’t jump down, he backs down, fanny first. He does bump into walls a little bit, but he moves very slowly.” As she talks, Maxx bats at some flowing bed-=skirt fabric.
Maxx does have one issue at home. Although he can find and use the litter box, he isn’t able to see well enough to effectively cover his waste, which cats do instinctively. So Jaxon has taken it upon himself to follow Maxx into the litter box and cover it for him, Hoak says.
“I’ve never heard anything like that,” says Browning. “How does the other one know that he can’t see? That’s like a little miracle. It’s just incredible.” | <urn:uuid:e06c87ac-cc3e-4f63-8e45-502e67b43867> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121105/LIFE/121109566/1043 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986236 | 1,709 | 1.554688 | 2 |
An unusually large number of voices are heard at Tuesday night's school board meeting in Sparta.
Parents are demanding answers after a reported bullying incident on a school bus last week.
Police are investigating, interviewing students and looking at surveillance tape from the bus. But that's the extent of official information they're releasing.
Tuesday night, parents and community members were given time to speak to the board. That included the mother who claims her child was bullied.
She says her 13-year-old son had pizza sauce smeared on him before being called derogatory names. She also says one of the other students stuck his hands down his pants and then rubbed it in her son's face saying, "you like it, don't you?' Her son also had a bruised lip.
In an emotional plea to the board, the boy's mother called for action. "Things have progressed so, so badly and something needs to be done, I need to know that my 5,7 , 11, and 13 year old are safe when I send them to school," said Misty Morales.
School officials say they are addressing it and action has been taken against one child involved.
The Superintendent says it's a serious incident and feels sympathy for the child. "I feel for all students who have bad experiences whether it be on the bus, or in the classroom or walking to school and we try to address those, but again, because people don't always know what the consequence is, they understandably assume that it was not dealt with, and that's just not the case," said Sparta Superintendent John Hendricks.
Hendricks also says a school board committee will continue this discussion in two weeks.
Police are expecting to wrap up their investigation by the end of this week. | <urn:uuid:0706e44c-0c88-4c56-afef-88ef92a1a73c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news8000.com/news/Parents-speak-out-at-Sparta-school-board-meeting-about-bullying-incident/-/326/19099972/-/q7y9cqz/-/index.html?source=WKBT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986643 | 357 | 1.585938 | 2 |
China's economy is slowing down further, national figures suggest, with data for April showing sharper than expected declines in investment and industrial production.
A reading of the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday suggests more aggressive action may be needed to get the world's second-largest economy back on track, economists said.
In particular, industrial production rose 9.3 per cent from a year earlier in April, slowing from a nearly 12 per cent increase in March.
However, the data also showed inflation eased to 3.4 per cent in April from 3.6 per cent the month before, giving the government greater leeway to ease policy to boost growth.
"China’s economy is even weaker than thought, with industrial production growth back in single digits for the first time since the global financial crisis and electricity production flat lining," Alistair Thornton of IHS Global Insight said.
"We believe the government will step up efforts to stimulate the economy, even as genuine concerns remain regarding the very real possibility of over-stimulating," he said.
China's economy grew 8.1 per cent in the first quarter of the year, a still robust rate but its slowest pace since 2009. It was below the previous quarter's 8.9 per cent, but above the government's 7.5 per cent target for the year.
China's leaders face a challenge in keeping inflation under control while spurring growth. Rising pressures from wages and other costs are squeezing businesses. Consumers are feeling a pinch, too, as already high prices outstrip rising incomes.
Yang Kai, a 28-year-old patent attorney, recently moved from one eastern city, Hangzhou, to Xiamen, further south, aiming to be closer to his hometown and take advantage of more affordable housing. But price hikes are catching up with him.
"Moving was expensive. I guess that's because of higher fuel and labor costs. But prices for new appliances are also higher, though the most obvious example is food," Yang said.
"I still spend the same amount on food, but I don't go to good restaurants as often as before," he said.
Other data reported Friday showed investment in factory equipment and construction, so-called fixed-asset investment, rose 20.2 per cent in January-April. That compared with a 25.4 per cent rate of increase a year earlier.
Investment in real estate climbed 18.7 per cent, down from 34.3 per cent growth in the first four months of last year and from 23.5 per cent growth in January-March.
The figures come a day after China announced that its trade surplus widened in April as imports barely budged, sharpening fears the economy is not doing enough to stimulate domestic demand and counter a slowdown.
Already, there are signs that China's slowdown is hurting demand for oil, industrial components and consumer goods at a time when US and European growth are weak.
Last year's unexpectedly steep plunge in demand for China's exports due to US and European economic woes prompted communist leaders to reverse course and ease controls on bank lending to help struggling manufacturers.
Further easing measures are expected, with most analysts predicting the central bank will soon reduce reserve requirements for commercial banks.
Growth has fallen steadily since 2010 as a slump in global demand battered exporters and Beijing tightened lending and investment curbs to cool an overheated economy and surging inflation.
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Europe's Airbus lands record $20bn order 18 March 2013 | <urn:uuid:79ae24b1-448e-4624-8241-359e4f292ef4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mwcnews.net/news/business/18808-chinas-economy.html?fontstyle=f-smaller | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948135 | 839 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Hunting, with a helping of guilt
Pollan, who had never hunted before in his life, says he wanted to prepare a meal from the ground up: kill the food, prepare it, eat it. His goal was to experience the full karmic consequences of the food chain.
What followed was a sort of "Gomer Pyle goes hunting" escapade, infused with atavistic thrills, guilt and disgust.
Very few things, least of all hunting, lend themselves to overanalysis. And the article, while it contained some interesting points, had overanalysis in spades.
I grew up hunting squirrels and deer with my dad and brothers. I didn't always look forward to it, because it meant getting up before dawn and heading out into the cold woods to wait for first light. And during deer season there were so many other hunters that it felt a bit like a war zone. That's what made us eventually give it up: walking along just below a ridge line and listening to bullets whizzing overhead. Venison steak just wasn't worth the risk of being shot by morons.
But once the sun came out and it warmed up, hunting was full of simple pleasures. Companionship, for one; the challenge, for another: spotting game, walking quietly, sitting so still that the animals forget you're there, and of course shooting accurately. A walk in the woods on a beautiful fall day, but a walk with a purpose -- something that was very appealing to me as a teenager.
But the ultimate purpose was food, not killing. I've never understood simple sport hunting, killing things for the sake of killing things. But I've always been comfortable about my place atop the food chain. Shooting a squirrel is little different from catching a fish or buying a steak. You catch it, you gut it, you eat it. I see little moral difference between buying a roast in the supermarket and killing the roast myself.
Pollan goes on about how disgusting it was to gut the pig and see its insides, and cites some credible arguments about the evolutionary advantages of disgust. But I think he overprojects from his single experience. The first time I had to gut a fish, it was disgusting. The 50th time, it was routine. When my dad and I gutted a deer for the first time, he pointed out all the organs as we worked. It was a biology lesson, not a moral one.
I wonder if Pollan could write such a lengthy self-examination on fishing, and for some reason I think no. Shooting a pig (as Pollan does) has some moral attraction/repellant for him that catching and gutting a bass would not. But they are the same act, just with different tools. A deer rifle isn't any more or less immoral or mysterious than a fishing pole. But it seems to hold a lot more mystique for people unfamiliar with either. Which leads me to think that Pollan's discomfort has more to do with guns than hunting.
Pollan makes one good point: hunting makes you appreciate where your food comes from. You understand why ancient hunters all over the world considered hunting almost a religious experience, and gave thanks to their quarry for giving up its life so the hunter could live. Supermarkets let us take for granted what perhaps shouldn't be, both because we don't appreciate it and because the hidden nature of the modern food chain gives rise to things like factory farms -- things that produce far worse moral dilemmas than gunning down a mammal.
I haven't hunted since I became an adult, not because of any moral qualms but because of lack of opportunity or abiding interest. I still fish, though, and the reason remains the same: I am an omnivore, and nothing tastes better than fresh-caught fish, lightly breaded and cooked over a fire. And the day spent walking the shore or drowsing in a canoe, line dangling in the water with a worm or casting a lure toward likely hiding spots, is a day of relaxation and being a part of nature, not just an observer of it.
Update: Here's what another blogger thought of Pollan's piece.
Michael Pollan, food chain, hunting, fishing, midtopia | <urn:uuid:efbb8022-e32f-4ded-bbb8-a9de2471f4bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://midtopia.blogspot.com/2006/03/hunting-with-helping-of-guilt.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975652 | 873 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Princeton creative writing professor Jeffrey Eugenides takes readers into the classroom in his new novel, "The Marriage Plot," about three college students on the cusp of graduation. In his own classroom at Princeton, Eugenides talks to students about his creative process. "I try to have my students realize that all the mistakes they're making are mistakes that I've made and sometimes continue to make," he said.
Photo by Frank Wojciechowski
Play video of Eugenides.
Video stills courtesy of Seftel Productions
At Princeton and in fiction, Eugenides dives into classroom
Posted November 4, 2011; 12:00 p.m.
In his new novel "The Marriage Plot," Princeton creative writing professor Jeffrey Eugenides takes the reader into a college classroom where English major Madeleine Hanna is trying to carve out a life for herself in which literature is a guiding force. Eugenides, who himself was once a student with similar aspirations, hopes to help Princeton undergraduates also engage deeply with writing in his own classroom. Teaching, he says, is one of the toughest challenges he faces.
Teaching "is in a way the most difficult thing I do," Eugenides said, who talks about his writing and teaching in the accompanying video. "I have a much easier time standing up in front of 500 people and giving a lecture or reading my work than meeting the 10 faces around a seminar table and trying to say something that's useful to them. It's a hard task, and one I certainly haven't mastered."
"The Marriage Plot" centers on Madeleine Hanna, who is studying semiotics while secretly clinging to her enjoyment of the old-fashioned storytelling in books by Jane Austen and George Eliot. "What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative!" Eugenides writes. (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Eugenides)
Eugenides is, however, a master of the modern novel, having written the critically acclaimed "The Virgin Suicides" and "Middlesex," winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
His new novel, "The Marriage Plot," opens on graduation day at Brown University — Eugenides' alma mater — and tells the story of three students on the cusp of graduation and the love triangle in which they become entangled. Set in the early 1980s, the novel is a coming-of-age tale that follows the characters — the lovely, bookish Madeleine; her boyfriend, depressed genius Leonard Bankhead; and the lovelorn, spiritual seeker Mitchell Grammaticus — as they navigate college semiotics, clinical depression, a post-collegiate trip to Calcutta and the pain that often accompanies love. The title makes reference to the narrative structure of the 19th-century novels Madeleine is studying, in which the central concern of the plot is a woman's marriage prospects.
Eugenides, a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, arrived at Princeton in 2007 to assume his first full-time faculty position. He briefly taught at Princeton from 1999 to 2000 before moving to Berlin, where he wrote full time.
Teaching, for him, "is mainly remembering what it was like when I was sitting in the chair across from my creative writing teacher," said Eugenides, who earned a master's degree in English and creative writing from Stanford University. "I try to have my students realize that all the mistakes they're making are mistakes that I've made and sometimes continue to make."
For senior Megan Hogan, studying with Eugenides "definitely changed how I write. My prose is much more descriptive and confident now, and I venture further into my characters' heads." This semester Eugenides is teaching "Introductory Fiction" and traveling on a 17-city book tour for his new novel. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)
Megan Hogan, who is working with Eugenides on her senior thesis, said, "He encourages you to take risks, to approach subjects and styles and themes you always wanted to write about but didn't think you could." Hogan described him as "unfailingly enthusiastic" and "incredibly honest about your work."
Taking Eugenides' class her sophomore year "definitely changed how I write," Hogan said. "My prose is much more descriptive and confident now, and I venture further into my characters' heads. Even after stories of mine had been workshopped in class, Professor Eugenides would invite me to his office hours to discuss them some more."
Wrestling with semiotics and storytelling
Writing "The Marriage Plot," which Eugenides started a few years before coming to Princeton, was a chance to reflect on his undergraduate days, when he flirted with being an actor, wore thrift-shop suits and studied semiotics, a critical approach to studying literature and other cultural forms focused on the analysis of signs, symbols and the things to which they refer.
"Semiotics was all the craze in the '80s, especially at Brown," he said.
While Madeleine wrestles with what she sees as the coldness of semiotics, she secretly clings to her enjoyment of the romantic intrigues and old-fashioned storytelling in books by Jane Austen and George Eliot. "What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative!" Eugenides writes.
In the novel, Eugenides draws from his own experience traveling in India after college, when he volunteered for a brief time at Mother Teresa's Home for Dying Destitutes. The character Mitchell also visits the Mother Teresa home, placing pills on the patients' tongues and giving them head massages while pining for Madeleine.
The chapter on Mitchell's travels in India "is the shortest in the book and took me the longest to write," Eugenides said. "The difficulty was to get distance between my own memories and the fiction I was trying to create." He rewrote the chapter several times, eventually trimming 60 pages.
While Eugenides dips into his life experience in his fiction at times, he says he prefers not to. "Writing autobiographically is difficult for me and it causes a lot of trouble, so I try not to stay too close to my life, even though people will always think I'm writing about my life."
But he does rely on his own emotional experiences to shape his characters.
A billboard for Eugenides' new novel, "The Marriage Plot," looms over Times Square. On Oct. 30, the book debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times best-seller list. (Photo by Nick Barberio)
"All of the characters in this book are like me in many ways," he said. For example, Mitchell, like Eugenides, is from Detroit and is half Greek. "I usually have a strong emotional, intellectual connection with all the characters, including the female characters," he said. "You can disguise parts of your life, especially if you write from a different gender."
Writing, for Eugenides, can be a rewarding experience or a demoralizing one, "depending on the day," he said.
He explained that he is usually pretty tight-lipped about a work-in-progress, but a few years ago he opened up to fellow Princeton creative writing professor Edmund White about what he was working on. The new novel, then in its early stages, featured a family coming together for a debutante party, which occurred at the end of the novel. When Eugenides described the story to White, he responded, "Don't do it. A party at the end never works." The conversation prompted Eugenides to take a hard look at what he had written. Ultimately, he put aside the debutante story but kept the characters, transforming the story into "The Marriage Plot."
"I usually don't talk about my work to anyone. I'm pretty secretive about it," Eugenides said. "But I was glad I opened up to Ed, because when he said it, it started me thinking."
White was surprised to later learn how seriously Eugenides took his comments, but he is enjoying the results, he said.
"I'm loving 'The Marriage Plot,' which is, among other things, a very funny satire of academic life and its fads," White said.
Encouraging students 'to be ambitious in their own writing'
Eugenides made his literary debut in 1993 with "The Virgin Suicides," which tells the story of five sisters who commit suicide, narrated by the teenage boys who are mesmerized by them. Much of the book was written while Eugenides worked as an executive secretary at the Academy of American Poets, which eventually fired him for his extracurricular writing. The novel was soon bought by a publisher, and when it came out, Eugenides became "a literary celebrity," according to The New York Times. "The Virgin Suicides" was later made into a film by director Sofia Coppola.
His next novel, "Middlesex," published in 2002, is the story of Cal Stephanides, whose genetic abnormality is conveyed in an unforgettable first line: "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." "Middlesex," about the life of a hermaphrodite, landed a pair of coveted trophies: it won the Pulitzer and was selected for Oprah's Book Club. It has since sold 3 million copies.
Winning the Pulitzer "didn't change my life or make writing different," Eugenides said. "But it changed the fate of 'Middlesex' quite a bit, which I'm grateful for, because the subject matter seemed a little off-putting to many people."
Coming nine years after "Middlesex," "The Marriage Plot" was highly anticipated and has been enthusiastically received. Its publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, announced the novel's arrival with a billboard in Times Square and ordered an initial print run of 400,000 copies. On Oct. 30, the book debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times best-seller list. Eugenides is currently on a 17-city book tour, but is still teaching "Introductory Fiction" this semester.
"My classes are full of really smart students who are good writers," he said. "Workshops depend not so much on the teacher as the students. If the students like to talk about the work and are perceptive readers, then everyone benefits from the experience. I try to tell them stories about how I wrote my own work -- I think it's beneficial for them to see that I am often in doubt about how to proceed, and to share strategies I've used to solve problems."
Susan Wheeler, the director of the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton, said Eugenides "encourages his students to be ambitious in their own writing, and to have high expectations of each other. The same mixture of humor, intelligence, insight and empathy evidenced in his fiction marks him as a person."
As "The Marriage Plot" takes flight, Eugenides' students are seeing firsthand how a writer takes his work to the public. Hogan marveled at having a thesis adviser who has a billboard in Times Square and takes her out for tea to discuss her thesis: "He has a larger-than-life personality, and he buys you tea and chats with you about your life." That, she said, "is quintessentially Princeton." | <urn:uuid:08762d94-58fe-4f08-90d0-8ea63e4bbdf0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S32/01/60S19/index.xml?from=2000-10-01&to=2000-11-01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98135 | 2,401 | 1.664063 | 2 |
However, instead of resorting to conventional art materials, Porsche 911 GT2 sports car bonnets have been pressed into service as a “canvass”. The project is the brainchild of Argentinian Jorge Gómez. As both art lover and big fan of the Porsche brand, he came up with the idea of simply combining his two biggest passions, linking two fascinating art forms in the process.
19 important artists from Uruguay and Argentina, including for example Pablo Atchugarry, Rogelio Polesello and Jorge Ferreyra Basso, accepted Gomez’s invitation to lend Porsche bonnets their very own signature and put a creative twist on them. The work on the skin of a racing car inspired the artists to very different works, offering the beholder a great variety of styles and materials employed – from acrylic to enamel, from mosaic tiles to tyre rubber. But from time to time the works of art still fulfil their original purpose as car bonnets, because Gómez occasionally insists on fitting them on his own Porsche 911 GT2 and taking the artworks for a spin. The collection is now making its European debut in the Porsche museum, being exhibited against the impressive backdrop of 23,000 hp. | <urn:uuid:3359059c-9da8-4698-9dce-c83999efa464> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ph.news.yahoo.com/porsche-museum-organizes-new-special-exhibition-september-20-085508753.html?.tsrc=globe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954344 | 251 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The Life and Times of the Code Talker
ISBN 9781101608425 | 82 pages | 04 Dec 2012 | Berkley
Summary of The Life and Times of the Code Talker Summary of The Life and Times of the Code Talker Reviews for The Life and Times of the Code Talker An Excerpt from The Life and Times of the Code Talker
Chester Nez’s memoir was just the beginning. Here are more stories and photos from the last remaining Navajo Code Talker of World War II.
After the publication of his book, Code Talker, Chester Nez reflects on the path that took him to where he is today—from growing up on the New Mexico reservation steeped in the traditions of his Native American ancestors, to his days fighting alongside other Code Talkers, to his hardships and triumphs after the war. Here are stories of his family, then and now, tales of his close relationship to nature and her creatures, accounts of how his life and legacy have changed since publishing his memoir, and a tribute to his fallen friends.
The Life and Times of the Code Talker is the perfect purchase for those who never want Chester Nez’s stories to end…
Includes a preview of Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII
INCLUDES NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS
To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication
Please alert me via email when: | <urn:uuid:d6e1dd77-95ac-434e-961d-43e5a620d8ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781101608425,00.html?The_Life_and_Times_of_the_Code_Talker_Chester_Nez | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950043 | 316 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Matthew - Chapter 1
1 Roll of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham:
8 Asa fathered Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat fathered Joram, Joram fathered Uzziah,
15 Eliud fathered Eleazar, Eleazar fathered Matthan, Matthan fathered Jacob;
17 The sum of generations is therefore: fourteen from Abraham to David; fourteen from David to the Babylonian deportation; and fourteen from the Babylonian deportation to Christ.
19 Her husband Joseph, being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, decided to divorce her informally.
20 He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit.
21 She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.'
22 Now all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the prophet:
More on the Bible
The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.
Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.
Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.
Reading 1, Sirach 17:1-15: The Lord fashioned human beings from the earth, to consign them back to it. He gave them so many ... Psalm, Psalms 103:13-14, 15-16, 17-18: As tenderly as a father treats his children, so Yahweh treats those who fear him; he knows of what ... Gospel, Mark 10:13-16: People were bringing little children to him, for him to touch them. The disciples scolded them, ... Read More | <urn:uuid:e7145486-fe1a-472d-bc6b-af01d23ac118> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholic.org/bible/book.php?id=47&bible_chapter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959448 | 557 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
I guess this fits into this category as well as any…
Many (most?) terms change meaning over long periods of time; any glance at an etymological dictionary will confirm that. But I have occasionally seen changes in meaning within very, very short time periods. For instance, the N-Gram shows the term “uptight” not existing until around 1965, when it showed up in Stevie Wonder’s hit song “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”, wherein it had a distinctly positive connotation (“Baby, everything is alright, uptight and outtasight!”). But very shortly after that, “uptight” came to mean anxious, distressed—nearly the opposite of Wonder’s usage.
Around 1968, I first encountered the term “mindfuck” in the underground paper The Chicago Seed. It referred to an ecstatic state resulting from drug use. But ever since then, mindfuck, in its various forms (“Don’t fuck with my mind”, etc.), has referred to someone “messing with someone’s head”, i.e., playing some sort of unpleasant psychological games with them.
Around 1970, give or take a year, I first heard a form of the term “ripoff” in a conversation with a friend. He referred to someone’s having been killed as having been “ripped off”. The image I got was of someone being snatched off the planet—killed. But ever after that, I only heard ripoff used in reference to theft, not killing.
In some cases, perhaps the first usage I encountered was simply an example of someone misusing a term that was new to them, so that the correct usages I heard thereafter seemed like a change in meaning when they really weren’t. But I’m wondering if something else may be happening in some of these situations.
Does anyone else here have similar experiences to report?
Uptight. The OED cites an outlier “up tight,” with the meaning of tense, as early as 1934, and there are a number of citations from the mid 60s with the same sense. Seems to me more likely that the jazz subculture permuted “uptight” to an opposed meaning, as it did so many other words (e.g., “bad,” “cool”), than that the mainline culture switched the meaning of a subculture word.
The Chicago Seed. Flashbacks. I remember the first issues of this being handed out/vended in Old Town in the late 1960s, when I lived there. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/But to be young was very heaven!
Last edited by kem (2013-02-16 00:24:11)
The Chicago Seed. Flashbacks. I remember the first issues of this being handed out/vended in Old Town in the late 1960s, when I lived there.
Yeah, an issue of the Chicago Seed, brought back from Chicago to my conservative small town of St. Joseph, Michigan by my buddy Duke, was my first look at an underground paper, and a real eye-opener for this Christian fundamentalist teenager with a flat-top haircut! Could acid be far behind?
The bit-of-nostalgia-for-the-old-folks front-of-the-wave distorted song lyric I remember was from the Lovin’ Spoonful’s Do you believe in magic.
Your feet start tapping and you can’t seem to find
How you got there, so just blow your mind
You can’t blow your own mind unless even you are surprised by your brilliance. | <urn:uuid:ac6437ba-1f7e-47a5-97e0-3418e6b04c11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=16829 | 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 | 0.957814 | 880 | 1.726563 | 2 |
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Contribute your own thoughts, experience, questions, and knowledge to this survey for the benefit of all MedPage Today Healthcare Professionals and Expert Patients™.
alfonso e. sierra
The fact is that a sizable part of society may have decided since 15 -20 years ago and for several
reasons, all valid personally, that pregnancies after 38 - 40+ years are OK and desired. Both T 13
(more males) and T18 (more frequent and with more females that survive more than males with
adequate care) both have increased in incidence, T13, 13% and T 18, 22 to 24% since these times. If
no fetal DNA analysis is done in these pregnancies, T13 and T18 (and T21 if nothing else is done)
could be a finding at birth. If any of the 2 (T13 and 18) are detected prenatally, some obstetricians like
to perform a C-Section and call the pediatrics neonatal services to attend the delivery for need for
intubation and respiratory support.
Survival of these children was not the greatest earlier but is improving since at least 2003, more
recently thanks to requests of the parents to the pediatric and nursing providers to give full,
unrestricted needed care. a Medline search this morning disclosed several articles from Japan (4),
Swiss Federation, EU (3 from GB) and at least five from the USA., that in the last 2 1/2 years have
described progress and permeates the same content as the article discussed today by
Medpagetoday.com, namely the pride and joy of the couples and the siblings.
The medical provider opinions are also changing (J. of Medical Ethics July 2012, pp 391-5)
Objective Standards of care regarding obstetric management of life-threatening anomalies are not
defined. It is hypothesised that physicians' management of these pregnancies is variable and
influenced by demographic factors. Design A questionnaire was mailed to members of the Society of
Maternal-Fetal Medicine with valid US addresses assessing obstetric management of both 'uniformly
lethal' (eg, anencephaly, renal agenesis) and 'uniformly severe, commonly lethal' (eg, trisomy 13 and
18) anomalies. Respondents were asked to answer as if not limited by state/institutional restrictions.
Fisher's exact or χ(2) tests were used as appropriate and correction made for multiple comparisons in
analyses that were not prespecified. Results The response rate was 36% (732/2038). Nearly 100% of
respondents discuss termination for both uniformly and commonly lethal anomalies. In continuing
pregnancies, with patient request for obstetric non-intervention 99% of providers would comply for
either uniformly or commonly lethal anomalies. The majority 'encourage' such management, but some
were non-directive or discouraged this management. In continuing pregnancies, with patient request
for full obstetric intervention the majority of respondents was willing to comply for both uniformly
(71%) and commonly (82%) lethal anomalies. While most practitioners 'discouraged' full intervention,
some were non-directive or encouraged this management. Demographics and severity of anomaly
influenced counselling. Conclusion Discrepancies exist regarding the management of life-threatening
fetal anomalies. Patients may be offered different options based on practitioner demographics. The
majority of physicians comply with patient (parents. aes) wishes. Differences were noted when
comparing the management of lethal with that of severe commonly lethal anomalies, suggesting that
practitioners make a distinction when counselling patients..
So the title of this post is "Support Group May Offer False Hope in
T13-18 Kids", however, it is a summation of the study from
Pediatrics. Can you clarify the False Hope that you are referring
to? Being on several of the social networks referenced for the
study, I would have to say that we are all real people with real
trisomy children and experiences. How can it be false hope when it
is our reality being shared? And you don't even support your title.
Based on this inaccurately titled article and the comment posted
already, I wonder if in the medical profession ever step out of
their box and see what they are saying? If you were to visit an
organization that has a lot of trisomy children, or get on to one of
these communities to see what they are about, you would see that
many medical responses to the trisomy 18/13 debates just sound
silly. They may sound intellectually sound and important, but
usually are just filled with medical rhetoric and little reality.
Most of the "living" trisomy kids are not from parents of advanced
maternal age. True, more are being born. But if you actually get out
"the box" and go to the real world where these kids are, you would
see, amazingly, most of the kids belonging to younger parents.
And... they are not "surviving" simply because there are more of
them being born. More and more families are requesting, and even
pushing, for more medical treatments. Because of social networking,
families are becoming informed decision makers and leaning on
parental experiential data of communities adding into the thousands,
instead of relying on old genetics data and studies involving very
The medical community needs to realize that the value, importance,
and - YES - KNOWLEDGE of the parents' experiences TRUMPS outdated
genetic materials and old school teachings about "lethal anomalies".
This is the first and only study I've seen that actually gets
information from such a large sample size. And it paints such a
picture different from what they teach in med school. Neonatologists
and Geneticists, especially, need to move forward with a willingness
to learn from these communities and not to shun the wisdom of true | <urn:uuid:490c1c2c-0903-4e01-a76d-c0c8cf976b46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.medpagetoday.com/comments.cfm?tbid=33856 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941965 | 1,255 | 1.757813 | 2 |
08.Sep.2011 Are phonebooks junkmail?
Paul from Middlsex wrote to us to say:
“I’ve just received another Yellow Pages directory through my letterbox and it is now in the recycling bin. It upsets me to have to keep dealing with all the waste paper that comes through my door – even though I have a sticker on the letterbox that reads: “no unsolicited or junk mail”.
“This prompted me to send a comment to Yellow Pages on their website below, although I guess they won’t respond. I thought I’d also search on-line to see if there was anything else I could do to stop waste being pushed through my door.”
Paul’s letter to Yellow Pages:
Hi Yellow Pages,
I have just received your directory through the letterbox, even though my letterbox has a sticker reading: “no unsolicited mail”.
I use your services on-line, but it upsets me to keep receiving your directories through the door – I feel it is a waste of paper and a huge drain on the environment.
Unfortunately the directory is now in the recycling bin. I am also frustrated that it has now become my problem to depose of the directory.
Can you advise what else I can do to stop the Yellow Pages directory being delivered to my house and what Yellow Pages are doing to help reduce its impact on the environment?
Can anyone advise Paul how to stop reciving Yellow Pages junk mail? | <urn:uuid:297baf71-1b53-438a-999f-ac9432439778> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.saynotophonebooks.org/2011/09/08/are-phonebooks-junkmail/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965931 | 318 | 1.734375 | 2 |
As long as I can remember, Beirut has been the go-to example of a war-torn city. Only as an adult did I learn that Beirut used to be the Paris of the Middle East. According to Resolving the Clash of Civilizations, it’s on its way back:
I recently returned home from Beirut, Lebanon, where I spent a month covering the democratic Cedar Revolution and Syria’s withdrawal from the country after a 30 year-long occupation. Few places in the world beat Beirut as a foreign assignment. The city is packed from one end to the other with the classiest hotels, the hippest night clubs, the most stylish bars, the fanciest restaurants, the coziest cafes, and the best shopping districts this side of New York and Paris. But Lebanon’s sophisticated and freewheeling culture isn’t the only thing that makes a trip to that country both attractive and memorable. Nor is the nascent democracy movement the only encouraging news. One of the best stories out of Lebanon is the one that receives almost no coverage at all — the end of the long-simmering sectarian hatefest and a genuine yearning for friendship between Christians and Muslims. | <urn:uuid:dbf13d4e-938a-4a07-986f-acd4e3b2be03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.isegoria.net/2005/05/resolving-the-clash-of-civilizations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940842 | 246 | 1.570313 | 2 |
HOME | IN THE MAGAZINE | BACK ISSUES | MARCH/APRIL 2011
Driving south on Route 29, heading toward the heart of Virginia’s Monticello viticultural area, it’s easy to understand why Thomas Jefferson was so madly, deeply in love with the countryside here, and why he held such unwavering hope for growing his beloved vitis vinifera on its lush and lovely land. In the distance is the enchanting indigo majesty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. At the roadside, the curving, grassy-green landscape rolls along, rimmed by white split-rail fences and studded with fluffy sheep, black-and-white dairy cows, and shiny-coated horses.
But while Virginia’s bucolic beauty seems to promise an agricultural paradise, the Founding Father could never really figure out how to get those grapes to grow—not for lack of trying. Jefferson brought cuttings from 23 vitis vinifera varietals back to Virginia from Europe with visions of vintage cork-popping dancing in his head, but sadly for the agrarian-loving leader, he would only live to watch them wither and die during his early 19th-century experiments from the rootstock-nibbling pest, phylloxera. If only the third President of the United States could see it and sip it now. The 1970s brought the first serious efforts to grow wine in Virginia since Jefferson’s early attempts. Now nearly 190 wineries call the state home, making it the fifth-largest wine-producing state in the country.
This success hasn’t come without its challenges. The fickle, gloves-off weather patterns of the East Coast make grape-growing a series of vintage-to-vintage trials and tribulations. But ask any of the tenacious, challenge-loving winemakers among the Virginia’s six official AVAs why they put up with it, and they’ll tell you the same thing: They’re addicted to the challenge of making a great wine when they haven’t a clue what Mother Nature might hurl at them, and they relish the chance to show the world what they can do and which varietals thrive best in America’s Old Dominion state.
The 800-acre Barboursville Vineyards estate is arguably where Virginia’s successful modern-day winemaking really began. After visiting the U.S. during the 1976 bicentennial, Italian-native Gianni Zonin—a member of one of the more prominent family-owned wine producers in Italy, with more than 4,000 acres of vine land spread across seven of Italy’s grape-growing regions—fell in love with Monticello and the surrounding areas that now make up some of Virginia’s best and brightest winemaking regions. But it wasn’t just the Jeffersonian history that drew him in. He was struck by how similar the climate was to his native Vicenza in Northern Italy. The former estate of James Barbour, governor of Virginia during the War of 1812, was up for grabs, and so Barboursville Vineyards was born.
Today, under the deft hand of winemaker Luca Paschina, the winery has grown to be one of the largest producers in the area. It crafts about 40,000 cases annually from 13 varietals, with nods to the homeland like the 2008 Nebbiolo, which is faintly floral on the nose but with some great blackberry and cherry fruit, and a grounding note of tobacco. And the 2006 passito-style Malvaxia (they spell Malvasia with an “x” at Barboursville, just for kicks) smells of chestnut honey and apricots and is devilishly luscious on the tongue.
Barboursville Vineyards, 17655 Winery Rd., Barboursville, Va.; 540-832-3824
To discuss Virginia wine and not invoke the name Gabriele Rausse is like talking about the American Revolution and skipping over, say, a guy named George Washington. “They all tell me I was going to fail,” says Rausse in his thick Italian accent. And why not? When he arrived on the scene in 1976—as Gianni Zonin’s pick to bring a little Italian vineyard management know-how to Charlottesville—there wasn’t much happening on the wine scene in Virginia. Only one winery was attempting to grow vitis vinifera, and mostly Chardonnay at that. Still, Rausse felt drawn to the area. “It chose me,” he says.
Encouraged by the challenge, he was determined to make Virginia a world-class wine-producing region. “You can plant if a plant is in the right place,” he says simply, so that’s what he went about figuring out. His initial failures were tough: In his first planting, he lost 30 percent of his crop. By 1983, though, he’d successfully grafted 19 of Thomas Jefferson’s original 23 failed European varietals onto healthy rootstock, a feat that has earned him the sometime nickname of “Father of Virginia Viticulture.”
Rausse started his own winery in Charlottesville in 1998, and when he’s not crafting outstanding Viognier or surprisingly elegant Cabernet Sauvignon (a varietal not well known for its success in Virginia, but under Rausse’s spell, is elegant and earthy in both his oaked and unoaked versions), he’s fittingly the Associate Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello. Rausse does not keep a tasting room, but you can pick several of them up at the Greenwood Gourmet Grocery, which has the largest selection of Virginia wine for sale in the area.
Gabriele Rausse Winery, PO Box 3956, Charlottesville, Va.; 434-296-5328
Greenwood Gourmet Grocery, 6701 Rockfish Gap Turnpike, Crozet, Va.; 540-456-6431
The beautiful, vaulted-ceiling tasting room at Veritas, where empty bottles and barrels double as wall art and broad, leather couches and long wooden tables make for comfortable, at-your-leisure tasting, is enough to make you want to linger. But their reds truly make it difficult to leave. Since opening in 2002, British ex-pat Andrew Hodson and his daughter, Emily, have given a nod to their homeland with a plummy Port-style wine they like to call Othello and a plush Claret made of 55 percent Merlot, 30 percent Cabernet Franc, and a bit of Petit Verdot.
As to that latter grape, in January 2011 Veritas released its first 100 percent Petit Verdot—rich with black cherries and licorice, and a bright, minty edge. For that wine, he and Emily go for a more extracted style by extending the maceration on the skins for three weeks, which shows in this wine’s deep, rich ruby color. Says Hodson, “I think it’s the future of Virginia wine.”
Veritas, 145 Saddleback Farm, Afton, Va.; 540-456-8000
To taste Claude Thibaut’s creamy 2006 vintage Blanc de Blanc—all nougat and pears with a bracing green apple finish—is to wish that there were more than just 25 cases of the stuff made. Thankfully, there will be more where that came from, as Champagne-native Thibaut and his notable talents are here to stay. After coming to the States and crafting a 25th anniversary sparkling wine for Kendall-Jackson in Napa from 2000 to 2002, he wound up in Charlottesville, Va., in 2003, crafting the sparkling wines for Kluge Estate Winery that would soon become renowned.
By 2005, Thibaut struck out on his own, partnering with Champagne producer Manuel Janisson to create their own 2,000-bottle label, Thibaut-Janisson. Working almost exclusively with Chardonnay (he also makes a tasty, strawberry and cherry scented-sparkling rosé for Veritas, which can be sampled in their tasting room in Afton), Thibaut is excessively careful about when his grapes are picked in order to maintain his trademark green-apple finish. “In Virginia, there is a very short window to pick Champagne grapes, otherwise you’ll go from green apple into white pear and, finally, pineapple.”
Thibaut also works without a tasting room, but his wines are in shops across the state, like Whole Foods and Dean & Deluca, and Restaurant Eve in Alexandria keeps his sparkling wine on the list, too. Oh, and his Blanc de Chardonnay was served at last year's White House state dinner—not too shabby.
Thibaut Janisson, 1413 Dairy Rd., Charlottesville, Va.; 434-996-3307
When you pull into King Family Vineyards’ 327-acre farm in Crozet, you quickly get the idea that being a good land steward is high on the priority list. On the left you’ll see a broad swathe of open wetlands and a sign explaining it’s a waterfowl restoration habitat, which the Kings established in a partnership with the North Atlantic Wetland Conservation Commission. On the right sit 15 acres of vines, from which the Kings’ mostly estate-harvested wines are produced.
Winemaker and Rhône native Matthieu Finot takes a non-interventionist bent, opting for unfiltered wines that express the character of the land from which they come. “A good winemaker is doing nothing,” he says. “The work should be done in the vineyard.” Here, that means the harvesting, sorting and de-stemming are all done by hand for this boutique, 5,000-case operation that first put down vines in 1998.
Amble into the tasting room, where beneath a deer-antler chandelier you can sample Finot’s skillful touch with oak, from his elegant, well-balanced 2009 Cabernet Franc, full of strawberries, plums and spice, to his 2009 Chardonnay, which undergoes malolactic fermentation and lee-stirring in barrels, resulting in a beautiful lemon-meringue and gently tropical-vanilla quality.
King Family Vineyards, 6550 Roseland Farm, Crozet, Va.; 434-823-7800
One of the newer kids on the block, owners David and Margo Pollak of Pollak Vineyards only opened their rustic-sleek, white clapboard tasting room in 2008, although they purchased the 100-acre farmland and put down vines for their all-estate-grown winery in 2003. Still, this was no whim for the former West Coast couple: They were bitten by the wine bug back in the 1970s, when the excitement of what could be in Napa spurred David to invest in one of the first wineries to give it a go in Carneros.
Of the eight varietals grown here, the reds really shine, like their 2008 Merlot, with its super soft, round tannins, black-cherry fruit, and nice, long finish. It spends 14 months in half-new, half-neutral French oak, and the easy, food-friendly 2009 Durant Red, a medium-light-bodied blend of equal parts Cabernet Franc and Merlot, reminiscent of a Beaujolais with a pretty strawberry aroma and just a little spice on the palate.
Pollak Vineyards, 330 Newtown Road, Greenwood, Va.; 540-456-8844
Check out our March/April 2011 issue for recommendations and tasting notes for Virginia wines. | <urn:uuid:48034b3c-a6a1-43fc-9479-d8e5c12420b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://imbibemagazine.com/Virginia-WIne-Country/Print | 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 | 0.945924 | 2,520 | 1.726563 | 2 |
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Exciting news has just reached us that a country record flock of 90+ Sociable Lapwings was present at Salalah in Oman on Christmas Day, 2010.
After an absence of any firm location data since early October, Erzhan – our most experienced traveller – has just popped up on our radar again. For the fourth year running we can confirm he is now back in a wintering flock in Sudan.
A new transmission just received from Dinara now locates her close to the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
A surprise transmission from Abaj on Thursday December 23rd alerted us that he was still alive, his transmitter was once again functioning and he was probably now wintering somewhere in the Middle East. Today we have just received the great news of a further transmission from Abaj that places him a few kilometres north of Al Qa’arah in the west of Saudi Arabia.
One of our tagged Sociable Lapwings has been tracked all the way from the breeding grounds in Kazakhstan to wintering grounds around the Great Rann of Kutch. Dinara, an adult female Sociable Lapwing tagged in May 2010 at Birlik in central Kazakhstan, was tracked spending at least ten days in the Indus valley in Pakistan [...]
‘The Amazing Journey’ project was designed primarily to improve our understanding of the migration routes that Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwings use so that conservation measures can be put in place. The data we are now obtaining is proving extremely interesting. For example Tatyana, an adult female Sociable Lapwing tagged in May 2010 at Kantarlau in [...]
Jamie Buchan has kindly sent us details of three Sociable Lapwings seen in Qatar on the 27th November, following on from the two sighted south-west of Doha on November 18th (again reported by Jamie). The three birds were seen at Arakhiya Farm, 30-kilometres south west of Doha, and were apparently associating with Northern Lapwings. The [...]
Two new eye-witness reports we have just received confirm Sociable Lapwings are now passing further south through the Middle East and have arrived in The Gulf.
In addition to providing important new sightings records, Birders’ contributions to The Amazing Journey website are also providing extremely valuable information about Sociable Lapwing behaviour and habitat association. These are an important aid to conservation planning. | <urn:uuid:a37d5806-7072-4b61-9c32-209f33a00bc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.birdlife.org/sociable-lapwing/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969262 | 487 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Pricing is something many bakers struggle with every day. We love what we do and want our products to be affordable so everyone can enjoy them. But then we also need to cover costs and make a living.
So here's where the money goes. For every dollar that comes into the bakery...
9% is actually state, county and city sales tax. I collect it from the customer, pay any and all fees associated with collecting that money (such as credit card processing) then remit the entire amount to the proper agency.
25% covers food and packaging. Things you'd expect like flour and sugar and butter and eggs. Plus bakery boxes and cellophane bags. And bakery string and labels. All of the items needed to transform raw ingredients into baked products and get them to your home safely. This includes some things you might overlook like gloves and plastic wrap, tape, cups and lids, parchment paper and garbage bags. Plus all of the cool decorating items that make our products special such as sprinkles and gel colors and edible glitter and chocolate and gum paste and fondant.
36% -- and my biggest single expense -- is labor (not mine). Payroll plus the employer contributions to social security. Plus worker's compensation insurance. These are the people who help bake and decorate your cakes and cookies, help me open and close the shop, without whom I could not attempt to run my business -- clearly money well spent.
9% goes to rent, utilities and phone.
2% goes to advertising. Very thankful here that Facebook is free and the cost of maintaining the website is minimal.
7% goes to miscellaneous overhead. Things like banking fees, permits and business licenses, equipment repair, our monthly pest control service, supplies and smallwares.
Which leaves 12% for me as the business owner. I made more money when I had a "real" job in industry, and benefits too, but running the bakery is much more satisfying in ways that money can't buy.
We make almost everything in the bakery from scratch, so my food costs are higher than a grocery store bakery's might be, and so are my labor costs. Also included are the food and labor costs associated with making food we give away, to children who come into the shop, and as donations through gift cards for charitable events. Plus the cost of making items we don't sell and have to throw away, breakage, waste, you-name-it.
I never expected to make a fortune running a small bakery, but you could not pay me enough money do do anything else.
And if you'd rather buy your baked goods from a grocery store or home-based baker because they are cheaper, I understand. | <urn:uuid:4fe46bd8-3b9c-4f84-aee8-c1da6c7487ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caketalk.typepad.com/caketalk/2012/02/the-dreaded-p-word.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965642 | 558 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Gilmore reiterates support for same-sex marriage21/10/2012 - 15:08:26
The Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has once again voiced his support for gay marriage.
Speaking at the International Lesbian and Gay Association of Europe's conference in Dublin this afternoon, Eamon Gilmore said same-sex marriage is not a gay rights issue but a civil rights issue.
He said the issue would be considered by the Constitutional Convention.
His comments come after a new opinion poll in today's Sunday Times found that two thirds of Irish voters support gay marriage, while just over a quarter believe the law should remain unchanged with provision for civil partnerships.
Director of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network Tiernan Brady said it was likely we would need a referendum in order to introduce same-sex marriage in Ireland.
"The current thinking politically and the thinking by many Attorney Generals over the past number of years has been that the issue (of same-sex marriage) would require a referendum and couldn't solely be done legislatively," he said.
"The Constitutional Convention will examine that and move it forward, hopefully, to a referendum as quickly as possible."
Eamon Gilmore said attitudes in the country were almost unrecognisable to those that prevailed a generation ago but insisted more progress was needed.
“That ILGA Europe should choose our capital city, Dublin, for this conference is a source of pride for us,” he said.
“This city, and this Republic, have been on their own remarkable journey in relation to the rights of LGBTI persons.
“There is a generation of young Irish people, for whom the Ireland of 20 or 30 years ago would be almost unrecognisable.
“Thousands of young LGBTI persons, who in the past would have felt the need to live elsewhere, have opted to stay in Ireland.
“And by doing so, they have enriched the country and made it a more tolerant place. Many in public life have emerged as role models for young LGBTI people and, in recent years, civil partnership ceremonies have been occasions of great celebration around the country.
“That journey is still incomplete. As I have stated elsewhere, the right of same-sex couples to marry is not a gay rights issue, it is a civil rights issue, and one that I support.
“The question of same-sex marriage is one that will be considered by our forthcoming Constitutional Convention. This is an innovation in Irish democracy, where citizens and public representatives will come together to consider what changes might be made to our Constitution, so that it better reflects not just the society we are now, but the society we aspire to.”
The conference was attended by delegates from 42 countries across Europe who work for LGBTI rights.
Yesterday members of Ireland’s transgender community held a rally in Dublin to demand greater recognition in law.
They were joined at the gates of Leinster House by supporters from elsewhere in Europe at the protest calling for new legislation to have their changed gender acknowledged legally.
Organisers claim transgender people in Ireland and elsewhere in the world are treated as if they have a mental disorder.
They said the time had come for the introduction of “inclusive and respectful” gender recognition legislation and criticised progress made by the current Irish government on the issue.
more stories like this:
- once per day, no spam. | <urn:uuid:51d2de22-e3ed-4895-b255-213762f944d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/gilmore-reiterates-support-for-same-sex-marriage-571301.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965853 | 695 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Marblehead Museum & Historical Society
Located in the historic district of Old Marblehead, the Marblehead Museum & Historical Society serves the community with a treasure trove of historical artifacts and archives, as well as guided tours of the Lee Mansion, which was built in 1768. More than 200 privately owned colonial period homes contribute to the historic charm of this important fishing port and harbor. Step back into history and support the preservation of one of New England's oldest maritime towns.
- Hours: Tue - Sat, 10am - 4pm
- Handicap Accessible: No
- Student discounts: No
- Senior discounts: No
- Private parties: No
- Food/drink: No
- Alcohol served: No
- Coat/bag check: Yes
- Parking: On-street: free
- Restrictions: No smoking
- What makes this community special?: Marblehead is a town with great history and a will to preserve it.
- What is an interesting historical or little known fact about this town?: The town was named Marblehead by settlers who mistook its granite ledges for marble.
- Guided tours?: Yes
- Guided tour languages: English
- Audio tours?: No
- Gift shop: Yes
- Gift shop hours: Open during store hours and online.
- Cameras allowed?: Yes
- Membership levels: Individual | <urn:uuid:c06c47d7-0391-4774-8cf1-921980c61d0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marblehead.patch.com/listings/marblehead-museum-historical-society | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93753 | 281 | 1.5 | 2 |
by Staff Writers
New York (AFP) Nov 15, 2012
Eat, warm up, clean up: more than two weeks after superstorm Sandy, thousands of people in a remote New York City beach community are struggling just for the basics.
From 10:00 am in Far Rockaway, there was already a long line of people waiting patiently outside the library for overcoats promised by a charity at midday. Two other lines had formed in front of a nearby church.
One was for hot food, the other for daily needs like cleaning liquids, batteries, diapers, brooms and water bottles. Volunteers stood by, offering advice on how to apply for all manner of other aid.
The Rockaway neighborhood is in Queens, part of New York City, but since Sandy struck with huge floods and hurricane-strength winds on October 29, it can feel like somewhere in another, poorer country.
Sandy knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and damaged or destroyed many homes through flooding. But while most of the New York area has gotten back on its feet, Rockaway is still crawling.
Everywhere in the modest community south of John F. Kennedy International Airport it's the same story: long lines of people needing help from churches, federal aid offices, and a multitude of charities.
Many people come with shopping carts that they fill up with everything they can collect, then walk slowly away.
"Do you have a heater? I need a heater," asked Kiomara Espaillat, a retired woman with a missing leg who was waiting in her wheelchair for an overcoat. She said she lives alone in her apartment, still without heat or light, or even a phone.
"Nobody is telling us anything," she complained.
Bilma, a 28-year-old immigrant from El Salvador, was in line with her four-month-old baby. She also didn't have electricity.
"They said maybe tomorrow. It's very difficult," she said.
Some said they'd been helped initially by friends or family, but as time dragged on that became impossible.
"It's finished," said Alba Hernandez, an immigrant from Nicaragua lining up for food outside the church for the first time.
The 16 days that have passed since Sandy seemed like an eternity for many.
On Beach Channel Drive, Linda Di Cenio was distraught over her small home, bought just last June. There was still water oozing from the floor.
Like her neighbors, she'd emptied her belongings out onto the sidewalk in an attempt to dry them in the increasingly cold air. She said she had no insurance.
"I don't know where to go, I cannot sleep," she said.
Nearby, volunteers had set up distribution of clean socks and towels in the garden of another house.
Cecilia, 35, who had two teenage children, was happy to get a free dressing gown.
"I am so cold at home. My landlord says she has to change the boiler but she has no money. She has no idea when it will be done," she said, adding that she had to boil water to be able to wash.
"If we don't laugh we cry," Cecilia said.
At another corner, there were abandoned apartments with doors off their hinges and waterlines showing the flooding had reached more than three feet (one meter) high.
Inside, there was a children's shoe, a pile of clothing, toys, and sand. The renters apparently never returned.
Along the beach, bulldozers pushed back the sand that piled up in the streets. Parked cars were still covered with sand, while further along, on a main street, there was a wrecked boat.
Police officers stood at some crossroads to direct traffic where there were no lights. Most stores were still closed.
On the west side of the peninsula, on Rockaway Beach boulevard, the noise of generators used to supply electricity was deafening. There was an impromptu clinic in a house still smelling of damp.
In front, the scorched ruins of houses destroyed in a blaze at the height of the hurricane were being razed. Passersby wore hospital masks to avoid breathing the dust.
Janina Joniec, 82, looked out on the scene while sweeping her staircase. She was covered in bruises, the result of falling down unlit stairs.
"Look, my son says I look like a zombie," she said.
The skyscrapers of Manhattan were barely visible off in the distance.
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
A world of storm and tempest
When the Earth Quakes
|The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2012 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement| | <urn:uuid:f67bc0a7-e6d2-4940-9fd6-5f255edebf3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Lifes_no_beach_for_seaside_victims_of_Sandy_999.html | 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 | 0.976755 | 1,074 | 1.546875 | 2 |
After I accused American private schools of hiding vital data, a practice that makes it hard for me to compare them to other schools, National Association of Independent Schools President Patrick F. Bassett agreed to a chat. His organization represents many well-known private schools:
Mathews: You have said you don’t like my way of comparing schools. Okay, what way of comparing schools would you prefer?
Bassett: When parents ask us, “What’s the best school,” we say, “The school that best meets your child’s needs.” The first step in finding that perfect school is to evaluate what your child needs. An environment that’s more nurturing? Or more competitive? Does she thrive in a larger community or one that is smaller? Is he looking for specific classes or programs? Does the philosophy of the school mesh with your family’s values? Look at the websites and other materials from the schools. Would the approach and program at a school work for your child?
Once you have a shortlist of schools that might work, visit them. You can learn so much by observing classes and talking to teachers. Finally, talk to other parents who have kids at the school. What do they like about the school? What would they change? What made them choose the school?
Mathews: But where is the useful comparable data that can help the busy parent who does not have time to visit several campuses? You told me a decade ago you thought it would be good for independent schools to release the percentage of their graduates that have completed college. The National Student Clearinghouse now provides that data. Why don’t you urge your members to use it and report it?
Bassett: Attending, persisting, and graduating from college is indeed what independent schools are designed to prepare students to achieve. We know from data about the sector as a whole that independent schools excel in this regard. We’ll look into the National Student Clearinghouse to see whether the data it collects might be a good fit for independent schools, and, if so, recommend schools to participate.
Still, the best approach is for families, at each school they are interested in, to ask about how the school is tracking its graduates and what the results show. Many schools use the NAIS College-Age Alumni Survey, which examines graduates’ college experience, and asks them to rate how well the independent school prepared them academically and in areas such as leadership, collaboration, and fitness, among others.
Mathews: That still doesn’t explain why your members resist releasing such simple statistics as the number of AP tests given and the number of seniors graduating each year.
Bassett: If you had a website to explain your journalism work to potential clients and to keep faithful readers in the loop, would you list your weight and shoe size or highlight that you’d never worked in a pet store? Probably not, because it doesn’t help your key audiences.
Although many independent schools offer AP courses, a significant number do not. Independent schools are not obliged to follow a prescribed curriculum, but can determine independently the best way to educate students and meet their goals. Phillips Exeter Academy, for instance, doesn’t offer any AP courses. Instead, it offers classes such as American Politics and Public Policy, Molecular Genetics, and Contemporary Hispanic Theater. The Challenge Index suggests that Exeter is less concerned with challenging students than other schools because it does not offer numerous AP courses. I would beg to differ.
Tons of relevant data are available on independent schools websites, ready to mine by prospective parents desiring detailed information.
Mathews: What do you say to parents like me who don’t agree with you that that is the most important data, who think that the colleges your students get into — which often appears on your Web sites — is probably more influenced by the academic values and college pedigrees of the parents than anything the school does?
Bassett: I’d say they would be guessing instead of looking at the data.
The average SAT scores of students from all backgrounds at NAIS schools exceed the average test scores of students from other types of schools, but the margin grows significantly for students from the lowest income brackets. For students whose family incomes are less than $30,000 a year, for instance, NAIS students scored 23 percent higher on average.
Studies such as the National Education Longitudinal Study also show that low-income students who’ve attended independent schools are much more likely to succeed in college and to graduate than students from other types of schools. Why? Because these students have adjusted to the challenging academic curriculum and achievement-oriented culture of independent schools and they are well-prepared to persist and succeed in college.
This is the essence of our disagreement with your Challenge Index. Choosing a school is NOT an objective decision that can be made based on one criterion alone. It’s a subjective process that takes consideration and time.
Many people — even busy parents — spend hours researching what car to buy. Most would never think of buying a car without test-driving it… And that’s just for a car! Doesn’t it make sense to invest at least as much effort in finding the right school for one’s child?
Ranking schools is a disservice because it short-circuits the process of discovering what really counts — whether or not any individual school is a perfect match for a particular child in terms of engagement, academic programming, level of academic rigor, extracurricular offerings, etc. Rankings don’t help families narrow down or synthesize the information that matters to them; rankings trick people into thinking some criteria matter more than they should.
Here’s a question for you, Jay:
Do you have evidence that the graduates from schools high on your rankings are successful in college or life? Do they attend and graduate from college in greater numbers? Are they more likely to volunteer in their communities than students from other schools? Are the schools high on your list the best match for more students? Do Challenge Index rankings track what really counts — success in life as an engaged, productive citizen?
Mathews: Good question by you. Nobody collects data that would answer those questions either for schools on my list or schools in your association. So we have to go with what we have. (Note that automakers, unlike your members, release lots of data so that buyers can narrow down their choices before they do their test drives.)
Let’s break it down to smaller pieces. The size of a high school’s graduating class gives parents a sense of how big the high school is. If you provide the size of the ninth-grade class, they can discern how many kids stick it out all four years. But many of your schools do not report the size of either the ninth grade or the graduating class. Why not? What harm would come from revealing such a simple statistic?
Bassett: Independent schools have very little attrition — mainly from families moving away. NAIS does collect that data, but it’s of no use to the public. There is lots of room for misinterpretation too. Pundits are likely to apply a fallacious assumption: number of 9th graders - number of 12th graders = students who dropped out. That’s virtually NEVER the case for independent schools. The number of students varies year by year as a result of the school’s strategic enrollment goals (some schools admit new students in each year of high school, for instance), the number of families moving in and out of town, a family’s decision to move to another school that is a better match, student dismissal, etc. So what folks who rank schools hope for is a simple calculation that tells a story, but the calculation is never simple, and often leads to erroneous conclusions.
Independent schools do share the most important data: what students do while at the school and where graduates go to college. Matriculation to college is a clear measure of how well schools are functioning, and that’s why the best public and charter schools also share that information. | <urn:uuid:147867fd-b430-4bbc-96a9-38fb453571af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/class-struggle/post/private-schools-leader-vs-me/2012/07/11/gJQAPWP8dW_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967825 | 1,691 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Falling Whistles is a special campaign to both raise awareness and give money to an important cause that for some reason the world has chosen to ignore. The cause is the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa that has so far claimed the lives of over 6 million people and continues to end the lives of more than 1500 people every single day. It is one of the most violent regions in the entire world and has famously involved the training and murder of child soldiers. Why so many countries have decided this conflict does not matter is one of the greatest tragedies in human history.
You can donate directly to the Falling Whistles campaign or purchase a whistle which is meant to stand as a symbol for blowing the whistle on this terrible human crisis. I’d like to personally thank the wonderful people behind this campaign for standing up and doing what they can to make people aware of this issue. | <urn:uuid:1553ed8d-8a69-46bd-a17c-fe3e434e5b5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.changethethought.com/falling-whistles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96834 | 181 | 1.515625 | 2 |
|Motto||Discover Your Place|
|President||Dr. Janet Robinson (Interim)|
|Location||Sylvania, Ohio, USA|
|Campus||89 acres (0.36 km2) Suburban|
|Former names||Lourdes Junior College, Lourdes College|
|Colors||Terracotta and Gray
|Affiliations||Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference|
The liberal-arts institution opened in 1958 as Lourdes Junior College, and its academic culture is rooted in the Catholic Franciscan tradition. Lourdes offers baccalaureate degree programs in the arts, business, education, nursing, sciences and social work as well as graduate degrees in education, nursing, business administration, organizational leadership, liberal studies and theology. The institution also offers pre-professional programs such as art therapy, engineering, law, medicine, occupational therapy, physical therapy and veterinary science. It is classified as a Master’s university by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Lourdes has been named a “Best in the Midwest” college by the Princeton Review for seven consecutive years from 2004-2011.
Lourdes currently has an enrollment of about 2,600 students. The university provides a variety of social, recreational and educational activities to further enrich students’ lives, ranging from music concerts and educational lectures to intramural sports. Community service and volunteer activities are encouraged, and the university provides many opportunities for service experience, such as Habitat for Humanity. The university began an intercollegiate athletics program in 2010 and competes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) in the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference.
Founding and early history
In the early 1900s Mother Adelaide Sandusky led a group of sisters from the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota to Northwest Ohio and became known as the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio. The Sisters began educating students in the Toledo Diocese. Soon after arriving in Toledo they established Provincialate High School to prepare the Sisters for education and healthcare careers. In 1917 the group purchased 89-acre (0.36 km2) of farmland in Sylvania. Following the Great Depression in the early 1940s the property became the location for an extension campus of the College of Saint Teresa.
Lourdes received its certificate of authorization from the Ohio State Board of Education in January, 1958, at which time it became known as Lourdes Junior College. Although originally established to educate sisters of the Franciscan community, the college became fully accredited in 1964 and began to admit lay women in 1969. Lourdes Junior College became known as Lourdes College in 1973. At this time discussion began on expanding degree offerings to include four-year degrees. In 1975 men were admitted for the first time in the school's history.
In 1982, the Ohio Board of Regents authorized Lourdes College to grant two baccalaureate degrees, the Bachelor of Individualized Studies and the Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies. In 1986, Lourdes was authorized to add the Bachelor of Arts, with seven majors, and Bachelor of Science in Nursing (B.S.N.). In 2002, graduate programs at Lourdes were approved by the Ohio Board of Regents and accredited by the North Central Association. The college later expanded the graduate programs, adding a Master of Organizational Leadership, Master of Education, Master of Arts in Theology, and Master of Science in Nursing programs. On August 19, 2011, Lourdes College officially transitioned to Lourdes University at its annual convocation.
Recent history
Student enrollment reached an all-time high of 2,035 during the 2006-07 academic year and the university continues to see new all-time enrollment records. To keep up with the needs of a growing student body, Lourdes commenced construction of a new academic building in October 2006. The new building, composed of Delp Hall and McAlear Hall (renamed Russell J. Ebeid Hall in 2012), opened in 2007. Delp Hall, which was designed to be environmentally friendly, houses the Ebeid Center and the WIN Center. The Ebeid Center was designed by students for students and offers a place to gather, study, watch TV, play games or put on small stage performances. The WIN Center offers an environment an environment focused on student success and retention. The Center has groups study rooms, computer labs and academic support to all Lourdes students in good standing. McAlear Hall features additional classrooms, faculty offices, and space for finance and information technology operations.
In fall 2007, Lourdes announced plans to expand its nursing program through a partnership with Promedica Health System, and classes began at The Toledo Hospital in January 2008. A year later, the Lourdes School of Nursing launched a new Operating Room First Assistant program, followed shortly by the introduction of the Registered Nurse (RN) to Master of Science in Nursing (MSN). In 2009 The Chronicle of Higher Education named Lourdes one of the "Top 10 Places to Work For.” The college initiated a Pre-Engineering program in partnership with the University of Detroit Mercy and added a new Master of Arts in Theology degree program.
Although predominately a commuter campus, in 2010 Lourdes opened the new Lourdes Commons student housing complex after renovating the Wickford Woods apartments located next to the main campus. The opening marked the first time in the college's history that students have the opportunity to live on campus. Lourdes renamed the on-campus housing for students Lourdes Commons. It is located to the South East of the Main Campus. Lourdes Commons offers one and two bedroom apartments with a number of amenities in four separate residence halls. Student enrollment reached a new record of 2,616 students. In 2011 the university will begin another partnership, with Owens Community College. Students will be able to earn to earn Bachelor of Science four-year degrees in eight business majors: accounting, finance, business administration, health care administration, human resource management, integrated business, marketing and management, taking the majority of classes at College Hall on the Owens Toledo campus with classes taught by Lourdes faculty.
The campus of Lourdes University is located in Sylvania, Ohio, northwest of Toledo less than a mile from the Ohio-Michigan border on wooded 89 acres (0.36 km2) bounded by the Ottawa River to the north, Silica Drive to the west, Convent Road to the south and a branch of the Norfolk Southern Railroad to the east. The campus features buildings ranging from early 20th century to early 21st century, many constructed in the California Mission style of architecture.
The campus includes over 12 academic buildings, and numerous facilities are still in use by the Sisters of St. Francis. St. Francis Hall was built in 1917 and was the first building constructed on the property for the Sisters. It currently houses the Center for Professional Studies and contains classroom space, a student lounge, disability services center, and other offices. St. Clare Hall was constructed in 1929 as St. Clare Academy. It was renamed St. Clare Hall in 1977 and includes many of the administrative offices including the Registrar, Bursar, First Year Experience classrooms, and faculty offices. The building also includes classroom space, meeting and conference space, and music practice rooms. Lourdes Hall is connected to Mother Adelaide Hall and contains the President's office and various other administration and faculty offices. It is also home to the Campus Ministry and the office of Service Learning. The Franciscan Theatre and Conference Center includes a gymnasium and fitness center, meeting rooms, commons area. The Serra Theatre is also located in the facility and seats 850 for campus and local community cultural and educational events. Delp Hall, is a modern, green facility to collect rainwater runoff and also includes a geothermal temperature system. It houses the Ebeid Student Center and the Sr. Cabrini Warpeha WIN Center with study rooms and computer labs for student use. In 2011 the university broke ground on a new dining hall. The university also renovated an apartment complex adjacent to the campus to be used for student housing.
The Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio. maintain an active commune on the campus of the university that includes residence space, an art studio, non-profit counseling center that specializes in helping the needy and marginalized, and religious and prayer spaces. Our Lady Queen of Peace Chapel is the main chapel of the Sylvania Sisters of St. Francis as well as the chapel for Lourdes University. The chapel was dedicated in 1961 and features Santa Barbara Mission style architecture designed and built under the direction of Mother Mary Adelaide. The Portiuncula Chapel is a small oratory located near the main chapel, constructed as a replica of a church St. Francis in Assisi, Italy. The Rosary Care Center was constructed in 1975 as Rosary Hall and served as a residence hall for senior Sisters of Sylvania Franciscan community. It now serves as a 76-bed licensed nursing home to vowed religious women and men, and priests.
The university is classified as a Master’s college and university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The university utilizes a semester-based academic calendar and has a student-faculty ratio of 11:1. Lourdes University offers its students more than 30 majors to choose from. Academic disciplines at Lourdes are organized into the Graduate School and four Undergraduate Colleges, which encompass 15 departments.
- College of Arts and Sciences
- College of Nursing
- College of Education and Human Services
- College of Business and Leadership
- The Graduate School
Lourdes University's undergraduate programs were not ranked by U.S. News & World Report for the 2010-11 academic year. However, the Lourdes University College of Nursing was ranked #234 in the top nursing graduate programs. The university has full accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Lourdes has been fully accredited by the North Central Association of the Higher Learning Commission since 1964 and received its ten-year renewal in 2006-07.
Lourdes University teams, nicknamed athletically as the Gray Wolves (which its mascot and nickname are closely tied to the story of St. Francis of Assisi and the Wolf of Gubbio), are part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), primarily competing in the Wolverine–Hoosier Athletic Conference (WHAC). Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, lacrosse, golf and volleyball; while women's sports include basketball, cross country, lacrosse, golf, softball and volleyball.
Lourdes began its athletic program in the fall of 2010 and began competing in men’s and women’s golf, women’s volleyball and men’s basketball. The college plans to add additional sports including softball, lacrosse, and cross country in the following academic years. Their athletics colors are terracotta, black and white. Recently, Lourdes was named as one of the newest members of the NAIA.
Student life
The majority of students at Lourdes are classified as in-state students, with 93% of students listed as Ohio residents. Out-of-state students represent 6% of undergraduate enrollment. In addition, 52% of undergraduate students are full-time students. 46% of the student body is under 24 and 54% listed as 25 or over.
Lourdes offers a variety of activities including: art and music, drama, environmental issues, literature, student government, social groups, as well as a variety of organizations that focus on academic interests. L.E.A.P. (Lourdes Events and Activities Planning (LEAP) is a student group that focuses on planning on-campus activities. The Campus Ministry offers students the ability to become active members of the university community through spiritual, social and service opportunities. Students play an integral part in the shaping of prayer and liturgy, outreach events, and activities that create a sense of community. Campus Ministry coordinates volunteer efforts among students, faculty, staff and administration to participate in the Habitat for Humanity. Alternative Spring Break, to help at local agencies such as Sylvania Area Family Services, Bethany House, and Helping Hands of St. Louis soup kitchen, and to increase awareness and involvement in local, national and global outreach projects and justice initiatives. The Department of Recreation offers an assortment of recreational health and intramural sport activities, such as pilates, yoga, fitness training seminars, volleyball, flag football, self-defense, cornhole, ladder golf, badminton and indoor soccer. The college also offers a number of academic honor societies including: Kappa Gamma Pi (Catholic College Graduate) ~ Phi Alpha (Social Work Honorary) ~ Phi Alpha Theta (History) ~ Sigma Theta Tau (Nursing) ~ Theta Alpha Kappa (Religious Studies & Theology).
- "Welcome from the President". Lourdes University. 2012. Retrieved August 31, 2012.
- "Franciscan tradition". Lourdes College. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- "Carnegie Foundation Classification - Lourdes College". Carnegie Foundation. 2008-2010. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- Staff (August 24, 2010). "Lourdes College named among best in nation". Catholic Chronicle. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- "Department of Mission & Ministry". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- VanOchten, Brian (March 30, 2011). "Lourdes College approved as new WHAC member". The Grand Rapids Press. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- "History of the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio". Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
- "Timeline of Lourdes University". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "History of Lourdes University". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 12, 2012.
- "Lourdes transitions from college to university". Toledo Free Press. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- Hoffmanwork, H. (January 28, 2011). "Lourdes posts 12% increase in spring enrollment". Lourdes College. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
- Staff (April 5, 2010). "Lourdes College unveils plans for student housing". WTVG. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- Stoll, Joe (August 20, 2010). "Lourdes College students can now live on campus". WTOL. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- Gibb, Emily (March 10, 2010). "Owens students can earn Lourdes business degrees". Toledo Free Press. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
- "History of the Sylvania Franciscans". Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
- Blade, Nick (February 22, 2011). "Lourdes College breaks ground on new dining hall". WTOL. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
- "Lourdes College - Best Colleges - Education". US News and World Report. August 20, 2010. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
- "Academics: Majors and Programs". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "Lourdes University - Best Colleges - Grad School - Nursing". US News and World Report. August 20, 2010. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "Directory of HLC Institutions - Lourdes University". The Higher Learning Commission. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "Enrollment". United States National Center for Education Statistics. Fall 2009. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
- "Student Organizations". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "What is L.E.A.P.?". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "Campus Ministry". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012.
- "Recreation Programs". Lourdes University. Retrieved October 29, 2012. | <urn:uuid:b48f93c3-39bc-459d-a4c1-7dd42c355b73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_University | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941315 | 3,346 | 1.570313 | 2 |
State investigators are now looking into a fire that badly burned an 11-year-old patient at Doernbecher Children's Hospital.
Ireland Lane, a cancer survivor, was at the hospital for an unrelated head injury Feb. 2.
She was reportedly making an art project for the nurses at Doernbecher's, and minutes later her body caught fire.
Fortunately, Lane was able to run to some nurses outside of her room, who smothered the flames. She was then transferred over to the burn unit at Legacy Emanuel.
Lane's family claims she had just used the hospital's hand sanitizer to clean up after her art project, and they believe that could somehow be to blame.
The hospital says their immediate investigation turned up no clear cause. Administrators say there was no access to an open flame in her room that could have ignited the hand sanitizer, a product which is typically made up of more than 60-percent alcohol.
Studies have shown certain conditions in an oxygen-rich environment could also cause sanitizer to catch fire, but the hospital says that did not exist in Lane's room either.
The State Fire Marshall's office has not yet confirmed what started the fire, and the hospital says hand sanitizer is vital to the care of patients.
"Hand sanitizer saves lives, and it saves lives each and every day," said Oregon Health and Science University's Dr. Stacy Nicholson. "We have not made any changes at this point, but if the investigation says we need to, we certainly will do that right away."
"This was an absolutely tragic event. When I got the page, I was horrified. I can't believe this would happen anywhere, much less our own hospital. Our hearts go out to the child and her family," said Nicholson.
The State Fire Marshall's office expects to release results of its investigation this week.
Meanwhile, Lane remains in serious condition at Legacy Emanuel.
Copyright 2013 KPTV-KPDX Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, May 22 2013 12:04 PM EDT2013-05-22 16:04:01 GMT
A man was arrested at the Centralia Police Station after showing up in handcuffs. The 21-year-old walked to the station Saturday and asked for help taking them off. He said a friend bought them at aMore >
A man was arrested at the Centralia Police Station after showing up in handcuffs.More >
Wednesday, May 22 2013 12:56 AM EDT2013-05-22 04:56:12 GMT
The body of a missing Portland woman has been found in Hawaii. A medical examiner's office in Hawaii confirmed Tuesday the body of Ivanice Harris was found near Yokohama Bay. A cause of death has notMore >
The medical examiner's office in Hawaii confirmed Tuesday the body of Ivanice Harris was found near Yokohama Bay. A cause of death has not yet been determined.More >
Wednesday, May 22 2013 10:53 AM EDT2013-05-22 14:53:28 GMT
It was lights out last night for more than 2,000 people in Clackamas County after a single car crash near SE Bakers Ferry Rd and Highway 224 in Boring. The crash involved a 1989 Chevrolet Corvette andMore >
It was lights out Tuesday night for more than 2,000 people in Clackamas County after a single-car crash near Southeast Bakers Ferry Road and Highway 224 in Boring.More >
Wednesday, May 22 2013 4:52 PM EDT2013-05-22 20:52:12 GMT
A traffic stop in northeast Portland led to a chase and finally a crash in Portland overnight. Emergency dispatchers said officers tried to make a traffic stop at Northeast 102nd Avenue and Skidmore Street,More >
It's not every day you see your car on the morning news, but a Portland-area woman was just as surprised to see it involved in a high-speed chase. More >
Tuesday, May 21 2013 7:16 PM EDT2013-05-21 23:16:48 GMT
MOORE, OK - The Oklahoma County Sheriff's office tweeted a photo of a frightened, muddy dog Monday after the deadly EF-5 tornado ripped through the town.The comment accompanying the photo said, "scared,More >
A heartbreaking photo of a little dog guarding the body of his owner, who was killed in the Moore, OK, tornado, is going viral.More >
Wednesday, May 22 2013 6:21 PM EDT2013-05-22 22:21:12 GMT
(RNN) - British officials are saying one man is dead and two others were injured in a possible terrorist attack in London on Wednesday.According to BBC News, eyewitnesses said man was attacked in a streetMore >
One man is dead after two men attacked him in broad daylight with knives and meat cleavers. More >
Wednesday, May 22 2013 11:41 AM EDT2013-05-22 15:41:38 GMT
A major Oregon Department of Transportation project could affect your travel plans this summer.ODOT is planning to re-pave Interstate 84 between Interstate 205 and Interstate 5.The agency says the re-pavingMore >
A major Oregon Department of Transportation project could affect your travel plans on Interstate 84 this summer.More >
Wednesday, May 22 2013 1:25 AM EDT2013-05-22 05:25:22 GMT
Fluoride in PortlandPortland voters are deciding Tuesday what kind of water will be coming out of the tap. They're voting between fluoride or no fluoride in the city's drinking water. The first batch ofMore >
Portland voters are deciding Tuesday what kind of water will be coming out of the tap. They're voting between fluoride or no fluoride in the city's drinking water.More > | <urn:uuid:f3eed198-520d-49c1-8339-805610e0e82f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kptv.com/story/21237766/mysterious-fire-badly-burns-doernbecher-patient | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966568 | 1,198 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Vietnam Airlines plans low cost carrier
BUSINESS: Vietnam Airlines is considering entering Asia’s booming low-cost aviation sector with a new offshoot, while aiming to build its home base into a major entry point for Indochina, its chief says.
Friday 30 September 2011, 12:10PM
The state-owned airline is confronted with “growing pressure” from Asia’s budget operators, president and CEO Pham Ngoc Minh told AFP in an interview.
“We see opportunities in the low-cost segment,” he said, without revealing more details of the group’s plans.
From Malaysia’s AirAsia to India’s GoAir and the Philippines’ Cebu Pacific, a host of no-frills airlines have spread their wings in Asia in recent years, in a challenge to the traditionally more expensive flag carriers.
While some analysts argue the market is already too crowded, given the dozens of discount airlines already criss-crossing the skies, others believe there is still room for more competition.
Aviation analyst Shukor Yusof of Standard & Poor’s Equity Research said flying is currently affordable for only a relatively low percentage of Vietnam’s 86 million people.
He said Vietnam Airlines should “seriously” consider starting a low-cost subsidiary.
Vietnam Airlines also hopes to make the country’s two biggest airports, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, a gateway to the fast-growing sub-region of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, competing with Bangkok and other regional hubs.
Analysts agree that Indochina, with more than 100 million people, has strong tourism potential, but they say Vietnam remains far from hub status.
Vietnam needs “a lot more spending” on airport and other infrastructure for it to become a gateway that could compete with hubs like Singapore or Hong Kong, said Jonathan Galaviz, chief economist at Galaviz and Co consultancy, which focuses on travel and leisure.
The government says the number of foreign arrivals in Vietnam was more than 3.9 million in the first eight months of the year. By comparison, tiny Singapore’s visitors exceeded three million in the first three months.
Analysts say those numbers could be boosted if Vietnam Airlines can begin service to the United States, home to a large percentage of the four-million-strong Vietnamese diaspora.
But flights to the US west coast have still not begun pending US Federal Aviation Administration approval of Vietnam’s security and other standards, Minh said.
The airline has previously cited similar reasons for delays in the service, which it has talked about for several years.
“We will open our direct flight to west coast America” on receiving the all-clear, said Minh, a veteran of almost three decades with the airline. He assumed the top job in December 2007.
Galaviz called US-Vietnamese routes “critical” to bilateral relations.
Since the restoration of diplomatic ties between the former enemies in 1995, a wide range of links has evolved.
Established in 1993 as the once-isolated communist nation began opening to the world, Vietnam Airlines joined the industry association IATA in 2006, aligning it with international standards.
It has grown to serve 55 destinations in 19 countries, either directly or through codeshare partners, and Minh sees the airline intensifying its network in Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, South Korea and booming neighbour China.
“There’s a lot of potential for this carrier,” Yusof said.
Last year it became the first Southeast Asian airline to join the SkyTeam global alliance, which includes Delta Air Lines of the United States and others.
It plans a stock market flotation when conditions improve – hopefully within two years – to help finance an expansion of its fleet, which currently comprises about 70 aircraft, including 10 wide-body Boeing 777-200ER planes.
“We will have about 115 aircraft by 2015 and about 170 aircraft by 2020,” Minh said.
He says the airline is different from other state-owned firms because of its lengthy international business experience. Foreign investors have criticised inefficiency in the broader state-owned sector, a key part of the economy.
“We don’t have any subsidy,” Minh said at the airline’s compound of low-rise Soviet and modern-style blocks. “And we shall survive in this environment.” – AFP | <urn:uuid:701b4ed5-1a0f-4bff-94cb-c24f2c79beb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thephuketnews.com/vietnam-airlines-plans-low-cost-carrier-27069.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942196 | 940 | 1.609375 | 2 |
“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
The answer to the question in the title is, of course, you can’t. Bollocks is bollocks no matter from which race, religion, continent or country it comes from, or in what language.
I tried, and tried hard, but I couldn’t let Friday’s non-event go by without a word or several about the Mayans and particularly about the dipsticks who thought they had interpreted the Mayan calendar.
By the way “the Mayan Calendar” is an anagram of “deny earth almanac” so that in itself should have told them something.
But no, in the best bollocks-brain tradition that also brought us ‘the Y2K crisis that never was’ and that never made any sense either, we have been subjected for months and years now to all this end of the world malarkey from so-called learned scholars who knew such a lot about such a little they might as well have known nothing about anything at all. Plus, they have not an atom of common sense between them!
There’s a fasab rule that there are none so dumb as those who think they are smart. I suppose that’s my take on “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Happily I have been blessed with the ability to recognize that there are at least a trillion things that I don’t know for every little thing that I do know. I have also learned not to jump to conclusions when there is precious little evidence to support them.
So here’s the story.
We all know by now that the Mayans carved a calendar into a big round stone and that some self-important smart asses tried to decipher it and came to the conclusion that, because the calendar apparently stops at Dec 21, 2012, that is the date when the world must end.
That’s a bit like munching your way through a bar of chocolate, looking at the empty wrapper and deciding that there will be no more bars of chocolate ever! (Now THAT would be the end of the world!)
There could have been lots of reasons why the Mayan calendar ended on that date (if indeed it did) but they were either dismissed or, much more likely, never even considered. None of them fit with dipstick logic.
- the wee-calendar-carver-man-person may have keeled over and died without passing on his ‘magic formula’ to a successor.
- he may just have got pissed off with the job and stopped.
- he could have broken his chisel.
- he might have whacked himself on the thumb with his hammer.
- he could have continued his work on a second stone that nobody has found yet.
- or he may have been the Mayan equivalent of the modern day dipsticks who tried to interpret it and really did think the world was going to end on that date.
It’s not the fact that we have these ‘end of the world’ morons and their equally moronic pronouncements about the apocalypse that annoys me. It’s the utterly depressing fact that no matter how insanely stupid their ideas are there are always hoards of other morons willing to believe them.
How sad is that?
And it has been going on for thousands of years.
A Roman priest and theologian in the second and third centuries, predicted Christ would return in A.D. 500. His calculations were based on the dimensions of Noah’s ark!
In the year 999, despite the fact that there weren’t any of the events required by the Bible transpiring at that time, there was almost hysteria over the return of Christ with all members of society seemingly affected by the prediction that it would happen on January 1, 1000 AD.
In 1186 the “Letter of Toledo” warned everyone to hide in the caves and mountains. The world would be destroyed and only a few would be spared.
In 1420 the Taborites of Czechoslovakia predicted every city would be annihilated by fire. Only five mountain strongholds would be saved.
Also around the same time someone called ‘Mother Shipton’ claimed the world would end 400 years later in 1881.
In 1666 the bubonic plague outbreak killed 100,000 Londoners and, along with the Great Fire of London during the same year, made the world ending likely to most. The fact that the year ended with the Beast’s number (666), didn’t help sanity to prevail either.
By 1809 things were getting really silly. A woman fortune teller, named Mary Bateman, had a magic chicken that laid eggs with end time messages on them. However the uproar she created was ended abruptly when an unannounced visitor caught her forcing a magic egg up the hen’s ass! She was later was hanged for poisoning a wealthy client.
William Miller founded an end-times movement that became known as ‘Millerism’. He determined that the second coming would happen sometime between 1843-1844. A spectacular meteor shower in 1833 gave the movement a good push forward and the anticipation continued to build up until March 21, 1844, when Miller’s one year time table ran out.
In 1874 the Jehovah’s Witnesses were getting in on the fun, but failed. They also struck out in 1878 and 1881. Charles Taze Russell then predicted the Rapture in 1910, followed by the ‘End of the World’ in 1914. He later reinterpreted this as the ‘invisible’ return of Christ when the world ignored him and continued. The Witnesses had no better luck with predictions for 1918, or 1925, or 1957, or 1975, or 1994. Amazingly, the failure of every one of their forecasts has not affected the growth of the movement, the Watchtower magazine, a major Witness periodical, having apparently over 13 million subscribers worldwide.
Then the revisit of Haley’s comet was, for many, an indication of the Lord’s second coming. The earth actually passed through the gaseous tail of the comet. One of the few sane people of the time was enterprising enough to sell ‘comet pills’ to people for protection against the effects of the toxic gases.
1960 was the date chosen by Piazzi Smyth, a past astronomer royal of Scotland, whose 1860 book titled “Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid” both predicted that year as the date of the new millennium and was responsible for spreading the belief in pyramidology throughout the world.
1962 saw Pope John XXIII contributing to the madness, predicting that visitors from outer space would arrive in chariots of flaming steel and would share their advanced knowledge with humanity. Our life span would be increased to 150 years or longer and most diseases would be wiped out.
In 1967 when the city of Jerusalem was reclaimed by the Jews, prophecy watchers declared that the ‘Time of the Gentiles’ had come to an end.
By the mid 1970s it was the turn of the late Moses David (formerly David Berg) founder of ‘The Children of God’ to predict that a comet would hit the earth, and destroy all life in the United States.
Then a group called the ‘Tara Centers’ placed full-page advertisements in many major newspapers for the weekend of April 24-25, 1982, announcing “The Christ is Now Here!” and predicting that he would make himself known “within the next two months.” After the date passed, they said that the delay was only because the “consciousness of the human race was not quite right…” in other words, all our fault, not theirs!
In 1983, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Guru of the Rajneesh movement also predicted massive destruction on earth, including natural disasters and man-made catastrophes. Floods larger than any since Noah, extreme earthquakes, very destructive volcano eruptions, nuclear wars etc. would be experienced. Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Bombay would all disappear. To the best of my knowledge they are all still around although Bombay did have a makeover name change. .
In 1991 Nation of Islam Leader, Louis Farrakhan, proclaimed the Gulf War would to be “the War of Armageddon … the final War.” Wrong!
In 1992, we had the whacko in Waco. David Koresh and his Branch Davidian group change the name of their commune from Mt. Carmel to Ranch Apocalypse, because of his belief that the final all-encompassing battle of Armageddon mentioned in the Bible would start at the Branch Davidian compound. They had calculated that the end would occur in 1995. After a 51-day standoff, on April 10,1993, they did have their own mini apocalypse when 76 members died as a result of a deliberately set fire.
Also in 1992 Lee Jang Rim started a church called, “Mission For The Coming Days”. Using numerology as the basis for his chosen date, the cult (no spelling error) looked forward to the Second Coming believing that Jesus would return through Sydney Harbour! An hour after the appointed prediction time the cult leaders ran for it, hiding their faces from reporters. One reporter was punched. Some disappointed members committed suicide, probably because they had given all their worldly assets to Lee Jang Rim who was later jailed for two years for embezzling 4.4 million dollars from 10,000 of his cult followers. Ironically Lee Jang Rim had used the money to buy bonds that matured AFTER the end of the world! You gotta laugh!
Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church Los Angels also caused quite a stir when he announced he had received a vision from God that warned of an apocalyptic event on June 9th, 1994. Hinkle, quoting God, said, “On Thursday June the 9th, I will rip the evil out of this world.” Nope, didn’t happen either.
Then Harold Camping in his book “Are You Ready?” predicted the Lord’s return in September 1994. The book was full of methods that added up Bible numbers up to 1994 as the date of Christ’s return. Of course it was nonsense, but proving that you can’t keep a good man down, he was at it again in 2011, when he pronounced that May 21 that year would be ‘Judgment day’. Needless to say he was wrong again!
In 1993, when Rabin and Arafat signed their peace pact on the White House lawn on September 13, some saw the events as the beginning of the tribulation. With the signing of the peace agreement Daniel’s 1260 day countdown was underway and by adding 1260 days to September, 1993 they came to February 24, 1997 as the fateful day.
The July 29, 1997 an issue of the ‘Weekly World News’ carried a statement by a spokesperson of the ‘International Association of Psychics’ which said that 92% of their 120,000 members had had the same “end time” vision. War, pestilence, and a worldwide plague were among the predicted events which would see the end of mankind by around the year 2001. So much for psychics!
Also around 1997 a group called the ‘Sacerdotal Knights of National Security’ reported that “A space alien captured at a UFO landing site in eastern Missouri cracked under interrogation by the CIA and admitted that an extraterrestrial army will attack Earth on November 27 with the express purpose of stripping our planet of every natural resource they can find a use for — and making slaves of every man, woman and child in the world!”
Then, because 666 times three equals 1998, that year saw another spasm of end of the world predictions. For example, a Taiwanese cult operating out of Garland Texas predicted Christ would return on March 31, 1998. The group’s leader, Heng-ming Chen, announced God would return, and then invite the cult members aboard a UFO. However, the group had to abandon their second coming prediction when a precursor event failed to take place. The cult’s leader said God would appear on every channel 18 of every TV in the world, but as one commentator concluded, perhaps God realized at the last minute that the Playboy Network was channel 18 on several cable systems, and he didn’t want to have Christians watching a porn channel.
Also in 1998 the famous psychic, Edgar Cayce, predicted that a secret, underground chamber would be discovered between the paws of the Great Sphinx and that inside there would be documents revealing the history of Atlantis. This revelation would trigger the Second Coming of Christ. This prediction is more interesting than most because two independent studies have revealed that there is in fact an underground structure just where Cayce said it would be!
The wonderfully and appropriately named ‘Church of the Subgenius’ predicted that on “X Day”, July 5, 1998, the end of the world would occur. At that time, “the Men from Planet X, or XISTS, will arrive on Earth, close a deal with “Bob,” rapture the card-carrying Ordained SubGenii up to the Escape Vessels of the Sex Goddesses, and destroy the remaining population of Earth, VERY VERY SLOWLY.” In case you are wondering, ‘Bob’ is J.R. Dobbs, leader and High Epopt of the Church of the SubGenius, Living Avatar of Slack, the Saint of Sales. You couldn’t make it up!
The new millennium year of 2000 produced an upsurge in end of the world predictions. When none of that came true some of them regrouped and hit on the ‘no year zero’ excuse, pushing their doomsday date out to 2001. Nope. Wrong again!
A few years later, Shelby Corbett, of Bradenton, Florida put up benches throughout the town advertising that the rapture will happen in 2007! She had little Biblical knowledge but conveniently had a book out pushing the same information.
Then Arnie Stanton noted on September 16, 1997 that that evening was the fourth Jewish festival since April 3, 1996 when a lunar eclipse had occurred. He quoted Luke 21:25-26 which mentions “signs in the sun, in the moon and in the stars and on the earth distress of nations” and decided that “these recent lunar eclipses are the last known astronomical signs that will precede a 7 year (360 day/year) countdown to Armageddon/Christ’s return to the Earth.” Arnie expected that Christ’s return would occur within a few months of September 29, 2004 when Asteroid Toutatis made a very close approach to the Earth. Afraid not Arnie.
On April 17, 2008 Ronald Weinland travelled to Jerusalem and announced that he and his wife were the two witnesses of Revelation. The title of his book, “If it doesn’t come to pass…starting in April, then I’m nothing but a false prophet…” said it all.
And then we had the Mayan calendar nonsense, which brings me back to where this post started. It turned out to be a bit longer than I had intended, but I wanted to give you a flavor of the idiots that are out there, all with equally idiotic followers. And this is just a few of many, many more examples.
So is there an answer?
Well yes there is. And it’s pretty simple. Just do three things, (a) don’t listen to self-important academics and scientists who clearly don’t know what they are talking about. (b) treat others the way you like to be treated yourself, and providing you are reasonably normal and not some kind of kinky masochist, then that yardstick should do fine; and (c) don’t worry about the end of the world, you can’t do anything about it anyway, I mean where are you going to go?
THE END (of the post, just the post!) | <urn:uuid:5da12c28-5bea-49d1-bbbe-1955ef9ef57b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fasab.wordpress.com/tag/evidence/ | 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 | 0.971128 | 3,406 | 1.632813 | 2 |
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India is considering allowing additional wheat exports to cut huge stocks at government warehouses and make room for the new season’s harvest, Food Minister K. V. Thomas said on Thursday.
After lifting a four-year-old ban on wheat exports by private traders in 2011, last year the government approved 4.5 million tonnes of exports from its overflowing warehouses, and more than 2 million tonnes of this total has yet to be shipped.
Approval of yet more exports by India, the world’s biggest wheat producer behind China, will help buyers in the Middle East and Africa as leading suppliers Russia and Australia are facing falling output.
“We are considering some more exports. That is the best way to lower your huge surplus stocks when world prices are good,” Thomas told Reuters.
Separately, Thomas said the government would prefer to wait until end-February to get a clear idea about the 2012/13 season sugar output before conceding to industry’s demand to raise import tax. (Reporting by Jo Winterbottom and Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Anthony Barker) | <urn:uuid:dfe544a0-3186-40a3-910d-9b81b1382276> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/india-considers-allowing-further-wheat-exports-609394.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948623 | 233 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Arrgh. My keyboard has died, I bleated on Facebook a few weeks ago. Immediately I hit pricespy.co.nz to find the cheapest replacement and started drooling at the sleek lines of the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 - the latest version of my "dead" one.
In my mind I'd almost made the purchase when my Bargain Betty alter ego kicked in. A cursory inspection of my old keyboard indicated one of the gaggle of 7-year-old boys who hijack my home office to play Mathletics had dropped something sticky between the keys. Nothing more than a nail file was needed to "fix" the 10-year-old keyboard.
From a consumer behaviour point of view, what I was doing was seeking to reward myself by buying a new item when I didn't need it, consumer behaviour expert Robert Aitken of the University of Otago told me.
"It is all to do with people's self-image," he says. "It might be an opportunity to step up a little. You have progressed quite nicely and you deserve this."
Fortunately I'm not egotistical enough to think I deserved this new keyboard. I just coveted it.
We're getting out of the habit of letting things wear out, although we're better than our cousins in Australia, the UK and the United States. I certainly don't darn socks any more. But taking this approach with more expensive purchases starts to burn a hole in a person's long-term savings.
"Repair, not replace" is my mantra when it comes to breakdowns. It seems appliance repairs have dropped out of our collective psyche, in part because it's almost too expensive to call a tradesman.
Yet even for a DIY-phobe such as me, it's not that hard to do many repairs. Sometimes simply opening up and investigating the item draws your attention to the cause of a problem. If not, I have repair strategies.
Strategy 1: When it came to repairing my out-of-guarantee washing machine, I tottered off to the library, borrowed a copy of the Haynes Washing Machine Manual and repaired my own machine by following simple instructions.
Strategy 2: In the era of the internet, repair manuals aren't necessary. If you need to repair anything, from your iPhone to your bicycle, there are how-to videos on YouTube or step-by-step instructions on websites.
Strategy 3: When my InSinkErator broke down, I phoned the company's help-line. Superwoman on the other end of the phone talked me through the problem. She even sent me the replacement part free. I love that company.
Strategy 4: If all else fails I make a beeline to the nearest Asian-run repair shop. They can repair almost anything and charge a pittance. Case-in-point was my CD player that stopped working. I popped it into one such store in Dominion Rd.
The outcome was a $20 repair bill and a stereo that is still doing its job three years later. That's a bargain, if you ask me.By Diana Clement Email Diana | <urn:uuid:e8b52dfe-4a31-4084-b922-e58a34d3abe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10674420 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965639 | 653 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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| | Re: Sex Selection Procedures
Re: Sex Selection Procedures
[ Back to Messages
Posted by Deborah
on October 15, 1999 at 00:50:02:
In Reply to: Re: Sex Selection Procedures posted by Presper on July 25, 1999 at 14:13:04:
: I read two books about Sex selection & it sited several studies that said the opposite of your advice with regard to timing of intercourse. The books said that if you are using intercourse (versus artificial insemination) then you should have intercourse 4-6 days before ovulation... havve you heard about this theory?
Tell me what would be the difference in intercourse and insemination???? No difference! The sperm into the vaginal canal/cervix same thing---- Intercourse before ovulation for female sex, and at time of ovulation for male. The reason for this is simple, female sperm have been shown to live longer--fertilization actually takes place in the free area (usually or very high up in the tube) and if the female sperm are there at time of ovulation from intercourse from days prior will be female child. If egg is just being released the males are faster and have better chance of getting there first. The males faster but die faster too. Female sperm live longer but are slower. Follow me??? You also want to be sure to have a high spem count when wanting male child and want deep penetration to help get the sperm as far into the canal/cervix as possible. I would like the title to the book that you are referring too?
All times are GMT -7. The time now is 01:44 AM. | <urn:uuid:877e6eb3-cf5a-4d7a-966d-d7e54105b02b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthboards.com/infertility/442.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94138 | 377 | 1.804688 | 2 |
China Gold Reserves “Too Small” – Ensure “National Economic and Financial Safety”
by Tyler Durden
China needs to add to its gold reserves to ensure national economic and financial safety, promote yuan globalization and as a hedge against foreign- reserve risks, Gao Wei, an official from the Department of International Economic Affairs of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writes in a commentary in the China Securities Journal today which was reported on by Bloomberg. China’s gold reserve is “too small”, Gao said and while gold prices are currently near record highs, China can build its reserves by buying low and selling high amid the short-term volatility, Gao wrote. The People’s Bank of China is accumulating significant volumes of gold under the radar of many less informed market participants which is bullish. The Chinese government is secretive about its gold diversification and buying and does not disclose gold purchases to the IMF. Therefore, there has been no official update to their holdings since the barely reported upon announcement four years ago that Chinese gold reserves had risen from just over 500 tonnes to over 1,000 tonnes. | <urn:uuid:f326543c-8d23-4975-b551-1dc3780c4298> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://revolutionradio.org/?p=40274 | 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 | 0.958432 | 228 | 1.773438 | 2 |
All that is left for tens of thousands of daily commuters is an old city highway, which leads past the former al-Salam Palace and the conference center to Nisoor Square. The intersection is one of the busiest in the city: During Ramadan, when people head home early in the afternoon, hungry and impatient after fasting all day, it can take 90 minutes simply to cross it. It's hot and dusty; concrete barriers, installed following a recent bomb attack, block each lane of traffic. European embassy drivers coming from the neighboring diplomatic quarter avoid the square at all cost.
On the Sunday before last, a convoy led by the private American security firm Blackwater USA crossed the Nisoor Square intersection at 12:30 p.m. Although what happened in the following 30 minutes does not rank as one of the bloodiest tragedies to have occurred in postwar Iraq, for many Iraqis the incident is emblematic of their difficult relationship with America, which from their perspective operates in their country as a foreign power above the law.
But was it actually a crime? The US convoy came from the east and apparently planned to exit Nisoor Square to either the west or south, according to eyewitnesses. Two of Blackwater’s gray SUVs blocked the roundabout’s southern access point for incoming traffic, presumably to secure the convoy’s passage. It was a traffic situation that has become common in Iraq since the invasion. Signs on vehicles make the consequences for non-compliance unambiguously clear: “Caution, stay back 100 meters, or you will be shot.”
That phrase has been plastered along the sides and backs of many vehicles used by private security contractors operating in Iraq, but often the order is difficult to comply with for civilian drivers. Stuck in a traffic jam, what do you do when a security convoy presses in from a side street, horns blowing and guns pointed at you? How can you stay back 100 meters when a convoy is traveling towards you in your own lane? “Deadly force authorized” is also commonly written on armored vehicles -- but authorized by whom?
Iraqi traffic cop Sarhan Diab, 30, says he and his colleague Ali Khalaf, also 30 years old, did their best to halt the traffic coming from all directions in order to clear the way for the convoy, as they stood on a traffic island near the southern part of Nisoor Square. The two were summoned to the police academy in eastern Baghdad on Thursday after first being debriefed by US officials. Khalaf was later named as a key witness in a report into the tragic incident by the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Diab told SPIEGEL his aim was to get the US convoy across the intersection as quickly as possible -- perhaps too quickly, it seems.
“The first shots came from one of the two American vehicles that I could see,” says Hassan Jabbar, a 45-year-old lawyer who was on his way to the Justice Ministry that day and was only two car-lengths behind the white Kia when the incident happened. “A man with tattooed forearms fired from an open rooftop hatch," he recalls. "Another jumped out of the car. He also fired shots and signaled to us with angry gestures that we should go back the other way.”
Jabbar managed to turn around, but since his path was blocked he also got caught in the hail of bullets. He was shot four times in the back and he was taken to Yarmouk Hospital, which is only a few hundred meters from the intersection.
Police officer Uday Kadhim, 28, who was sitting in a squad car with four colleagues at the exit to Abu Ghraib Street, describes a “rain of fire” that lasted 15 minutes. Dhia Hassan, a 63-year-old economist working at the nearby offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, claims the firefight went on for 20 minutes. “We all hid in the cellar,” he says.
Just to the east of Nisoor Square is the watchtower of the former al-Salam Palace -- once the headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard -- which now houses the Iraqi national police, a unit known until recently as the “Interior Commandos” and thought to be infiltrated by Shiite militia members. A US Congress commission recently suggested disbanding it.
US media reports have mentioned witnesses hearing shots fired from a watchtower at a nearby police station, but details remain sketchy. The US security contractor has stuck to its claims that the convoy ran into “armed enemies” and that “Blackwater professionals heroically defended American lives in a war zone.” The firm did not respond to a list of questions from SPIEGEL. The US Embassy, which resumed diplomatic journeys outside of the Green Zone last Friday, declined to comment until its own investigation has been completed.
Members of other private security firms are also reluctant to comment on the incident. There are around 30 firms currently operating in the country with between 15,000 and 50,000 employees, drawn mostly from former soldiers and ex-cops. Blackwater is the industry’s top dog and follows a high profile approach. Big vehicles, loud sirens, visible weapons, helicopters -- Blackwater favors anything that can be used to keep potential enemies at bay. The aggressive attitude of the firm’s security details has earned its employees the nickname “testosterone monsters.” Employees from other security contractors are often happy to get past a Blackwater-run convoy in one piece.
Some other firms -- mostly British and Canadian -- prefer to take a lower profile approach on the streets of Baghdad. Although they also drive armor-plated cars, their vehicles are much more inconspicuous than Blackwater’s SUVs. Most are BMW or Mercedes models from the 1980s which have been stripped of conspicuous accessories and which are deliberately left unwashed so as to blend in better on the streets of Baghdad. The drivers wear checkered short-sleeve shirts over their bulletproof vests so as to look like average Iraqi men. Some even go as far as dyeing their blond hair black and wearing dark contact lenses to look more like the locals.
Dozens of such security escorts operate each week in the shadows of Blackwater’s convoys in Baghdad. However, that doesn’t mean they are guaranteed safe passage around the city. On May 24, four low-profile British security contractors and their client were abducted from the Iraqi Finance Ministry by a group of uniformed men driving cars from the Interior Ministry. Since that incident, according to an employee at the US Embassy, some private security firms are convinced they’re “at war with the Interior Ministry.”
So of course there were plenty of sarcastic comments to be heard around town after Iraq’s Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani presented a report last Thursday that cleared Iraqi authorities of any responsibility in the Nisoor Square shooting. His observation that the incident has “destroyed the dignity of Iraqis,” however, is right on the mark.
The people on the streets of Baghdad feel more helpless by the day -- but the government's loud declaration that it would toss the private contractors out of the country is an illusion. After all, even Iraqi government ministers are protected by Western security experts.
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Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH | <urn:uuid:880ebb85-fcba-48f8-8659-ee8b4b4dd37b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/contract-carnage-blackwater-s-hail-of-gunfire-a-507513.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972873 | 1,587 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Lady Gaga launch her Born This Way Foundation at the end of last month at the Harvard University. In The opening ceremony Lady Gaga Invite Oprah Winfrey. Her recent interview with Lady Gaga home town is very popular now days.
Lady Gaga talks about different types of questions regarding her foundation to the Time Magazine. She spoke in depth about her foundation.
Born This Way Foundation want to create a sense in the youth and their parents and the culture throughout world wide to work for a kinder and for a happy society in which happiness every where and each person have the equal rights.
The Born This Way Foundation is about to combating the meanness and cruelty among the people and how to teach to young people to become brave and fight for their rights.
Lady Gaga further wants intension of people about the critical point that there is no distinction between the bully and the victim. Every person should have equal importance and valuable member of society.
The Foundation want to bring the transformative change that is going to a long time to affect the overall culture.
Would you like to support Born This Way Foundation? Is this right step of Lady Gaga for the people in society to have equal rights? What is your opinion!! | <urn:uuid:b4e56e4a-38f4-49eb-843f-49a3300acc96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ladygagahot.net/the-purpose-of-lady-gagas-born-this-way-foundation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951013 | 242 | 1.59375 | 2 |
More than a century ago, Nietzsche's madman cried out, "God is dead ... and we have killed him." How we might wish that he had been at least partly right, for we are plagued even in this postmodern era with some gods possessed of uncanny powers of resurrection! They persist in existing to incite us to violence, confuse us about our sexuality, promise us what they cannot deliver and excuse us from a lack of concern for our fellow humans. Whether it takes a wooden stake or silver bullet, we must find a way to intern these gods so that they haunt us no longer.
Let's bury God the Commander-in-Chief. It was bad enough in ancient times when the conception of God as a Divine Warrior incited the slaughter of innocents with swords of bronze, but in an age when a few fanatics can kill millions, we really must discard the notion that "our god is bigger than their god." As far as the biblical record goes, it's understandable how a tiny nation surrounded by great empires might feel the need for divine intervention when Ancient Near Eastern politics was continued by means of bow and spear, but 21st-century American generals really should be relying on their well-trained troops, their state-of-the-art equipment and the strategic wisdom of their own planning rather than the relative size of their god. Can't we deep-six God the Commander-in-Chief and replace him with a God who wants us to love our enemies?
Let's bury God the Prude. Some theists make us wonder why the Creator ever made us sexual beings if so much of sexual activity is God-displeasing. All of it can't be blamed on the Bible, either. Even the priestly writers that jotted down the laws against adultery, incest and male homosexual acts expended far more words advocating the elimination of economic inequality. Paul made a few negative comments about homosexuality but he devoted his ministry to reaching out to those who had previously been judged as unfit to be part of God's community. Let's close the casket lid on the sex-obsessed God the Prude and listen to the voice of God who abhors the degradation, exploitation or oppression of human beings by any means.
Let's bury God the Fairy Godmother. In churches in our poorest neighborhoods and in many parts of the Third World, hucksters preach a "prosperity gospel" of health and wealth to people desperate for more of both. This God can scarcely be found in any ancient scriptures, for those writings would never have been preserved through the centuries had they proclaimed such an obvious fraud. "Have enough faith," those preachers say -- and they mean "trust in me enough to give me your last dime and you'll be healed of AIDS. You'll be driving a new car." Maybe God the Fairy Godmother can just be left out for the crows to eat.
Let's bury God the "Get Out of Jail Free" Card. Nearly 500 years ago, the western Christian church was in thrall to God the Accountant. He tallied the indulgences and the masses, then calculated what each soul deserved. Reformers were aghast at such an image of God that turned God's mercy into quid pro quo, and they preached a God of grace who threw open the gates of heaven on account of Christ. In the centuries since, what had been a course correction has itself become a caricature of God. Head up to the altar, repeat the magic formula and receive your free pass to heaven. There is no cost to discipleship, only reward. There is no need to be concerned with loving your neighbor as long as you're "born again." Let's burn God the "Get Out of Jail Free" Card and respond instead to the God who calls us to be salt and light in this world as we feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, heal the sick and visit the prisoners.
It seems to be innate to humans to create gods in their image. Gods who condone our desire to dominate or exact revenge, who feed our sexual phobias, who use our materialistic desires to manipulate us and who then let us off the hook for all of it if only we'll recite the club oath are nothing more than the same monsters created by the minds of human beings for thousands of years.
Some of us believe in a God who somehow manages to penetrate our solipsistic sense of the divine to reveal the true nature of the Holy One. When a voice is heard crying "Peace" in the midst of the wilderness of war, we hear the voice of God. When a despised prophet defends the social outcast and calls the powerful insider to account, we hear the voice of God. When the skeptic exposes the religious charlatan, we hear the voice of God. If we just listen now, we'll hear the voice of God demanding that we bury those false gods we have constructed so that the God of peace, justice and mercy is no longer obscured.
Rev. Allen H. Brill is a Lutheran pastor (ELCA) and member of the bar in South Carolina. Email firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:4243af63-3362-4ad1-936e-2074fec9154e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://populist.com/05.4.brill.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958275 | 1,057 | 1.570313 | 2 |
If you're one of the 30 million Americans being pursued by a collection agency, help is now here when it comes to those bill collectors who are aggressive, harassing and abusive. New this year, a watchdog agency is policing large collection firms.
Kevin Lynn says bill collectors sometimes call his house up to 20 times a day. And get this, the debt isn't even his.
“I always told them I don't owe the debt, they had the wrong person, that I don't know who the person is,” Lynn explained.
But that person apparently lived in the house previously. Lynn filed three lawsuits to get the ringing to stop. Even more frustrating, his phone company charges him for each incoming call.
“Very upset that I have to pay to be harassed,” Lynn said.
The Federal Trade Commission says it got more than 150,000 complaints about debt collectors last year, that's more than any other industry.
“Some of our number one sources of complaints for consumers are for harassment and abuse calling too often, using profanity, making violent or abusive threats,” said Attorney Chris Koegel with the Federal Trade Commission.
To crack down, a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, is going to start policing some of the largest collection agencies in the country.
How bad can some company's tactics get? Attorneys representing consumers say bill collectors have left people threatening messages like:
“I’m going ahead with a warrant for your arrest.”
“You will be behind bars for six months. And once you go behind the bars you may lose your job.”
In an FTC lawsuit filed against one bill collector, a grieving mother said she was asked how she would feel if the funeral home dug up her son's body and, "dropped it outside my house because i hadn't paid my debt."
Every industry is going to have bad apples," said Patrick Morris, with the Debt Collection Trade Association.
The association says it wants those using abusive tactics weeded out so others can do the right job.
"Don't shoot the messenger. We're here doing our job. We're here respecting laws and regulations and we treat consumers with respect,” said Morris.
The new watchdog agency, CFPB, will have new authority to make sure large collection firms are not harassing or deceiving consumers into paying debt and are using accurate data to pursue debts.
Lynn says that's good news because he's still getting collection calls and feels helpless to do anything about harassment.
“Americans definitely need a new watch dog to help them,” said Lynn.
The CFPB's new authority started January 2, 2013. The FTC and CFPB are working together and will share information and complaints it gets from consumers. | <urn:uuid:9ed34757-7f03-473f-9e79-cc6507f07d09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news4jax.com/news/Watchdog-group-policing-abusive-bill-collectors/-/475880/19016228/-/c090f5/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966145 | 586 | 1.578125 | 2 |
One of the region’s largest school districts keeps getting smaller.
Enrollment projections to be used in determining staffing levels for next year in the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda School District and given to a consulting firm developing a plan for Ken-Ton’s future show a continued decline.
The total enrollment in October was 7,370 students, which means Ken-Ton’s enrollment has dropped by 171 students from the year before.
At Kenmore East High School, where graduating classes once surpassed 1,000 students, the overall enrollment dropped to 981 this year. The latest projections have it down to 659 by 2017-18.
Districtwide enrollment has dropped by 9.5 percent between 2008-09 and the current school year. And each of three methods used to calculate projections through 2017-18 show further decreases ranging from 4.4 percent to 6.2 percent.
The 4.4 percent figure is considered the most accurate, according to Robin B. Zymroz, director of student services.
Five-year projections, which were presented to the School Board last week, were based on enrollment counts done in each of the district’s 13 buildings in early October.
“We take that information, and we use that information to project into the future,” Zymroz said.
Those projections also have been given to SES Study Team of Canastota, the consulting firm hired by the School Board in August to explore the possibility of a districtwide consolidation.
Falling enrollment, stagnant state aid and increasing costs already have resulted in a decision to close Jefferson Elementary School next year. But the move by Jefferson students, current and future, into four other schools will result in only a temporary spike in their enrollments, according to Zymroz.
Meanwhile, the formal plan for Jefferson’s closing is a work in progress, said School Superintendent Mark P. Mondanaro.
“There’s a lot of human capital involved,” he said, citing students, staff and technology.
Closing Jefferson is expected to save the district approximately $2.5 million. Even so, early work on the district’s 2013-14 budget indicates a $2 million deficit because of various factors, including the depletion of reserve funds.
Programs, class sizes and staffing all took a hit in the current budget, in which the district had to dig itself out of a $12.5 million hole.
“I still don’t want to see additional cuts in programs. I think that’s important,” said School Board President Bob Dana. “We’ll fight with the tough decisions.”
Other board members agreed. With all of the cuts made in recent years, member Jim Simmons said, they’re already at the “bare bones” level.
Money-saving recommendations that may arise out of the consolidation study won’t be a factor in the 2013-14 budget, the superintendent noted. | <urn:uuid:3caca3bc-7210-443d-be3c-c356bb571600> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121217/CITYANDREGION/121219312/1010 | 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 | 0.958835 | 625 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Council Tax and Benefits
Council Tax is set by Birmingham City Council and helps to pay for local services such as schools, roads, libraries, police, fire and rubbish collection.
- Pay your council tax
- Tell us you have moved
- Find out about exemptions and discounts
- Check your council tax band
- Council tax enquiries
The Benefit Service is responsible for the administration and payment of housing benefit and council tax benefit. | <urn:uuid:bc125907-ea62-47a8-ab44-041455985f0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://supportbmag@birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite/council-tax-benefits?packedargs=website%3D4&rendermode=live | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96236 | 88 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Category Archive 'Torture'
06 May 2011
Former CIA Director Michael B. Mukasey testifies to the crucial role played by mildly coercive interrogation techniques in establishing the trail that ultimately led to Osama bin Laden.
The cosmic irony is that the single greatest success of the Obama Administration resulted specifically from the policies and tactics used by the previous administration which he ran against and has since eliminated.
[T]he intelligence that led to bin Laden came… began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information—including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.
That regimen of harsh interrogation was used on KSM after another detainee, Abu Zubaydeh, was subjected to the same techniques. When he broke, he said that he and other members of al Qaeda were obligated to resist only until they could no longer do so, at which point it became permissible for them to yield. “Do this for all the brothers,” he advised his interrogators.
Abu Zubaydeh was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of 9/11. Bin al Shibh disclosed information that, when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydeh, helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the United States.
Another of those gathered up later in this harvest, Abu Faraj al-Libi, also was subjected to certain of these harsh techniques and disclosed further details about bin Laden’s couriers that helped in last weekend’s achievement.
The harsh techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA. Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of these techniques.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has said that, as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations. The Bush administration put these techniques in place only after rigorous analysis by the Justice Department, which concluded that they were lawful.
The current president ran for election on the promise to do away with them even before he became aware, if he ever did, of what they were. Days after taking office he directed that the CIA interrogation program be done away with entirely, and that interrogation be limited to the techniques set forth in the Army Field Manual, a document designed for use by even the least experienced troops. It’s available on the Internet and used by terrorists as a training manual for resisting interrogation.
In April 2009, the administration made public the previously classified Justice Department memoranda analyzing the harsh techniques, thereby disclosing them to our enemies and assuring that they could never be used effectively again. ...
Immediately following the killing of bin Laden, the issue of interrogation techniques became in some quarters the “dirty little secret” of the event. But as disclosed in the declassified memos in 2009, the techniques are neither dirty nor, as noted by Director Hayden and others, were their results little. As the memoranda concluded—and as I concluded reading them at the beginning of my tenure as attorney general in 2007—the techniques were entirely lawful as the law stood at the time the memos were written, and the disclosures they elicited were enormously important. That they are no longer secret is deeply regrettable. ...
We… need to put an end to the ongoing investigations of CIA operatives that continue to undermine intelligence community morale.
Acknowledging and meeting the need for an effective and lawful interrogation program, which we once had, and freeing CIA operatives and others to administer it under congressional oversight, would be a fitting way to mark the demise of Osama bin Laden.
05 May 2011
Doug Ross outlines the simple facts which play havoc with one of Barack Obama’s principal campaign issues. Say, how is Eric Holder’s plan to prosecute CIA interrogators going?
1. 2003: Enhanced Interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad Results in the Nom De Guerre of bin Ladin’s Courier…
2. 2004: Enhanced Interrogation of al-Qahtani Confirms the Nom De Geure of bin Ladin’s Courier…
3. 2006 (?): Enhanced Interrogation of an Al Qaeda Captured in Iraq, Ghul, Produces the Real Name of the Courier…
4. 2006-2009: NSA Begins Furiously Intercepting Any And All Communications Made By Anyone “al-Kuwaiti” Has Ever Known…
5. Late 2010 (?): al-Kuwaiti Places a Very Ill-Advised Phone Call… “[conversing] with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence… the courier [then] unknowingly led authorities to a [bizarre] compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad…”
6. 2011: Surveying Abbottabad, We Grow Confident We’ve Found Bin Ladin’s Hideout…
7. April 29-May 1 2011: Obama’s Team Tells Him They Have High Confidence Bin Ladin (or at Least His Most Trusted Courier) is In the Compound, and Obama Agrees, and Orders the Raid; On May 1 It’s Executed By SEAL Team 6…
8. May 2011: Begin a Disinformation Campaign To Convince the Public That 2003-2008 Never Happened.
05 Dec 2010
David Ignatius observes that, in the new, morally-improved age of Obama, sleep deprivation, face slaps, and body shakes are out, but sudden death by high explosive is thriving as never before.
Liberal scruples about interrogation and unlimited detention and the significant percentage of released detainees returning to the jihad have very obviously modified the American approach to war. If you can’t gain any information from captured insurgents and you are going to wind up in the end playing catch-and-release, the likelihood that you are going to take any prisoners at all declines dramatically.
Most amusingly, the consciences of the intelligentsia have been found to be surprisingly comfortable with the more recent remote-killing campaign.
Every war brings its own deformations, but consider this disturbing fact about America’s war against al-Qaeda: It has become easier, politically and legally, for the United States to kill suspected terrorists than to capture and interrogate them.
Predator and Reaper drones, armed with Hellfire missiles, have become the weapons of choice against al-Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas of Pakistan. They have also been used in Yemen, and the demand for these efficient tools of war, which target enemies from 10,000 feet, is likely to grow.
The pace of drone attacks on the tribal areas has increased sharply during the Obama presidency, with more assaults in September and October of this year than in all of 2008. At the same time, efforts to capture al-Qaeda suspects have virtually stopped. Indeed, if CIA operatives were to snatch a terrorist tomorrow, the agency wouldn’t be sure where it could detain him for interrogation.
Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, frames the puzzle this way: “Have we made detention and interrogation so legally difficult and politically risky that our default option is to kill our adversaries rather than capture and interrogate them?”
It’s curious why the American public seems so comfortable with a tactic that arguably is a form of long-range assassination, after the furor about the CIA’s use of nonlethal methods known as “enhanced interrogation.” When Israel adopted an approach of “targeted killing” against Hamas and other terrorist adversaries, it provoked an extensive debate there and abroad.
“For reasons that defy logic, people are more comfortable with drone attacks” than with killings at close range, says Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism officer who now is a consultant with ERG Partners. “It’s something that seems so clean and antiseptic, but the moral issues are the same.”
22 Oct 2010
The usual gang of establishment media collaborated:
New York Times
The commentariat of the left is complaining that US forces did not stop the Iraqis from coercively interrogating enemy prisoners. The other big news is the larger involvement of Iran in the Iraq insurgency than the US government publicly reported.
Rusty Shackleford notes the hypocrisy of leftist indignation.
WikiLeaks Bombshell: US Knew Arab Regime Tortured Citizens
Wow. this is the big deal? And what was the US supposed to do if they investigated claims that the Iraqi government tortured its citizens? Invade? Yeah, I bet Julian Assange, the hysterical Left, and their Islamist allies would love that.
It’s the problem with America haters like Assange, Chomsky, and Osama bin Laden: it’s a worldview where America is always in the wrong, no matter what we do.
When we act, it’s evidence of US Imperialism. When we don’t act, it’s evidence of the US not caring about brown people.
We’re damned if we do, we’re damned if we don’t.
Which makes their underlying theory of cause and effect not a theory at all. First because it’s not falsifiable. Second, because all affects are attributed to the same cause.
I think the part of the story that pisses me off the most is that Assange promised us last time he’d do a better job of vetting the documents in order to protect the lives of soldiers and civilians. So, what did he do? Gave al Jazeera complete access to them.
23 Mar 2010
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Osama bin Laden, Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohammed Atta
All poor Mohamedou Ould Slahi did was recruit Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah, the suicide pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93, for their mission on September 11, 2001.
Mr. Slahi and his defense team allege that he was tortured, i.e., beaten, exposed to uncomfortable temperatures, threatened, frightened by threats against his family, and sexually taunted by female interrogators. A DOD inquiry failed to confirm most of these allegations, but they were obviously credited, and considered to constitute torture, by the officer in charge of prosecution.
Wall Street Journal:
Although the treatment apparently induced Mr. Slahi’s compliance, the military prosecutor, Marine Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch, determined that it constituted torture and evidence it produced could not lawfully be used against Mr. Slahi.
Col. Couch, in a March 31, 2007, Page One story in The Wall Street Journal, cited legal, professional and moral reasons for declining to prosecute.
Mr. Slahi, who was then viewed as a cooperator by interrogators, was granted various privileges at Guantánamo Bay, including his own quarters and garden to tend.
Col. Couch, now in private practice in North Carolina, said Monday’s order “is one of the consequences that the decision-makers should have foreseen when they decided to adopt a policy of cruelty, and the interrogation techniques that flowed from it.”
The same Journal article informs us that he is consequently being freed to resume his former activities.
A suspected al Qaeda organizer once called “the highest value detainee” at Guantánamo Bay was ordered released by a federal judge in an order issued Monday.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was accused in the 9/11 Commission report of helping recruit Mohammed Atta and other members of the al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that took part in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Military prosecutors suspected Mr. Slahi of links to other al Qaeda operations, and considered seeking the death penalty against him while preparing possible charges in 2003 and 2004.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson granted Mr. Slahi’s petition for habeas corpus, effectively finding the government lacked legal grounds to hold him. The order was classified, although the court said it planned to release a redacted public version in the coming weeks.
Mr. Robertson held four days of closed hearings in the Slahi case last year. Mr. Slahi testified via secure video link from Guantánamo Bay, said his attorney.
“They were considering giving him the death penalty. Now they don’t even have enough evidence to pass the test for habeas,” said the attorney, Nancy Hollander, of Albuquerque, N.M.
Spiegel did a major article in October of 2008 on Slahi.
What can one possibly say about the kind of stupidity that equates misinforming, threatening, taunting, scaring, and even roughing up or inflicting some discomfort on a mass murderer with torture? Or about the legal acumen of jurists who award habeas corpus protection to unlawful belligerents apprehended overseas during time of war?
Do you suppose they can quote “Quos Deus perdere, dementat” [Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad] in Arabic?
11 Mar 2010
Pakistani sources told the Washington Examiner.
The Afghan Taliban’s former second in command has been “singing like a male canary” since his capture last month, officials here told The Washington Examiner.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was arrested by Pakistani security agencies in Karachi, has become “a vital asset in gathering information on the Taliban and other extremist groups operating in the region,” one Pakistani counterintelligence official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of his work. Baradar is of interest to both U.S. and Afghan authorities. It is believed that U.S. counterintelligence officials are also questioning Baradar, who has close ties to Mullah Omar and other leaders in the region.
Baradar’s information that will aide both Pakistan and the United States in the war on terror, the Pakistani officials said.
“He obviously does not want to be released under any circumstances,” one Pakistani official said. “He would not survive after the information he has given the government.”
Baradar was born in Wetmak village in the southern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan into an ethnic Pashtun Popalzai clan in 1968. His arrest dealt a serious blow to the Afghan Taliban.
The Pakistani official said Islamabad “is expected to turn over Baradar to Afghan authorities after we have finished with him.”
What the article and its sources fail to discuss is the obvious consideration that, post capture, Baradar was not Mirandized, taken to Guantanamo, sent to Illinois, given a trial in Manhattan, or released in Bermuda. In fact, he was not put in US custody at all.
It is only too clear that US domestic differences concerning detainee status, interrogation, and ultimate fate have produced a state of affairs in which we have every interest in making sure that a captured terrorist in possession of valuable information wind up in somebody’s else hands rather than our own. We cannot cope with prisoners.
We can’t interrogate them. We don’t know how to try them. And we are incapable even of keeping them safe in captivity. Bring someone like Baradar into the United States, and Ivy-League-educated attorneys will come a-running to be sure that he gets the full protection of the kind of top flight legal counsel you certainly could not afford, the domestic Constitution, the Magna Carta, and the opinion pages of the Washington Post and New York Times.
In Pakistan, the ISI can apply any enhanced interrogation techniques it cares to try. No wonder Baradar is talking.
Best of all, no one is accusing Barack Obama of renditioning Baradar to Pakistan. Why, the scoundrel was captured there. It’s not Obama’s fault that he fell into the tender mercies of Pakistani intelligence.
14 Nov 2009
How can a case against a foreign enemy apprehended by another government possibly be prosecuted within the rules of domestic criminal procedure? Khalid Shaikh Mohammed obviously was never Mirandized. What can Eric Holder and Barack Obama possibly be thinking? Are these people hopelessly naive?
Andrew McCarthy doesn’t think so. He thinks they know exactly what they’re doing.
We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.
Read the whole thing.
25 Aug 2009
US Special Operations-trained Interrogation Caterpillar. These guys are fierce.
Pamela Hess and Matt Appuzzo, writing for some news agency, are trying to shocking a nation’s conscience.
With just two weeks of training, or about half the time it takes to become a truck driver, the CIA certified its spies as interrogation experts after 9/11 and handed them the keys to the most coercive tactics in the agency’s arsenal.
Can you imagine? Just because some Muslim terrorists killed a lousy 3000 Americans and produced some mere billions of dollars worth of physical destruction and economic disruption, the Bush Administration actually allowed people with only two weeks of federal training to slap terrorists, pour water on them, and (worst of all) to expose them to caterpillar attack.
Hat tip to Stephen Frankel.
Unlike the US, Al Qaeda provided appropriately thorough training. They even produced a manual.
11 Jun 2009
As Stephen Hayes describes, first you make sure that US forces Mirandize captured enemy fighters.
When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.
Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal—read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.
If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Then, you arrange $11.1 million a head retirement packages to the South Seas for your prisoners. Yes, 17 Uighurs into $200 million comes to $11.1 million semolians.
Palau says its decision to temporarily take the 17 Uighurs, or Chinese Muslims, being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison was a “humanitarian gesture.”
But the South Pacific island may have been motivated more by 200 million other reasons.
Two U.S. officials told the Associated Press that the U.S. was prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in return for accepting the Uighurs and as part of a mutual defense and cooperation treaty that is due to be renegotiated this year.
Figures on Palau’s federal budget weren’t immediately available, but if it is close to its size in 1999, when it was $71 million, the deal with the U.S. would in effect more than double the nation’s spending and make it the fastest growing economy in the world.
Frankly, I bet you could get very close to every terrorist simply to put down his AK-47 and retire for a considerably smaller one-time payment.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine a more effective recruiting promotional deal. I can see Achmed the al Qaeda recruiter delivering his spiel even now, “And if the soldiers of the great Shaitan capture you, they will only provide you with attorneys from Sherman & Sterling before funding your retirement to a life of leisure in a tropical paradise surrounded by beautiful maidens serving you Mai Tais. Inshallah!”
05 Jun 2009
And, my, oh my, the democrats did not like that, and they don’t want you to hear about it.
The Hill reports on democrat efforts to stonewall and obfuscate.
In the bowels of the Capitol Visitor Center, members of the (House Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations) gathered behind locked doors on Thursday morning to begin a series of hearings on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
What began as a remarkably quiet and secretive hearing had, within a matter of hours, exploded into a political brawl over intelligence matters and national security.
Despite the weeks-long furor over how the Central Intelligence Agency came to use enhanced interrogation techniques, and what members of Congress were told about their development and implementation, the committee’s first hearing on the issue during the 111th Congress almost came and went without notice. The hearing was announced publicly but was not open to the public.
According to Republicans, that was by design.
“Democrats weren’t sure what they were going to get,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.), ranking Republican on the Intelligence panel, referring to information on the merits of enhanced interrogation techniques. “Now that they know what they’ve got, they don’t want to talk about it.”
The hearing was publicly described only as a subcommittee hearing on “Interrogations.” A committee spokeswoman would not comment on whether the development and use of controversial interrogation tactics were discussed.
But Republicans on the panel said that not only did the use of interrogation techniques come up Thursday, but that the data shared about those techniques proved they had led to valuable information that in some instances prevented terrorist attacks.
Hoekstra did not attend the hearing, but said he later spoke with Republicans on the subcommittee who did. He said he came away with even more proof that the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA proved effective.
“I think the people who were at the hearing, in my opinion, clearly indicated that the enhanced interrogation techniques worked,” Hoekstra said.
Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), a member of the subcommittee who attended the hearing, concurred with Hoekstra.
“The hearing did address the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been much in the news lately,” Kline said, noting that he was intentionally choosing his words carefully in observance of the committee rules and the nature of the information presented.
“Based on what I heard and the documents I have seen, I came away with a very clear impression that we did gather information that did disrupt terrorist plots,” Kline said.
Neither Hoekstra nor Kline revealed details about the specifics of what they were told Thursday or the identity of the briefers.
Democrats lambasted their Republican counterparts for discussing the information that was provided behind locked doors.
“I am absolutely shocked that members of the Intelligence committee who attended a closed-door hearing… then walked out that hearing – early, by the way – and characterized anything that happened in that hearing,” said Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). “My understanding is that’s a violation of the rules. It may be more than that.”
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said, “Members on both sides need to watch what they say.”
Both Schakowsky and Reyes accused GOP members of playing politics with national security.
“I think they are playing a very dangerous game when it comes to the discussion of matters that were sensitive enough to be part of a closed hearing,” Schakowsky said.
Asked about the validity of Republican contentions that information shared in Thursday’s hearing showed the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques, Schakowsky said she could not comment on what was discussed at a closed hearing.
Reyes responded by saying he did not attend the entire hearing.
“I wasn’t at the whole hearing,” Reyes said. “As the chairman my view is we need to get the facts about how the enhanced interrogation techniques came about, not just the results.”
23 May 2009
“In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.”
Rich Lowry hits Obama’s nail right on the head.
Put Barack Obama in front of a Tele PrompTer and one thing is certain—he’ll make himself appear the most reasonable person in the room.
Rhetorically, he is in the middle of any debate, perpetually surrounded by finger-pointing extremists who can’t get over their reflexive combativeness and ideological fixations to acknowledge his surpassing thoughtfulness and grace. ...
It’s natural, then, that his speech at the National Archives on national security should superficially sound soothing, reasonable and even a little put upon (oh, what President Obama has to endure from all those finger-pointing extremists).
But beneath its surface, the speech—given heavy play in the press as an implicit debate with former Vice President Dick Cheney, who spoke on the same topic at a different venue immediately afterward—revealed something else: a president who has great difficulty admitting error; who can’t discuss the position of his opponents without resorting to rank caricature, and who adopts an off-putting pose of above-it-all righteousness.
Read the whole thing.
20 May 2009
David Kahane, at National Review Online, finds fuel for the next box office blockbuster in some recent headline.
[W]e still can’t sell scripts about “Muslim terrorists,” but a celebrity death match between the Central Intelligence Agency and the person who stands second to the vice president in the line of succession to the White House should any, you know, unfortunate accident befall the leader of the free world, is right up our alley. Which is why I was first off the mark last week when Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, the flower of Baltimore and the pride of San Francisco, accidentally pulled the pin on a live hand grenade in front of the fiercely independent Washington press corps and blew herself up.
She wasn’t trying to, of course. She was trying to explain to a bunch of less-than-enchanted media stenographers who would rather be covering Michelle Obama’s workout, or even Bo the dog’s breakfast, that the nasty, un-American CIA has deliberately “misled” her when discussing just precisely how they were going to insert bamboo shoots under the fingernails of a caterpillar that they would then waterboard and introduce into the cell of some totally innocent mujahedin caught up in the lawless Bush-Cheney dragnet during the hysteria that followed the inside job that was 9/11 and . . .
In the other corner we have the Central Intelligence Agency, which we in Tinseltown have been depicting for years as just about the most malevolent organization in the world, outside of the Catholic Church, the Club for Growth, and the Cheney family. In movie after movie, the shadowy CIA guy always wound up as the villain in the last reel. So imagine our surprise when, during the Bushitler interregnum, we discovered that the CIA is on our side, and has been for decades! Screwed up the whole Shah of Iran thing and opened the way for the mullahs? Check! Consistently overrated and then failed to forecast the sudden disintegration of the Soviet Union? Check!! Never did quite figure out what Osama bin Laden was up to? Check
To top it all off, along came super-top-secret agent/Vanity Fair babe Valerie Plame and her dashing, Graydon-Carter-tressed hubby, Joe Wilson, running a sting operation against the hapless Bush White House, whipsawing the president and the veep with Joe’s unprovoked New York Times tale of sipping mint tea with Colonel Kurtz up the Congo and all of sudden there’s shouting about the “sixteen words” in Chimpy’s State of the Union address and Valerie is outed by Cheney flunky Scooter Libby — okay, by Colin Powell flunky Dick Armitage, same thing — and then Judy Miller goes to jail and . . .
[H]ere’s the script that just made me a cool $1.5 mil plus five monkey points plus two first-class tickets to the premiere: Three Days of the Dodo Bird.
We open in Abu Ghraib prison, post-“Mission Accomplished,” where a SHADOWY CIA AGENT gets the bright idea to strike fear into the hearts of America’s “enemies” by photographing completely innocent prisoners in outrageous situations (piled naked on top of each other, led around on a dog leash by a woman, forced to wear panties on their heads) calculated to offend and inflame the sensibilities of the Religion of Peace. Now, you and I both know that these kinds of things happen every week at the right Hollywood parties, and they’re tons of fun, but for some weird cultural reason the photos are deemed offensive, the super-top-secret psy-war campaign winds up on the front page of the Times every day for a year, and the Shi’ites hit the fan.
Read the whole thing.
20 May 2009
Noemie Emery, at the SF Chronicle, thinks the way Nancy Pelosi’s pious grandstanding over enhanced interrogation techniques backfired on her was pretty funny.
It was always quite clear that liberals’ efforts to wreak vengeance on President George W. Bush for his (successful) terror-war strategy would hurt Democrats more than it hurt him, but who ever dreamed it would become quite so funny this fast?
Minutes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave her news conference on the subject of “torture,” she, and not Bush, was the issue and story; she was at war with the CIA and Director Leon Panetta; she was at war with House Whip Steney Hoyer, who wants to succeed her; and she had become a huge problem for President Barack Obama — or as he might say, a “distraction” — who had trouble enough trying to reconcile his rhetoric with the demands of his office, and his responsibilities to protect the country with the addled demands of his frenetic admirers. Not bad for a 25-minute presser. And this was just the first day.
This knowledge that the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate had known of and approved at last tacitly the “harsh” techniques sanctioned by the Bush administration in the grim days after 9/11 was the more explosive on the heels of the news that many Bush-era tactics — detainment, rendition, Club Gitmo — were being endorsed by their president.
The problem is that like the CIA, the entire government is now in the hands of the Democrats, who now have the job of protecting the country, not under past conditions, not under conditions they like to imagine, but conditions that really exist. The conditions that exist are those in which small groups of people, undeterred by threats or the prospect of dying, are able to inflict immense harm.
Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack, but it took place thousands of miles from the mainland and was an assault on the Armed Forces. The 9/11 attacks were an assault on the mainland, on unarmed civilians who were going to work. In conditions like this, nice people from Chicago and Texas, who find themselves charged with protecting the lives of 300 million, may find themselves employing “enhanced information techniques” seldom used in the days of orthodox warfare.
This may cost them the good will of the chattering classes of the East and West coasts and most cities in Europe, but, as Scrappleface puts it, “crashing hijacked planes into buildings full of noncombatant civilians is one of several ‘enhanced immolation techniques’ forbidden under U.S. and international law.”
Trying to square their need to trash Bush for his successful deterrence agenda with their need to escape blame if harm comes if his acts are reversed by their people, liberals react with the perfect lucidity that has long been their main trait. Eugene Robinson insists that because it can’t be proved beyond doubt that any technique used by the Bush administration stopped any specific attack from occurring, it proves beyond doubt that none did.
Read the whole thing.
17 May 2009
Stung by CIA rebuttals, Nancy Pelosi did her best to forstall more damage to herself by trying to assure CIA officers that they were not her targets. She was only continuing the left’s vendetta against George W. Bush and officials of his administration.
So ease up, fellows. The Speaker is signaling that you’re safe and she is not sincere. It’s just politics.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has backed down slightly in her fight with the CIA, saying that she really meant only to criticize the Bush administration rather than career officials.
“My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe,” Pelosi said in a statement. | <urn:uuid:a70c4bb3-8a36-4991-bffe-d2456d3313cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://neveryetmelted.com/categories/iraq-war/torture/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964699 | 7,372 | 1.8125 | 2 |
What is Tantra?
The highest of all possible human goals is the attainment of complete enlightenment, an ultimate state of peace in which all obstacles obscuring the mind have been removed and all good qualities such as wisdom, compassion, and skillful means have been fully developed.
However, we cannot reach this ultimate goal merely by waiting for it; we need to use the appropriate methods to take us there.
What are the methods for attaining the peace of full enlightenment? They are the paths of Sutra and Secret Mantra; there is no third method. Of these two, the techniques revealed in Secret Mantra are superior to those revealed in the Sutras.
Not only is Secret Mantra the supreme path to full enlightenment, it is also extremely rare. As Je Tsongkhapa said, the teachings of Secret Mantra are even rarer than the Buddhas because, although a thousand founding Buddhas will appear during this Fortunate Eon, only the fourth (Buddha Shakyamuni), the eleventh, and the last will teach the paths of Secret Mantra.
At the moment, we have a great opportunity to practice these rare and beneficial teachings, so it is important that we develop a strong intention to practice them purely.
If the Mahayana teachings were to vanish from this world, we would have no opportunity to become a Buddha. Therefore, while we still have access to these precious teachings, we should apply ourself to them assiduously and try to gain some experience of them.
The etymology of Secret Mantra is as follows. ‘Secret’ indicates that these methods should be practiced discreetly. If we make a display of our practices, we will attract many hindrances and negative forces. This would be like someone talking openly and carelessly about a precious jewel they possessed and, as a result, attracting the attention of thieves.
‘Mantra’ means ‘protection for the mind’. The function of Secret Mantra is to enable us to progress swiftly through the stages of the spiritual path by protecting our mind against ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions.
For more information on this subject, see Tantric Grounds and Paths. | <urn:uuid:cf4edb5d-b69c-4b32-bcfc-89a0a267fb1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kadampa.org/en/reference/what-is-tantra/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952021 | 450 | 1.546875 | 2 |
A "Coast Guard expert" tells Congress it has its priorities for maritime security mixed up here:
Members of Congress should be more concerned about the threat of terrorists using mines and small boats to attack multiple U.S. ports and disrupt the economy, according to a U.S. Coast Guard expert.Of course, there is an argument that the Port of Bullfrog, LA is at less risk than a spectacular hit in Los Angeles or New York, Cheasapeake Bay, Houston and the other big ports. An analysis of such risks is available here in a paper titled "A Critical Vulnerability, A Valid Threat. U.S. Ports and Terrorist Mining" by CDR Michael Sparks, USN. CDR Sparks sets the scene of multiple mine hits in geographically distant ports and notes:
Lawmakers should grant more funding to port surveillance to counter the threat, Guy Thomas, science and technology adviser for maritime domain awareness at the Coast Guard, said in an interview.
Instead, lawmakers are focusing port security spending on scanning shipping containers for a nuclear bomb, which most experts in the Coast Guard and intelligence community agree should be less of a priority than maritime domain awareness, he said.
Lawmakers have preferred to fund container scanning technology because “it’s visible and your congressman gets points for doing something” that is more dramatic and TV-friendly than installing cameras, radars and sensors, according to Thomas.
A scenario that greatly troubles him is that terrorists might use multiple small boats — carrying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and coordinated via inexpensive satellite radio — to attack several U.S. ports at one time. Or the terrorists might use the boats to disperse anthrax all over a city, he said.
Terrorists “could also drop mines in the harbor as they entered to really slow seaborne relief operations to the port,” Thomas said.
He was reluctant to talk about a multiple port attack scenario until recently, when he found others openly discussing it.
He is concerned about mines because there are “hundreds of thousands” of them potentially available to terrorists. The mines could be easily hidden underwater and “lie in wait” until a ship passes by and is hit, leading to closure of a port.
An attack by mine on a port would be harder for authorities to manage than an attack by an improvised explosive device or truck bomb near a port, as it would be harder to know if additional mines had been planted, Thomas said.
After witnessing several war games, Thomas believes the Navy lacks the mine dispersal capability to deal with more than one mine attack on a port. However, it might be able to handle two such attacks if they were located close together, he added.
Thomas favors using airships such as blimps, aerostats, or tethered lighter-than-air aircraft, and satellites to surveil ports.
Airships and aerostats can be used to monitor up to 100 miles from shore at a lower cost than manned aircraft.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, has said he wants to focus on increasing the security of small vessels.
The Coast Guard will hold a summit in June on improving security of small boats.
“We’ve done a great deal in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to secure our ports from potential threats posed by commercial ships, but we know very little about the 77 million U.S. boaters or the 13 million recreational vessels that ply U.S. waters,” Allen said in March.
“This leaves us extremely vulnerable to a U.S.S. Cole-style attack within one of our ports or waterways,” Allen said.
The National Strategy for Maritime Security summarizes a variety of tactics commonly mentioned as maritime security risks:
“Terrorists can also develop effective attack capabilities relatively quickly using . . . explosives-laden suicide boats and light aircraft; merchant and cruise ships as kinetic weapons to ram another vessel, warship, port facility, or offshore platform; commercial vessels as launch platforms for missile attacks; underwater swimmers to infiltrate ports; and unmanned underwater explosive delivery vehicles. Mines are also an effective weapon. . . .Terrorists can also take advantage of a vessel’s legitimate cargo, such as chemicals, petroleum, or liquefied natural gas, as the explosive component of an attack. Vessels can be used to transport powerful conventional explosives or WMD for detonation in a port or alongside an offshore facility.”
The United States has more than 360 ports.
The U.S. is again the target of terrorism. What is different is that this time, it is not the rampant loss of life and the devastating images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center or the buildings crumbling to the ground that will impact our way of life. We will not see the smoldering rubble or the countless pictures of people in mourning the loss of loved ones. It is the second and third order effects caused by the terrorist mining that would have an impact on every citizen of the country by straining resources and the economy.Why the economic effect?
The volume of goods and trade imported and exported through United States ports is expected to more than double over the next twenty years. Currently, fifty ports in the United States account for approximately 90 percent of all the cargo tonnage shipments while twenty-five ports account for 98 percent of all container shipmentsHistory should guide us in assessing the risk- the mining of U.S. ports is not a new idea:
...over the period 14 May 1942 to 1 April 1944 German U-Boats planted a total of 338 mines in the approaches to Western Atlantic ports running from St. Johns, Newfoundland to Panama. Of these, 130 were planted in the approaches to U.S. East Coast ports inflicting 9 ship casualties and closing ports for a combined total of 30 days (New York - 2 days; Chesapeake Bay - 3 days; Jacksonville, Charleston and Savannah - 3 days; Wilmington and Charleston - 8 days). In their attempt to stem the flow of critical materials to England and then Europe, the Germans elected to concentrate on torpedo attacks against East Coast shipping and the Atlantic convoys instead of continuing the mining operations. And yet, with only 11 submarine sorties and the expenditure of 120 mines they inflicted 9 ship casualties and interrupted the vital flow of war materials for a total of 30 days (A Misplaced Strategy).CDR Sparks' piece with its recommendations can be downloaded and read as an Acrobat document. In sum, though, he asserts that the Department of Homeland Security lacks the assets to "do" counter-mining operations and would have to call upon the Navy. When the thesis was written, Navy assets were not located in the optimal ports to provide quick services to the DHS and the US Coast Guard. CDR Sparks makes some sensible suggestions to rectify these imbalances. While there is some cost involved, the old slogans "Be Prepared" and "An Ounce of Prevention' come to mind. The Commander also points to the possibility of "IED" type improvisation for creating mines for use in U.S. ports -- whihc might rely on decidely unsophisticated "command" detontation instead of fancy electronics - but command detontations work just fine.
Discussions by a vendor of equipment to locate sea mines, the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS). Discussion of UUV in mineops here,
Wikipedia article on Naval mines here.
Aviation Week article on Naval mine threat here:
The U.S. Navy, for example, is embracing new concepts such as modular capabilities incorporated as an organic part of the combat system of major warships and submarines, while getting rid of many dedicated mine countermeasure (MCM) vessels, particularly the Italian-designed Osprey-class. Most European navies, on the other hand, still put their money on the proven 1980s concept of the dedicated minehunter, despite the complexity and expense, on a cost-per-ton basis, of these vessels.Lots of options, but the need to do something is upon us...
Meanwhile, industries in various parts of the world are proposing their own concepts and technologies for the detection, classification, identification and destruction of mines. Some even claim that a small support vessel and a rigid-hull inflatable boat are all that's needed to take a containerized MCM system to sea and operate it effectively. In all these approaches, unmanned and autonomous underwater vehicles are emerging as critical components of operations.
Whichever approach prevails, the threat of naval mines is real.
UPDATE: Of course, Congress is busy with other matters, like taking care of victims of the Japanese occupation of Guam in WWII.
UPDATE2: And then there's the Wal-Mart issue. | <urn:uuid:5df7879b-a26d-4c58-acd1-5909284c1199> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eaglespeak.us/2007/05/maritime-security-mines-small-boats-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948877 | 1,806 | 1.632813 | 2 |
On Nov. 14 at the Douglas High School auditorium, the National Honors Society inducted new junior and senior class members in to Chapter Number 974. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of these students.
At the beginning of the night, everyone quickly took their seats and let the ceremony begin. The evening started off with a welcome from the NHS President, Dora Valencia, who lit the first candle to commence the ceremony.
Each candle was lit throughout the ceremony by a different senior; every candle represented a different characteristic of the NHS. After lighting the second of the five candles, senior Carolyne Miller began her speech by stating, “Character by meaning is what you do when no one else is looking… as a National Honors Society member, I commend you all to have a character that excels you far beyond everyone’s expectations or standards.”
Later, Miller was asked what it meant to be a part of the NHS, “It means a lot to most of us because it showcases our ability to excel in leadership and academics.”
Stepping up to the stage, senior Benjamin Rivera, then proceeded to light the third candle of the night which represented scholarship.
“There is a great deal of uncertainty in the world. Almost nothing is constant and everything is subject to change… nonetheless, the students arriving here today have scholarship to keep their feet on the ground,” Rivera told the audience during his speech.
As the night advanced, Marco Noriega lit the fourth candle representing leadership. He said during his speech, “Leadership is the capacity to turn vision into a reality. Setting an example that can change the world. Today, we all stand as leaders.”
Noriega was DHS very own student council president, and he was used to being a leader and setting an example for other students to follow.
“After all, I am more afraid of an army of a hundred sheep led by a lion, than an army of a hundred lions led by a sheep,” he said.
The person with the honor to light the last candle of all five was senior Emily Castillo. “There are two basic kinds of characters. Two basic kinds of individuals,” she declared. The fifth candle was meant to represent service. “There are those who seek primarily to succeed themselves, and there are those who seek primarily to serve others.”
After all candles were lit, senior Javier Busanez, introduced all the current National Honors Society members. One by one, all of the 39 senior members were introduced to the audience and asked to take their seats. Following shortly after, Valencia introduced new members that joined the National Honors Society. With a total of 33 juniors and an addition of six new seniors, 39 new candles were lit and 39 oaths were taken.
At the end of the ceremony, DHS Principal Randy Walker made a brief speech congratulating the current and new members.
“I’m glad to be standing here tonight to recognize the students who have demonstrated the excellence in the areas of leadership, service, scholarship and character. The National Honors Society is a select membership and being a member shows who and what you are—a very special group of Douglas High School students. We are all proud of your accomplishments.” | <urn:uuid:a415aeaf-6209-42f6-9e08-e8b2477bb4a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.douglasdispatch.com/articles/2012/12/19/news/features/doc50ad08a07f051978302318.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973284 | 688 | 1.695313 | 2 |
PARLIAMENT yesterday adopted a report that proposes the privatisation of state owned companies and parastatals.
The report will give the Privatization Commission the go-ahead to privatise five public sugar companies, three hotels owned by Kenya Tourist Development and Kenya Wine Agencies.
The hotels that are targeted include Intercontinental (International Hotels Kenya Limited), Hilton Hotel (Kenya Hotel Properties Limited) and Mountain Lodge.
The sugar companies earmarked for privatisation include Nzoia, Sony, Chemelil, Muhoroni, Kibos and Miwani, some of which are said to be in massive debts.
The privatisation of the sugar companies was first approved by the cabinet in 2010. Most of these factories are underperforming and heavily indebted while two are under receivership.
The cabinet however underscored the need to protect the interest of farmers in the privatisation process. As such, farmers will be given an opportunity to actively participate in buying shares in the factories as individuals and co-operatives.
Under the Sugar (Amendment) Act, sugar cane farmers and outgrowers are entitled to a 51 per cent stake in all government-controlled sugar companies which are set to be privatised.
The departmental committee on finance planning and trade said that the move to privatise them is expected to attract investors to help turn around their fortunes.
Golf Hotel in Kakamega, Sunset Hotel in Kisumu, Kabarnet Hotel, Mount Elgon Lodge, Mountain Lodge, The Ark Limited and the Kenya Safari Lodges and Hotels Limited will also be considered for privatisation.
Other state parastatals lined up to be privatized include Consolidated Bank, National Bank of Kenya, Development Bank, Kenya Meat Commission, Kenya Pipeline and East African Portland Cement.
In November, Finance minister Njeru Githae appointed members of the Privatization Commission in a Gazette notice. In July last year, the minister directed the commission's chief executive to priorities the sale of Kenya Wine Agencies' 30 per cent stake to South Africa's wine maker, Distell.
Currently, the government owns a 72.65 per cent stake in KWAL through Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation, while Centum Investment owns 26.43 per cent.
The Transition Authority will help in the separation and validation of existing assets and liabilities as either belonging to the government or the county government.
The Privatization Act states that the earnings from the sale of government shares shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund, while the proceeds from the sale of a state corporation's equity holding shall be deposited in a special interest bearing account established specifically for that state corporation to maintain the balance sheet of the corporation. | <urn:uuid:b858da24-7a72-4c39-8af9-005c4630f58f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201301101340.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940601 | 557 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Perfectly Squared Day
As the Barry Manilow song goes, "Looks like we made it."
I speak, of course, of my "coming out" party 49 years ago.
The most significant milestone in my life is once again being acknowledged; because without this one, there would not be any at all.
First, foremost, and always, I am thankful for being. Existing is a good thing; the first option of Hamlet's question is the right answer. God knows I should be more grateful for that, considering how things could be going.
Yet God knows how much of an Augustinian heart I have. I find it so ironic the number of years I have been alive is now the same as the number of full months I have been without a job. I know Jesus said to only worry about today, but it is so hard when the few bills I have can't be paid. And the Devil knows of that insecurity all too well. Thank God there is more than enough grace to overcome being hopelessly despondent.
The motto of this 'blog and its owner has been "Go Forward." There are days when I think I do; there are days when I just hold my ground; there are days when reverse seems to be the direction. At times the cross you carry is an easy yoke; at times you have Simeon along; at times it fells you. Yet, it is with you always.
Such is each individual's via crucis, this experience called life. There is no living without dying, but there is no dying without rising. Is this not the true meaning of being an "Easter people," in the words of Blessed John Paul II? Is this not what we are called to do according to the prayer ascribed to St. Francis of Assisi? How can we be fruitful unless we become a seed scattered and sown?
"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, "A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!'"Robert Browning(1812-1889)
I pray the best is yet to come. | <urn:uuid:c16f3e1e-d586-479a-9188-e5800cf00209> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://awingandaprayer.blogspot.com/2011/07/perfectly-squared-day.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971967 | 468 | 1.65625 | 2 |
[Novalug] Best programming language for "munging?" Not Perl? Ruby? Python?
James Ewing Cottrell 3rd
JECottrell3 at Comcast.NET
Wed Oct 28 16:21:58 EDT 2009
Like I said, Perl was designed to make System Administration tasks
easier. For quick tasks, it's great. Having dynamic strings, hashes, and
arrays, as well as regular expressions makes it faster than programming
in C. So when a project feels too heavy for a shell script, Perl has
been the logical next step for me. I can use or ignore the features I
don't need or like.
I dunno Python at all, other than from grubbing thru a few anaconda
scripts, so I dunno how well it can bang out those easy tasks quickly.
I'm assuming it can.
But I think the Next Big Thing is Ruby, especially on Rails. Ruby was
designed to fix Perl, and as an alternative to Java. In fact, I'm
reading a book right now called From Java to Ruby, by Bruce Tate, which
says that Java is Too Heavy, burdened with Cumbersome Frameworks, and
that RoR is orders of magnitudes more productive (not to mention FUN)
Bruce has written several Java books too, so it's not just a case of "My
Language can beat up Your Language". And he says that a lot of other
Java gurus are wringing their hand at what Java has become too.
To be fair, the book was published in 2006, so developments in Java
could have changed the tide somewhat. Or not. I dunno.
Change is always difficult, but it is ultimately rewarding. I learned a
lot when I switched from csh to ksh, and from vi to emacs, and probably
when I switched from Solaris to Linux.
So now I need to make another change, from Perl to Ruby.
The counterpart to CPAN is Ruby Gems. A large repo is RubyForge.ORG
Consider the first item from the following URL:
Net::SSH even looks like a CPAN name, doesn't it? I bet many a hacker
cut their teeth on Ruby by rewriting the Perl modules from CPAN.
So what are you waiting for? I wonder what took me so long.
Paul D. Bain wrote:
> James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
>>> When Perl was made, it was a nice unification of sed/awk/sh/C. Easy
>>> to understand and Get Things Done. But it has turned into a monster,
>>> mostly because it pretended to be a Language when it stretched that
>>> term to the breaking point. It's a collection of Special Cases.
>>> Perl did get some things right. The idea of \special always being
>>> literal in regexps is nice.
>>> And taking the left or right values from || and && is WAY better than
>>> the stupid 0 or 1 of C, altho making them boolean results as in Java
>>> is useful.
>>> And it IS totally cool that you can create reference to hashes of
>>> arrays of arrays of hashes on the fly all in one statement.
>>> The grammar is Context Sensitive and Ambiguous. Cardinal Sins.
>>> OK, let me ask you folks, what would you call the string =~ in the
>>> following statement: $var =~ /regexp/;
>>> Is it an operator? NO! OK, then what is it? Well, it's a Glorified
>>> Comma. The operator is "m" here, and "=~m" is the infix notation for
>>> "$var" and /regexp/ if you will.
>>> After using Perl for about 5 years I was calling for a Perl II
>>> language back in the early 90s. Well, they finally got to it with
>>> Perl 6, but they are going in the wrong direction ... it's even MORE
> Thank you for giving us the opinion of a long-time Perl user. I had
> suspected that Perl 6 was headed in the wrong direction, but I was not
> certain because I am not a long-time Perl user and because I have not
> been following Perl 6 developments closely.
> My question is this: If Perl is deficient in some respects, then
> which language is now best for "munging," the transforming of messy
> input into cleaner, culled data? In yesteryear, Perl held this
> distinction -- does it still? Or does that distinction now belong to
> Ruby? I understand that Ruby processes strings just as well as Perl does
> because, for example, it supports Perl-style regular expressions.
> One of Perl's huge advantages is this respect is CPAN.org, which
> has, AFAIK, no Ruby counterpart. CPAN has many good modules for
> processing and munging email, which is important to me. Furthermore,
> Ruby's libraries are still considered inferior to Python's. Moreover,
> the number of mature Perl and Python frameworks is huge, probably far
> larger than the number of Ruby frameworks. In this regard, Ruby-on-Rails
> (RoRails) does not count. RoRails is a Web application development
> framework only, and I am interested in munging tools _only_.
> BTW, this is an important question in the field of legal technology.
> That is why I am asking.
>>> American Dave wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 01:07:39PM +1300, Mark Smith wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 04:42:52PM -0400, James Ewing Cottrell 3rd
>>>>>> I've pretty much been writing in Perl (and shell) for 20 years now.
>>>>> even today, it's a really good language for just about everything.
>>>>> sadly, some folks have negative connotations associated with perl.
>>>>> not sure why it gets a poor review from those people.
>>>> The complaints usually revolve around the following:
>>>> * Vars like $_ are horrid to read, especially when implied
>>>> * No out-of-the-box GUI support
>>>> * Perl's base is much smaller than many other modern languages,
>>>> meaning you've got module soup after a while. This is also a feature.
>>>> * Without 'use strict' code isn't maintainable.
>>>> * Perl 6 is very, very late.
>>>> I should note that I like Perl.
>>>> -A. Dave
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More information about the Novalug | <urn:uuid:767d099a-baf3-490a-a4d1-d658bf026dc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://list-archive.xemacs.org/pipermail/novalug/2009-October/021687.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948765 | 1,476 | 1.820313 | 2 |
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